Hey Friends,
Welcome back to Field Research, the dark humor and satire publication written and produced by me,
.Thanksgiving in the U.S. marks a special time in my writing career. Two years ago I made the terrible choice to become terminally online, which allowed the diseased thoughts swirling around inside my head to spill out into the open.
But, more importantly, five years ago my mind officially disintegrated when I declared myself a writer.
Today’s piece is a retrospective look at the critical inflection points which have led me to this moment. I hope this rare personal essay resonates. If it inspires you to throw caution to the wind and pursue your own creative passions, even better.
Every writer is a gambler
In October 2018, I secured an interview for a Business Development position (e.g., corporate dealmaking) at a small biotech firm in Evanston, IL. The company had acquired some potentially lucrative CNS compounds (e.g., brain disorder drugs) from Northwestern University’s biomedical research department and had executed a successful initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
It was an exciting opportunity. My family had relocated from San Francisco to Chicago six months prior. Felicia, my wife, was already crushing it at a new corporate job and we’d just learned she was pregnant with our son. My daughter had adjusted to her new environs like a champ.
Felicia had established the kind of stable, steady, ladder-climbing career which featured reliable income and generous benefits. We were lucky, and extremely privileged, and this dynamic allowed me to pursue riskier opportunities at hard-charging investment banks and boom-or-bust biotech startups.
If I snagged this job, we’d earn the equivalent of our San Francisco-based salaries while building a life in the far less expensive city of Chicago. Financial security and early retirement beckoned. The future looked bright.
I crushed the interviews. There was no doubt in my mind I’d get the gig. I was beyond overqualified for the position and it was crystal clear I could add a ton of value to the organization.
And yet, in early November I received a lifeless email from Human Resources informing me the hiring manager had selected another candidate. After the initial shock, I stewed on this setback for hours, and pondered how I’d so thoroughly misread the situation.
Had I been overconfident in my résumé? Was I in denial about my abilities? Or maybe my condescending prick vibes were just a little too much for polite society.
Then a more pathetic realization dawned on me.
The CFO and Chief Medical Officer and V.P. of Finance loved me. But the guy who would’ve been my boss had a third of my credentials, a fraction of my experience, and was five years younger. He didn’t want the strongest candidate for the position. He wanted someone to mindlessly build Excel models and not ask questions1.
While contemplating what to do next, I reflected on all the jobs I’d had since graduating with an MBA in 2012: pharmaceutical marketer, equity research analyst, business intelligence analyst, journalist. Then I recounted the litany of shady dealings and literal crimes I’d seen along the way. Then I recalled the murderer’s row of horrible bosses I’d had to endure, and how miserable it was to work with them. Then something snapped inside my brain.
Suddenly I felt compelled to write about the things I’d seen. Suddenly I couldn’t bear to put on my person suit another goddamned second. Suddenly I needed to speak truth to cynical corporate power — if only for my own sanity.
I was tired of watching duncecaps enrich themselves by exploiting my skills and my talent and my tenacity and my work ethic.
Suddenly I was a writer. And I was ready to bet on myself.
Every writer is a narcissist
With no formal writing education — not even a single creative writing course during college — I began my first attempt at a novel in mid-November 2018.
I dreamt up a character named Jane, who’d be my plucky, mixed-race, female protagonist, and who I’d drop into a macho world full of corrupt pharmaceutical executives, cynical hedge fund managers, and complicit newspaper journalists.
After preparing a comprehensive plot outline, with an intricately planned yet ridiculously executed insider trading scandal — think Coen Brothers films — I thrust poor Jane into my shoddily crafted fictive universe and let the chips fall where they may.
By year end I’d written 10,000 words. They weren’t great by any means, but I knew from my research the keys to writing a novel were forward momentum and forward progress. There’s a hilarious and tragic adage which says, “Every writer in the world has a perfect first chapter.” I wanted the whole damn book.
To my wife Felicia’s chagrin, I kept plugging away at this midlife crisis-induced project well into 2019. Surely she wondered why I didn’t just get a real job and buy a Tesla, like the other depressed dipshits in our neighborhood. But she also knew once I sank my teeth into something, I wouldn’t let go until I was ready. If ever. She married it, and now she had to live with it.
I continued making solid forward momentum and good forward progress until my son was born that May. As the battle-hardened father of one insane three-year-old already, I knew the ensuing three months were a write-off and shelved the project until fall. By then I’d have come to my senses, given up, and applied for soul-crushing jobs at Baxter or AbbVie, right? Right?
By New Year’s Eve I’d written 40,000 words. Better yet, I was having a goddamned blast.
Every writer is delusional
We all know 2020 was a dumpster fire from hell, and few want to relive it.
But it was a crucial year for my development as a novelist. I wrote 80,000 words for my [shitty] project, including 30,000 in November, when I finished the goddamned book! As the story progressed, I also tapped into that elusive and euphoric flow state, which was more satisfying than any paycheck I’d ever received.
It’d taken two years, and all the while Felicia and I had to keep one adorable infant alive, placate one demanding toddler, and survive one isolating, punishing, once-per-century global infectious disease pandemic.
But I’d done it. I’d achieved my irrational goal.
I didn’t know any bona fide writers, so I asked my closest friends to beta-read the novel in early 2021 while I revised on the fly. Generally, they liked it! Certainly the book was funny as hell, as is my wont. According to them, it was also educational, informative, and insightful, especially for those not privy to Wall Street and Big Pharma’s relentless and malicious profit-seeking.
But warning signs glared. Felicia hated the book. Another female beta reader said my protagonist was “unknowable." Most obviously, at over 120,000 words the project was way-too-fucking-long for both the genre — Commercial Fiction — and for a debut novel.
My project was dead on arrival and I didn’t even know it. Worse, because I’m a stubborn and delusional asshole, I forged ahead with gusto.
I deciphered the “querying” process, crafted a subpar query letter, and — as with the aforementioned job interviews — was certain a bloodsucking literary agent would bite. How could they not? I was the poor man’s token minority version of Michael Lewis. A sure moneymaker.
By mid-April my query stats were as follows:
Zero partial requests
Zero full requests
One “nice” rejection
Twenty-four form or radio silence rejections
My defeat was flawless.
In the background the pandemic raged on, but the vaccine rollout was finally underway and kids were heading back to school and people were returning to the office and the job market was hotting up.
I’d taken my shot and missed. Spectacularly.
My writing career had anonymously and ignominiously died in utero.
Playtime was over.
Every writer is tenacious
Chicago’s one of the best cities in the world during summertime, so I was in no rush to limp back to Corporate America until the fall.
I tossed my delusions of grandeur onto the backburner and reintroduced my kids to civilization. Simple things, like trips to Costco, made their eyes light up, which reminded me how much they’d suffered during the past eighteen months. I placed my focus where it belonged: on my family.
We savored a somewhat normal summer, then booked a trip to see Felicia’s parents in the urban utopia of Joplin, Missouri during the last weekend in August. It’d be a wonderful chance for my kids to see their grandparents, and run wild in their massive yard, before they returned to school full-time.
Then the universe threw us another curveball called the Delta Variant. And wouldn’t you know it, Southwest Missouri was ground zero for the increasingly lethal outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in the U.S.
I couldn’t willingly take my children — especially my still unvaccinated son — into the maw, least of all since infection posed a fatal risk to Felicia’s pushing-eighty parents. So I called an audible. If the kids couldn’t safely visit their grandparents in Joplin, I’d safely bring their grandparents to Chicago.
My wife’s childhood home in Joplin is 600 miles from our decaying Gilded Age condo in Lincoln Park.
Over an eight-day span I drove 2,400 miles — roughly 40 hours in the car — which afforded me a lot of time to think. A lot of time to chat with my best friends. A lot of time to wonder WTF I was doing with my life. A lot of time to ponder my various possible futures. A lot of time to imagine the career I wanted for myself, and the lifestyle I wanted for my family.
When I completed the final leg of my exhausting journey I’d made up my mind.
I’d write another book.
I’d bet on myself again.
Every writer is indomitable
I synthesized all the lessons from my catastrophic first attempt at writing a novel and started anew in September of 2021.
I set a target length of no more than 80,000 words. I built a completely new world with completely new characters and introduced a male protagonist named “Al” who was modeled off myself. I switched the point-of-view (POV) from third-person omniscient to deep first-person. I tapped into the darkest recesses of my demented brain, raised the emotional, psychological, and physical stakes for the hero, and wrote with ferocity and fearlessness. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
This novel would take no prisoners.
The words came fast and furious. I produced 17,000 in a few short months. But this time I upped the commercial ante as well. I decided to build a “platform” alongside the book, which would ensure I’d be irresistible to bloodsucking literary agents. I’d dare them to doubt me. Dare them to deny me.
I launched a Medium page in December 2021 and quickly migrated to Substack in May 2022, when I created this absurd little publication called Field Research.
At least once per week I wrote a short piece of razor-sharp satire, or pitch black comedy, or played the part of gonzo journalist, or recounted an absurd episode from the vagaries of everyday life.
Meanwhile, in the background, I kept grinding away on my novel. Diving deeper into the minds of the characters and letting them take control. Allowing them to do whatever their depraved little hearts desired.
Michael Lewis once said in an interview that he wears an ear-to-ear smile across his face while he’s writing. I’d found that magic, too, routinely laughing out loud when I shocked and amazed myself with yet another unhinged gambit. I’d never in my life had so much fun “working.”
Of course, the process was far from frictionless.
The story bottlenecked at 40,000 words when I was forced to stop and figure out what in the actual hell the novel was about, and how and why these characters had gone so far off the rails.
Simultaneously — and justifiably — Felicia had become increasingly frustrated with my newfound life as an “artist,” i.e., being a middle-aged man with two Master’s Degrees, who used to be a hot corporate commodity with high earning potential, who’d devolved into a one-man financial drag on his family.
And who could argue with her assessment? Three-and-a-half years of forfeited income was a tough pill to swallow, especially since the new novel wasn’t close to complete and the prospect of future revenue remained frustratingly remote.
The labor market devalues stay-at-home parents. American culture treats taking care of your kids as a form of economic seppuku. I was wasting my potential. Squandering my prime earning years. Deep-sixing my career prospects. Wasn’t it time to move on?
Backtracking would’ve been the rational choice. I could’ve deleted Field Research and pretended it never existed. I could’ve tucked my manuscript into a long forgotten laptop folder never to be heard from again. I could’ve refreshed my LinkedIn page and marketed myself as a progressive stay-at-home-dad who was itching to get back into the job market and create some good ole fashioned shareholder value.
It all made logical, intuitive sense, which is why I doubled-down on myself.
In July 2022, I attended the Midwest Writers Workshop in lovely Muncie, IN. Along with the conference events, writers could pony up fifty bucks to have their first chapter critiqued by a member of the teaching faculty.
I loved my novel-in-progress, but it was time for a reality check. I scheduled a critique session with the prolific author Katrina Kittle, and I wondered if this would be the moment the gods decided my pipe dream had run its inevitable course.
Except, not only did Katrina not hate my first chapter, she adored it2. She was so enthusiastic and excited and generous, and she flat out told me, “You can sell this book.”
Writers tend to flail around in their own skulls for unhealthy amounts of time, and little injections of spiritual rocket fuel like this provide the confidence required to keep going. In fifteen short minutes I’d received validation from a master of the craft, and with clarity and precision Katrina helped me sharpen the internal character arc for Al, my protagonist.
The trajectory of my writing career had instantly changed.
Every writer conquers fear
Reinvigorated after the conference, I plowed through tens of thousands of words over the next several months, while producing my best work yet for Field Research, and withstanding my kids’ perpetual quest to kill my vibe.
But during Thanksgiving last year the interminable grind — of the free weekly newsletter game, of my parent-teacher association responsibilities, of the never-ending geopolitical horror show, of dealing with my money pit of a condo and the ridiculous neighbors within it, of managing two psychopaths who were augmented clones of myself — had whittled me down.
Not coincidentally, my manuscript stalled at 65,000 words. I’d reached the climactic moment in the narrative, I needed to mine some extremely dark mental space to see it through to the end, and I didn’t have enough gas in the tank to make it happen. Zooming out, I also had to land this plane — while I was still constructing it — in 15,000 words or less.
The draft sat untouched for months.
As the calendar turned to 2023 I distracted myself by introducing paid subscription tiers for Field Research. My instant failure to generate any meaningful revenue confirmed the intrinsic worthlessness of this publication, and injected a much-needed dose of spite into my veins.
During the darkest days of winter, with a shredded meniscus in my right knee (avoid trampolines), I sat in my favorite writing chair and bulldozed my creative barriers. It took me a full week to write a few hundred words, sometimes with literal tears streaming down my face, but I’d smashed through.
When I read the critical passage to Felicia, and she confirmed its emotional resonance, I felt equal parts satisfaction and liberation. The end of the novel was now in sight.
I pivoted to the final creative challenge: how could I weave all these narrative threads together and close the story in a memorable, entertaining way?
There was a meta narrative at play, which I wouldn’t dare spoil, but the fictional protagonist, in the novel, and me the writer, IRL, both had to find a way out of our respective jams. Luckily, we did, and in mid-May the first draft of the book came to its thrilling conclusion. Word count: 75,000.
Writing is re-writing, they say, and for the next six weeks I revised the novel like a madman. It was pretty clean, save the sporadic clunky passage, the plot held water, and best of all, spending time with the debauched cast of characters was legit fun as hell.
But:
The time had come to stress test the work.
Every writer needs fam
In early July, after yet another excursion to Joplin, the former methamphetamine capital of America, I finished my final round of revisions and sent the draft to my beta readers.
This time around not only did I know a ton of writers, I knew a ton of great writers, who I’d met by hustling at writing conferences and being a reply guy on the interwebs.
Surreally, the following list of supremely talented people read my novel and offered feedback.
, author of the hilarious “self-help” book Poe for Your Problems, as well as the wonderful newsletter Poe Can Save Your Life, has been a major investor in me since my early days on Substack. She loved the book, but saw room for improvement with respect to the B-plot. Cat wasn’t afraid to offer that feedback, which is the mark of a true friend, and a great writer. I listened, and I adjusted., the emotion-manipulating maestro behind the fantastic Stock Fiction, and the author of the delightful YA novel See Dot Smile, loved the book. She suggested I fine-tune the protagonist’s relationship with his unrequited love interest. I listened, and I adjusted., the mastermind behind the brilliant short story collection Everything Abridged, and the author of the forthcoming How to Dodge a Cannonball, and the madman at the wheel of Extra Evil, and the dude who does everything I do on the page, except better, read a slightly updated version of the book, and loved it. He suggested I deepen the narration at a handful of the novel’s critical moments by adding an extra splash of interiority. I listened, and I adjusted.Martin Seay, the scary smart author of the mind-bending 2016 novel The Mirror Thief, who lives in Chicago and meets up with me every few months to talk craft, publishing, and the nature of the universe, loved the book. He benefitted from reading a fully revised version, and his takeaway was, “This book is awesome.” Martin also put in a good word for me with his agent.
, author of the hotly anticipated debut novel Victim — pre-order his joint now — and the razor-sharp writer behind the criminally slept on newsletter Dwell, who I met after he randomly took a chance on Field Research, loved the book. He too saw the final polished version, wrote me a killer blurb, and hooked me up with his agent.Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my boy Alex, who I’ve known for more than half my life, and who’s like a brother to me, and who’s my biggest fan, and who believed in me and encouraged me to keep going. No matter what. Surprise: he loved the book.
And finally, nobody’s been more important to my writing journey than my amazing, beautiful, brilliant, considerate, kind wife Felicia. Imagine the horror of marrying me, giving birth to my savage children, and reaping no rewards — financial or otherwise — for your troubles.
Felicia never once left my corner, though on countless occasions she asked me some form of the wholly reasonable question: “What the fuck are you doing, you selfish asshole?”
I couldn’t have done any of this without her, which makes this fact most gratifying of all: Felicia loved the book.
Every writer perseveres
With that crew in my corner even an egomaniac like me would be understandably and undeniably confident.
Back in the spring Cat helped me craft the best query letter anywhere on the internet, and by early October I was ready to deploy it with extreme prejudice.
I populated the pitch with positively killer blurbs from Cat, D-Day, and Andrew, revised and updated my comparable titles — tweaking as needed depending on the targeted agent — and carpet-bombed the literary agency landscape.
First, of course, I queried Martin’s agent on the strength of his recommendation. Surely that’d elicit a quick offer of representation and we could put this nonsense process to bed early, right?
The three-week shot clock expired unanswered, signaling a rejection.
After I tossed a few highly selective queries into the ether, I prioritized Andrew’s agent on the strength of his recommendation. Surely that’d elicit a quick offer of representation and we could put this nonsense process to bed early, right?
Andrew’s agent requested the full manuscript and read it promptly. She liked it! She said my voice was “compelling.” She said she could already see the future film adaptation. And she said another, more commercially-minded agent would scoop up my project in a heartbeat. All of that was fantastic feedback, and also a rejection.
Meanwhile, the form rejections piled high and the three- and four-week shot clocks continued to expire (e.g., no response rejections). Even me, a fairly hard-nosed, hard-edged writer, couldn’t help but feel a tad bit demoralized.
But I kept my eyes on the prize. I knew my book was great, I just hadn’t found the right agent yet. I kept telling myself that, but more importantly, I believed it.
As the rejections accumulated I noticed a few patterns. Agents looking for “Thrillers” really wanted books revolving around a dead White girl in the woods and the conspiratorial cover-up orchestrated by corrupt town officials.
Agents who claimed to like “dark humor” and “dark narratives” had obviously never read Field Research.
I refined my search and began targeting top “Commercial Fiction” agents, according to Publisher’s Marketplace. Fittingly, on Halloween I got my first big breakthrough.
Two agents requested my full manuscript within an hour of submission!
I was stoked AF! I’d successfully triangulated to bloodsuckers who wanted what I was selling. It was clear cause for celebration.
So what did I do after receiving those requests? I picked up the pace, and fired off more than fifteen additional queries by Friday, November 3. If querying is a numbers game — and it most certainly is — the only rational way to play is to take as many shots on goal as possible.
On Monday, November 6, my resolve was rewarded. An agent I queried the previous Friday sent me an email. He’d read my entire manuscript over the weekend, said it was “extremely fun,” and wanted to set up a call to “strafe me with praise.”
I spoke with the agent that afternoon for over ninety minutes — we instantly vibed — and received an offer of representation. I was fucking thrilled. But the agent rightfully encouraged me to shop around.
And I owed it to myself — to Felicia, to my kids, to my fellow writers who’d invested so much time in me — to play the game as ruthlessly as possible. I followed up with every agent who’d requested the manuscript and let them know I’d received an offer and the clock was ticking: read the book and come correct by Monday, November 20, or get out the way.
Then I went back to my list, narrowed it down to the agents I’d actually want to work with, and typed an extremely satisfying email subject line: “Offer of representation — LEVERAGE.” I volleyed over a dozen of these warning shots to light fires under their gatekeeping asses.
Most congratulated me and graciously stepped aside, but one mega-agent at the mega-agency took the bait. Meanwhile, one of the two agents who made the full request on Halloween set up a call on Tuesday morning, finished the book on Tuesday night, and offered me representation during an excellent discussion on Wednesday morning.
I’d gone from starving beggar to spoiled chooser.
Over the ensuing days I conducted due diligence on the two offering agents by reviewing their sales track records in Publisher’s Marketplace, googling feverishly, and — critically — speaking to authors they repped. Those deep dives were illuminating and clarifying.
The second week of the process proved quieter, if no less nerve-racking. The other agent who made a full request on Halloween tapped out. He’d just had his first child and didn’t have the bandwidth to meet the deadline. A bummer, but an understandable aspect of #dadlife.
Finally, on the last day of the deadline, I spoke with the mega-agent. She loved the book, and wanted to represent me, but with an active roster of over thirty high-profile clients producing a book per year, she said she couldn’t give my novel the attention it deserved. I didn’t receive an offer, but I respected her candor and professionalism, and savored her major vote of confidence in my project. If there’s such a thing as a moral victory, this was most certainly it.
When it was all said and done, I was left with two fantastic options. The choice was difficult, but clear: I’d dance with the proverbial girl who brought me.
I signed with the first agent.
Every writer writes
So that’s my story. I’m now represented by a bloodsucking literary agent. It only took five years, two completed novels, one birth of a child, one global infectious disease pandemic, two democracy-straining elections, and one heavily taxed marriage.
I’m an overnight success.
Of course, in reality, the journey’s only just now beginning.
I have to revise my novel with my agent3 to make it even more marketable. We have to go on submission. And we have to successfully sell the book. Even if we achieve that incredible result, my novel almost certainly won’t be available on a bookshelf near you until 2025.
And so much could still go wrong.
My novel might not sell. Some fatal ratio of algorithms to private equity scumbags might put the final nail in traditional publishing’s coffin. I might get myself canceled. Any number of tragedies could befall me, my family, humanity, or the planet.
Or, my novel could sell and flop commercially. It could get critically panned4. On the other side of the sanity continuum, perhaps my book will become a smashing, best-selling success, which will cause me to lose my mind and transmogrify into a cynical, craven, right-wing demagogue, which will fulfill Felicia’s absurdly hilarious prophecy, and force Michael and Dennard to character assassinate me.
Regardless of what happens next, I’ve achieved a major milestone on my publishing journey.
The work ahead remains infinite.
But I’ll continue to write.
I’ll continue to bet on myself.
Because the gods are satirists, the company imploded and the underqualified hiring manager failed his way to the C-suite at another organization.
When I told Katrina via email I’d secured an agent she wrote me the loveliest response, and was so thrilled for me. She’s a fabulous writer. Check out her catalog and buy a book for yourself here.
Still sounds surreal.
The Wall Street Journal better fucking hate it.