One Massive Novel, in Two Acts

Here's a secret that will become obvious in October: Four Letter Words: Act 1 & 2 are meant to be one book.

Shocking, I know. I ambled up to my editor in the digital version of a high-stakes Vegas casino and dropped an 800 page manuscript on the table. Maybe if I'd penned an epic fantasy that length would fly, but I didn't and it wouldn't for one simple reason: that book would cost too much to print. It would mean that I'd make nothing from the sale unless I priced it over twenty dollars. For a paperback.

Ready for another not-so-secret secret? I'm poor. Broke. Financially deficient. However you'd prefer to phrase it. I don't take pride nor shame in this, it's simply a fact, but I couldn't price a book higher than I could afford. That would be the epitomy of privelage and I wouldn't stand for my work to be represented in that manner.

Which catches us up to the present, where there's little more than a month before the release of Act 2 & I'm plugging through edits I've made a million times before, stressing my choice to split the story but knowing it was a compassionate one. When I'm nothing else, when I'm ripped apart, broken down and all the bullshit's stripped away—I'm one of those people that gives a fuck.

Even if the only fuck I give is about my own self-obsessed musings printed on dead trees.

Love Always,

@haleybcu

haleybcu.com