Was there ever a book that didn’t get published that you really thought would be a shoe in? If yes, is there a way you could provide us, your local fans, a way to read it anyways?

Hobson

Oh yeah, I’ve written plenty of books I thought would be published but weren’t. There was one before Syrup, two between that and Jennifer Government, one between that and Company, one between that and Machine Man, then I managed not to insert a dud book and went straight to Lexicon, and at least one since.

I was totally sure all those would be published, because why else write them. I mean, novels are hard. You don’t do all that work unless you think the end result will be amazing. I don’t know any method of writing a first draft other than operating under the delusion that it’s the greatest thing in the world ever. It’s not, of course, because it’s a first draft. At that stage it barely makes sense. But you need belief.

I’d classify three of my unpublished novels as unsalvageable, by which I mean I’m doing the world a favor by never showing them to anyone. The rest might be good if I had a few more ideas and did a lot of work, maybe. But I sure don’t want to publish them in their current state.

One I still think is awesome and should be published. I originally wrote about it, humiliatingly, here, but it sits in a weird place because it’s not really a young adult book but not really anything else either. It will almost certainly not sell very well, which would make it harder to sell future books, and it’s messy in places and I don’t really love the ending any more. But every now and again I read it back over and think, this is something.