I just got off the phone with my good friend Roger Hart.
Roger Hart’s novel FEATHER and SEL will be released in 2026, and I couldn’t be more excited for this story to be in the world. I’m thrilled for Roger, of course, but not just because he and his wife Gwen are among my very best friends. I’m thrilled because FEATHER and SEL is one of the best books I’ve read in the last five years. It’s all about human relationships, personalities, dreams, and people that are all too often judged or stuck in boxes; it’s about kindness, friendship, empathy, and about being downright human in this world. It’s the kind of rare book that when you finish it, you miss the characters for weeks afterward, and months later, you still wonder what they’re up to. That’s how real and alive these characters become.
A motorcycle is the only image I want to share without giving anything away about Feather and Sel. But the motorcycle is an essential component of Sel and Feather’s story.
Anyway, I started this post because Roger and I had a great conversation about the state of the world and our own worlds.
But one important thing we talked about, concerning the upcoming release of Roger’s book, was how the WORST part of being an author—and primarily the only part we both heartily dislike—is promoting oneself! Getting a manuscript into the hands of someone who wants to publish it is hard enough. It requires a type of self-promotion that’s alien to a writer’s personality, but it’s part of the package.
HOWEVER, once a book is taken by a publisher, and it is indeed going to be published and have a life out in the world, life feels complete. Goal accomplished. FIT feels that way for about a day. Then it’s up to the author to promote the heck out of it. It’s up to us to get on social media and whip up excitement. It’s up to us to call bookstores and libraries and set up book events, sign up for book fairs, school or college visits, holiday fairs, and all that jazz that might sell books. That sucks. Self-promotion requires all the exact opposite skills that writing a book require.
Writing a good story requires introverted hours at the computer, immersed in the fictional world we’re creating, writing, reading, rewriting, rewriting, editing, reading, writing, rewriting (did I mention rewriting?), and sticking with the characters to the bitter end, making sure that the story hangs together entirely, all “guns hanging over the mantle have gone off,” all needs created within the reader have been satisfied, and then taking criticism and suggestions from readers and editors, and rewriting and rewriting again, until it is the best story it can be. All of that is hard, but immensely satisfying. You can’t take criticism to heart if you are too in love with your own words or your own self. You can’t take the leaps that bring a story from being good to being great if you can’t take suggestions.
Promoting the book takes the opposite kind of skill set: You have to believe your story (and by association, YOU) are already great, and you have to jump into the fray of social media telling everybody and their brother why they should read YOUR words, your story, fall in love with your characters. It’s like going from anonymity, and complete humility, taking suggestions and criticisms to heart, and humbly deciding what to keep and what to change—to suddenly have to assert absolute confidence and bravado in order to self-promote. It’s a completely ironic career 180. Very few people have both skill sets in abundance.
The actual DOING of book events—reading, talking about writing, talking to readers—is a blast. That’s a truly fun and rewarding part of being an author, and at some point, the stories do the talking, but having to set it all up is what’s so hard.
Roger and I (and Megan Cooley Peterson, whom I’ve discussed this with more than once) aren’t the only ones who feel this way. I know this, but it’s not a phenomenon I hear discussed except in quiet writer conversations. In the olden days, publishers did a great deal of book promotion. In today’s culture, that’s no longer true. It’s up to us.
It’s a good thing that what keeps us at this is our love of stories, our love of creating a world and people we love spending time with, characters whom we want to go out into the world and take on their own life. That’s what keeps us going.
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