Category Archives: Debut Novel

One Year Anniversary

09 Wednesday Sep 2020

Posted by in Debut Novel, Role of the Writer, Writing Life

≈ Leave a comment

Tomorrow, 10 September, will mark the one-year anniversary of the release of my debut novel, The Confessions of Adam. In recognition of this milestone, here are three take-aways from the experience. 

  • Involve Others. You will not be able to launch your debut alone, and you don’t want to. Engage the skills of others to help shepherd your book into the world. I enlisted an eager and willing team of friends with diverse skills such as event emcee, graphic designer, web plugin integrator, book club leader, and small business owner. Some of this was organic as I worked to create a local launch of the novel and let my needs be known, but in the end I had a base of people who were creatively engaged with me and vocal advocates for our unique effort.
  • Keep Writing. It is critical that you start and make progress on your next project. You may find you’re consumed with the book you’ve finished and have stopped writing. This may seem prudent or even helpful in the short-term, but once the excitement wanes, you’ll be left only with the writing. Make sure it’s not a blank page. The writing is the only part of the process that you fully own. Keep doing the work. I kept writing. It became a solace.
  • Tend to Everything Else. Over the last year I’ve seen voluntary and involuntary job change, the one-year anniversary of the death of my mother, the birth of my first grandchild, a close friend traverse cancer, and a global pandemic. The rest of life marches on even as this momentous goal you’ve worked toward for so long is realized. Give the people and events of your life their needed attention and consideration.

And remember to take a moment to enjoy it all. To use David Gibson’s phrase––life is gift, not gain.

First Book Club

26 Wednesday Aug 2020

Posted by in Contract with the Reader, Debut Novel, Role of the Writer, Writing Life

≈ 4 Comments

On Saturday evening, August 29th, I will attend my first book club where The Confessions of Adam has been read and will be discussed. I’ve been invited to come and talk about my debut novel. These readers aren’t rookies. They’ve met monthly, enjoyed dinner, and read books together for over two decades.

As I prepare for the conversation, I’m pulling my notes from research, considering what I might read if asked, and gathering a few extra books, bookmarks, and author cards. But what I know is this––what I bring to this group of thoughtful readers will pale in comparison to what they will give me. They have taken the time to read my novel and I will receive an hour of reader insight––listening in as readers talk about their experiences with my book. Such conversation is invaluable as I work on my next manuscript. Such feedback informs and educates a writer like none other can. It’s a rare opportunity for which I am grateful.

Working In Adam’s Shadow

23 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by in Debut Novel, Starting a Novel, Writing Life

≈ Leave a comment

There are several aspects of publishing the debut novel that I didn’t see coming. This is another of them. I imagine with time and distance such sensitivities may subside, but for now it seems any work I do, I do in the shadow of that one novel, that first novel.

I suppose it’s about expectations––mine and my readers’––the desire for continuity and patterns. It’s also about an imagined body of work and how the next project will fit with the first. 

This is the compare and contrast that we do with all we produce, whether it be this employer and the previous one, this year and last year, this house and our first. Each significant effort becomes a metric, an aesthetic data point, for those that come before and after. And with this we stare into an imagined future, how the next will look and what we can do to shape it. 

This is, creatively, a two-edged sword. Past work can motivate and push us to new innovation and higher effort; it can also hem us in and define our capabilities. We do best to see each project as different, as its own effort, independent of those that came before and after. The relationship between two projects may not be in form or function but in evolution, a recognition that to get to one we must have gone through the other, and we are creatively richer, more skilled for it.

Release Day Review

11 Wednesday Sep 2019

Posted by in Debut Novel, Role of the Writer, Writing Life

≈ 1 Comment

Yesterday my debut novel was released. The Confessions of Adam is in the wild. It must now fend for itself. I can no longer tinker with it. Edits complete. It has found its voice. It is finished. And I am happy with what it has grown to be.

I spent the day on social media and the evening at Court House Grounds in Danville, Indiana with 100+ local and regional readers and lovers of books. 

A day unlike any before.

With gratitude.

I am thankful for my wife, for our partnership in writing and in life. 

I am thankful for my publisher and the many creative efforts that went into making a manuscript a book, immense work, up to the hours before release.

I am thankful for my launch team and my writer’s group, a few members of which overlap. 

I’m thankful for the hospitality and creative partnership of Court House Grounds and OurSpealcialTEA. 

I am thankful for readers past, present, and future. You who have and are teaching me what this novel is about and the personal meaning to be mined from it.

And I am thankful to The Maker, for the opportunity to riff on this epic drama of mankind’s origins. Our first story.

First Readers

28 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by in Contract with the Reader, Creative Process/Craft, Debut Novel, Writing Life

≈ Leave a comment

As advance copies of The Confessions of Adam go out and are read, I’ve entered this strange new land. I’ve ceased to interact with the words on the page and am now listening to readers’ perspectives of the novel. Listening to the first members of my audience—my first readers—as they make the book their own.

This is a new skill. 

Like learning to talk about any major event in your life, it isn’t simply the vocabulary and the formation of concepts and constructs for thinking about it, but also learning what to say and what not to say and—in this case—slowly forming the language needed to comment while doing all I can to support the reader as they have their experience. 

I am humbled and amazed that a story I have written is functioning at a level that causes readers to think about relationships, motivations, and choices. I am learning, not what I have written, but all that what I have written can potentially mean. 

It is a strange new land. But like every stage of this adventure, it is proving to be a gift.

Release Date

14 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by in Debut Novel, Writing Life

≈ Leave a comment

On Tuesday, September 10th my debut novel, The Confessions of Adam, will be released. The optimal day to release a book, per industry wisdom, is Tuesday. A late summer, early fall release is also good, as readers are settling back into their routines and are often looking for their next book. And of course Christmas is coming. There is time for a reader to finish the book ahead of the holiday season and then purchase a copy as a gift.

It’s marketing.

On Tuesday, September 10th my debut novel, The Confessions of Adam, will be released. I have spent more than a decade with this story. I started writing it in the winter of 2005. I finished the final full draft the summer of 2016. I carried this project close and spoke of it with intimate friends and in small groups. Started on one laptop, finished on another—it required hundreds of revisions, dozens of notes on the biblical text, an outline that morphed alongside each draft, selections for workshops, and phone calls with my agent and publisher. It was incremental progress and Divine intervention—still Divine intervention.

Indeed, it’s marketing. But first it was personal.

The Last Read

31 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Debut Novel, Role of the Writer, Writing Life

≈ Leave a comment

This week I finished reading, for the fourth time in six months, my debut novel The Confessions of Adam. This was my last reading. With an advance reader copy in hand, it was the last opportunity to edit the text. I finished the novel.

Three thoughts come to mind at this milestone:

  1. It is strange to be so familiar with a text. A sort of blindness sets in, an inability to process any further what text is doing. Instead of learning more about the intent of the story with each pass or draft, I now learn what the story is about from readers, from engaging with readers in conversation about the novel. 
  2. I’ll not do it again. The temptation is to say to oneself, ‘I must do this again. I must write another novel like this one.’ But the fact is I won’t. I won’t do this again. The next novel will be different in more ways than it is similar. The next novel will have its own challenges and personality. Each book is a unique, a custom effort.
  3. You never finish a book, you just stop. Leading up to this reading, there had been dozens of beta readers and editors, including Cyndi and I. Yet we still identified around 35 edits. I am convinced that I could read this novel every month for the next year and find changes I want to make. It is time to stop, to go to press. I’ve done all I can.

So long, Adam of Eden and Oren of Susa. It has been a pleasure working with you.

First Copies

17 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by in Contract with the Reader, Debut Novel, Role of the Writer, Writing Life

≈ Leave a comment

At a conference last week my publisher had a book table and sold the first pre-release copies of my debut novel, The Confessions of Adam. About a dozen copies went home with readers from various locations across the US. 

It is surreal to think that at any given time a stranger somewhere could be reading your novel. I have moved the work from that silent and solitary place of daily writing, through months of maneuvering a manuscript toward publication, to this new and foreign stage of observing from afar unknown readers as they react to a book with my name on it.

I am reminded of the axiom ‘the story must stand on its own.’ I’m not sitting next to each reader giving them a synopsis of the novel or telling them how I came to write the story. They’ve never seen my name before. I’m an unknown. I’ve nothing to do with the reader’s experience. The book is now theirs to complete, to read and to imagine.

The story must stand on its own—while I write the next one.

That

05 Wednesday Jun 2019

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Debut Novel

≈ Leave a comment

As I complete the final edits of the manuscript which will be my debut novel, The Confessions of Adam, I thought that I’d share with you the other item that my editor so kindly identified.*

What we’re dealing with here is called a “weasel word.” You can Google this. Better yet, look it up in Merriam-Webster. It’s there. I knew nothing about it until my editor pointed it out. 

As it turns out, my weasel word is that.

Here are two examples from The Confessions of Adam:

Incorrect: The telling of it feels like a tale. It could be an elaborate dream that he’s had and that he has now come to claim as personal history.

Correct: The telling of it feels like a tale. It could be an elaborate dream he’s had and has now come to claim as personal history.

Incorrect: ”No, the Maker isn’t visible, but he says he can see Him. Adam says that he can see the Maker just as a blind man can see his lover enter the room.”

Correct: ”No, the Maker isn’t visible, but he says he can see Him. Adam says he can see the Maker just as a blind man can see his lover enter the room.”

Clearly, those sentences didn’t need that. In fact once I removed that, the sentence shone brighter.

Shoot. Hang on. Let me fix that opening sentence.

As I complete the final edits of the manuscript which will be my debut novel, The Confessions of Adam, I thought that I’d share with you the other item that my editor so kindly identified.*

Forgive me.

*See the previous blogpost for my other editorial gotcha.

It’s Like Starting a Business

13 Wednesday Mar 2019

Posted by in Debut Novel, Role of the Writer, Writing Life

≈ Leave a comment

On the morning of February 25th, I had a conference call with my publisher, Karen Porter at Bold Vision Books. She and I discussed social media, manuscript edits, cover art, publicity, release prep, and endorsements. I left the call with a couple dozen action items – from compiling edits on the manuscript to ordering business cards to installing plugins on my website.

With the success of a publishing deal for your debut novel comes the requirement to not only ensure the quality of the product, but to also establish the structures of public commerce. 

I’m just getting started on this journey. Here is my first lesson learned:

Engage with the collaborative team that is forming around you.

This product that I have worked solo on for so long has now become a significant concern for other skilled and creative people. I need to now view these as my team, my colleagues, and fellow creatives. I am the founder of a co-op that is rising and forming. This has nothing to do with writing. This is about being a conscientious team member and ensuring that I engage my colleagues around the table.

So to my agent Joelle Delbourgo, my publisher Karen Porter, my photographer Connie Phillips, my social media consultant Scott Carter, and the other team members whose names I’ve yet to learn – my cover artist, my editor – welcome and thank you for all you’ve done and are doing to make The Confessions of Adam a successful debut. I’m thankful for the opportunity to be part of your team.