Book launch: Two weeks to go

A ten-year creative journey comes to an end on July 2

So, here’s something very cool that I am extremely excited about: I have a book coming out soon. This is something I may have mentioned to you before. It’s a short story collection, entitled I Blame Myself But Also You (and other stories), published by Malarkey Books, and depending on how you count, it’s taken me a little more than ten years to get it to this point.

Beautiful, ain’t it? Cover design by @MrWojoRising

I’ve wanted to publish a short story collection since I was pretty young, though I didn’t get serious about doing the work to accomplish this until 2014. I started small, with some flash fiction pieces—one of which made it into the book—but before long I started working on what became my first novel (How I’m Spending My Afterlife) and the longer stories based on my time in the Coast Guard that eventually congealed into a second novel (tentative title: The Shitbird), which is as yet unpublished.

So I started writing stories and submitting them to literary journals and zines, writing and submitting, and if you’re lucky enough not to be a fiction writer, then you probably don’t have a feel for just how grueling this process is. Rejections come at a steady clip, and even when a story breaks through the first readers (whose job it is to weed out as much as they possibly can; the volume of submissions these publications get is astounding) and lives to see the published page, there’s often no financial reward—you have to settle for the dopamine hit and the knowledge that this is how you build your brand as a writer, getting your name out there and hoping readers, editors, and agents see your work, like it, and remember your name.

(Ugh, sorry I just wrote “build your brand.” I detest the idea of personal branding. I am not a breakfast cereal or an insurance company and neither are you.)

I finished the manuscript for I Blame Myself But Also You (and other stories) in 2018. Then I spent a couple months working with an editor (Joshua Mohr) to whip it into shape; without Josh’s incisive critiques and suggestions, the book wouldn’t be what it is, and I owe him a lot.

But even with that, placing the manuscript was not easy. For a while, I kept close track of all the publishers and agents I sent the manuscript to. I racked up 116 rejections in a three-year period. One hundred and sixteen! (Never again do I want to hear about how Harry Potter was rejected by ten publishers before someone bought it—this is always presented as a testament to persistence, but all the writers I know would consider ten rejections to be a laughably easy route to publication.) When I sent it to Malarkey Books, at the time a brand-new press about whom I knew basically nothing, I had decided that that was it. If Malarkey didn’t pick it up, I would shelve the manuscript and re-assess what the hell I was doing with my time.

Luckily, I didn’t have to do that. It took a while—Malarkey is a one-person operation, and Alan was building what has turned out to be an incredible press—but eventually that acceptance came. A little over a year later, and here we are. I have a short story collection going to press with a highly reputable indie publisher. Dream realized!

Am I excited? Am I bursting at the seams? Of course I am. I’m not a robot. But goddamn if I’m not also anxious as hell about it—anyone who’s struggled with their mental health will recognize this. What if nobody buys it? What if people do buy it and they hate it? What if I talk about this book so much and for so long that people start walking the other way when they see me coming? And who the hell am I to write a book in the first place? Who do I think I am, exactly?

I guess I think I’m a writer. And my evidence for this is that I HAVE A NEW BOOK COMING OUT WOOHOOOOOO!

Get it straight from the publisher. Get it from Bookshop.org. Go to your local bookstore and ask them to special order it (it’s distributed by both Ingram and Asterism, which is something they might ask you about). Or, if you must, get it from that sprawling online entity we all know and tolerate, the one that eventually destroys all it touches. (Hey, a writer’s gotta eat.)

And if you do buy a copy, thank you. It means everything to me that you’d part with a few bucks to read some weird stuff I made up.

Events and suchlike

Here’s a quick rundown of some things I’ve done lately or am going to do soon:

• I was on a podcast, Teaching Learning Leading K12 (I know, from the title it sounds like an odd fit, as I have never been a K-12 teacher, but Steven Miletto is an excellent host and it was a fun conversation). I’ve recorded a couple more that aren’t live yet, but I’ll let you know when they are.

• On August 3rd, I will be on Art In Your Ear, hosted by my friend JoEllen Schilke, on WMNF 88.5 FM in my old hometown of Tampa, Florida. I’ll be on at 12:15pm EDT.

• On August 7th, I will be appearing at Tombolo Books in St. Petersburg, Florida. I’ll be in conversation with Bay Area author and Tampa Bay Times columnist Stephanie Hayes at 7pm. If you live in the area—and I know a lot of you on this mailing list do—PLEASE COME and bring everyone you know. Thanks!

  

• On August 14th at 7pm, I also have a San Francisco appearance in the works. Details are still coming together, which is why I’m not naming the venue just yet. I’ll let you know when they firm up.

That’s it for now. Thanks for reading all the way to the end.