TL;DR: I self-published my dang book

It's not ideal but I thought you might like to know.

You may recall that some time ago I wrote a book about a Seattle historical figure who fascinates a lot of people. Like there are tons of tweet threads, TikToks, and YouTube videos about Lou Graham but, as I quickly realized when I started writing about her years ago, most of the readily-available source material is….what’s the scientific name? Oh, right. Sus. The material is sus.

So I wrote a book at the behest of a publisher and then that publisher cancelled the contract and then I tried to shop the book around and no one wanted it. Or, more specifically, no one in publishing wanted it. A lot of regular human people - read: readers - did want it.

And I know this because I was getting emails almost weekly from people who wanted to read my book or see the research that I’d found. Artists, playwrights, history buffs, and just regular people interested in a different shade of history than is generally made available - they were finding my work through Google searches (I’ve written about this here, here, here, and here) and links and emailing me to learn more.

Which is weird, since publishers kept telling me that there wasn’t enough interest!

Anyway, the response from most people was that I should publish it myself. But a.) I’ve already been down that road (lol literally 13 years ago) and b.) I already did the work of writing the goddamn book, the last thing I want to do is the work of making it happen and then getting people to care.

I wanted someone else to do that! I wanted someone else to put together book events and tell me where to go. I wanted, you know, for my book to get the Actual Published Book treatment.

But that was not to be.

So, in a kind of fugue state - when I realized that it was my birthday again and that it was on my birthday five years prior that I had turned in my first draft of the book - and facing my own mortality in an existential sort of way, I just…did it.

I got some software to format it. I went back through and checked my notations. I compared drafts and added back in things that my original editor had told me to take out. Then I spent a few weeks giving it a quick copy-edit (REALLY BRISK BUT ALSO I AM A FAIRLY SLOPPY WRITER SO LOL CAUTION TO THE WIND I GUESS) and designed a couple of covers and then I put it on my website for $5.

You can also buy it on Amazon in Actual Book Form or eBook, which I low-key hate because Amazon is a toxic workplace that’s terrible for the local economy and also kind of ruined Seattle and, like, the planet.

This is not even remotely how I wanted to do it, but I figured that as long as people keep reaching out, I’m going to keep being reminded that there’s like six years of work that I just have living in the cloud somewhere and a lot of people who’d like to see it.

Plus, I live in fear that someone will like, make a TV show or something and they’ll get it wrong and send me into a rage spiral. Or worse, that they’ll use my work and not credit me which is REAL common. And with the book, at least I can point to it and be like “SEE? SEEEEE?”

So anyway, I published the book. You can buy it. It’s not very expensive because I don’t really care about making a bag off of this.

I just wanted it out there. It’s not how I wanted to do it - I’m deeply disappointed that this is how it happened, but it needed to happen so here we are! - but now it’s done. And now you know.

Thank you for being along for the ride and reading my little newsletters and caring about my little writing projects. The entire idea of writing honestly feels exhausting and fairly pointless right now, and self-promotion feels even more fruitless.

But as I’ve gotten older, it’s become more and more clear that even when it feels like you’re shouting into the void, there’s usually some part of the void that will shout back.

Here’s shouting at you, Void,

-HBO