Aunt Angie is reading SEX OF THE MIDWEST

Or at the very least it might be on her to-read list

In the interest of full disclosure, I do not have an Aunt Angie. I have an Aunt Millie (hey, Aunt Millie) and I hope she’ll be reading my novel-in-stories—SEX OF THE MIDWEST—which publishes this Tuesday, just in case you haven’t been keeping track.

Aunt Angie is my friend’s aunt and I do not know her. I’ve never met Aunt Angie and I assume my friend has never mentioned me to her before. Aunt Angie is, in other words, a complete stranger to me. Still, the other day my friend told me that when he was talking to his Aunt Angie about me and my book she said, “Oh, that book’s on my list to read.”

There’s a part of me that assumes my friend made this up. In my head, there’s a 75% chance that it’s not true. He’s sort of a joker, though there were a lot of specifics in the story, which lends it some credence. For me, there’s a 90% chance that Aunt Angie was confusing my book with some other book with a title that sounds vaguely like SEX OF THE MIDWEST.

“How did Aunt Angie hear about SEX OF THE MIDWEST?” I asked my friend, but he did not know.

Of course, maybe Aunt Angie reads The Washington Post or follows Kirkus Reviews. It’s not impossible. Maybe the book came across her radar in some other ineffable way that we refer to in the publishing business as “word of mouth,” that mysterious and impenetrable process that leads to people actually reading the book you wrote.

Let’s, for the benefit of this newsletter, assume that my friend did not make up this story and that Aunt Angie really did, in some mysterious way, hear about my book and put it on her to-read list. Let’s assume that Aunt Angie, who I do not know and who had no idea that I was friends with her nephew and so is (it bares repeating) a complete stranger to me, wants to read my book.

I cannot explain to you what a miracle this feels like. I cannot describe the feeling it gives me, something between joy and panic and total disbelief.

Writing a book and then wanting to get it into the hands of people who might actually read it is, quite simply, one of the most idiotic things you can possibly aspire to do. I mean, you might as well get in a barrel and go over Niagara Falls. You might as well declare that you’re going to build a rocket ship in your garage that will take you to the moon. This is the level of foolhardiness you are taking on when you write a book and assume that someday people will read it. Add to these wishes the idea that someone who you do not know personally might read it and you have reached levels of idiocy that defy description.

It took me a while to come to this realization. It took me even longer to internalize it. It takes time to fully understand how idiotic it is to be a writer. It took me a lifetime. It took: landing an agent; publishing a couple books; losing the agent; self-publishing a book; feeling totally demoralized by the process of self-publishing a book; and finally, just sort of giving up. That’s where I was when I wrote SEX OF THE MIDWEST. I’d given up. I’d given up on the publishing, but clearly not on the writing.

It turns out there’s a lot of freedom in that place where you have given up.

Who is Aunt Angie? Is this her? No one knows. Well, except my friend, but you get the point. Photo by Chris Curry on Unsplash

In those long years, I learned not to expect too much from the whole publishing process. I stumbled cluelessly through the launch of my first book. To this day, I can’t tell you how it “did” or how it “performed.” I can’t even really tell you how many copies it sold. Not enough to keep my agent is, I guess, the answer.

What I know is that after the book had been out for a few months, I got a random message from a middle school librarian. My book was the most checked out book in her library and she just wanted to let me know that. A message from a complete stranger. It was by far the best moment in the whole publishing journey for that book.

I’ve said this before, but it’s one of those things that’s worth saying over and over again—by far the best thing to come out of my writing is the people I’ve met along the way. Take just the example of Substack, which I have many conflicted feelings about. But if I weren’t on Substack, I wouldn’t have connected with

Kelcey Ervick

, whose work I loved long before Substack.

If I hadn’t connected with Kelcey, I wouldn’t have been able to go up to Indianapolis this Saturday to do a little signing event with her and

Barbara Shoup

at Loudmouth Books for Proof: a mid west lit fest. I wouldn’t have had the chance to meet Kelcey in person and talk books and writing and newsletters.

Me and Kate at Loudmouth Books

I wouldn’t have been able to sell the very first physical copy of SEX OF THE MIDWEST, to

Kate Gehan

, a fellow Indiana writer who I’ve “known” on the internet for years, but have never met in person (check out her short story collection, The Girl & the Fox Pirate). It felt especially perfect for Kate to be the first person to buy the book in person. It feels good when strangers read your book, but it also feels good to feel supported by fellow writers.

I drove the two hours there and back to Indy mostly just to be able to meet Kelcey in person and hang out with her and Barb. It was worth it. There are so few people in the world who share the exact idiocy that is being a writer trying to navigate publishing. If you’re going to crawl into a barrel and go over the falls, it’s good to have friends to go along with you.

I don’t know how other authors feel, but for me, the best metaphor for what it feels like to publish a book is putting a message in a bottle and setting it adrift on the sea. And I mean, literally, the whole metaphor. As the author, you’re on a deserted island. You write this note, tuck it carefully into the bottle, pitch it into the waves and sit back down on the shore, alone, to see if anyone answers. It is lonely and weird and bewildering.

Maybe it doesn’t always feel this way. Maybe for some authors, it’s more like handing the bottle to people they can actually see. Maybe if you’re very lucky, it’s like handing the bottle to people who have been lined up for days eagerly waiting to read that message. I don’t know. I can only say what it feels like for me.

If you asked me to summarize in one word what SEX OF THE MIDWEST is about that word would be community. Okay, two words—community and connection. Three words: community, connection, and love, which is so sappy, but also the truth.

So it feels right that the book has already brought me together with so many people. With Katherine Meyers and Anya Silverman-Stoloff, the amazing women at Midas PR in the U.S. With

Henriette Lazaridis

and

Anjali M Duva

, my amazing publishers at Galiot Press. With Kelcey and Barb and Kate.

And, hopefully, with Aunt Angie and all the other Aunt Angie’s out there, whose names I’ll never know but who might pick up my message in a bottle and give it a read.

Tomorrow is the big day! SEX OF THE MIDWEST will officially be out in the world (it feels like forever, doesn’t it). Come see me at some of the events lined up for the next few weeks.

• Wednesday, Oct. 22, 5:30-7:00 at Analog Coffee and Records in Madison, Indiana.

• Thursday, Oct. 23, 7:00-8:00 at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Cincinnati, Ohio.

• Tuesday, Nov. 18, 7:00-8:00 at Belmont Books in Belmont, Massachusetts.

• Thursday, Nov. 20, 7:30-8:30, Concord Arts: Independent Press Prose Reading Series, Concord Center for the Visual Arts, Concord, Massachusetts.