A debut sixteen years in the making

Sixteen years. Way longer than I expected — though not for this book.

In 2009 I joined an MFA program at SF State with the primary goal of graduating with a publishable novel. After years in a weirdo prog rock band — touring, self-promoting, making everything from scratch — then forming Omnibucket as a micro-press (again doing everything from writing and design to binding, distribution, and publicity), I went to school dreaming of a publishable novel. 

What I really wanted was a champion — someone else to carry the load this time. 

At first, after school, I thought I was on track. I’d won an award for my thesis, a draft of a novel, and used that to secure an agent pretty quickly. But then came the years — endless drafts, diluting the vision, parting ways with that agent, finding another who believed in it (and in another idea I’d been sketching). There was a big push, rejections, another parting of ways. I was told to put that first one on the shelf and focus on the other.

So I was back on my own. A year later, with a spreadsheet full of “nice personal rejections,” a few temptations from hybrid publishers, and some much-needed encouragement to keep going, I did. And I found the right home.

While grappling with edits to the first novel, I began sketching scenes for this other obsession. When my daughter was 18 months old, my wife and I took off with a pile of notes to spend a year in Lyon, France. 

St. Ulphia’s Dead was born here, on a bench along the Soane river in Lyon.

Every afternoon from 1–3pm, while wife and child napped, I wrote. I had a first draft in six months, a final another six months after that. And then — onto the shelf it went, until it found its home. 

Regal House Publishing. They loved it. No changes (beyond proofreading).

So what is it like? To fulfill a dream sixteen years in the making? Well, it’s magical. 

I hired a photographer and spent a hilarious afternoon in a bizarre public art space in Seattle, trying on outfits and poses and repeating, “let’s try weirder.” I prepped the manuscript myself (thankfully, thanks to my wife insisting I should do it). That reread rekindled joy. I laughed, I got chills. As a compulsive editor, I expected to tinker. But with distance, it felt like reading someone else’s book written just for me.

The book was, as Truman Capote once said, an orange — complete, whole, and separate from its creator.

Cover design? That’s a story for another essay. So are blurbs. (Though I will say: there are few thrills like receiving fresh blurbs from authors you admire, seeing them capture your book in ways you hadn’t imagined. And while we’re at it, check out The Blurb Artist by Caroline Cooke, who graciously blurbed me.) 

So what’s next? Everything else. ARCs, style sheets, metadata, marketing, a new website (designed in Google Docs, ha!). After so much waiting, it’s all coming fast.

This summer I returned to Lyon, to the same bench on the Soane where the book was written. I sat there, trying to reclaim the spirit of those afternoons. For pure nostalgia. But then I realized something:

I’d imagined publication as an ending. But I was wrong. It isn’t the end. 

It’s the beginning.

The machine is revving up for launch. Soon it will be out in the world.

👉 Do you remember a moment when you realized something was just beginning, right when you thought it was ending?