On September 1st, my debut novel is being released. The Human Countermove. Getting it released is incredibly exciting, and knowing it took three years fills me with a quiet dread. The journey has been incredibly long. Two years to write it. One year to decide what to do with it, and now it’s available for sale. I’m counting every pre-order on a little calendar, crossing off a square with every sale.

Not that you can trust me, but it’s my opinion I’ve written a compelling book. My mom liked it for one. That’s a big improvement over my practice novel. My beta readers liked it, I even managed to convince one of my readers to review two different drafts, which is unheard of in the beta reader space. Usually you only get one chance to impress someone.

But it’s here. It’s been professionally edited, copy-edited, and gone over again and again. Ready for scrutinizing eyes.

The Journey

They say the first one million words are practice. I believe I hit the equivalent of one million words somewhere near the end of my first draft. There was a day when a switch flipped in my head. From then on, my understanding of scene composition, dialog, and character motivations was just, clearer.

For someone editing their first book, a sudden jump in skill is very bad news. It meant I had to face my rough, rough, rough first draft and clean it up with a newfound understanding of storytelling. That’s a lot of work for a single broom.

I lost momentum a couple of times. My systems for reliably writing weren’t in place yet. One weekend I’d pump out 13,000 words, then nothing for a month.

Even the soul of the story wasn’t there on the first go-around. I found it partway into the second draft. A great idea that really clarified the narrative. Funny enough, I wanted to put that heart in the sequel. My editor talked me out of it, convinced me that good ideas are meant to be spent, and that my debut should be as strong as it can be.

In my opinion the back third of this book is where it excels, a final arc that imbues the whole story with purpose. The place where all those funny little ideas were vacuumed out of a hypothetical sequel and pulled into the original.

Choosing to Self Publish

I’m an impatient man. It’s silly of me to be impatient after spending two years writing up a draft, but I was ready for this project to be out there. I’ve met plenty of writers sitting on twelve novels just waiting for the right agent to turn them into stars, that’s not the path for me.

The scariest part of self-publishing is knowing that every inch of success is entirely on you. That also means if the book only sells a dozen copies, it’s your fault. For me, that didn’t seem so bad. I’d rather improve by releasing my work and letting people give me honest feedback than hide away and write book after book on my own. I’ve never worked on something that didn’t get released to the public within four months of being finished before, so a year of waiting was an eternity.

Now that the time is here, I’m really enjoying the process. Soon there will be something out in the world that I’m proud of, something I made, something I’m eager to share. Lately I’ve been attending a lot of farmer’s markets. I haven’t made a single sale, but the experience has been a blast. I get to spend time speaking to real people, giving advice to novice writers, learning what different readers like reading. After all this time on my own pushing to finish a product, getting to know someone else’s story is sort of, healing.

My review of self-publishing so far: Owning my own book and owning my own success is hard work and an absolute joy.

The Novel

I can’t write this whole thing up without talking about my novel! The book is titled “The Human Countermove”, there’ll be a link and description down at the end. But here, in this little blog, I want to give a more informal description.

The book tells the story of Zouk, a washed up strategy game grandmaster who challenges the three AI rulers of his society to determine society’s future.

It’s a cerebral near-future sci-fi, inspired by my love of chess and strategy games. The premise is drawn from the famous chess match Kasparov vs Deep Blue (1997), where mankind’s best chess player was soundly defeated by an algorithm.

I wrote this thing on the hunt for some narrative payback. In real life, we got our butt handed to us. In The Human Countermove, the big question at the start of the book is, ‘What can a person do to out-think something that is cognitively superior’? Zouk Solinsen is my very own John Henry the steel-driving man, except this time instead of trying to beat the machine by brute-force, Zouk pulls every trick in the book to get an advantage.

One thing I fought hard to keep in the book was a rejection of the normal dystopian tropes. So often in these things society is irredeemable, and it all descends into war and destruction. The reader watches the conflict between robots and humans pave a fiery trail for centuries, they see the last few untracked humans turn into a rebellion. I’m ready for something new.

Our main character is a victim of a broken system. A system that demands efficiency in every act. Work and play and rest, all measured, all prescribed in particular doses. It’s not unreasonable to be angry. A broken system needs change. But at the heart of the story is one issue, does the system need to be burned down, or do we not yet understand it? Is there something inherently wrong with a society run by AI Minds? Maybe. Or maybe there’s just a separation between what mankind asks for and what we really want.

Conclusion

As silly as it is, I’ve often defined whether or not I’m a writer by the absence of a published book. I’ve worked professionally in the field, I’ve written for graphics teams, voice actors, education companies, by all means, I am a writer. But this was the last hurdle. As soon as this book comes out, I get to say it to myself and mean every word.

Next week, I will be a novelist.