A Chair Between The Rails: Origins

While we wait for Kickstarter to approve my project (I wasn’t prepared for that!), I thought I would tell you a little about the origins of A Chair Between The Rails. I’ll try to keep it spoiler-free.

Summer of 2012, I was out of work. I took a job at a local music store, working under the store’s psychotic former manager. After getting to know him a bit, I began to realize that his alarming thought patterns matched those of the main character in a novel that I had abandoned the year before. Finding inspiration in the pain this man caused me, I set out to rewrite the novel.

The germ of that story, originally titled Distant Eden, took shape in 2007. An early draft struggled to find its rhythm and died after a few chapters. A second draft was completed in Fall of 2008, but turned out to be overly cumbersome. (At the time, I was obsessed with writing long books for the glory of authorhood. I was a fool.) In 2011, I started the novel from scratch. I was in design school at the time, training myself to cut paper to tolerances of 1/32 of an inch. Enforcing the same precision on my writing muse, I quickly killed the third draft of Distant Eden with my fear of failure.

From 2009 to 2011, I had worked on The Tower of Babel, which comes chronologically after A Chair Between The Rails. With the failure of the 2011 draft of Distant Eden, I gave up on the story and declared The Tower of Babel to be the first book in the Vaulan Cycle. But it was not to be: readers asked for more backstory, and people who knew the story of Distant Eden encouraged me to get it out there. So I set out again, summer of 2012, to rewrite Distant Eden. This time, it worked. The book will be released November 1, 2013, as A Chair Between The Rails.

Suicide is a resonant theme in A Chair Between The Rails. I’m a little concerned that this may bother people. However, the book settled into its current state not by design, but by me listening to what it had to say. As I delved into what I perceived to be the psyche of my insane coworker, his insanity began to infect my mind as well. I worked it out through writing the novel. The resultant character is James Feckidee, the narrator of A Chair Between The Rails. I cannot apologize for James’s tendencies, nor for the strange way in which they come to fruition (and to redemption) in the story. The book is what it is.

That said, I like to think that the book’s presentation of willful death has something to say to us. Growing that summer in my relationship with my fiancee (now my wife), I began to learn the hard way what it is to die for someone else. Taking this and applying it to the almost constant passage of blaring trainhorns in this city, I stumbled upon the climactic scene in the novel. You can come to your own conclusions from the story, as I don’t really want to go too deep in explaining what is (I hope) a work of art.

A Chair Between The Rails comes chronologically before The Tower of Babel. I’m planning a third and possibly a fourth book, which will bring the Vaulan Cycle to true circular completion. I know this is an ambitious project—a new attempt at myth-making—but I’m up for it.

Kickstarter Announcement

acbtr_postrans_roundiii1_KINDLE_RGBDear Friends and Readers,

On July 1st, I’ll be diving headfirst into one of the craziest things I’ve ever done: I’ll be conducting a Kickstarter campaign to fund the publication and marketing of my upcoming novel, A Chair Between The Rails.

If you’ve read The Tower of Babel, you probably have a lot of questions about what happened before that story. A Chair Between The Rails will answer some of those questions. If you haven’t read The Tower of Babel, the new book is the best place to start for getting into the series. Though it is being released after The Tower of Babel, it is Book I of the Vaulan Cycle, and The Tower of Babel is Book II.

I am fronting some costs of publication myself. However, I would like to run ad campaigns for the book on the websites of three major national magazines. These are magazines whose readerships will enjoy the book. A project of this size requires capital, but it should produce a return that will help get Ripening Books (my publishing company) closer to self-sustenance. Hence the invitation for you, my readers, to participate in building the Vaulan Cycle into something that is nationally known. The Kickstarter campaign will be crafted around donation levels that are not financially burdensome to backers, but which provide great value in gifts. There will be 8 gift levels total; but for now, I’ll draw your attention to two:

For $35, you’ll receive:

  • A digital copy of the book in your choice of format,
  • A thank you by name in the published print and digital versions of the book,
  • A print copy of the book, and
  • A digital copy of The Victorious Airborne’s new album, Come, My Tired Machine.

For $75, you’ll receive:

  • A digital copy of the book in your choice of format,
  • A thank you by name in the published print and digital versions of the book,
  • A print copy of the book, signed by the author,
  • A digital copy of The Victorious Airborne’s new album, Come, My Tired Machine, and
  • A sneak peek of material from my non-fiction project We’re All Singing Now: Making Art In The 2010s, which is currently in the development stage.

I can’t tell you how excited I am about this project. I’ve worked for months on the text of this novel. From nights where I stayed up too late editing, to mornings where my eagerness to work on the book woke me up too early, the process has been a great personal struggle. The greatest battle has been with anxiety: a gnawing fear that the book will not reach the readers it deserves. While I know intellectually how to deal with this fear, mastering it emotionally has been extremely difficult. I guess I’m all in with this one.

A Chair Between The Rails was born from a singular vision, a belief that life begins only when we surrender to forces that are greater than us. For me, the writing, editing, and production of the book turned out to be a lesson in that principle. Now, I want to turn that structure inside-out. I want to turn the book over to an audience larger than I could ever create on my own. I want the people to grapple with this book.

I invite you to join me July 1st, 2013, as I launch my Kickstarter campaign. Your donation will help get A Chair Between The Rails in front of over 400,000 web visitors distributed across three major sites. I look forward to your participation, and I thank you ahead of time!