Three Months to the Drop

Pub date is almost here. This is what it feels like.

Hi, dear readers. Before we get into it, here are a couple cool things that happened since my last post:

1. I interviewed Frank Santo, author of THE BIRTHPARENTS, over at The Rumpus. Frank’s debut novel is the best debut I read in 2023 and one of the best debut’s I’ve read in a while. We had a great conversation about the Bronx, where his book is set, his time working in the foster care system, and whether or not it’s okay for a white guy to even write about characters of color from the Bronx in the first place.

2. Debutiful (an excellent podcast and website that consistently shows love to debut books) named VICTIM one of the most anticipated debut’s of 2024.

Okay. Now for the main event.

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As of yesterday, I’m exactly three months away from the publication date of my debut novel, VICTIM. Believe it or not, it still feels weird to type this. 

If you didn’t know, publishing is slow.

Mad slow.

So slow that in the last year and change since I signed my book deal, it has been quite easy to forget that this is actually happening. That this is real. 

Yeah, the pre-orders going up made it feel a bit more real. As did receiving physical galleys, and seeing them out in the world online. Knowing that people were reading it. 

Then the Goodreads reviews started rolling in (mostly positive, for now), and now, we’re at the point where it is being shared by the Almighty Influencers online and has even ended up on a couple most anticipated in 2024 lists. 

A lot of you who know me personally, who see me out in Miami, often ask me these days: How does it feel? 

I figured I’d try and address that here—in the hopes that capturing some of what I’m feeling, honestly, might be of use to others peering in from the outside—as well as a way to preserve it for posterity. 

So, how am I feeling?

One way to describe it is a stiff cocktail of excitement, anxiousness, and gratitude—though it is hard to say exactly how many parts of each ingredient is present in the drink. 

I’m excited, obviously, for the book to be out!

I’m excited that I’m getting closer to the moment when my novel will actually be there, resting on top of a table at your local independent bookstore, or your local Barnes & Noble. Just knowing that this will be a reality soon, after all the years I’ve dreamed about that moment, is cool as fuck.

I’m excited to see my friends and family holding my novel, and I’m also excited to stop receiving their texts asking where the book is because they paid for it online and haven’t gotten it yet and don’t really understand what a pre-order means. (Yo, what the fuck? Your publisher is gypping me, son!)

I’m excited to go on the little tour my team at Doubleday is setting up right now (more details for you soon!).

I’m very excited to meet readers in real life, and I’m excited to have some fun and, hopefully, insightful conversations about the novel. 

I’m excited to meet other authors in the process. I’m excited to be part of this dope cohort of writers with books coming out in 2024 (Danzy Senna, Kiley Reid, Percival Everett, among others), to be “in-conversation” with them, even if that conversation happens in the minds of readers who check out both of our books.

I’m excited to see what the response is. To see what kind of impact the book makes, if any. 

So, what am I anxious about?

There are the obvious things, of course: That, despite the mostly positive signs thus far, the book might flop. That there might be a revolt at my reading.

Some of these are clearly more possible than others—though one can never know. After all, it only takes one chair thrown across a room to get the party started, as any visitor to City Island in the summer knows… 

Still, these days, I won’t lie, I sometimes find myself anxious about how the book is doing, or how it will do. I sometimes find myself doing shit I’m a bit embarrassed to admit. Like checking my Goodreads reviews every day to see if I’ve gotten any new ones, or Googling the book to see if I’ve made any more of these “Best Books of 2024 To Watch Out For” lists that are starting to get generated. For some reason, I won’t front, I feel a bit burnt if I didn’t make one I stumble upon (damn, for real, you sleeping on me?). This despite the fact that I’ve already been on two of them. (That need for validation is a bitch, ain’t it?)

The rational part of me says: You shouldn’t care about any of this in the first place, man. That isn’t why you wrote your book.

And yet, sometimes, I do.

A few months back, it was easier to shake this off. It was easier to get back to my main distraction: trying to work on something new. But lately, as pub date gets closer, it’s been difficult to focus on another project in the way I really want to.

There are just too many little things to attend to on a daily basis that also require my focus. Emails to respond to or send, interviews and other things to coordinate, social media stuff to do or promote.

In the last couple of months, I’ve felt torn between the push and pull of working on something new, and making sure I’m doing everything in my own power to promote VICTIM and help the team behind me do their job, too.

So, I’ve decided that at this point in time, the most I can do is think about the new project, which I’ve done a lot of, and read. In the meantime, I’m allowing myself some grace when that old need for external validation starts to flair up.

I’m reminding myself that this is a special period of my life. I won’t always be imminently about to publish a book, and I’ll never again be imminently about to publish my debut book. So, fuck it, I’m allowed to be a bit needy, right?

But to be honest, focusing on gratitude is what has helped me the most.

When I start to spin out of control a bit, and start to wonder why I’m not on this list or that list, for example, or why this other book has more Goodreads reviews or more love on Book Tok (sigh, trust me, I know this shit is super lame and corny, but I’m being honest here) I catch myself, remind myself that nobody likes a hater, and more importantly, remind myself of the overwhelming sense of accomplishment that I already feel despite the fact that my novel hasn’t touched a store shelf yet.

Not just for getting this far in the process, and for publishing a book I’m so very proud of, but also for already receiving things that really, really matter to me—like love from early readers who really got what I was up to, and respect from OG’s (both male and female) of this ancient craft that I have looked up to for years. I mean, son, have you seen my list of blurbers? The shit is insane. In a lot of ways, I feel like I already won.

And then there are the things completely separate from this book that I’m grateful for, too, and that help ground me.

Like the timing of all of this. That, ultimately, this book, while something I’m immensely proud of and something that will always be special to me, is also just one additional thing in an already full life I have.

Like my family. Like my wife who celebrates my every accomplishment with genuine joy and often reminds me to stop and take them in (because I often forget to do this). Or, my kids, whose wails and needs make it difficult to think about myself and my book for too long anyway. Or, my peoples in New York City, in Miami, in Tampa, and, I’m blessed to say, around the world, that love me and whose love is completely independent of my novel and how my novel does in the marketplace.

So even as I’m getting my butterflies, I’m also reminding myself that this book will not make or break me. That, in fact, I’m a whole person independent of it.

Reminding myself of this brings me back to my center. It brings me back to Andrew, the writer who grinds and puts in the time and work simply because I love this shit. Not to win any awards or accolades or go viral, but because I really do care about writing and creating things I’m proud of.

Which is important. Not only for me, but for anyone else out there who maybe has work about to come out, or work on submission, or an MFA application that will be weighed and judged soon.

The center, the work, and the joy that you get from it, and the joy and satisfaction that you get from making it as strong as you possibly can, is ultimately what really matters.

So how do I feel? I’ll tell you the short version. Now that I’ve already given you the long one.

I feel like I’m at Six Flags. The Six Flags in Jersey, to be exact. I saved up my can of Coke and I got in for the low.

I feel like I’m on that one big ass roller coaster that creeps up and up and up little by little. Tick, tick, tick, tick.

I feel like I’m nearing the top. The crest. When the car pauses for a second and you’re looking down at the drop, and the series of highs and lows and twists that await.

I’m there. And I’m excited for what is to come. Maybe even a bit scared. But I’m also looking down at the parking lot in the distance, the little people down there walking around and eating over priced cotton candy and shit.

I’m reminding myself that, in a short period of time, I’ll just be one of them again: Not on the ride. Watching other people go through it from far away. Perhaps waiting on line to get on again because it was so fun.

But that next time will be different, of course. Because nothing is ever the same as the very first time.

Peace,
Andrew  

Recommendations: 

• Brad Listi
  ’s interview with publicist Lauren Cerand on the Otherppl Podcast. This was excellent and extremely valuable—especially for writers about to publish a book.

• This interview with novelist Lexi Friedman, whose latest novel The Book of Ayn, is getting a lot of attention (it is currently part of my TBR pile). “Part of the process of writing a book like this—and maybe any book—is going to the most risky, edgy, potentially dark place, and digging around in there and seeing if the thing you are saying is worth saying.”

• This piece by

  Geraldo Cadava
  analyzing the fall out from a recent interview with Donald Trump on Univision. Gerry is one of the smartest and most nuanced writers about Latino representation and politics at work today. It’s always a good idea to read him.

• This George Packer piece, which contains a series of warnings and best practices for the press should Trump win a second term next year. 

• This Q&A with the novelist and short story writer Phil Klay, on finding a moral center in the chaos of war and war commentary online. “You need to be open to complexity because whatever narrow thing that you want to achieve in the real world will, if it gets put into practice, be put into practice in the real world. Not in the ideologically antiseptic world that you’ve created in your head.”