On waiting…

I was hesitant to write this blog post, as it wasn’t too long ago that I was a struggling writer with no publishing credentials. So, I know how it feels to see published or soon-to-be published authors complain about the publishing process. Because at least they are getting published. But it’s due to the reality of what I’m feeling that I have literally nothing else to talk about right now.

    The waiting doesn’t get better. Before signing the contract, I was simply waiting for someone to see my book’s worth. Now after signing, I’m waiting for the large span of time before its publication to pass. And its crazy to me that I’ll be experiencing two birthdays before the book releases. Again, I am immensely grateful to be in the position to publish my book at all. But I’m also so eager for my career to fully start.

    I suppose I don’t have much else to say about this. Just that the waiting is hard. And I’m eager to be offered more publication deals to be excited about in the meantime. This slow crawl to publication is making me anxious for so much more.

    But much of my life has been one long, slow crawl. Sitting here in my study, I’m thinking about all the good things I have in my life. Glancing up the wall in front of me, my Written Arts degree hangs proudly. The silence of my home today contrasts greatly with the vibrancy of laughter and contentedness experienced up until bringing my girlfriend to the airport yesterday. The walls of books surrounding me, a collection of acquired knowledge throughout my years of writing, leading to signing a publication deal. These are all amazing gifts that I first had to work incredibly hard over an excruciating amount of time before I could attain them.

    Some cliches are just true. All the best things in life take time. That’s truer still, in this precarious and painfully slow industry.

    I’m grateful though, to have had to wait for so many other great things. Bard College is a rigorous and intensely difficult school. Graduating from there is no small feat. And it was as humbling as it was illuminating, and I left my college experience not only with a degree and a written book (THE MONSTERS AMONG US, out 2025!) that won an honors grade, but also a family. Two professors provided me with a sense of community I never had before and helped me survive one of the most tempestuous periods of my life. I will always be thankful for them, and so trust me when I say, my continued admiration for my alma mater is not to be mistaken for the same admiration that Andy Benard from The Office has with Cornell. He was an idiot whose parents paid his way through college, and never amounted to anything more than his college years. But I am an author who has been enriched and deepened and saved by my college. Many years were spent there, waiting for that degree; for a chance to prove myself. And eventually, it came.

    The same can be said about my love life. One failure after another, ill-fitted souls destined for nothing but catastrophe. I always felt unique to a point where I could never be understood. And if one can never be understood, then one can never be loved. Not truly. So, I always figured I’d be alone forever. Chipping away at novel after novel, a secluded, neurodiverse hermit. But in the love I’ve found in my aforementioned girlfriend, for the first time in my life I’m finding that it’s possible to feel loved after all. Over a decade of dating, and so much pain, while waiting. But I’ve found it at last and it’s all the sweeter for having waited.

    Again, some cliches are just true. And it will be all the sweeter after waiting all this time for THE MONSTERS AMONG US to be published. And there are some exciting things to share on the horizon: next month, on August 23rd, the cover for THE MONSTERS AMONG US will be revealed. And I am so, so excited to share it with you all.

    The wait until then… amplifies my satisfaction.