Welcome Back! Updates on New Stories, Debut Novel, and the Future of Cole's Chapters
I am thrilled to share the first details about my debut novel, as well as several other updates to my work here on Substack!
It’s Been a While…
…Partly due to some developments in my personal life, as well as a big shift in my creative focus.
Lately, I’ve been pouring pretty much all my time into my debut novel, Kronomund. It’s a supernatural thriller, deeply rooted in wilderness exploration and survival. If you like forest ranger stories, a good mystery, or just the great outdoors, then you’ll love this book.
Right now, I am about 60% done with the current draft, which will be going out to beta readers. I’m racing to get it done by the end of the month, so that I can meet my release timeline later this year. I have a few people who have already agreed to read this version and provide feedback, and for that I am extremely grateful. But I would love to get a couple more beta readers
Here’s a look at the book’s tentative blurb:
“You’re going to disappear, and no one will ever know what happened to you.”
A series of impossible phone calls puts Bert Cypress at the center of a grisly missing person’s case—and in the crosshairs of the local sheriff.
Clearing his name means joining Kerristead’s chronically understaffed search and rescue team, saving scores of ill-prepared tourists who flock to their remote mountain town.
Every rescue call pulls Bert deeper into the shadow of the unforgiving Mount Skyliant. Here, a growing collection of prophetic missing posters predict an untimely disappearance for countless people–including Bert himself.
The search will bring the team to untamed reaches of the wilderness; places that have claimed the lives of entire expeditions, and hide secrets older than time itself.
For Bert, disappearing is only the beginning.
If you’re interested in participating as a beta reader, please reach out to me via DMs, or in the comments of this post, and we’ll get in touch. I am willing to provide comp subscriptions in exchange for your time.
Paid Subscriptions
Speaking of subscriptions: I placed paid memberships on hold for the past several months. Because of the dip in my published writing, I didn’t want to continue to charge my most loyal fans for new content they weren’t getting.
Now, I have plenty of material coming down the pipeline, and paid subscriptions will be turned back on. If you’d like to support my writing, you can do so by enabling a paid subscription here:
By the way—paid subscriptions still grant you access to my back catalogue, which includes access to two full novellas, and multiple short story collections.
For those of you who are already paying members: billing will resume at the start of September. I want to give you a heads up in case your needs have changed, and you no longer wish to subscribe. If that’s the case, and you’re having a hard time figuring out how to update your subscription level, I put together a handy guide to help you navigate the ins and outs of both my website, and Substack:
Future Stories
You may have noticed I recently published the latest installment in a sort of experimental serial, There’s No Such Thing as Gideon Gale, in which one Minnesota man discovers his hometown’s famous feature reporter does not exist. Rather, he seems to exist as a shared hallucination, living in a mysterious chunk of static snow that the local TV station broadcasts three times a week. But not everyone falls under Gale’s spell, a fact his most loyal fans find infuriating…
I don’t foresee this being a long collection (famous last words), maybe another three or four entries. I originally liked the idea of doing these made-for-web style stories where I played around with unusual formats native to the internet. I think I did this much more successfully with my first entry in The Attention Farm, which was told through the lens of a prison experiment into mysterious, mind warping—and possibly sentient—symbols called “Sigils,” which grow in power the more people observe and think about them.
The problem I’ve repeatedly encountered with this mode of storytelling is that I don’t think it suits my goals as a writer. One of my strong suits—I’ve been told—is building tension in my stories. It’s a delicate dance in thrillers; keeping the reader entertained and on the edge of their seat without desensitizing them to the danger, or resorting to ridiculous escalations.
While serializing works well for some authors and genres, spacing out my chapters by a week or more allows for too much of a pressure release.
In the future, I plan to focus on my larger projects, behind the scenes content, and one-off short stories.
Me, the Author…
…plus, plans for my long neglected Instagram account.
For the past few years, this newsletter—and my socials—have been entirely focused on sharing the stories themselves. There are two big problems here:
Publishing new original weekly short form fiction pulled me away from the projects I am actually interested in working on
I’ve been missing out on one of the great strengths of this platform: getting to interact with you directly
While the bulk of the writing happens in front of my computer, most of the creativity, workshopping, and brainstorming happens out here:
Many of you know that I started on this platform as an adventure writer, sharing personal essays and news about mountaineering. This experience absolutely bleeds into my work, something I finally realized when writing the climbing and expedition sequences in Kronomund.
I want to share more of these adventures with, and show how they inform the stories I eventually produce. Most of this will take place over on Instagram, lest this turn into a photography newsletter.
Still, I think it will be fun to include you in the creative process.
Overhaul
Once the manuscript is out of my hands, I also plan on tackling an overhaul of the site. The more I look at it, the more I get the feeling it’s tough for visitors to just jump into a story and start reading if they want to sample my work. I’m not sure exactly what that will look like, but you can expect a few “pardon our dust” signs in the coming weeks.
Again, most of this is contingent on when The Big Priority is onto the next phase. I look forward to spending more time with you here in our little corner of the internet!
Thank You for Reading!
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