I sold my book!!
The Monster's Wife, a novel, that I wrote, that is real (!)
I’m a little shook. I’m very pleased!! I can’t believe this is real? This is real! I wrote a book! The book is coming! The news is out!!
I am a little dopamine drunk, but I want to try and explain how I got here.
Here’s one way to tell it: I got sober at the end of 2022. In 2023, I built my life back. When the WGA Writer’s Strike hit that spring, and we TV writers went pencils down, I finally found a viable replacement for booze that wasn’t over-working and scrolling: reading books. I read like I hadn’t read since middle school. I made up for lost time. I basically split my time between the picket line and the Silverlake Library. I read, like, hundreds of books. In December of 2023, I got an idea. I wanted to write about the wife and children of a serial killer of gay guys. I assumed it’d be a TV show. I actually texted my husband (then-boyfriend!) I thought it should be a play. At some point in early 2024, it told me it wanted to be a book. And insanely, I wrote it. I printed my first full draft in November of that year.
I’m incredibly wary of the tone of this turning into an acceptance speech or, worse, a commencement speech. I’d be happy to talk more at some point about what happened after that first print out, how I navigated revisions, querying, etc. I love Substack as a place for writers to share how they did what they did — that’s how I ended up here, lurking on the ‘stack reading tips and tricks and gleaning insights from some of the greatest living writers at just about every step of my process. I’ll probably write more about how I work, like I’ve done here and here and below, where I accidentally discovered my book’s birthday! [the date will shock you!]
The Playground and The Graveyard: Tips on Accidentally Writing A Novel (Part I?)
I’m endlessly fascinated by the little tips and tricks and rituals of the novel writer. I didn’t actually mean to write a novel. But when I happened upon an idea that outsized the part of my brain that thinks about spec-ing out TV pilots and one-pagers and pitch scripts—to say nothing of the part of my soul that was so tired of being told ‘no’ by stream…
But today I feel called to keep this simple and grateful. I wrote my very first Substack article when I was going a bit cuckoo prepping my manuscript for sub. It made me feel sane and less alone. I’ve loved having this outlet. This is my 10th(!) post, and it’s so exciting that it’s to finally share this moment with you all.
More soon and thanks for reading and I hope no one is mad at me,
Dan
Congratulations! Looking forward to reading it!
Fantastic! Congratulations!!!