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I have finished my short story draft, gotten editor comments on my Horror Novella completed, and gotten final reader feedback.
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Recent Fascinations | The Fiction Books that Made Me, Dishonorable Mentions + Stages and Changes, a Goodbye to Fiction and Fascinations
Want to understand what this series is? Go Here
I almost didn’t write this for a couple different reasons. The first is that I struggled with whether or not it is productive to add negativity onto the tail end of this series. The second is that, frankly, I’m tired of writing this damn newsletter.
We’ll get to that second point later (the Stages and Changes section of this particular newsletter edition), but as far as the first one goes, I decided to go on with it because I’ve already planned it and mentioned it a half-dozen times in the other entries.
So, without further hemming and with no hawing to be tolerated, let’s just get into it.
The Fiction Books that Made Me: Dishonorable Mentions.
First, in true pretentious fashion, let’s define some terms. What do I mean by Dishonorable Mention?
For me, the term means that these three entries are stories, and in two cases series, that I know have affected me as both a reader and a writer, but for one reason or another I feel uncomfortable praising them at any length. For two of them, it is because of the behavior of their respective writers, for one of them it is because I feel a kind of silly shame for ever even having liked it. So, let’s walk these skeletons out of the closet and get on with the thing.
AMERICAN GODS | Neil Gaiman
The difficult thing to parse about this particular novel is that, had I made this list a few years ago, AMERICAN GODS would have rested firmly at #2. It is a novel that is immensely important to me and my view of the United States. It shaped my understanding of story and plot and character as a young man who was just starting to take writing seriously.
I will never forget the first time I read the book. 2017, on a plane from Jackson, Mississippi to Boston, Massachusetts. I finished the novel just as we landed and got off the plane in Boston on the weekend of the 4th. It was enormously impactful and an experience that changed my life. When I got back home, I changed my major to History and started taking my education seriously for the first time in my life.
Over the next several years, I began to fanatically follow Gaiman’s work, and for a brief period, he usurped King as my favorite writer.
And then, in 2025, the VULTURE article hit me like a Mack truck. I won’t go into the contents of that article, but it was a harrowing read and I have had to reevaluate my relationship to Gaiman and his work. Perhaps there will come a time when my personal distance from being a young writer who idolized Gaiman not just as a writer but as a person will be great enough that I can reevaluate my relationship to his art. AMERICAN GODS still changed my life, but at this time, I struggle to know if that is a good thing or a bad one.
THE HARRY POTTER SERIES | J.K. Rowling
If there’s ever been a writer who needed to learn to shut the fuck up, its JKR. I am one of the millennials where my childhood was consumed by all things Harry Potter. I know my house, my patrounos, and my familiar (Gryffindor, Badger, Rat), and so do all of my friends. I read the books in middle school, watched the movies, and lived and breathed the fandom in those early internet days.
As I got into college, I defended the series (and JKR) against the constant conservative backlash as she expanded the world and added to characters, including sidestepping Dumbledore into being LGBT representation.
Imagine my whiplash, and the whiplash of many a HP fan, that into the 2020s we found ourselves backpeddling as JKR took an atmospheric nosedive that eventually ended up in HOLOCAUST DENIAL.
My relationship with this series is decidedly less complicated than my relationship with Gaiman and his work. At this point, I have moved on. I enjoy the books and the movies on occasion, and I try to ignore whatever fuckin’ nonsense that ridiculous woman is saying. Still, when I turn to my inner world as a writer and imagine a holiday setting, snow covering a fantasy world, I imagine Hogwarts. And I likely always will.
THE LEFT BEHIND SERIES | Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
…Okay let me explain.
This series is utter dogshit. It is poorly written chaff that makes little sense and was written with the explicit purpose of converting people to a particularly American brand of Christianity using a fear of eternal suffering and being “left behind” following the Rapture. The authors are two hacks with questionable morals and unquestionably shitty ideas about the world.
BUT
When you’re 15 years old in South Mississippi and a Certified Heathen who didn’t grow up religious, it is a pretty wild ride. Demons and angels, and people getting punched to death and a hooker who MIGHT JUST TEMPT THESE GOOD CHRISTIANS INTO SINNIN’. So, cut me a break.
Yeah, the books are a shitheap. I’ve never reread them, but they DID serve as a pathway to better postapocalypse fiction for me, and for that I am forever grateful.
You won’t catch me admitting it in public, though.
Some Final Notes on the Dishonorable Mentions
Don’t take any of the discussion of these three entries too seriously.
If you still love Gaiman’s work, then by all means continue reading and enjoying it. Far be it of me as a Hemingway and John Wayne lover to tell anyone not to read a book because the writer is a dirtbag and a bastard. If you still love HARRY POTTER, the same applies. If you love THE LEFT BEHIND…okay you might need some help but that’s okay, we all hit rock bottom at some point.
Anyway, I’m going to move on to what this edition of my newsletter is really about. I’ll see y’all on the other side.
Stages and Changes, a Goodbye to Fiction and Fascinations
I started this newsletter back in December of 2022. From the very beginning it has had a nearly identical structure to it. I lay out some recent updates and project progress, and then I write for maybe 500 words on a “Recent Fascination”. Early on, that was things I was reading and how they tied into my writing projects. Later, it became more personal and self-exploratory. But throughout all of it, the structure has remained largely the same. It’s fascinating to go back and see my previous writing processes laid out, like my claims that I’m a discovery writer in that first issue, and to track the progression of my attempt at being a bookish influencer right up until the point I abandoned it.
What is less enjoyable though, is how it becomes obvious throughout each edition that I, at some point, lost interest in the newsletter. I started phoning those “Recent Fascinations” sections in. Some of them are shockingly short, less than 300 words. Some are banal and useless. Some are meandering and meaningless. Some are all three!
It’s obvious to anyone that the monthly update newsletter has become something of an obligation, and at this point it’s one I see very little point in. Most months, I don’t have any significant updates on my work or story publications, and most months the “Recent Fascinations” section becomes an after thought.
Take in comparison my recent essay “A Brief Interlude on Stepping Away”. The writing process for that essay was a joy. It came quickly and easily, and the end product feels real. I had people from my personal life reach out and say they enjoyed it. I have gotten more views here on it than anywhere else. It felt like something real. After publishing it, I started exploring the personal essay scene on Substack. I started reading them, participating in the community, and I’ve found something genuinely enjoyable. A text-based version of the YouTube video essay I’ve been loving for years.
And, I think, I’ve found what I want my newsletter to be.
While it might feel sudden on the outside, this will be the last monthly edition of my “Fiction and Fascinations” newsletter. Over the coming month I’m going to start implementing a number of changes.
To lay them out as I currently have them planned:
- I will be renaming the newsletter into something completely different, and to be determined.
- The newsletter’s primary focus will be shifting to a personal essay-first approach, with updates on writing happening as asides.
- Note: information about book releases and new short stories will still be sent out here regularly as relevant.
- Newsletter releases will be more infrequent/unscheduled. Instead of aiming for the first week of the month, I’m going to aim for two essays a month, but should it make sense for me to skip a month entirely, I will. The focus will be on the essays not on obligatory updates.
- These essays will NOT focus specifically on my writing process or on my influences, as Fiction and Fascinations have. Instead, they will just be personal essays on topics that interest me.
- Examples:
- Third spaces
- Death and funeral culture
- The history of my home town
- Examples:
- I’m going to start creating digital zines that I will be sharing exclusively through substack and this newsletter.
- My website will become an archive of old newsletters, but new releases will not regularly be posted there. This will be the final simultaneous post.
- NOTHING will change about how you get the emails. Don’t worry about any of this impacting you receiving my updates!
- However, if you want to participate in discussions and other pieces of it, create a free Substack account and follow me! It’s the newsletter delivery service I use, and by having a native account you’ll have access to comment features.
These changes probably sound insubstantial, but I am confident that by turning this into a space for creative nonfiction and personal essays, the entire vibe will change.
I guess we’ll have to see.
As always and forever:
Thanks for reading.
