Every book has a story.
I’m talking outside of the pages; how the book came into being.
I started writing Breathing Fire in 2017. It’s the longest I’ve taken with a book in almost a decade. I would set it aside for long periods. At one point (and I don’t EVER recommend doing this), I grafted the story onto another story and tried to make one mega-story out of them both.
It didn’t work.
The inspiration for Breathing Fire came from a couple of sources. At the time, I was watching a lot debates on science and religion and philosophy. I focused on what some have called “the intellectual dark web,” a consortium of public intellectuals, such as Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, Bret Weinstein, and others. (Some of them in particular have also been called “The Four Horsemen” … you know, of the apocalypse! Yikes!)
Around the same time, I read “Before the Fall” by Noah Hawley. “Before the Fall” follows an artist who survived a plane crash. It also gets into some intellectual territory, or at least some social criticism; the media hound the main character, and also seek to blame certain people for the crash. The book comments on the media profiteering from division and outrage.
I’d already been toying with a story about a public shooting for a while. Of course, this is not a popular topic to write about. We see enough of it; why would anyone want to read a book about it? But I like exploring ideas and themes in my books. One theme is the idea of the trauma suffered by the surviving victims of shootings.
At one point, I had a story going about an aging actor who was past his prime. He’s filming a movie in NYC’s Central Park and a gunman gets up on the camera lift — like a cherry picker — and opens fire. But it was too graphic and sad, and I let it go.
Later, I decided that my main character would be one of these public intellectuals. I’d base him loosely on Sam Harris, a neuroscientist and author who has a podcast called “Making Sense.” Harris is famous for his takedowns of religion, controversial in his positions on foreign policy, but an unquestionably brilliant guy.
Part of that brilliance, it seems, is his command of the English language. He’s a “smooth talker.” I’d watch him debate people, and his articulateness, coupled with his unwavering calm, seemed to be what gave him the edge. Yes, his positions on things seemed logical and internally consistent, but it wasn’t just that logic, or the data he cited, which made him so effective at “winning” debates, I decided. It was how well he communicated.
So I thought: is he just killing it because he’s so well-spoken? Is that really the metric for discerning truth — how well you can argue?
I called my character Alex Baines. I wondered, what if someone became really incensed by him? What if they took action? But beyond that, what if they were inspired, or even goaded, into taking action by someone else? Like a public rival. Maybe someone who had been hurt by Baines in the past…
And a story was born.
***
The next part of the story-behind-the-story goes as follows: Interestingly, there’s one other book I’ve written that I felt the need to talk about, almost as a caveat, or mea culpa — and that book is called Gone, one of my biggest sellers to date.
I felt the need to explain its nature: rife with conspiracy theories. I also felt I needed to explain how rushed a book it was, in retrospect, and what I might’ve done differently had I to do it all over again.
Why that’s interesting is because it was the success of Gone, published in 2016, that drew the attention of a literary agent, and that literary agent went on to — briefly — represent Breathing Fire.
The thing is, I’d never noticed I’d draw such attention from Gone, since the agent’s initial message went into my SPAM folder on Facebook. (Thanks, Facebook!) It was three years later before I even realized I had such a folder, and went fishing around in it, to discover the agent’s interest in me.
I’d written nearly ten more novels since Gone, and none of them seemed to grab the market in the same way that book had. The market was getting more crowded, for one thing, and I could’ve really used the boost an agent might’ve brought. (Again — THANKS FACEBOOK)
But I reached out to him anyway, and he responded, and he asked me what I was working on. I pitched him four projects that were in the works, and Breathing Fire was the one that piqued his interest. At the time, summer of 2019, it had been sitting idle and still in need of work, so I dusted it off and gave it another draft, then sent it in to the agent without much expectation.
He called me after a weekend spent reading it and said he wanted to represent me. I was blown away!
But let’s cut to four months later, and the twenty brick-and-mortar publishers to whom the agent sent the book all said no. Most of them said good things about it, calling it “propulsive” and “clever” but that they would have a hard time marketing it, since it fell between genres.
The thing about Breathing Fire is that, not only does it contain a shooting scene, there are two big sections that host an intellectual debate over science-versus-religion. And then there’s the “metaphysical” aspect; the strange vision Alex’s wife, Corrine, continues to see — and not be able to explain — throughout the story. Plus, there’s also a substantial cop character, and chapters from her POV. So, what kind of book is it? Police procedural? Supernatural thriller? Philosophy book?
I totally get it.
After those publishers passed, I sought the counsel of a writer friend who pens bestsellers. She read the book and assured me it was a good book; she loved it. But she understood why publishers might’ve been averse, and cautioned me against “dying on that hill.” So I parted ways with the agent and sought to represent myself directly, as I’d done with seventeen other books, and approach digital publishers.
They also said no. Even one of my long-standing publishers, who has thirteen of my other titles, said no. (That publisher once published a book of mine called High Water, about flying teenagers and a monster in a lake, yet called this book “esoteric”…)
It’s getting tough out there, people!
In fairness, one publisher — Literary Wanderlust — was brave and bold enough to take on the project. But then the coronavirus hit and complicated everything. In the end, I decided to publish it myself. Because, why not? Should it sit forever in the proverbial desk drawer drawing spiders because (most) publishers didn’t think it would earn its keep? I figured, if even just a few people read it, and liked it, it would justify self-publishing it.
***
But here’s the disclaimer: Breathing Fire may not satisfy my main readership. It’s possible the publishers are right and it is esoteric, insofar as people discussing the meaning of life is esoteric. Put plainly: it’s certainly not going to be for everyone. But what book ever does?
Still, understanding that I might be out of my usual target market, I gave the book a pink cover. I put a meditative figure front and center. I categorized it on Amazon as “metaphysical and visionary”. I even priced it at $5.99, because snooty literary thrillers are usually more expensive, hee hee. The point being, I’ve tried to demonstrate that its not my typical fare (if I have a typical fare), and to avoid setting up any false expectations.
Yes, I call it “propulsive” — but so did a rejecting publisher. And it does have a big twist! But this is a book I wrote because I wanted to. Because I liked the idea, and I wanted to somehow crystallize the science-versus-religion debate in my own words.
That’s the real admission here: this was a passion project. Of course I had the reader in mind, and wanted to keep things moving at a good pace, but whenever I got into territory I thought would lose people, or put them off, I kept going anyway.
And who knows? Maybe that’s not a bad thing.
