Publishing the Unpublishable
- wood4792
- Apr 14
- 2 min read
In all fairness, I could have been more savvy with my first novel.
I wrote it in the span of two months last summer, from fever pitch to fever dream. You have to understand, that had never happened before. Normally I'd spend weeks plotting out a short story, and who knows how long writing the damn thing. Not to mention polishing. For once, the ideas simply flowed in a way I find it hard to articulate. While I've never been overly romantic, I knew it was the one.
Or at least, the first one. The most frightening one. Once it lay in my lap - glaring at me from my computer - I was instantly flooded with terrifying questions.
Who was my audience?
What was my message?
Why did I write this?
These questions and more came from a fantastic book I read by Rebecca Thorne. In her illustrative work The Five Sentence Method - How to Write Your Damn Book Already, she described how every author must contemplate who they are writing for.
I had only myself to blame, since I only wrote it for myself. Sure, I could say sci-fi fans, but it was too odd. Too strange. Too weird. We'll come back to that in a second.
So, without any hope of publication, I doom-scrolled my favorite website The Submission Grinder. It's a fantastic resource (which I've linked below) for writers who are struggling to find places to submit to. I did my second favorite activity: compiling a list of publishers in my Excel form. Then, I started firing off submissions. I had heard from other writers that it would take weeks or months to hear back from them. So, I impatiently applied to a few more.
To my surprise, my number one site Lovecraftiana (links below), responded back. They loved it, and they wanted to serialize my story in four separate issues of their magazine. It turned out that my weird story just needed to find the right audience - weird fiction! It was a dream come true, one that was born when I first read The Ballad of Black Tom and The Fisherman in college.
Though my novel won't come out until April of 2026 (and finish January of 2027), I count myself lucky that I've finally realized my dream of being a published author. Hopefully my story and my resources can help other aspiring writers to find their own voice - and their own audience.
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