Reconsidering My Book

And other news!

Two years ago, my second novel was published. The Night Burns Bright wasn’t my first choice of titles but it was, of the publisher’s suggestions, the one I could most live with. I wanted to call it Every Side of Darkness but there was, at that point, some hang-up about having “darkness” in book titles. The publisher was Lake Union, a subsidiary of Amazon. Not that many people realize Amazon operates several traditional publishing imprints. Lake Union is a good one. They have a serious editorial team, good book designers, and they whipped together a nifty audiobook. The Night Burns Bright was my first book ever to be an audiobook, so that, in it of itself, was exciting.

There were two downsides, for me, to going with an Amazon imprint. One was my longstanding opposition to how Amazon runs its business and my many criticisms over the years of Amazon as a company. The second was that Amazon’s imprint was not going to interact with bookstores in any meaningful way. They weren’t even going to try to get my novel into bookstores and bookstores wouldn’t be likely to take it, if they did try.

In that sense, it was a shame. The Night Burns Bright is a very good novel. It is narrated by a troubled 12-year-old and it tells the (fictional) story of a murderous cult operating in upstate New York in the aftermath of 9/11. It is literary fiction with some thriller and horror elements. Despite its youthful protagonist, it is not YA. I wrote the novel in two feverish months in the summer of 2019, got an agent shortly before the pandemic, and had it shopped in June 2020, which in retrospect was one of the worst times ever to shop a dark, psychologically distressing novel. My agent brought the novel to most major publishers of note and they all, in various forms, shot it down. One editor said that “I actually think in this isolating time I’m craving novels about community that bring us all together… I’ve been thinking a lot about what community is and how we all benefit from it – and what we’re missing now that everything is so fractured.” Another editor added (spoiler alert) the novel was “much too dark for me by the end. When it came to discovering all the bodies, especially those of kids, I was rattled. I think kids being killed that way would make it a tough read for many people. It was for me. It wasn’t the cult stuff that I found difficult (though it’s certainly creepy, but also fascinating). It was the mass murders of children and parents, especially the children.”

It’s not a feel-good novel! And my pitch suffered, I think, because I was blending genres. While there are many examples of successful books (Station Eleven, The Fortress of Solitude) that fall under the rubric of literary fiction—I’m very proud of the writing in it—and incorporate tropes of others genres, my novel seemed to flummox a lot of the publishers, though some did reject it with kind words and praise. My agent included Lake Union on our list and after many months, they came back and said they liked it and would publish it. They made a fair offer. I had no other options and wanted the novel, very much, to exist. Despite my opposition to Amazon as a company, I said yes. I reminded myself that one major publisher (HarperCollins) is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s clan and the German conglomerate that owns Penguin Random House was literally enriched by its close collaboration with Nazis. Not a lot of clean hands in these businesses.

Other than a few announcements on Substack and one belated launch event, I did not promote The Night Burns Bright at all. I felt conflicted about the Amazon association. I didn’t try to get reviews or push the novel into bookstores. Amazon, which owns Goodreads, was diligent about promoting the book online, and something I remain proud of are the sheer number of people who clearly read the novel and had nice things to say about it. I also enjoyed speaking to a book club in New Hampshire. I had some hope a film/TV adaptation could eventually come out of The Night Burns Bright but it didn’t come together. Overall, I was proud of the novel and proud of how it did, despite my lack of effort, reach people.

One lesson I took is I will absolutely, in the future, promote my own books more. I don’t know how you will feel about that, you the dear reader. But this Substack has grown and I do believe this is one of the great, under-utilized powers of the platform—it can be a place people really discover books again. Book review sections are dying across the country. Literary-minded websites tend to offer analysis and reviews of books that are already widely-reviewed elsewhere. Or they traffic in fluffy promotion, hot takes (Lauren Oyler - good or bad??) and don’t do the work critics should be doing: discovering new books. Substack, thankfully, can do that. My advice, as always, is for people on here to review new books.

So, the news—you can see it in the PW announcement above. I’ll have a new book coming out next year from Verso, one of the best publishers in the business. Right now, it’s just a proposal, but I see it as a political and cultural study of everything happening right now. Some of it, I hope, will build meaningfully on the work I’ve done on this Substack. The title itself is a work-in-progress and I imagine the book will evolve quite a bit over the course of this year. It’s a quick turnaround, which actually excites me. One of my pet peeves is how unnecessarily slow book publishing can be, especially on the fiction side. This book will not be extremely long and Verso is nimble enough, once I turn in a manuscript, to get it to you by early next year, likely February or March.

I’ll certainly be bugging you more about that and promoting it plenty! In the meantime, my expectation is to keep writing here on Political Currents, every week. I believe I can work on a book, work on Substack, and keep my other writing commitments. Writing and reporting, ultimately, are labors of love. I truly don’t feel like I’m doing real work because I enjoy it.

Also, finally, I hope to have another new announcement soon about my next novel, which will be called Glass Century. I believe Glass Century is going to be a great novel, even an important one, and it’s the sort of book that doesn’t lack for scope. It’s a novel, even if fiction isn’t your first love, that I hope you pay attention to.

And hey, if you’re not too worried about a few deaths in the woods, pick up a copy of The Night Burns Bright. I might just sign it for you.