“Your new novel is called Fight Me? Where is it? Why can’t I find it in stores?”
I want to answer this because I'm asked a lot, and because it's a useful cautionary tale for writers. I'm not at all psyched to have a cautionary tale but I do, so, let's lean in.
I started Fight Me in 2009 as a follow-up to Soon I Will Be Invincible. I dropped it, wrote You and then Crooked, then picked it up again in 2015.
Two reasons. After Invincible I wasn't ready to write about superheroes again - that book was a great journey, I went on it and it was complete. And Fight Me is an ensemble book. I knew how to write monologues, built on a single strong voice. Fight Me has four or five main characters with deeply interconnected lives, modeled on The Royal Tenenbaums and The Big Chill. I had to learn to write a different kind of book.
It was a long messy haul. I promised it in 2017, 2018 and 2019. I rewrote it at least five times. My long-suffering agent neglected to fire me; I assume he was distracted.
I delivered it in July 2020 and we put it on the market. I waited. There was no word - but the publishing industry goes on vacation in August, right?
September came, I waited. I've been in the book industry long enough to know this particular silence. In October it was dead.
What happened? Three things, in ascending importance:
One: It was summer 2020, and I wasn't engaging with what the public was interested in, i.e., not predominantly white suburban superheroes.
Two: My previous books didn't do great numbers. Invincible did great, for a slightly niche-y book (and pre-MCU, remember). You and Crooked, less so. Fight Me was my fourth book, and if you haven't broken out by then, editors think they've seen the limits of what you're capable of. They'd rather gamble on a debut. Or as one editor put it: (clears throat nervously) "as much as I liked the book I couldn't quite figure out how I would relaunch this novel against his fiction track record." ← how editors talk
Three: It was a turkey. The narrator was mopey, the plot was murky, the central voice lacked the dynamism and tension of a Doctor Impossible or a Richard M. Nixon. We brought it out too soon. As long as it had taken to write, it still wasn't done.
I spent the next few months in shock. Was my career dead? No? Then what exactly was the difference between this and a career that is dead? Did it die with Crooked years ago, and I’m only now realizing it?
(It helped that I had a graphic novel under contract with First Second, called We Hate Wizard School. I pitched it as a joke (as Wizard School is Bullshit), which is consistently how I have done my best work. I wrote it in a year and it's one of my favorite things I have done. It's being drawn by the extremely talented Savanna Ganucheau.
In January of 2021 the news came, an offer from Michael Joseph, an imprint of Penguin Random House UK. The deal would be for UK distribution rights, then hopefully we'd sell North American. I put my head on my desk and actually cried.
Except - did I even want this? The deal was risky - UK territory only, remember - so is a fourth book with minimal sales better or worse than no fourth book at all? If you can compare two things that are both the worst.
I told them, "Yes, but no." You can buy this but we both know it's a turkey even though you are unable to say that. Give me a year to rewrite it, then we can sell the North American rights and publish.
It took a year and a half. I cut, I restructured. I heard Richard Lawson say on podcast, "HBO won't greenlight a series unless there's a murder in the first episode." I reworked the book to start the book with a murder, and suddenly a lot of things fell into place.
But the damage had been done. In the spring of 2024, as time ticked down, we looked for a deal. The editor bravely took it to the Frankfurt Book Fair, but nothing came together. A few weeks after publication, we made the decision to take off the region lock and sell e-books and audiobooks in the U.S. No one in North America would give it a deal.
It deserves one. I'm going to say that. It's funny, it's a mystery, the characters feel exciting and perfectly individualized and it works. Every major character fights every other character. It's the X-Men meets Big Chill I always wanted it to be.
It's a fucking good book and I'm promoting it as well as I can. I go on Instagram, I do readings. I started a substack! Breakout sales or a film or TV deal may still change the game but until then, it's one novel against the overwhelming scale of the book world.
But that's where we are. I still have a book I think people will love. There’s only one thing you can possibly say in these situations.
Just finished the hardcover and I wish it hadn't ended.