Five Things I Learned From Each of the Five Books I Foolishly Released In Less Than One Year
Move Under Ground
My first novel, rereleased in June 2020, sixteen years after its original publication, was a self-conscious attempt at writing a work of cult fiction. I appropriated the voice of Jack Kerouac and the bestiary of H. P. Lovecraft and wrote a thriller I hoped would appeal to the large fan followings of either. And I succeeded, but only for those who were fans of both the Beats and weird fiction—a two-circle Venn Diagram with a very small intersection! What I learned is that while cults are often small, true believers stick with them. When I was solicited for a re-release, it was by an editor who had read the book as a young man; it had helped inspire him to enter the publishing industry in the first place.
Sabbath
Out in paperback in October 2020, this was a book from a major publisher, Tor, and also work-for-hire, based very loosely on a graphic novel and far more closely on a short synopsis given to me by the publisher. It’s a supernatural thriller/dark fantasy about a debauched knight from the 11th century brought to 2016 to kill the personifications of the Seven Deadly Sins. Sabbath taught me that I could write commercially—three-act structure, traditional love interest, McGuffins, you name it—while also keeping my own voice, themes, and interest in satire (e.g., Pride is a Donald Trump analogue, over the objections of the novel’s original editor) intact.
Wonder and Glory Forever: Awe-Inspiring Lovecraftian Fiction
I edited an anthology of mostly progressive Lovecraftian fiction around the themes of the sublime and awe-inspiring, and again with an emphasis on exploring the idea of cult fiction. Released in mid-November, this book of stories by the likes of Victor LaValle, Fred Chappell, and Molly Tanzer did very well thanks in large part of the HBO show Lovecraft Country. The program ended in late October, but a few million people hit the Internet and typed “Lovecraft Country more like that” into search engines, and some came away with Wonder and Glory Forever. I learned that it is true what they say: in publishing, timing is everything.
Bullettime
Timing is everything! This post-modern crime novel about a school shooter at three different decision points along three different timelines came close to being published several times in the first decade of this century. But, inevitably, another school shooting would erupt and editors would get cold feet. Finally, it was published by a Canadian press, but that company all but collapsed in 2019 after years of non-payment of royalties—they’d withheld them from me for five years!—and exploitation of its staff came to light. Republished by Open Road Media in December 2020, primarily as an ebook with a print-on-demand paper edition, a book about a teen boy being tempted by the goddess Eris to either shoot up or not shoot up his school made for a very unpopular stocking stuffer. I learned to take nothing for granted.
The Planetbreaker’s Son
And now, January 2021, comes a post-human post-singularity science fiction novella of competing virtual worlds, “The Planetbreaker’s Son”, published as part of PM Press’s Outspoken Author series of chapbook-sized collections. What I’ve learned here is that my interest in cult fiction—I love every cult writer from Patricia Highsmith to Philip K. Dick—has rendered me unclassifiable. I’ve been asked time and again these past months, What are you?
Am I a horror writer, a crime writer, a novelist or a short story writer, an anthologist or a literary historian, a science fiction writer or a satirist? I’m all of those things, of course, but refuse to commit to any one mode or theme. What’ll that mean for my career? Oh, I’ll probably end up, you know, some kind of cult writer.
