On the 21st of April, I published the final chapter of my latest novel, In Search Of, on the Substack platform. A crime thriller/relationship exploration story, it is filled with love, loyalty, betrayal, abandonment, and redemption. Set in Boston and around New England, the story follows the woman owner of an independent security company and her need to balance a dangerous current assignment and a developing new love.
Beginning in June of 2024, it was released in serial fashion every other week, then every week and about half way through, twice weekly, all because of the feedback from subscribers. Forty two chapters in eleven months.
But it started long before that. The first draft was slammed down ten years ago as therapy of sorts. In 2024 there were a few Life Changing Events and I needed to process the loss. Escaping to a place where I had control helped me to cope with the world I was living in where I had no control.
It’s not that I wrote for ten years. Like many who engage in therapy, it was an off and on experience. But when I felt I was spiraling again, like I was reaching for handrails that weren’t there or looking for exit signs in the dark, I pulled that story, that world, out again lived there for a bit.
As I wrote, I began to look forward to being in that world. I loved the characters, the situations, the dialog, the locations that I built. And I did what always do, as my tag line says (Nothing Reads Like Real Life) I put people and places that are part of my history into the story. It was sort of like visiting them again.
Upon finishing this work, I struggled with finding an agent or traditional publisher to take it on. The timing with other submissions wasn’t right. The economy and industry was tanking.
Finally, one agent who really liked the story structure, the character development, the potential for follow up projects signed it with a mid-list publishing house. Being thrilled beyond belief lasted 90 days when the agency went under and my novel was dead in the water.
I thought I was done but no, I was not.
The last conversation I had with the agent came with the suggestion to self publish on a digital platform. It is becoming all the rage, after all. No investment, other than time to build a reader/subscriber list. I looked over the edge. This agent sold me on the concept of serialized release, like what was done in the 1940s pulp magazines. Dole out the story one chapter at a time. Build some tension, something for readers to anticipate. Sort of like a reverse social media instant gratification project.
I looked over the edge again and this time I jumped.
I went back to the completed novel and took up the task of dissection, of formatting for that serialized Substack publication and then scheduling the releases.
I pulled initial readers from my website mailing list, promoted the shit out of it, built up a subscriber list of under 750 after six months. In the end, nearly 1000 subscribers.
In the end, forty two chapters in eleven months. I lived with this version of the project every week for eleven months
Now I am done. The final chapter was published on the 21st of April.
I was exhausted.
The funny thing?
Here it is almost a month later and I miss them. I miss the two main characters.I miss ‘hearing’ them talk to each other about Love, Life, Loyalty, Betrayal, Redemption. I miss experiencing the action of riding, of loving each other, of the dangerous part of the story.
The other funny thing?
I began this project to fill a hole in my life and now that it’s done, I feel like I’m back at square one. There’s a hole in my life again. It’s sort of like grieving. It’s sort of like that feeling you have when you’ve been dumped.
