Today, I'm Officially a Published Novelist

Victim is now available wherever books are sold!

Substack Fam! We made it. March 12, 2024. I feel like I’ve been plugging that date forever now, but it is here. My debut novel VICTIM is finally in stores.

If you’ve already purchased it, thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I’d love for you to tell a friend about it, or even post a picture on social media if you’re feeling up to it this week—anything you can think of to help spread the word would be wonderful, and greatly appreciated.

While you’re at it, a nice review on Goodreads or Amazon, would help, too.

If you haven’t purchased my novel, but have been thinking about it, this week would be a wonderful week to visit your favorite bookstore, or favorite online retailer and place an order, if you’re so inclined.

In case you need some convincing, The New York Times ran a glowing review this weekend—the review of my dreams, to be honest. They called VICTIM “thrilling,” said the satire is “uncomfortable, and entirely necessary,” and summed it up by concluding the novel “signals the arrival of a writer courageous enough to dive into the difficult head-on.”

So yeah, don’t just take my word that it’s something worth reading, listen to the paper of record! Or, if you prefer, the Washington Post and Time Magazine, who both recommended VICTIM as a book to read this March. If you’d like to learn more about the book, and why I wrote it, this recent Q&A with

Ross Barkan

and this one with The Rumpus that just published yesterday, are great places to start.

Also, as I mentioned last post, I’m going on a little tour starting this weekend, with stops upcoming in Miami, the Bronx, Brooklyn, the St. Pete/Tampa area, and the Dallas, Texas area. If you’re around, I’d love to see you, sign your book, and thank you for your support in real life.

Finally, a parting word.

I’m going to try and keep this short, because I feel like you’ve all heard about me talk about my novel a million times by now. But I wanted to give you, this community, a sense of what I’m feeling right now because I started this whole newsletter a little over a year ago with the intention of documenting my journey to becoming a published author and beyond.

And now here we are.

So: How does it feel? Pretty damn incredible, I must say.

This book is something I was grinding in the trenches with for a decade-plus. There have been many dark, lost days during this journey, and many thousands of thoughts about stopping, or giving up, and forgetting about this boyhood dream of mine to publish a novel.

To be honest with you, I’m just happy I persevered. Grateful, really.

The book needed all of that time to cook, and, to keep it real with you, so did I. Though I would have never guessed that it would have taken me all this time to publish a novel, or wished it, man am I happy it did.

The book is coming right on time—the time it was always meant to come. I’m just glad I waited around for it, and stuck with it.

And that is my message to you: Stick with it.

I know many of you out there are writers, too. Perhaps working on your first book, or you’re trying to sell your second or third, or maybe even just thinking about writing one.

Wherever you’re at in the process, I can almost certainly bet you’re probably filled with doubts, or probably wondering if you’re wasting your time. You’re probably thinking, like I thought, many a times: This may never happen.  

To that I say, just keep grinding. Keep your head down, stay working, stay reading, and try as hard as you can to have some fun while you’re at it. That’s key. Have fun. Block out the noise, and write the thing that excites you—no matter what that might be.

Enjoy the process, enjoy the ride. Eventually, when the time is right, you’ll end up wherever you were supposed to be—even if it may look entirely different from whatever you imagined.

That’s my story. That’s my truth.

Peace, and thank you, for real, for all of your support on this journey.

We did it. The boy from the Bronx with a dream, now a published novelist in bookstores and shit.

Who woulda thought!

Been in this game for years, it made me an animal…