Hi there. In two weeks, I start the absolutely mortifying process of sharing a novel that was pulled from my spiritual chest and splattered all over a bunch of real, physical pages. I wrote this book last summer over the course of a few very tumultuous months immersed in the slow end of an intense and difficult relationship. As far as personal experiences, this novel doesn’t dig into or pull much from any of my real life but it does hold the sort of liminality that I was experiencing at the time: the feeling of something massive coming to an end looming like a giant and the inability or outright refusal to really look that end in the face. The end always comes, ready or not.
The first draft of this novel was written entirely in longhand, pen on paper. This is the first and last time I will ever do that (don’t hold me to this). There’s a very purposeful focus in writing a novel with your one hand dragging every letter and word into existence and I’m grateful that this story was born in this way but the subsequent typing up the whole thing was pretty exhausting. The novel went through several rounds of self-edits over the course of the following month, the story got reworked over and over, and around the time I started sending my queries out to lit agents with big hopes was also the same time I decided to end my relationship.
Suffice to say the many, many rejections this novel received did little to ease the pain.
I stuck the story in a drawer for almost a year and turned my attention to building an online presence here on Substack. I still think this was the right move. I needed these past eight months on this platform to hone the kind of voice I want to write in and swallow the difficult pill that is sharing my words with an audience.
I wrote another novel this summer, one I was wholly planning on sharing before this one—and I’m still deeply proud of what I accomplished with it—but I realized pretty early in the editing process that the story itself still needed time to cook and ultimately the narrative wouldn’t work well in a serial format. It’s a dense story and it just wouldn’t flow well being published over a lengthy span of time.
I returned to this older novel during a sort of creative reckoning in my heart and, giving it another read, the story seemed to smirk at me. Like it had been waiting this whole time for me to arrive at this juncture and understand what I wanted. And what I want is to share this weird, challenging, irreverent, empathetic story with whoever is willing to receive it. The voice I use in this novel, the balance of humor, absurdity, devastation, love and earthiness, it’s exactly the kind of stuff I’ve wanted to be sharing here this whole time.
I’ve been living in the world of this novel again for the last month or so. It’s gone through a couple more rounds of self-edits and it’s as ready to share as it’s ever gonna be.
Without further ado, I present the handmade cover, title and cheeky blurb for my novel.
Marshall is on his vigilante shit and everyone else is uncomfortably aware of it. It’s a poorly kept secret in his small Georgia town that if you ask Marshall to kill your abusive parent he’ll do it and hardly ask any questions. He’s too focused on the end of the world to ponder the ethics—though if you ask him directly, surviving the apocalypse isn’t really the priority. It’s just good to be prepared.
When a twelve year old kid named Beaver approaches Marshall to inquire his services, Marshall makes the dual mistake of getting attached to the kid and thinking himself untouchable. When the consequences of his careless actions finally catch up to him, Marshall is forced to skip town with Beaver, the selectively mute unrequited love of his life, Jamie, and their mutual friend, Lana, who has inexplicably decided to quit cold turkey and choose sobriety on the open road.
Searching for free will amidst the silent collapse of surveillance state America, a series of seemingly random events will challenge each of their understanding of what it means to be good, which choices are ours and which are made for us. From a convenience store run by children to a strange diner ready to collapse into the earth to an eco-sustainable cult they each swear they’re too smart to get indoctrinated into, Marshall and his friends must decide who they are, what they’d like to cling to at the end of the world—and most importantly, if it’s even worth surviving.
Equal parts irreverent, challenging and heartfelt, Mars in Retrograde is a hard, honest look at generational trauma, what binds us as humans, the things a person will do to acquire a sense of safety, and if it’s possible to atone for our most awful mistakes and become something better than we were before. Mars in Retrograde wonders: maybe the world’s gotta end before anyone can be good again.
Down to business. Following the suit of many brilliant authors who have used this platform to serialize their novels, I’ll be posting two chapters a week, one on Saturday, one on Sunday. The first two installments drop on Saturday, October 12th and Sunday, October 13th, respectively. The last installments will be published mid-December so the whole thing will take about two months with twenty chapters in total.
Like everything else I share here, this novel will be entirely free to read. I might paywall it somewhere down the line but as the chapters drop, they will be wide open to you and anyone you’d like to share it with.
That being said, I am going against every internalized fiber of my being and humbly asking that if you enjoy the story and want to support me so I can keep writing books until I’m dead, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. I’ve dropped the monthly rate to just $5 which I hope is not an extravagant ask. I’ll also be dropping a Paypal link with each chapter so you can drop a tip if you’re enjoying rather than committing to a consistent subscription. Lastly, I’ll be offering a free (!!!) physical print of the book cover in all its arts and crafts glory to any new paid subscriber who would like one, just shoot me a message with your address.
There’s a lot of work that goes into creating novel from conception of the idea to the actual writing, editing, rewriting and finally formatting it for serialization. If I could tabulate how many hours I spent on this one book, the number would probably be big enough to make me wonder why I do any of this in the first place. I also made the cover myself which I’m really proud of, flaws included. All I ask is that you consider the time it takes to craft a good story despite how quickly you can swallow it down. If you wanna hear a bit more about my creative process and why I believe my writing/writing in general deserves financial compensation, I broke it down in the below post back when I started this page and I still mean every word of it.
please buy my almonds
I’ve just got back from a very cold walk around the reservoir and I’m feeling equal measures of gratefulness and a child-like annoyance that I’m confronting genuinely.
Sharing this book is no easy thing. This entire year has been a pointed challenge aimed at myself to be vulnerable in ways I still resist. This story is a piece of me and I’m equal parts excited and terrified to finally be offering it to you. I don’t really think of it as a debut but it is an introduction to capital m Me in a way. I hope you like it.
Read the book as it comes out or wait until the whole thing’s done and read it all at once. Don’t read it at all if it’s not for you. But, at the risk of stroking my own ego, I really do hope it is for you. I’m proud of it.
Love and kisses and honesty forever.
jw
so excited for this
Oh this type of story sounds RIGHT up my alley. I'm so stoked. I'm with Caroline in that I struggle with serial fiction, so if you're willing and able to provide a one-time drop at some point (even if it's at the end of your serialized version) I'd be all over that. Either way, though, so happy for you that this story re-entered your life when the time was right, and that we get to be the happy recipients of it!