Six days from now, Exit Strategy will officially be out in the world. I’m proud of what I created and I can’t wait to hear what you think.

You’ve watched me disappear down research rabbit holes. You’ve met Mackenzie, Emily, Caroline, and Stormy. You’ve watched real-world headlines get closer and closer to the world I built for 2031, occasionally faster than I expected.

Now we’re almost there. The preorder is live, advance copies have been out for a while, and early reviews are coming in. All those files, corrections, uploads, retailer pages, and tiny decisions nobody sees when they open a book are finally becoming an actual book launch.

Every book launch feels different. This one has been especially challenging.

Exit Strategy started out as a simple short story, or at most a novella. It was no different from a dozen other ideas outlined in my project file, waiting for me to write them.

I wrote a very simple outline, filled it in and freestyled my way to the ending. Then Mackenzie demanded more. Much more.

Suddenly, there was a foundation and a reason that the building in Santos meant so much to her. A loving aunt became an essential piece to the puzzle. Her sisters…well, I got to see a different side of them.

One question led to another, and the story kept getting bigger. Somewhere along the way, the question stopped being simply how Mackenzie could leave the country for medical care without attracting attention.

It became: How do you disappear in a world designed to keep track of you?

Exit Strategy stops belonging to me and my street team. That’s one of my favorite parts of publishing. I know what I wrote and what I thought I was doing when I wrote it, but readers inevitably notice things I didn’t expect.

They like characters I thought they might hate. They get angry about things I thought would slip quietly past them. Sometimes they find connections I put there deliberately, and sometimes they find connections I missed.

I’m especially curious what happens with this book because there are so many things I haven’t been able to discuss without spoiling it.

The Exit Strategy The StoryGraph readalong begins October 15. I want to give everyone a couple of weeks to get the book and start reading. After that, we can get into Mackenzie’s decisions, the people around her, and some of the bigger questions underneath the story. I’ve been sitting with a lot of fun stuff because spoilers are rude.

Substack will change a little after launch, too. Instead of telling you what’s coming, I want to show you what went into it. We’ll talk about Portugal and the Portuguese reader who saved me from several embarrassing mistakes. We’ll go down some of the research rabbit holes that led to private aviation, passports, medical travel, surveillance, and property ownership.

We’ll also spend more time with the Williams family and some of the threads connecting Exit Strategy to the larger world I’ve been building. Some of those connections are obvious. Others have been sitting quietly in the background for a very long time.

And eventually, we’ll talk about what comes next. I’m not doing that yet because apparently I have learned at least a little patience.

Six days to go. Are you ready?

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