The Book That Almost Wasn’t

Two Years Ago…

I had just finished re-writing a novel that had taken almost five years to complete. I made art for it. I blogged about it. I handed it out for beta reading. I loved the story and the characters, the world I had carefully crafted. It was the epic Sci-Fi space opera I had always wanted to write. Only it wasn’t.

IT WAS BAD

The draft I had was clunky, slow in parts, and lacked focus. The themes were a mish-mash of two or three different ideas. I was facing multiple structural narrative changes, and another two or three rewrites at minimum.

Now, remember, I spent many years laboring on that book. Beyond that, it was the second novel I had ever written. The first was worse—before you ask, no, you’ll never read it. The point I’m making is that I had a lot sunk into that book. But it soon became clear what be done. I had to let it go.

And that’s the headspace I was in when I started writing No One Ever Leaves. It was a melancholy place to be, filled with the loss of a grand world filled with power struggles over star systems no one would ever know. In many ways, that was the foundation for the setting of NOEL.

Ceylon City is a lost colony, abandoned by the rest of humanity. For Leon Chandra, Remi LaRue, and the other characters of NOEL, there is no escape. Long ago, ships from other worlds stopped coming. Now, the people of Ceylon are all just trying to survive in a city at the bottom of an endless ocean.

The setting for NOEL is claustrophobic, old, and repurposed. It’s a place that was built for one thing long ago and then adapted for those left to pick up the pieces. Was I writing about myself? Now that I look back at it, perhaps so.

After the initial draft of NOEL, I did the usual editing and rewriting that goes along with it. I found all the typos. I went back and fixed the things my notes instructed me to fix. And I was proud of what I had written. The narrative was focused. It felt planned and intentional. And I was, perhaps for the first time, ready to really give it a go. This is the one, I thought. This is my first book that I’ll publish.

At around 50K words (or 200-ish pages in a standard paperback), the book fell short of what today’s publishers were likely to consider. Yes, there are successful science fiction novella writers out there, but I’m no Martha Wells. And yes, I know that many of the classics clock in at this word count. But the reality of the situation is that I live in the 21st century where publishers want nothing to do with what I had written. For these reasons, I decided to self-publish.

So, after polishing the book as best I could, I sent out beta copies for feedback. I hired a professional editor for beta reading. And I sat back and waited, working on a few short stories and other projects. When the feedback rolled in, I was gutted.

This book had problems too  — glaring, red hot, angry mistakes that felt like cancer. I’m talking about the kinds of problems no writer wants to admit. It had nothing to do with what I had screwed up the last time, or the time before that. No, I had made all new, terribad choices and written a very insensitive character that could have alienated readers.

I felt so defeated. Once again, I had failed miserably. To add to it all, challenges in my personal and professional life were compounding everything. So, I put NOEL on the digital shelf, left to rot like the others, and started working on something else entirely.

Until four months later, when my writer’s group convinced me otherwise.

My friends and compatriots, fellow writers who have heard and lived in Ceylon with me for over a year, were adamant that No One Ever Leaves should see the light of day. They told me they loved the characters. They told me they loved the setting. They told me they wanted to read more about the world I had created. They gave me a serious pep talk, and for that I am very grateful. Because I was able, after some time and space, to wrangle that book back into something I felt proud of.

And that’s where you find me now, in the middle of the fourth version of NOEL. I have all those nasty mistakes fixed. I have a copy editor on schedule for March 2026. I have a FANTASTIC cover artist lined up. And I have big plans for the release of this book. Because I think it’s an interesting story worth telling, with a theme I find important, and most of all, I think it rings true.

If you’re still here, dear reader, don’t give up on your dreams. They’re worth it.