Year-End Thank You
Thank you for your support this year. And Night School—new novel available 23 January 2025.
This month’s content is brought to you by readers like you whose paid Substack subscriptions and book purchases help produce and promote my work: extraordinary stories about ordinary Americans. If you’re a free subscriber, consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Thank you for supporting and reading my work and spreading the word. And a hearty welcome to new subscribers. I hope you stick around.
Year-End Thank You
As 2024 ends, I want to pass on this year’s following milestones and thank you because your support helped make these possible.
Produce and promote my fourth novel Night School (available 23 January 2025).
Published and promoted the second edition of my first novel Pepper’s Ghost.
Published seven stories and five newsletters such as this on Substack to over 600 subscribers.
Earned a top-25% award for my short story “Cash In the Past” in Coverfly’s ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Competition.
Entered Pepper’s Ghost in the 2025 ScreenCraft Cinematic Prose Competition.
Entered Pepper’s Ghost as nominations for two book awards.
Edited a forthcoming short-story collection.
Edited the second edition of my second novel In Another Sun.
Completed a to-be-named novel.
Producing and promoting stories requires time and money. Independent authors like me are often overlooked because of trends, sales, and genre. I do not answer to a board or a corporation and have no interest in being with the “right people” and saying the “right phrases.”
But this is where you help. Your book purchases and paid Substack subscriptions tilt the challenges of business and creating stories in my favor. A unique, well-told, well-written story not only illuminates experiences, similarities, differences, joys, pains, fears, and hopes about our short time here on Earth, but it also attracts an audience that, like a snowball, attracts a larger audience, resources, and opportunities—all of which lifts the audience *and* the writer.
My ideal reader is the individual (no matter age, gender, color, creed, number of degrees, or no degree) who invests in American culture—nooks and crannies and warts and all; loves plot, character, theme, and imagination; and longs to be entertained like the root sense of that word—to be held by. This everyday reader may be a farmer, work in an office, or clean the office.
I love shaping and sharing my stories that, be they novels or short fiction, focus on ordinary Americans real and imagined and offer an alternative to what’s popular, what’s prescribed, or what’s assumed you’ll consume. I make everything you read—from writing and editing the stories; to book interiors and covers; to online content and marketing materials. I have a long-standing interest and background in science, classical learning, and making stuff.
Thank you for your time, supporting my work, and spreading the word. See y’all in 2025.
Night School – New Novel Available 23 January 2025
“What you hear is what you know, but what you don’t know is what you need to hear.”
When college radio DJ Scotty Piper receives mysterious messages connected to his love of music and encyclopedic knowledge about a legendary rock band and their enigmatic guitarist, he leaves behind his colleagues and everything familiar and raises the odds he may never return home or to the job that keeps him grounded and gives him meaning. Scotty pursues answers and untangles riddles, diving into an oceanside city’s natural and supernatural history, an underground world of allies among enemies and enemies among allies, and groups and individuals haunted by transcendence. Like a detective, he unearths the truth about things that are seen but temporal and those that are unseen and eternal. Scotty’s journey among media and tech, money and corporations, the secular and sacred, and illusions and reality reveals an inescapable longing to be part of something larger.
ISBN (print): 9798986092713
ISBN (e-book): 9798986092720
A book’s success can thrive on word-of-mouth and grassroots marketing, and I’m asking you to help spread the word about Night School. Anything below you can do can positively impact me and my work:
Order the book (print and e-book).
Recommend to family, friends, acquaintances, book clubs, libraries, bookstores, bloggers, and platforms devoted to American fiction and culture.
Share on social media and websites.
Add and rate on Amazon, Goodreads, and similar outlets.
Place a copy in Little Free Libraries.