I published my first novel, Gods of the Hills: An Act of Secession, on Amazon Kindle this week. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.
Except…it does not feel like a major accomplishment. This has nothing to do with it not being accepted by a literary agent or published by a major or minor publishing house. Instead, it has to do with the fact (not just the quote) that art is never finished; only abandoned.
I’m not willing to put the effort into whatever it would take to get the book published in the traditional way. After all the years and months and hours of work I put into Gods of the Hills, at this point, I’m only willing to hit send and be on my way. I’m proud of what it is, and wish it could be something better.
And I truly think you will enjoy it.
~~~
It comes down to priorities. There’s only so much time in the day, and I’m not willing to give the characters in Gods of the Hills any more of my time. I have a daughter, a wife, family, friends, students, colleagues, neighbors; real people whom I love and admire. They deserve my days.
My wife and daughter own my evenings, and I continue to give freely of all that I have.
But my nights, my late nights, those are for me. And when it comes to Gods of the Hills, I’m ready to move on completely
I truly hope you enjoy it.
~~~
In 2002 or 2003, my oldest friend told me an idea he and another friend had for a movie. The story has now been through so many generations in my head, but I remember their original idea as an Old School-style movie, where a 2002-era Will Ferrell and some other funny folk are professional procreators (get it? Pro. Creators.), and it’s their job to get women pregnant. It’s a post-apocalyptic thing without going too heavy on the apocalypse.
My friends may have even outlined the story. I have a vision of a shootout taking place in a suburban cul-de-sac, but the vision might not be from their original version of the story. Whatever their outline may have been, it is completely gone from my head.
But it did sound funny at the time, and after some conversation, I agreed to write the screenplay. It would be their story; my screenplay. I was a 25-year old freshman living at a residential college with a bunch of 18- and 19-year-old kids; what the fuck else was I gonna do?
To keep myself honest, I tried to make it a collaborative writing process, but my friends weren’t really into it. They each had their own lives going on, and making time for creative writing was not a priority. They were more than willing to read the script and offer feedback, but that was about it.
You know, like producers do, right?
Well, it’s been almost twenty years now, and I still haven’t turned in their script.
Instead, I started making drastic changes to the story based on the shit I was learning in college. My undergraduate studies focused on twentieth-century postmodern literature, accompanied by an unhealthy dose of poststructural theory and deep dives into feminist and postfeminist theory (thanks to the woman who would later become my wife).
I also had a ton of free time to indulge my love of science fiction, fantasy, and video games, thanks to the band of creative artists I was lucky enough to call my floor-mates.
But as I grew and changed, so too did my interests in The Procreators. Instead of wanting to write a fun romp through a world where baby making had devolved to a “job” (with all the hassles of every other job), I wanted to combine the story’s post-apocalyptic premise with an inspired, postfeminist critique of patriarchies, matriarchies, and traditional sex roles in the modern world.
My friends weren’t really into it, no matter how hard I tried to blend my vision with theirs.
~~~
About five years ago, I decided (not for the first time) to start waking up around four in the morning, rather than staying up until four in the morning. Maybe if I wasn’t so exhausted when I sat down to write, I’d be able to punch out that second novel.
So I set my alarm for 3:45 a.m., and when the beeping went off, I’d roll out of bed, stumble to the bathroom, piss, brush my teeth, head downstairs to turn on the coffee, come back upstairs to wake my computer and set up my writing applications, return back downstairs to retrieve a cup of coffee, then come back up to the office to sit down and get typing. I had roughly two hours to write before the workday began.
I did that for about three months, then I gave up. Partly it was because (like most people) I hated waking up, but it was also because, after 90-ish days of solid writing, my story ran into a seemingly-impassable brick wall.
The worst part was that I was really into the story. It occupied my mind whenever I wasn’t at the computer, and I’d found a narrative voice that I thought would propel the novel through whatever obstacles I might encounter. Turned out, I was wrong (as usual).
So I put the story away. Just another version of The Procreators that would never see the light of day.
~~~
Unlike the other versions though, that one just wouldn’t go away. It’s been five years, and there’s been other versions of the story since, but I still considered that version canonical. Without a doubt, it was the version that lasted the longest (somewhere around 35,000 words), and something about the narrative voice, despite the way it misled me, still feels right.
So two years ago, years after I first wrote it, I sat down and re-read it. Despite the story’s lack of a true middle or end, I liked it. The narrative voice still felt strong, the various characters felt real, and the conflicts I’d begun to arrange in the plot felt compelling.
It wasn’t a solid piece; more like an attempt to build a house — including the electricity and plumbing — without the benefit of blueprints. Some people might be able to pull that off; I am not one of them.
So I went back to the drawing board.
Or as I called it, “The Journal of a Novel” (after Steinbeck).
~~~
The journal started sometime before or after New Year’s Day, 2018. I didn’t intend for anyone else to read it, not at first. But at some point, as I started reading it over to remind myself of various elements of the story, I began making stylistic choices based on the assumption that the words would be read by someone else, and I started asking myself, “What the fuck am I doing with this?”
I abandoned the journal for three hundred and four days. It doesn’t matter why.
What matters is that, near the end of 2018, I started it back up. I tried to be good and write in it every day, but that didn’t happen. Instead, I wrote it in as often as I could until I finally felt enough momentum to leap away from the journal and back into the story itself.
When I first restarted the journal, I set myself an arbitrary deadline of completing the story before the end of the school year (this was accompanied by a decision to self-publish Gods of the Hills before the end of April vacation, i.e., this week).
I’m happy to say, you can now buy the latter on Amazon Kindle, and I truly think you’ll enjoy it.
I’m scared to say (but will anyway), that the other story will be finished by the end of the school year.
If everything goes well, it won’t be what you think.