Hey, folks and friends. Kenji always says guys, gals and nonbinary pals. I like that. I have been known to say theydies and gentlethems, but the other day I heard someone say “gentles and ladymen” and that is also chef kiss.
All of which is to say, “hi.”
Last week I finished the Crowns Forgotten book 2: The Steel Ghost. If you have only been reading on this website, then you can’t probably guess what that is about. You might have some guesses soon, but you won’t know for sure till September of ’26 because that’s when the one-chapter-per-month train ends for this book and we begin book 2.
That’s right, if you want to read The Steel Ghost for free all you need to do is wait. If you want to read it sooner, check out the linktree on the home page (or just click it here) and you can get the ebook for like three dollars on Google Play books or slightly more in print from Lulu. All valid.
Finishing a book always leaves me feeling a bit weird because there’s so much work that goes into it, especially at the end. And when it’s over … basically nothing happens. It’s a curious feeling.
When is ay NOTHING happens, I don’t mean NOTHING. I mean nothing in the universe changes. I got myself a treat and my wife was super happy for me and since she had been kind enough to do the cover art, I was also happy for her. And that was lovely. Even my kids were psyched.
But the world didn’t get any better. The problem weren’t solved. Utopia didn’t emerge. There were no loud applause when I entered the grocery store (no more so than usual). So that leaves one feeling odd. This is why we write second and th ird and fourth books. Because I have this habit now and I need to keep doing it because if I don’t, what will I do with that time and energy and focus? What will it have all meant? (that I enjoy it is a healthy side benefit, but it’s not the primary motivation, I don’t think).
It’s also a bit curious because the end of the book process is so very different from the beginning. You see, the start and middle are all creative in much the same way. Outlining, planning, character building, lore building, world building, etc are all the same sort of activity. And writing the words that fill in that outline is still a creative act in the same vein.
Editing is the same sort of creating no matter how many rounds.
But after that, there’s a manuscript staring at you. And that’s when you have to turn it into a fucking book. You might think of a book as the things you’ve read. It starts with a title page and ends with “they all lived happily ever after” or some similar platitude and that’s the book. But that’s a lie you’ve been told by the english language. Because that things I just described is the story. The book is a physical thing. And in order to turn a story into a book you need to battle a series of terrible monsters.
In my case, the first and more awful monster is called Microsoft Word. In theory, I know how to format a book to have an appropriate gutter so the pages look like they’re aligned and I know how to insert page numbers and chapter titles. Also in theory, I have the knowledge of formatting the book into sections so that each chapter start looks identical and or justifying text so the right edge doesn’t look stupid (a thing I forgot about last time) and I know how to insert section art and chapter art and drop cap chapters and …. in theory I know all that.
In practice, I haven’t done any of it since the last time I put out a book which was two years ago and I have forgotten most of it and had to stumble through remembering. Also, I do not need to educate you on how making one pixel of changes in Word can skew the formatting of the whole document, do I? I do not. It is a horror.
But once that’s done I have to fight it’s minion: printing to pdf so you don’t lose your formatting. This is a hated minion because it comes out after you defeat the boss and tries to do you in when your stamina is low.
And, of course, once you’ve done that (and then gone through and done it again for a smaller font because you print off a few pages and it looks like a Doctor Seuss book) you’re not done. Because now is the part where you have to create the cover and you realize that while your talented wife did hte cover art for you and it’s great …. that isn’t all. You need title text. You need formatting. You need a photo of yourself for the back of the book and you need … MORE WORDS.
Because you now face the three headed beast of Author Copy: the about page, the background shit )(which I call “the necessaries”), and the back of the fucking book. the back of the book is the worst, because it takes the tone you’ve written that is almost one hundred fifty thousand words of delicate curving narrative and it zooms ALL THE WAY OUT until you have to turn the whole thing into like 80 words. Any story, no matter how lovely, can be made to sound deeply stupid if you use few enough words. And so defeating this boss involves not just knowing how to describe your tale, but using just the right number of words and trying not to sound like a fool, but also not giving away too much but giving away enough that the audience doesn’t feel like the rug was pulled out from under them. It’s exhausting and I hate it.
And then there’s even more parts like deciding on prices (much of which is out of my hands regarding minimums, but the sky is the limit on maximums). And I have to set up direct deposit for the nine dollars I’ll ever make. To say nothing of making plans to put out new editions with ISBNs I own in the new year.
All of which is to say … hey guys, I put out a book. Neat. Now what?
Well, obviously. Now I start a new one.
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