Remember How I Published a Novel This Year?

CW: No Thoughts, Just Marketing

It’s a short week in America and we’re all perhaps a little less thankful this year. But I did publish a novel in June, and I realized it’s been a while since I’ve acknowledged it.

What’s Happening with The Future Was Color

• Earlier this month, the LA Review published this beautiful review, which I almost missed (it came out on November 6):

  How does a person go on writing in this renewed nuclear age of 2024, and to what end? The book is largely historical in scope but, like any good text of that kind, proves particularly pertinent to present realities. One wonders as they read whether there is a purpose to art in the midst of contemporary, human-made maladies — ongoing global violence, impending climate disasters, the threat of nuclear war — only to be reminded by the novel’s end that it is these very maladies that spark such art in the first place. In other words, without the world as the artist’s muse, there would be no art, and once more, then, we return to the novel’s theme: creation in the face of destruction. 

• Back in June (I told you it’s been a while), the Los Angeles Review of Books published

  Alina Stefanescu
  ’s gorgeous, rich, and roving essay on the novel, “Utopia is Not a State; It Is a Compass”

• Also in June, the Wall Street Journal said my “style channels a kind of rapturous Fitzgeraldian opulence, where loneliness is romantic, disenchantment beautiful and the world exists in sensuous splendor.” And the Washington Post called the novel “a work of muscular poetic force, mysterious and arresting.” 💪🏻

• Holiday season is here, alas. If you know anyone who would like a novel about 1950s Hollywood (and a million other things), please don’t hesitate to order a copy — or several, why not. And if you order from SubText Books, I’ll sign and inscribe it for you.

• At the same time, list season is here, and anything you can do to remember, loudly and publicly, how it’s the best thing you’ve read this year would be great.

• By the way, do you review books? Do you know anyone who does? There’s a pretty good one that most outlets missed.

• The best part: My agent recently received the statement for sales up through June 30. Apparently, TFWC earned out pretty much immediately, which means for the first time in my life I’ve received a royalty check. For a book that didn’t receive a lot of post-pub press, this is incredible, and it’s all because of readers and booksellers, and for that I’m very, very grateful. Thank you all <3

a very serious novelist outside Lofty Pigeon Books in June

What’s Happening with Patrick Nathan

• Drawing from Entertainment, Weakly and some unpublished work, I’m putting together a proposal for a book about reclaiming agency in an autocrat’s world. If you know anyone handing out advances, let me or my agent Erik know.

• In preparation for an ambiguous life change, I’m expanding my client list. My strengths are marketing copy and manuscript consultation. If you know anyone looking for either, please put us in touch!

Thank you for suffering through this email. I’ll return with a real essay shortly. As ever, anything you can do to contribute is much appreciated. Thanks so much for reading!