debut author – HESSE PHILLIPS

Lightborne Updates: UK Trade Paperback OUT NOW!

Today is filled with all the usual excitement, expectation, and nail-biting dread of every milestone I’ve faced thus far in this weird business of being a published author. However, today also marks a bittersweet end of the road in my publishing journey. Unless I pull a Pachinko within the next year or two, this will be the last UK pub day Lightborne ever gets.

I loved this book. I worked on it through my 20s and 30s, and into my 40s. It was a way of life for so long that tearing myself away from it took nearly as much discipline as writing the damn thing. Now I’ve moved on, and it already feels distant at times, but the lessons I learned in writing it will hopefully stick with me forever.

I’ve been living a weird double-life over the past two years, embarking on my next book while my first was making its international debut by slow stages. In the beginning, transitioning away from a book I knew so well I could set the characters free in the maze of my head and simply sit back and “observe” them was painful at times. After two years, I still don’t know my new cast of characters that well, although I am getting closer. It’s a strange feeling to be back in a part of the writing process which I last experienced so long ago it’s only a distant memory for me, leading me to second-guess myself – to think I’m doing it wrong. Connecting with other writers is keeping me grounded, but I already can’t wait to be in the 15th or 20th revision again, at the point where “mess becomes book.”

Those are some of my most treasured memories of Lightborne, even now. While publication is exciting and vindicating, it’s also a lengthy process of letting go. And while I still love “my boys” – even the wicked ones (looking at you, Poley) – I will never again experience that sense of mutual habitation that came with writing their story. This is what people mean, I suppose, when they talk about being visited by the Muse: a collaboration between me and the imaginary beings I’ve created, acting not independently of me (obviously) but in ways I can’t entirely explain. People also call writing a lonely profession, but when the writing is going well, it’s anything but.

So I’m a bit sad, but very excited to keep working, keep writing, and celebrate not the last, but the first of many last, glorious voyages of my debut into the world, with hope that it will find readers who will love it and need it as much as I did.

Safe travels, boys. 💙

Lightborne Updates: Paperbacks & Staying Alive

I must admit I love a good paperback. Smaller, lighter, easy to carry, a paperback book feels like a close friend. I love the subtly textured surface and faint newsprint smell of the paper, and the way the spine of a truly beloved paperback becomes grooved and whitened with age. Hardbacks are great and all, don’t get me wrong – but a paperback is a living thing.

So naturally I was giddy with excitement when my complimentary author’s copies of the forthcoming Lightborne paperback edition showed up at my door the other day. I’ve seen PDFs of the new cover and therefore thought I knew what I was getting into when I opened the box, but no PDF could possibly do it justice.

I think someone in the design department at Atlantic Books must have heard me going on and on about how much I loved the gold on the “deluxe” edition cover from last year, because they went all-out with it. Believe me when I tell you, this baby glows.

And it looks pretty great from the back too.

With the official paperback launch date set for 6 March, preorders are of course available (and encouraged!) But for those who prefer ebooks, the ‘Zon is also running a Kindle Deal on Lightborne for the month of February, where you can score a copy for just £2.19.

It should probably go without saying that all of this is coming at an exceedingly weird time, particularly yet not exclusively if you’re American like myself, and particularly yet not exclusively if you happen to also be queer, and writing queer books, and plan to continue being and doing all of those things for as long as you have breath in your body. I am glad, at the very least, that I made some difficult but necessary decisions to start out the year, and intend to carry that energy with me into whatever comes next.

The intersection of my self and my obsession with history means I cannot avoid writing about queer survival under truly intolerable conditions – history is sadly saturated with them. It also means, of course, that not everybody makes it out alive, and those that do emerge scarred, battered, and at least a little bit broken. But we will always have a future, even in the bleakest of times. History may often show us in our darkest hour, but it also offers hope: we’ve always been here, and will always be here.

For me, the most important words I wrote in Lightborne were these:

You must live because I love you – because you must be avenged
– because to live is a form of vengeance, when so many have
sought to destroy you.

Sometimes it comes down to that: staying alive. Because us staying alive really pisses off the ‘phobes.

And if I’ve learned anything about myself this year, it’s that I get a kick out of pissing off ‘phobes.

Lightborne Updates: UK Paperback Sneak Peek

I can’t help but want to talk about perhaps too many things in this post, as I know many of us are still reeling after last week. Perhaps shocked and blindsided, perhaps proven right in the worst way possible, perhaps teetering just above despair. Anyone celebrating is invited to leave at this point. Anyone lashing out, lighting fires, throwing blame at those more vulnerable than themselves, screeching “I told you so” as they rub salt into others’ open wounds, is invited to seek therapy.

It feels very strange and not a little delusional to be talking about my book at a time like this. Not that it doesn’t feel strange to talk about the future at all, given how little we can say for certain about it, other than that things look bleak. They certainly look bleak if, like me, you are a queer author who writes queer books. As I discussed at length in my previous blog post, we could easily be entering a dark age in terms of art and literature, an age in which books like mine will become hotly contested objects. But it’s one thing to worry about whether or not your book might still be legal in your home country a year from now, quite another to worry whether you, as a human being, will also be legal: your marriage, your passport, your family, your friends, your livelihood, your joy, your resistance, your thoughts, your dreams.

However, as a number of other queer authors have also pointed out, there’s no sense whatsoever in backing down before the fight has even truly begun. We are already tired, especially those of us who have been targeted before, but I hope we are far from giving up. Now is a time for those of us who can afford to be loud to scream with all our might.

Knowing my history as a queer person is a double-edged sword, because I’ve seen my community in its darkest hour, but I’ve also seen us emerge from that darkness, again and again. Whatever is coming, we have every right to feel dread in the pits of our stomachs, but also every reason to believe we will find ways to survive it. As Marlowe says in Lightborne, “to live is a form of vengeance, when so many have sought to destroy you.”

As long as humanity lives, we live. I’m sure it drives those who hate us crazy.

All that said, I’m extremely lucky to have exciting things to look forward to in 2025, among them the paperback launch of Lightborne in the UK. Come what may, in March there will be a whole new edition of the book out in the world, with a stunning new cover to rival the old one.

And now, without further ado:

We still have the beautiful gold accents that gave the original cover such a bold presence on the shelf, but now with a much darker, moodier atmosphere, and even a subtle appearance from Kit Marlowe himself. I chose this design among several options – it wasn’t easy, as they were all impressive – but I loved this one for that rich blue tapestry background, and the vintage feel of the design.

The back cover, I should add, is equally gorgeous:

Those who have read the book already will surely recognize Frizer’s knife peeking out! I fought for that knife, I will say, and I’m so glad I did. Authors – this is me advising you to fight for things you want on the cover. You might not get them, but you’ll have no regrets.

I’m beyond excited to see the paperback in its full glory, as I hope readers will be as well. Whatever dangers are barreling down at us from the future, I hope we’re able to find reasons to stay excited and engaged. After all, the world desperately needs that from us. Our anger and outrage is necessary, but so is our hope, our creativity, our joy.

It might mean the difference between simply getting through whatever comes next, and doing the work that desperately needs to be done: of building a better world than the one we started with.

Lightborne Launches Stateside

I look back on the past version of myself who brought their laptop to their US book launch with the intention of keeping their blog updated and think, “Oh, you sweet summer child – so innocent, so full of big dreams!” In the end, I didn’t have time to unpack the laptop, let alone to sit up through my jetlag reaping the whirlwind of emotions for content. Even now, much of my trip to Boston, Massachusetts remains a blur of happy reunions with old friends, rooms filled with watchful, attentive faces, visits to old stomping grounds, old favorite beers in old favorite bars, new favorite books bought in new favorite bookshops.

At least one thing is clear: I’m extremely lucky. Not everyone gets their dream launch in their dream location with their dream conversation partner; not everyone gets to sit on a panel of rockstar authors and read their work to a packed audience. But I’ve been lucky for quite some time. I was lucky twelve years ago, when I discovered GrubStreet Boston’s Novel Incubator program and joined a community full of lifelong friends who all share a passion for the craft of writing. I was lucky to have some of the best writing instructors out there, Michelle Hoover and Lisa Borders, who gave me all the support I could possibly need.

There’s a bittersweetness to it all. Returning to the last place I called home just as the whole country is turning its gaze towards the abyss infuses even joyful moments with a sharp tang of dread. I fear for many of the friends I left behind, nearly all of whom said the same thing as we bade each other goodbye: “If the shit hits the fan, I’m coming to stay with you!” They were only half-joking, I could tell, just as I was only half-joking when I answered of course they could stay with me, I’d take every single one of them in if I could. Many told me how lucky I was to have gotten out when I did, how lucky I am to be so far away, which is a hard thing to hear, given how much I’ve missed them, and how much I’ve missed the place where, they say, I’m so lucky to no longer live.

I’ll have more to say on all of that later. For now, I’d like to just hang onto the excitement and gratitude of these days. I’d like to thank Nicole Vecchiotti and Timothy Deer, the organizers of Craft on Draft, as well as our hosts at Trident Booksellers, our Master of Ceremonies Cameron Dryden, and my fellow panelists Thérèse Soukar Chehade, Henriette Lazaridis and Janet Rich-Edwards. Thanks to Porter Square Books and to Marketing Director Josh for throwing Lightborne a launch party to remember, and to my conversation partner Michelle Hoover for knowing exactly the right questions to ask. A huge thanks to my publicist Meghan Jucszak at Pegasus Books, who helped put everything together.

A final shout-out also to the many dear friends who rallied together to give Lightborne the send-off I’ve always dreamed of. I told many of you that we have to come back and do it all again soon, and I mean it. This is a world that needs more art, more joy, more luck to go around. I sincerely hope we get to share in that.

Lightborne Updates: A Big Box of Books

Last Friday I received the most exciting bookmail any author could ask for: a box full of shiny (very shiny) new copies of my debut novel, hot off the press! They even have that “new book smell,” which, IYKYK.

With my planned trip to London for pub-day fast approaching, just about every friend I talk to asks me whether things are starting to feel “real” yet. What I’ve discovered throughout this whole publishing process is that the goalposts for “real” keep moving the closer you come to the big day. Seeing the manuscript become a digital ARC felt “real,” then holding the physical ARC in my hands felt even “realer”; after that came the final cover design, then the corrected digital proof, and now I sit here with a copy of Lightborne next to me – the same as will soon appear on bookshelves across the UK, Ireland, even as far away as Australia.

It can’t possibly get any “realer” than that, can it? Have we not, at last, reached “maximum realness,” as a drag queen somewhere is probably also wondering right now?

I count on nothing, as far as that is concerned. A year ago, in my naivete, I might have believed that walking into my book launch would be the peak of this whole experience, but now I’m no longer certain there will be such a thing as a peak. (Or a launch, for that matter!) We writers like to impose the rules by which our little worlds are governed onto the “real” world, in the hope that we might feel just a little more in control of our lives, but the shape of a publishing journey is not a single curve building towards climax, probably more like a series of waves of varying lengths. There’s an addictive element to it – the highs are very high, the lows abysmally low. And you never really know when one is going to hit.

For now, amidst so much uncertainty, I’m doing my best to focus on the milestones I can count on happening: the next time I hand a friend or a family member their very own copy of the book and blushingly insist, “You don’t have to read it”; the first time I get to listen to the entire audiobook, and hear award-winning narrator Will M Watt bring Kit Marlowe, Ingram Frizer and Robin Poley to life. The first time I walk into a bookshop and see Lightborne for sale – an experience I’ll be lucky enough to share with my wife, and my parents, who are traveling all the way from Pittsburgh.

For now, please enjoy this extremely amateur unboxing video, in which I finally get to hold Lightborne for the first time – another beginning in a long series of beginnings.

The GOOOOOLLLLLDDDD!