BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT

Archwinger has finally finished a book!

A few keystrokes ago, I just finished the first draft of a book. I didn’t specifically plan to finish on New Year’s Day. I just happen to be off from work which gave me some extra time, so this happens to be when I finished.

Previously, I posted a few excepts from a book on Substack. That is not the book I have written. I actually tabled that book for awhile. The topic of that book was the birth and development of the internet and its effect on dating and society as a whole, with a focus on the internet manosphere. Essentially, me pontificating for 15 or so chapters about things only I think are interesting and hoping you guys all buy it just because I’m Archwinger, that legendary guy from the Red Pill Reddit days.

I’ll still probably finish that book, but life got busy. Our biggest client increased our quota to remain on their list of preferred patent law firms (while cutting how much they’re paying us because they’re big and they can). At the same time they did this, we had to let one of our four attorneys go. Shortly after that, another of our attorneys had a family tragedy and significantly reduced her workload for awhile. So the big boss and I have been working our tails off to meet our quota.

Meanwhile, the wife and I had a new addition to our family. He’s almost four months old now. The wife has been off of work since then, so I’ve been floating our entire family financially. The still new-ish house, new minivan to fit the bigger family. All me. It’s been a lot.

So I haven’t had the bandwidth to sit down and write a heavy, thinking-man’s book.

But I have to write. I get these ideas and tickles in my brain bouncing around being noisy, and if I don’t write, I can’t focus. I have to get these things out to make room for other thoughts.

A long time ago, I started a different book. I got maybe two chapters into it and quit. I used to do that a lot.

I had just finished reading a book called “A Thousand Tiny Kisses” or something like that. It’s since been renamed, and the author started going by a different name. But you don’t need to run out and buy it unless it sounds really interesting to you. It wasn’t life-changing or anything like that. Just, back then, there weren’t a lot of books written by manosphere men.

The book was written by a PUA guy and tells the story of a dude who can’t get laid, does PUA stuff, starts getting laid, and has a lot of misadventures with women. Each chapter, he screws up with a different girl somehow and learns from it. Toward the end, he gets into a more serious relationship, gets really hopeful, but it ends because they always do. He’s hurt but deals with it, moves to a new city, and the book ends with him talking to a girl in his new town and you know that while he’s not going to get the fairy tale happy ending, he’ll be fine.

Around that same time, the movie “Boyhood” came out. This movie tells the story of a boy, starting out when he’s a little kid, and ending when he goes off to college, in a sort of episodic format. His parents get divorced, his mom dates a bunch of guys who turn out to be different kinds of jerks, lots of step-siblings and friends are in and out of his life, he gets a girlfriend and is happy and hopeful but things end because they always do, his mom makes everything about herself all the time (played by Patricia Arquette, who does a really good job in the role), and the movie ends with him chatting with a girl in college and you know that while life’s not perfect, he’ll be fine.

So I started a book kind of blending these two themes, telling the story of a young boy and his misadventures with a girl each chapter, but starting out in kindergarten and intending to end when the main character is old. But the book was never intended to be about the girls. The girls were just the backdrop for the main character to tell the real story in the cracks and via his internal monologue — narcissistic mother, disengaged father, social weirdness and possibly on the autism spectrum, the educational system doing him no favors at all, lots of Red Pill style commentary on society and women.

But I got two chapters in and quit because writing books is hard. That was over a decade ago.

Recently, one of my favorite members of our dark corner of the internet, Mr. Rian Stone (https://rianstone.substack.com) did something I have always wanted to do: write a real book. Not a manosphere book purporting to tell internet men stuff about women or how to get laid and live better. An actual book normal people might read and enjoy. A normal fiction book called The Dog Walker. The term of art is “slice of life” fiction. It reads like satire, but is very relatable.

This book tells the story of a navy guy who, in most of the chapters, has an entanglement with a woman that usually goes badly due to a lot of personal issues stemming from his past, learns from each encounter, and eventually becomes a guy who won’t end up with the fairy tale ending, but we know is going to be just fine. I’m not doing the book justice with my one-sentence description. You should ABSOLUTELY buy the book and subscribe to Rian’s substack. (He’s written another fiction book that’s even better: Softbone. It’s cyberpunk-dystopian-satire-awesomeness and not as relationship-oriented, but buy it. It’s even better.)

So I went back to this book I started a decade ago, sat down and wrote something like ten chapters. It just kept coming out of me. But the format was weird. Every chapter was written Forest Gump style. Me (the author), as Forest Gump, is telling you (the reader), as the lady on the bus stop bench, a story about some girl from childhood, intermixed with a lot of tangents and pontifications about society, the educational system, parenting, and so on.

Essentially, every chapter was like an Archwinger essay from Reddit or Substack, but a fictional story with lots of social commentary from the main character instead of me ranting about women.

Then, I made the mista…wise decision to show the first chapter to Rian.

He was mostly complimentary. But told me something I already kind of knew but needed to hear: Content was good. Writing style excellent as always. But the execution fell flat. There’s no hook. Nothing to tell the reader what he’s in for, what the stakes are, whether I’m wasting his time — nothing to grip him and pull him in.

If I hadn’t personally asked him to look at the chapter and he didn’t know me and who I was, he’d never have read it. Same with you guys. Written the way it was, I’d essentially be relying on you guys to want to read it just because I’m Archwinger, that legendary internet misogynist from the Red Pill Reddit days.

“I’m Archwinger and I have something to say” is fine for a ten-minute Substack article that’s not costing you any money. But that’s a lot to ask of you internet men for a ten-dollar, 50k word book.

Maybe a dozen of you would have bought it, only half of you would have finished it after reading the first couple of chapters, and probably none of you would have bought my next book.

I rewrote the whole thing as a narrative. It’s a lot better. My wife has enjoyed every chapter I’ve shown her so far. My daughter read the first chapter and loved it. That’s two normal people — women even! — who think it’s good.

But it’s only good-ish. The way writing works is you write a first draft, then you throw it in the fireplace and write a second draft that doesn’t suck. Then, you take the second draft and rewrite the whole thing by taking out all of your indulgent tangents and things you thought were smart and witty but really just distract from the main points. (And I have a LOT of those because I’m Archwinger and that’s how I write. And I mean a lot lot.) In this stage, you also tie things together a lot better and make the thing make more cohesive sense.

Then you rewrite the whole thing again with the non-meandering, non-indulgent, cohesive sense in mind to get a third draft. That’s the first draft you can actually show to an editor. Who will tear it all apart and have you rewrite it again.

This entire Substack article is a great example of a meandering, self-indulgent tangent I should have reduced to one or two sentences.

Anyway, big picture: Book is written. Parts of it are even good. But there’s work to be done. But I’m close and really excited.

Somewhere along the line, maybe half a dozen-ish of you Substack subscribers decided to become paid subscribers.

I don’t actually offer any paid content. Which means you guys think the normal stuff I piss out of my keyboard is entertaining enough that you want to give me something you didn’t have to give me, just to show me that you think so. I’m really grateful. That’s super-validating.

So while I’m doing the rewriting process, I’m going to give the half-dozen-ish of you guys sneak peaks. You can help me edit if you want. Every week, couple of weeks, maybe once a month — however long it takes to get a chapter looking how I like it and depending how hard the day job is kicking my butt — I’m going to drop a chapter into Substack for paid subscribers. Then once I’m sick of staring at it, I’ll drop the next one.

You guys can comment. Tell me what you think, catch dumb typos I missed, tell me what parts really work or don’t work for you. I have my own tone and voice to think about, so I may not take your suggestions, but I’ll read and consider every one of them.

But anyway, unless things get really stupid in my life, or turning a document on my computer into a book on Amazon turns out to be much more stupidly hard than it ought to be, I’m hoping to have the book out this year.

I’m super excited! Happy new year, Internet Men!

[Link to Chapter 1]