Home for the holidays

December 7, 2022 from Prattville, AL

Hi everyone! How are you?? We’ve survived to the end of 2022, so I think we can all count that as a big win! I know it has been a hot minute since I’ve written on this Substack because to be quite honest I have had no clue how to use it! But as things have shaken up in the social media world and I’ve thought more about how I want to interact with my audience and what my actual goals are as an author, I think finally may have come to some conclusions about this medium.

Moving forward, this will be the space where I make (hopefully) weekly reports on my writing, reading, thinking, and simply whatever is exciting my interests at any given point. I want to do this both as a personal discipline to keep a better record of how my work and thinking is developing over time and as a form of accountability to always be doing something worth reporting on!

I’ll try to keep them simple, honest, and unpretentious. I’m really working at worrying less about what other people think of me. Truth is, it usually isn’t even what other people think that I’m actually worrying about. It is what I imagine other people are thinking. My goal is just to write. It’s not for me to decide if it’s any good or not. That’s not how literature works. So you can join me as I go on this journey to become a more free writer, less restrained by what I imagine the world thinks.

Writing

Folks are regularly asking one of two things these days: Are you writing? or When will the Batman book be done? The answer today is yes, I am writing and getting a lot words on the page, and it will be a bit before the Batman book is ready. Let me explain a bit.

One of the cool things that happened in 2022 is that I officially signed with a literary agent, something that I’ve been pursuing for years. At this point, I’ve lost count of how many times I got rejected by various (very polite) agents over the last few years. Even after I published Charlie Brown’s America it didn’t get any easier. A lot of this was, I think, because I was fully clear yet on what I wanted to do as a writer. I was most interested in trying to mold myself into whatever the agents seemed to want and that just simply didn’t work. It is hard to find the right fit when you don’t know who you are to begin with.

Not only did I find an agent, but I’ve been privileged to land at one of the best agencies in the business, Kneerim & Williams. They have represented some of my favorite non-fiction authors and have sold a long list of award-winning works of history. Not only did I find an agent there, I found two! Lucy Cleland and Sarah Khalil are the fantastic team representing me and the best part is that they really get what I’m doing as a writer. They love the Batman project and they’re hard work in revising my writing is turning this thing into something really special.

So what am I doing right now? Well, write now I’m working on a last draft of the book proposal for (tentative title) Batman: The Making of an American Myth. This includes full chapter breakdowns for the entire book and sample chapter I’m completing on the introduction of the Joker in 1940 and what it says about the world during World War II. Once this last draft is completed and edited, Lucy and Sarah will go do their magic and find the publishers interested in buying the book. If all goes well, we may get a couple offers, negotiate a contract with the right publisher, and from there I should have about 9-12 months to finishing writing the manuscript.

Speaking of manuscripts (literally “hand writing”), in my efforts to get away from online distractions and focus more on producing my best prose, I’ve started writing my first drafts longhand on legal pads. So, if all goes to plan, this entire book will be first written in pen and ink. I’ll then type my second draft and iron out the wrinkles there. So far I’m really enjoying it. The words just seem to flow a bit more easily. I also can’t open a new tab and do any online browsing from the yellow note paper.

Reading

I’m currently reading Mary Beard’s SPQR, which is a delightful history of ancient Rome. My agent, Lucy, recommended it to me as a good model of the type of popular writing I should be aiming for. The thing that strikes me in her writing is the simplicity and candor. It is deeply informed by her expertise in the classics, but it is delivered in a very conversational way. She is taking you on a tour of what can (and can’t) know about the history of Rome and she’s walking you through the debates over different versions of the history. Each chapter craftily transitions to the point of the next, but it all feels quite leisurely (in a good way!). I’m really enjoying it and I’ll share more as I read along. I’m a slow reader. I just own it at this point!

Subscriptions

One of the hardest parts about Substack for me was figuring out how to do the subscription thing. Here’s what I’ve decided: if you want to read this newsletter for free and support me by simply taking an interest in my work, you are absolutely welcome. If you would like to help support my work by doing a monthly subscription ($5 a month), then I thank you! You can cancel at any time, no judgement. I’ll keep writing and you can keep reading (We can stay friends either way).

I will offer one special offer: if you pay for an annual subscription, I will send you a personally autographed copy of my book Charlie Brown’s America as a special thank you. That is, again, only for the annual ($50) subscribers (I can’t afford to giveaway a book for $5, not yet at least!). So if you are interested in supporting my work or getting your own autographed copy of my book, subscribe today!!