Harmattan Season is officially out in the wild. Tonight, I’ll be heading to RJ Julia in Madison, CT where I will likely, for the first time, see my 8th book on a shelf IRL. In the very, very beginning—the Book of Genesis beginning—of this journey, when I was a young warthog passing afternoons in the Barnes & Noble by Westfarms Mall, the ultimate dream was to see my name on the spine of a volume on a shelf in that store; in any store, really. I know that eleven-year-old is still alive in me, because writing the first sentence of this paragraph lit a primal thrill through me. It still hasn’t gotten old.
Over the years, rituals tend to develop—some of them intentional, some of them the type of routine you simply fall into—and one thing that has flavored my launch days of late has been the imperative to spend as little time before a screen as possible. Even if a book you’ve published reaches no further than an inner circle of loved ones, even if professional markers of industry success are as far away as Alpha Centauri from the Mariana Trench, there is still the flurry of congratulatory emails, the social media notifications blazing like comets across the top of your phone. The texts, sometimes even the phone calls. It can all get a bit overwhelming.
This ritual is a bit of an outgrowth.
I heard at various points in my career a number of stories of writers who, upon having their debuts garlanded and praised and celebrated, found themselves paralyzed when it came time to write the next book. All the usual questions: how do I write something as good as what I just put out? What if they don’t like it? What if they don’t like it the way they liked the last one? Do I throw the same pitch a second time around? How do I best take advantage of this second bite at the apple? And on and on. I’d been lucky enough to avoid that madness, in large part because, by the time of my debut’s launch, I was heavy in the midst of edits for its sequel. This was how I moved all through the 15 years or so before Beasts Made of Night came out. I’d be querying agents with one novel while already drafting the next, so that by the time the last of the rejections came through, I already had another, better novel to offer them. And taking this rhythm with me into life as a published author has done much to maintain my sanity. The butterflies in my stomach move not out of nervousness for this thing that is now in the hands of strangers, they move in ardor for this other thing I’m currently buried in up to my wrists.
But there’s a shadowed side to this “there’s always the next job” mentality. Move like this for long enough and you forget what roses smell like. Shielding yourself against disappointment by training your eyes on the next task is a very good way to miss the magic—those tiny bits of thaumaturgy—happening right next to you. A reader—a single reader—rejoicing over a little flourish you put in there that you didn’t think anyone would notice. Someone guffawing at a joke you wrote. Someone closing the book in tears after having finished that last chapter. Those small moments—small, only when measured against the grand scheme of things—that exemplify that divine union between art and the specificity of a human reader’s experience. The reviews are lovely, but this thing—this thing right here—it’s the thing that eleven-year-old was after.
I find myself firmly mid-career, the coruscating energy of early-career promise and momentum a faded memory, the wisdom and craft mastery waiting for me in my late-career winter dotage still somewhere over the horizon.1 And in this place where you know enough to grow cynical and yet where you still find yourself wondering if your best years are yet ahead, there lies the temptation to treat this thing like a job and little else. Punch in, punch out, collect your paycheck, punch in, punch out, etc.2 But I’m lucky, given my schedule for the week, that I have this moment at least to sit down and think through writing about how lovely a moment this is. Bouba came to life on the page in November of 2022, was molded and shaped for much of 2023 and 2024, and is now able to make your acquaintance here on May 27, 2025.
You don’t have to tell me if something magical happens when you read Harmattan Season, if something in the book makes you laugh or makes you cry or teaches you something or plants a seed that grows into a garden a few years from now. Much as I like to hear kind things about my writing, it’s perfectly all right if you keep that quiet, enchanted moment to yourself. I do it all the time.
But I do hope that, however it happens, Bouba reaches the people who are waiting for him, whether they know it or not. I hope he’s able to meet them where they are, when they are, and work his magic.
Just as he has on me.
Currently reading: Yalo - Elias Khoury
Currently listening: Afterlife - Evanescence
One thing I’m very much looking forward to once I can tell myself I’m comfortably late-career is being able to speak (in interviews or extemporaneously) with the type of candidness Quincy Jones did once the skin began to sag. That man had stories and did not gaf.
This makes it sound like writing isn’t the most spiritual experience I encounter outside of a church. I’ve alluded to this in the past and may expound upon it in the future, but the making of a novel, for me, has always shared DNA with prayer. So vividly, in fact, that, quite often, I’m satisfied enough with the process that all thoughts of publishing the thing evaporate. But then I open my eyes, unclasp my hands and the rest of the world rushes back in to remind me that there is, indeed, rent to be paid. Lol.
WOOOOOOOOOO