Research Diary #1: Spies, Schemers, and Straight-up Bullsh*t

I may be technically “done” with LIGHTBORNE, my first novel, but it seems like the research just isn’t done with me. After years – too many years – spent scanning documents for familiar names, I am primed to pick them out wherever I might encounter them. Every now and then, an old ghost steps out of the shadows, and the hair stands up on the back of my neck.

Lightborne Updates: ARCs are in, and so is Impostor Syndrome

Last week I had the immense privilege of visiting my publisher Atlantic Books’ offices in person. Little did I know when I was making aimless circles around Bloomsbury, hopelessly lost, that once I got there I would be greeted by printed, jacketed, ready-to-go ARCs of my debut novel – a whole pile of them awaiting my woefully unpracticed signature.

Lightborne Updates: Proofs, Proofs, Proofs!

We’re just about into that incredibly exciting stage where things start getting printed on paper – meaning that I’ve recently received the most important pdf file of my entire existence so far, and have spent the past week going over it with a fine-toothed comb.

“Hey Hesse, how are the copy edits going?”

The first editorial phase was instructive on a global scale, subjecting characters, plot and overall themes to forensic examination. I came away from it feeling like I’d just gotten a free MFA in creative writing. The copy editing stage, however, will humble you up in a heartbeat.

Lightborne Updates: Mess Becomes Book

I’ve just handed-in my first batch of revisions to my wonderful editor at Atlantic Books, and I suddenly find myself with nothing at all to do, book-related, for the next few weeks. This is the process, as I’ve found it: lots of short bursts of grinding work that’ll keep you either manic or paralyzed with anxiety, until, suddenly, it’s all over. Now, to wait.

Eulogy for an Unpublished Novel

So this is the end. After two decades, I’ve stopped writing Lightborne. This is a celebration, but it’s also a eulogy: for the work, for the hope, for the task I just had to complete, which began as all eulogies do, with death.

Unstable Ground: How Setting Makes the Story

We’ve all heard of or read books that treat setting like a character, but what exactly does that mean? How is it achieved?

“Interesting places”

There are many roads through a novel, with many possible endings. As in real life, the most interesting places are almost never found at the end of a single, straight path. The way through the landscape sometimes requires going all the way back to zero, and then setting out again.