June is here! Truly the start of summer for me, as Friday was the last day of school for my kids. Not quite 48 hours into summer break, and already my household has descended into chaos. Feral animals roam the halls. Goldfish crackers strewn upon the ground.
So what to do? Why, start an ambitious project to stay busy and stave off entropy, of course!
To that end, I am going to toss my hat into the ring of my fellow Substack fictioneers. Starting this week, I am going to serialize a novella here on my newsletter. It is called The Unauthorized Guide to MindShifter and it will appear in a series of eight ‘episodes’ that air weekly, staring Thursday, June 5.
TUGMS tells the story of Emma Henig, an aspiring filmmaker working a low-level job in the documentary division of NowPlay, a global streaming platform. Emma is hired to help produce Fan Files, a docudrama series about fan culture. She lands the job thanks to her childhood connection with a notable fandom streamer and online personality named Melinda Midge. Melinda is the self-appointed expert of a short-lived TV show called MindShifter, which aired in the early 2000s. MindShifter is best-known, though, for its connection to national tragedy: one of the actors on the show was killed during the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. Melinda believes the actor’s death is a piece of a far larger puzzle.
Emma returns to her Indiana hometown, along with the NowPlay documentary crew, to film a segment with Melinda. But before she can—Melinda vanishes, leaving only a mysterious message for Emma. To find her friend, and salvage her career, Emma must search through her own past to uncover the answers.
I think you’ll like it! It’s a thriller that highlights the push-pull nature of female friendship, along with references to forgotten TV shows. I am really looking forward to experimenting with the weekly serialization format. I am constructing it in such a way that the end of each episode with really leave the reader hanging.
The first two episodes will be free for all to read. The remaining six episodes will be found behind the paywall. Perfect time to subscribe!
Along with the weekly installments on Thursdays, I will be writing essays/reviews/lyrical cookie recipes every Sunday throughout the summer. Those will be free for all!
Looking forward to exploring the possibilities of the platform with you!
Also this past week, my byline appeared in the muckraking Substack publication The Metropolitan Review. There, I reviewed Richard Beck’s Homeland, a history of the United States in the post-9/11 era. I found it illuminating in parts, frustrating in others. Thanks to Ross Barkan and the staff at TMR for making it happen!
Some of the themes mentioned in my review definitely get explored further in The Unauthorized Guide to MindShifter. Kismet!
And lastly, Naomi Kanakia, the grande dame of literary Substack, recently announced that she’s organizing the Samuel Richardson Prize for Best Self-Published Literary Novel. Self-publishing has been a vibrant space for a while now, yet literary writers fly under the radar for a whole host of reasons. The prize is meant to highlight some of those more deserving works so they can reach more readers. (There is no monetary prize, to be clear—just attention and bragging rights.) Naomi has assembled a team of judges to go through books, and I am one of them! Really looking forward to seeing what the writers out there come up with.
If you’re an author with a self-published literary novel, submit! Read through the guidelines for more detail.
Let’s make Substack Summer the best summer ever you guys!!!
i look forward to reading it!
Great stuff happening!