WHY I’M Strategizing
Like a lot of indie literary fiction writers, I’ve struggled to gain traction. I’ve done things “right”—entered contests and won for my writing, received strong reviews, and I’ve invested in professional editing, design, and marketing—because I believe the work deserves it. Even with all of the effort, I haven’t come close to breaking even. Part of me doesn’t mind. I love writing. I’d do it even if no one read it.
But I want people to read it.
How I’m strategizing
So I’m trying something new: I’m serializing Margaux & the Vicious Circle on Substack. A few chapters will be free—I haven’t decided how many. The rest of the book will be available for subscribers—free subscribers ($0), monthly ($5) or annual ($60). Free subscribers will receive a discount code to download the eBook version of Margaux & the Vicious Circle at a significant discount from retail prices—$4.79. All paid subscribers will receive a FREE download of the full eBook, to read ahead if you want. Founding subscribers (pledging more than $50 per year) will additionally receive a signed copy of my book, and the opportunity to talk to me one-on-one.
This isn’t a money-making scheme. It’s a sustainability experiment. If enough readers chip in even for one month or become free subscribers and buy my discounted book, I can afford to professionally edit Fiddler’s Point, the next book in the Margaux Chronicles.
It’s an ask—but also an offering.
Think of this as an ongoing story place, where fiction gets layered over memory, and mystery and magic become a way of seeing the world. If you’ve ever loved a character who felt more real than some people you know, or gotten lost in a book that helped you remember things from your own life—this one might be for you.
Here’s a description of the book:
Margaux Andrews lives alone in a dingy Lower Manhattan walk-up. By day, she’s a nanny, and at night she writes into the wee hours. She’s completed a draft of her first novel, One Elysium Street, and is working on her next, inspired by experiences and secrets from her childhood: a Colorado apartment complex where a friend vanishes, games that turn dark, and a place where danger lurks around every corner. She discovers that nothing was ever quite as it seemed. Her novel has earned at least a hundred rejections. Too unbelievable, the agents say.
Until… one writes back.
The M. Des Jardins Literary Agency, once entangled with the legendary Vicious Circle, offers representation, and also an invitation into a world where literature breathes, childhood memories serve as portals to truth, and the line between fiction and real life blurs. Margaux’s present collides with her past when she learns that the head of the agency is a long lost childhood friend.
As Margaux’s story takes on a life of its own, she must follow it back to where it began—to the friends she left behind, the girl who disappeared, the traumas, and the half-remembered magic that might be the key to everything.
When I’m strategizing
Beginning now, new chapters will drop weekly, starting next week. Of course, I’ll keep On the Shelf free and alive—short fiction, essays, poetry and the like.
Thanks for reading, and for sharing. This whole thing only works if it reaches someone who cares. Maybe that’s you? Maybe it’s someone you know!
Please visit my Substack website to follow or Subscribe to The Margaux Chronicles