Chris Mitchell's Blog

So, I don't even know if anyone reads this. I certainly have done an extremely poor job of interacting with Goodreads. I just read two reviews of my book that are over two years old. So, um, sorry.

Anyways, I'm writing a sequel to this book. I hope to have it done this year sometime.

I also plan on taking a long look at Independent Now and Forever and copy editing the hell out of it. The most prevalent and valid criticism of it is that there are plenty of errors in it.

I have no doubt. I wrote it in 2012, and it sat on my shelf for 3 years. Finally in 2015 I just just kind of snapped and said I'm going to put it out. I wish now I'd spent more time with it, of course.

So this new one, I'll definite let it percolate and who knows maybe even hire a proofreader. Those are cheap, right?

So I meant to write something here monthly. But life has been happening. Also, another thing I should have wrote here was that my book was free for two days. It was a fantastic experience watching the sales go through the roof. I think about 250 people have gotten their hands on my book, give or take a few. That's about 200 more than I thought would ever, ever read it. So that's pretty exciting. I've had old friends tell me it was "alright". That's enough. It really is.

So this book is set, mostly, in Alabama. In fact one of the key locations of the book is my parents house. Literally. If you followed the directions in the book, you would end up there. I wanted it, despite its utter ridiculousness, to be grounded in some way. To grab a chunk of reality. The place where the book ends, which I won't say here, is also a place out of my life. It's a place I traveled to for work in 2013 and stopped and hung out. The weird thing was, I had already written the ending. And I didn't know at the time that I'd be going to the place for work. It just kind of happened. And it made it all feel right. It made me realize that despite all my hangups and thoughts of being inadequate, at some point I had to hit that publish button.

My one regret so far is that I didn't hire someone to copy edit the book before sending it in the world. The two reviews I've gotten keep mentioning that, and I want to fix them, but I really, really don't want to look at it again. At least not yet. But before I close the book (yuk, yuk) on INAF, I am going to get it right.

I've had a few people speculate as to how I'd continue the story in my first book. I've thought about it too. But it seems like too big a job right now. I intentionally didn't mention anything outside of the narrow focus because first of all the entire premise is razor thin, and secondly at some point it could be an interesting thing to revisit.

So the new thing. I wrote 15 pages about how to hitchhike on an automated truck. It's more difficult than you would think.

That's all I got right now. Just like the first book, I'm not really sure where it's going, but it does involve another place I went for work. I am lucky enough to go to weird, inspiring places.

Now I just need to write.

One month ago, I did a terrifying thing. I hit the publish button on Amazon. And with that, my first novel went into the world.

To date I've sold a few dozen copies. Some people might be distressed by this, but I'm actually delighted. I didn't expect much, or any reaction. There's so many books by so many people on Amazon, I figured that even if it was fantastic, it may never be found.

But I knew a few things before I hit the publish button. I'm going to slowly blog about it on here because I am surrounded by book people and it seems like the right place to do it.

The first thing I knew, even from the moment I figured out the plot of my book, was that it was utterly ridiculous. Flimsy, but entertaining. I spent long years trying to write something lyrical, something important. A spiritual successor to This Side of Paradise. I realized about five years ago that I couldn't write that book anymore. I was in my mid-thirties and that thing I'd been struggling with was the thoughts of someone in their mid twenties. I needed to create something that didn't matter so much to me. Something my whole soul wasn't invested in. I needed to tell a simple story. Independent Now and Forever is that. It leans into tropes, it follows the typical arc of a movie. Joseph Campbell would dig it. I tried to make something that didn't challenge the reader too much.

Next time I'll talk about the setting. Thanks for reading.