LATEST BOOK UPDATE
I am still aiming to have my first book published first half of 2026, unless things go really badly or really, really well
Any time the number of a month is divisible by three, a quarter of the year is ending. For some arbitrary reason, businesses track everything by the quarter. Which means work goes completely insane as our biggest client suddenly realizes it’s March 25 and they have six days left to scream at me for not reminding them to review the stuff I sent them two weeks ago — the same stuff I’ve already reminded them about four times.
I pissed them off extra good this year because our family took a spring-break trip with friends and I was out of the office for a full week, right in the middle of end-of-quarter month. I call it a “trip,” not a “vacation,” because we were in an Airbnb with another family. Eight humans. Four children. Zero of whom have any boundaries, impulse control, or indoor voices.
And because we’re the proud owners of a mostly-new minivan that seats eight, I got to navigate downtown New Orleans during St. Patrick’s Day. In a minivan. With screaming children. We nearly died. I once drove a rental SUV cross-country in Costa Rica on mud-and-gravel roads that barely qualified as roads, most of them narrower than my master closet and somehow used for two lanes of bi-directional traffic. That was fine. By the end of that trip I was passing slow cars and calling them silly gringos.
This was harder.
Anyway, this post is supposed to be an “Archwinger Book Update”. Here’s the update:
I’ve finished what’s likely going to be the last edit/rewrite I’m going to do on my own
I may still tweak a sentence here or there, but the only way I’m going to make any real progress from this point is if I harden up, take a scalpel to the thing, prune some content, and try to be my own editor.
The book’s biggest strength is its voice. It’s the book’s superpower. The main character has exactly the right mix of charm, unlikability, self-awareness, self-deprecation, compassion, humor, and deflection. Everything stays in voice and it’s a great read. But that same strength is also the book’s biggest weakness: pacing. Every sentence is good material and serves a purpose, but not every sentence is probably necessary. After the first third, the middle starts to drag a little. It’s not a slog, per se. A casual reader will still think “this is entertaining”, but will also start wondering how much more of this there is before we get to the next thing.
Structurally, the first third does a great job setting out “this is what the book is going to be like”, the middle third is entertaining to read but is mostly story-telling and adding more depth to the character, then the last third is the huge emotional payoff that makes the book worth reading.
Rian Stone has been shouting how great of an editor Nick August is for months, so I asked him to take a look at my book
Nick and I agree that me English is lots more gooder than most people, so I probably don’t need someone to go line by line and make my words more better. (Not that it can’t be improved. It’s just probably not the best use of time and money.)
What I do need is someone who isn’t me or my wife to read the damn thing and say, “This is working. This isn’t. Here are some ideas.” Not a full structural/developmental edit (I can’t afford that even if it’s worth it), but at least some professional eyes on the parts that might be harder for a fresh reader to get through — the stuff I’m blind to because I wrote it.
Also, if any of you paid subscribers who’ve seen sneak peek chapters have thoughts (like parts you found bad to read or a lot), let me know. Normal people like you are the eventual audience, so what you think matters.
Using real editors is rare for new/indie authors. Because it’s expensive and you don’t make your money back. And nobody, me included, wants to write a book at a loss. I’m not looking to get rich here, but I can’t be doing a book-writing hobby that actually costs my family real money.
99% of how well new/indie authors sell is marketing. Their audience, e-mail list, social media reach. Mine is tiny… If I had thousands of dollars to spare (which I don’t), marketing would be the best bang for the buck. A slightly better-written book won’t sell more copies. A better-known book will.
That said, I’m treating editing as an investment in my hobby itself. I have two more book ideas I am genuinely exited about and plan to write, once I learn how to turn a manuscript into a published book with this one. If a future book turns out good, I don’t want people who like my writing to buy my earlier book and think “Holy crap! This is… rough!” But I also just want to put the best work I can out there. Because I want people to actually read and enjoy what I write and be entertained. Not just check off that I wrote a book.
I’m vaguely toying with the idea of traditional publishing, but maybe not really
The book is good, but it’s not very marketable. It doesn’t slot neatly into any genre. Amazon readers who want mysteries get shown mysteries. Thriller fans get thrillers. Fantasy readers get more fantasy. Nobody is actively searching for “voice-driven, character-based, literary/upmarket autofiction/memoir-style novel with minimal plot.” Amazon has no idea what to do with it. The only way people find it is if a bunch of you buy it and the algorithm starts recommending it to people who also bought the same kinds of books you buy. And I don’t have a bajillion followers. I have maybe a thousand, half of whom are probably bots.
So pretty much the only people who buy my book off of Amazon would be people specifically looking for my book. Meaning people who like me a lot on social media and decide to follow a bunch of links and spend money to read something I wrote. Some of you. Family. Friends. The book would otherwise be completely invisible.
One of my daughter’s friend’s moms is a big-deal author and she gently nudged me toward querying a few literary agents I think might be a good fit and seeing if there’s any traction in the trad-pub direction.
Traditional publishing is a slot machine. Big publishing houses are a dinosaur industry now that people can get their own editing, cover art, and self-publish. Most publishers don’t even market for you, unless you’re a golden child. And they take almost all the money. You have to sell a LOT of books to make anything. You’re just hoping to win the slot machine and get a viral book they’re able to put in every Barns & Noble and wine mom book club in the country. To get reach you’d never have gotten on your own on Amazon.
My book might be dead-in-the-water for publishers for the same reasons it’ll struggle on Amazon. Publishers don’t want to bet on a character-driven, voice-heavy, autofiction/memoir-style book as a debut book from some completely unknown new author unless he’s knocked it out of the park. Publishers want something with a catchy tag-line they can sell.
So a slot machine.
But I might query a few agents who seem like a great fit for my kind of book and the kind of author I am, and if I get zero traction, just publish on Amazon, which is fine.
The most recent state of the book isn’t reflected on Substack. Pasting every chapter on to the internet every time I edit would be stupid. But what’s there now is pretty close
The current manuscript is 18 chapters (plus a short Afterward) - 50,359 words.
It’s the only thing I’ve ever written that I can go back and reread and not completely hate. I almost cry a little when I get to the last third because a few snippets, while not autobiographical, started from a seed of something based on a similar thing from my life. I’m proud of the work.
Bibliographic info
The current working title is “Wait. What Was the Question?”
I’ll be publishing under a pen name. Since I’m primarily going to be announcing the book and making it known among the dreaded manosphere/Red Pill corners of the internet, I can’t have it tied to my real life. I’d get fired and stuff. But I also don’t want to write a general literary fiction book that is not actually a “manosphere” or “Red Pill” book as “Archwinger, legendary internet misogynist”.
I was going to go with a play on Archwigner, like “Arthur W. Ingram”, but my wife says that sounds old and stodgy. She like “Miles Brooks”, which definitely fits the hipster author vibe.
Conclusion
I’m still hoping to have the book out in the first half of 2026. Maybe by my birthday in July if I drag. But you never know. If some slow, dinosauric traditional publisher wants to give me a six-figure advance to rework the book with them before putting it on the shelves of every book store in the country, I could be persuaded to adjust my timeline.
I’m actually really exited about my next book idea. It’s loosely inspired by Kafka’s Metamorphosis, one of my all-time favorite reads.
Uh… okay… concluding words… um… Thanks for reading. When the book finally comes out, buy it. Not because I’m greedily grifting off of you but because lots and lots of people buying a book is the only thing that moves the internet algorithm needles to actually recommend a book to other people. Every copy helps the book find more readers who might actually enjoy it.
Looking forward to it.