All is not boding well for Father Julius. . .
 
A street preacher decked out in denim robes and running shoes, Julius is a source of inspiration for a community that knows nothing of his scandalous origins.
 
But when a nearby mental hospital releases its patients to run amok in his neighborhood, his trusted if bedraggled flock turns expectantly to Julius to find out what’s going on. Amid the descending chaos, Julius encounters a hospital escapee who babbles prophecies of doom, and the growing palpable sense of impending danger intensifies. . . as does the feeling that everyone may be relying on a street preacher just a little too much.
 
Still, Julius decides he must confront the forces that threaten his congregation—including the peculiar followers of a religious cult, the mysterious men and women dressed all in red seen fleetingly amid the bedlam, and an enigmatic smoking figure who seems to know what’s going to happen just before it does.

* * *

My debut novel, The Revisionaries, will be released on December 3.

A little secret, now: It wasn’t supposed to get published—according to me. Before I started, I told myself that the book wouldn’t get published.

I sure showed me!

Let me back up. I wanted it to be published; I simply knew that it wouldn’t be. By this I mean that in late 2011, before I began writing, I made a rough plot outline and did a little bit of math based on the pages I’d already completed, to arrive at an estimated page count around 400,000 words. Seized with a creeping suspicion, I performed a little bit of online research, which immediately confirmed my instinct. I was utterly screwed.

For those of you who don’t know, general wisdom states that a debut author is supposed to write about 80,000 to 110,000-word manuscripts, depending on genre, making the scope of my project, if you’ll permit me use of a little industry jargon, “absolutely insane.” But I had the story I wanted to write, and I wanted to write it all, so I shrugged and decided to tilt at the windmill, promising myself that if it weren’t published by my birthday in 2020, I’d self-publish a couple vanity copies to sit on my shelf, and then write a shorter second novel. Thus I insulated myself against self-loathing; I would be an idiot, but not a fool.

(Listen to me: If you are thinking of writing a book that long in defiance of all industry advice and expectation, be very ready for it to become extremely unpublished. That way if you get very very lucky—and I got very very lucky—it can be a nice surprise, and if you don’t, it won’t be a nasty one. Any other way lies regret.)

To avoid tedium now, I’ll fast-forward four years, after I’d finished the manuscript—which was not 400,000 words long, but rather a lean 330,000! My goodness, only three times longer than a sensible person would have made it! After a year shopping it, I found myself exactly where somebody with a debut doorstop should expect: writing a new shorter manuscript. But then, an astonishing thing happened. A publisher—that would be the delightful Dennis Johnson of Melville House—asked to take a look, and read it and decided he liked it enough to publish it.

“Just one thing,” Dennis said. “At this length I think the only thing many people will notice is the length. We’d want you to cut it down about a third. Do you think you could do that?”

“Yes, absolutely!” I replied. Please note, I had absolutely no idea how I could do that, but I knew the answer to that question. As I said, I’m an idiot but not a fool.

I told you all that because I want to pass on a few things you learn about yourself and the crafts of writing and editing when you’re cutting an entire normal-sized book out of your enormous book.

It’s going to hurt.

My friends, it is going to hurt. You’ll need to cut characters, which will allow you to cut down whole plotlines and entire chapters. You’re going to spend six months cleaning up your book to accommodate those decisions, and then another six months cleaning up the cleanup. You’re going to rewrite the entire beginning, and then take a call on Christmas Day a couple weeks before your deadline, because even though it’s better, it’s not yet good, and then you’re going to go back and read it and realize that this report is correct, and you’re going to plop yourself down in front of your screen on Boxing Day and you’re going to want to die but instead of dying you’re going to start re-writing your beginning again. Because that’s the process.

Being understood isn’t the mission.

Listen: Your editor will probably like your book and your writing a great deal—why else would they be publishing your book?—but it’s not your editor’s job to like your book. It’s your editor’s job to tell you what isn’t working. You made a choice, and the choice has resulted in a book that is not as good as it could be. This is hard, because you made those choices for a reason. You’ll want to explain those reasons.

However (though your editor will probably understand your book), it will begin to dawn on you it’s actually not your editor’s job to understand your book the way you understand it; rather, it’s your editor’s job to understand all the things about your book you don’t understand, and to explain them in a way that will help you understand why. (Honestly, editors are sort of magicians.) Often, these explanations will make sense, but sometimes they’ll be horrifying—because they haven’t understood your book exactly how you understand it, and for a very simple reason. They already have somebody who understands the book that way. They have you, dummy.

It’s your job to figure out what is meant by these suggestions, and then fix the problem in a very you sort of way. Because that’s the process.

Think of it as a game if you can.

Can you cut that character in a way that maintains the reason for the character to exist, and introduces even more fun and ambiguous mind-chewiness? Do that! Can you fix your editor’s objections in a way that still allows you to honor the reason you made the choice in the first place? Do that! Can you honor the spirit of the request rather than the letter of it, and make a fix that you actually like more than what you had? Do that! Watch the word count melt away to a trim and fit (but still baffling) 210,000. You’re winning! You’ll probably think you’re getting one over on your editor for a while, until it begins to occur to you that you’re, ah, fixing your book, which was the whole idea, because …

Everybody wants the book to succeed.

Obviously, right? It might really begin to sink in as you see the care with which the publishing team replicates your various story threads into different fonts to help convey the shifts, or the gorgeous art-deco poster designs inside, or the craft of the layout itself, the dust-jacket cover that really pops, the embossment on the spine, all of it. My friends, I’m here to tell you … it even smells

Everybody’s working to make a great book. Everybody believes it will be one.

If your book can lose 100,000 words and still work, it probably needed to lose them.

Jumping Jehoshaphat, what a lot of (fun) work. This one is exactly the length it needs to be now, and I think people will love it, and I can’t wait for people to let me know if I’m right. Perhaps I’ll give the audiobook reader’s voice a break next time and write short.

(If I can.)

* * *

A.R. Moxon: Twitter | Website

The Revisionaries: Print | eBook

“OK Boomer” is a thing now, used (understandably) by younger generations to glibly flip off older ones — not, I feel, to dismiss legitimate concerns, but to dismiss prevalent baby boomer / baby doomer attitudes of blah blah blah bootstraps, something something climate denial, yadda yadda but what about both sides. Is it fair? I dunno. You tell me: the younger generations are inheriting a world that feels like it’s being rolled right up to the edge of a cliff, a boulder about to be pushed off the precipice. Sure, yeah, hashtag NotAllBoomers*, but generationally, they’re the ones who took the freedom of the 60s and let it calcify into the osseous capitalist culture cemetery of the 80s. Meanwhile the millennials (often viewed as Anybody Young, much as the boomers are Anybody Old) and the Gen-Zers wonder why college is so expensive and why student loans are terrible and house prices are interminable and they’re accused of “killing” every boomer tradition likely in part because they just can’t afford it — and yet they get yelled at for affording *checks notes* avocado toast. So, “ok boomer” evolves out of that — a casual, perfect dismissal of the Old Man Yelling At Clouds.

Related (I promise), here’s something too I noticed the other day — I noticed that older people tend to ask for what they want. I went into a restaurant populated by some older folks and they were very particular about what they wanted. No, I don’t want to sit here, I want to sit there. Substitute gruyere for cheddar. No, I don’t like those bootstraps, I like these bootstraps, you sassmouthed dillywhipper.

I don’t say that as a knock — knowing what you want, and asking for it, is huge. And it’s something that I don’t feel you figure out until you get older. As a kid, I didn’t know to ask for what I want. In part because you’re told to take what you get. That’s the attitude, right? YOU GET WHAT YOU GET AND YOU LIKE IT. And that made me think back to the “ok boomer” thing, and how it’s a little bit of fuck-you-flavored resistance, a thumb-your-nose-at-the-olds thing, a bit of reclaiming agency — instead of RESPECT YOUR ELDERS it’s lol shut up. It’s a revelation of, “Yeah, no, we’re gonna reclaim our agency and skip asking for a better world, and start demanding one.” It’s a big thing. A vital and necessary generational spark.

And that made me think about writing.

When I was younger — and I think this is maybe true of younger, untested writers overall — you really, really want to Do It Right. You want answers and rules and a map and you want to follow that map. You want to to write to the genre and hit the beats and follow story structure and all that. And that’s understandable, isn’t it? Both in publishing and in the world at large we’re told there are rules. Ways things get done. Do this, don’t do that, don’t doom your chances, stick to the path, and you’ll be fine. The process is the process, ass-in-chair, x-words per day, stay in your genre lane.

But then, ideally, as you get older and more experienced in writing you realize, fuck that.

You start to see through that illusion — some of the biggest, bravest stuff breaks rules. It doesn’t follow a path. Yeah, you still gotta do the work, you gotta commit to this thing, but what that looks like isn’t like putting together an Ikea bookshelf. It isn’t set to some prescribed, predefined blueprint or structure. The best stories are the ones that became themselves, that were an emblem of the author’s heart and mind in some way, that embraced the rare confluence of narrative atoms that make up Who You Are. And I wish I’d learned that earlier. Don’t get me wrong — maybe there’s value in trying to follow the rules for a long time, because maybe that’s how you get practice, and maybe that’s how you mount up enough frustration energy to kick through the wall and find your own way through. But maybe it can also end up a sunk-cost fallacy. Maybe you don’t need all that time to try to do it how everyone else tells you to do it. And maybe some authors have a hard time breaking out of that mindset — that if they just get in line and follow the rules, it’ll all work out.

But fiction isn’t like that.

Publishing is, somewhat. By which I mean, you do need to generally follow some rules there — agents, querying, etc. Self-publishing is a bit more lawless, but you still gotta embrace the business side of things. Rather, it’s creatively where rules need to be subject to obliteration — order built from your own personal chaos. Order you made for yourself and your work — architecture you invented, not stole from someone else.

So, I’d advise authors — especially those in the midst of NaNoWriMo, and those writing fan-fic — to inject a little “lol ok boomer” into the work. To find a way to make your own demands in the work, of the narrative. To not ask for permission to write the book you want to write — and to write a different book than what the generations before already did write. Somebody will always be there to tell you why the story you want to tell isn’t right, or why you shouldn’t do that. But you know why you should. The story is in there. Your intestinal flora sing with the instincts necessary to do the work and tell the tale. Your heart knows what it wants; it knows the story it needs to tell. Don’t ask for permission to do that. Just write it. You are the only one for whom permission must be asked, and from whom it must be taken.

* just so we’re clear, I want to get ahead of anybody who’s going to still be like BUT THIS IS AGEISM #NOTALLBOOMERS. I hear you. I do. You, or a Boomer You Know, may be great. But do recognize that younger generations casting distrust toward older generations is a classic tune with a beat we can all dance to, and to quote Wikipedia, “Boomers are often associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, the civil rights movement, and the “second-wave” feminist cause of the 1970s. Conversely, many trended in moderate to conservative directions opposite to the counterculture, especially those making professional careers in the military (officer and enlisted), law enforcement, business, blue collar trades, and Republican Party politics. People often take it for granted that each succeeding generation will be “better off” than the one before it. When Generation X came along just after the boomers, they would be the first generation to enjoy a lesser quality of life than the generation preceding it.” So, just nod and smile and go with it. It’s not about you personally, okay? But if you’re that upset about it — it just might be.

** I also recognize that even by using it, my not-yet-old-but-certainly-not-young ass has only further reduced the potency of “ok boomer”

* * *

WANDERERS: A Novel, out now.

A decadent rock star. A deeply religious radio host. A disgraced scientist. And a teenage girl who may be the world’s last hope. An astonishing tapestry of humanity that Harlan Coben calls “a suspenseful, twisty, satisfying, surprising, thought-provoking epic.”

A sleepwalking phenomenon awakens terror and violence in America. The real danger may not be the epidemic, but the fear of it. With society collapsing—and an ultraviolent militia threatening to exterminate them—the fate of the sleepwalkers and the shepherds who guide them depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart—or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.

Print: Indiebound | Let’s Play Books (signed) | The Signed Page | B&N | BAM | Amazon

eBook: Amazon | Apple Books | B&N | Kobo | Google Play | BAM

Audio: Audible | Libro.FM

Myke Cole does not fucketh around. He’s written military fantasy, historical fantasy, and further, is now writing just straight up historical non-fiction in an accessible, engaging way. And soon he adds sci-fi to that list. Oh also, he’s on television? Jesus Christ, Myke, leave a little for the rest of us. ANYWAY. Today, though, he wants to talk about the last of his Sacred Throne trilogy — The Killing Light. *throws Myke the blog keys*

* * *

With The Killing Light, The Sacred Throne trilogy is complete. It’s been a hell of a ride for me (and hopefully for you too) featuring giant devils, a rebellion against an oppressive religious order, and a brave young woman who has been hard done by and climbs into a suit of power armor to balance the ledger, if only by a little. The trilogy featured narrow escapes, treachery from the closest quarters, and battle after bloody battle.

So, thinking back on all that, have you figured out what it’s about yet?

It is, of course, about love.

But let me be a little more specific. You all watched the absolutely brilliant first two seasons of the BBC comedy series Fleabag, right? If you didn’t, fix your shit. I won’t spoil anything, but I will say this – the triumph of that series is that it takes love head-on. It addresses the reality of what it is to love. It reminds us that love is a choice and a process and that most of all, love is about losing. “The pain now is part of the pleasure then, that’s the deal,” says Anthony Hopkins playing C.S. Lewis in The Shadowlands, and he’s absolutely right.

Dan Savage wisely tells us that every relationship we’re in will end, until the one we’re in when we die. It’s an idea that’s profound in its simplicity and it reminds me of a central axiom of my own:

That love is risk. If we want to win, we have to play.

And that’s the heart of The Killing Light.

Perhaps the most quoted line from the The Armored Saint (the first book in The Sacred Throne trilogy) is Clodio’s advice to Heloise – …love is worth it, the old man reminds her, It is worth any hardship, it is worth illness. It is worth injury. It is worth isolation. It is even worth death. For life without love is only a shadow of life.

An easy road is what we aim for in real life, but not in fiction. Stories without conflict are boring. In order to make the series sing, Heloise had to hurt, and badly. In order to make this critical point I have had to put her through the crucible that demonstrates it. Love is indeed a choice and choosing to love when doing so is hard, when it is costly, is where the rubber truly meets the road. Witnessing this was hard for me as the writer, but I didn’t want to shrink from her experience – most importantly this: That Heloise does not discard her loss, but cradles it, holds it as close as a lover and uses it to propel herself forward. Loss is the spinning wheel, the Kipti say. It crusheth us beneath, and raiseth us up again.

That is what all the battles and hard fights in what is admittedly a pretty blood-soaked trilogy are – engines of loss. Object lessons of how to navigate them. It’s why I love the grimdark subgenre so dearly. I never tire of examples of how humans can endure and emerge and find a way to triumph.

It is like this for all of us. We reel from the people we lose. The family members who pass away, the lovers who throw up their hands and walk, the friends who move and marry and lose touch. Sometimes we make mistakes that we recognize and own and remedy, but that we can’t erase or fully recover from. We lose people. Time helps. So does taking counsel from friends who help us to rally, but what nobody tells you is that it gets worse.

Because like the protagonist in Fleabag you get better at loving over time. With each new love we improve.

And that means that you will love harder the next time and the loss of that one will hurt all the more.

After one particularly rough ending, I sobbed on the phone to my friend on the other side of the country, belting out the cris de coeur that is so common to breakups that Hallmark may as well print it on cards, “Oh god, I feel like such a fool.”

“Yeah, well,” my friend said, “I guess if you’re going to be a fool, love’s a pretty good thing to be a fool for.”

We lose the people we love.

And it hurts. Sometimes it hurts so badly we tell ourselves it can’t possibly be worth it.

But it is.

It’s the only thing truly worth anything. It is worth it for Heloise, who is better than most, who has fought harder than most, who has lost more than most. It is worth it for me.

It’s worth it for you, too.

* * *

Myke Cole: Website | Twitter

The Killing Light: Print | eBook