It was 2003 and I had a big New York agent representing a work of fiction I’d written, a long novel about living in the age of global terrorism. It was supposed to be my debut.

But you could sense the fear of the publishing establishment. Why take a risk on a first-time novelist writing about a future attack on an American city—at precisely the moment when the country was preparing for an endless war? And who the hell is John Tessitore?

After six months, I had a collection of very beautiful rejection letters, some from the presidents of very distinguished publishing houses.

I doubled down. Struck while the iron was hot. Wrote two more full length manuscripts. Rushed them, I guess. Too fast. Even the agents weren’t having me this time. (Although I stand by many passages of those manuscripts as well…at least one of them.)

I tried to convince myself to give up, but in 2006 I had a vision: a few ghosts sitting beside a living man, in a crappy apartment, on a ratty couch.

Having no prospects, and no faith in the process, I just wrote. And rewrote. On and off. For six years.

I cut the ghosts eventually. They were replaced by a box of documents—bills, letters, mementos—like the one I’d found at a relative’s house during a clean-up. A whole life in a shoebox.

And my experiences working at an organic farm…those crept in too.

And a blind man I’d met in a record store on Long Island.

And my concerns about the future of my country, and the future of our planet.

After six years, I’d had enough. I had to end the obsessive spiral. The writing and rewriting. So I self-published the story as Jigsaw Men: A Novella. But I only told a few people that it was available. Soon after, I withdrew it from Amazon and tried to forget it.

I reread it last year, during the pandemic, as the environmental crisis was becoming undeniable, and decided to republish it with a couple of edits and a new cover.

I think it holds up.