I’m scared of holding babies.

For context, I’m great with kids. I teach music lessons for a living, with students ranging from four years old to retired (and I don’t ask their ages). I taught preschool music for three years and had a splendid time wrangling two-to-five year olds who could form rudimentary sentences and scream song lyrics back at me.

But when it’s a baby, I lose my resolve.

Why? Perhaps it’s because they can’t speak. I can’t tell exactly what they’re feeling, whether or not they’re crying. Or it could be the fear of failure wedged deep into my psyche that tells me I’m going to mess up the simple act of keeping a tiny potato of a human off the ground.

Naturally, becoming a father has forced me to confront this fear head-on. And so, with my wife by my side, I took our two-pound-fourteen-ounce preemie from the nurse’s hands and cocooned him between my chest and my shirt. There he lay for an hour, sometimes squirming, mostly resting.

The fear didn’t go away. But the love was stronger.

I knew this was coming. Though Baby H had arrived twelve weeks early, he was going to be born at some point. I’d war-gamed every possible scenario, from outright refusing to hold my own son to accidentally punting him between the posts (three points!). The inevitable responsibility had weighed on my mind for months.

But he’s my son. He’s worth being afraid.

I’ll feel more emotions than I believe possible in the days, months, years to come. Because, despite my fear of committing to this child, I’ve chosen to love him. And the number of times I’ve cried in his NICU pod (embarassingly often) tells me how deep that love goes.

But this newsletter isn’t about childbirth. It’s about book-birth.

Marrow and Soul will be released on February 5, 2024!

And though the joy of being a debut author pales next to the emotional spectrum of being a debut dad, I’m blessed beyond belief to hold both titles.

I’m accepting 100 ARC readers before the book releases. If you’re not familiar with ARCs (advance reader copies), authors send them to readers in the hopes of securing review before the book launches.

If you want a digital ARC of Marrow and Soul, reply to this email with the word “ARC” to get on the list!

Kickstarter Backers…

Limited editions are in the mail! Every physical reward (save a few I’m delivering in person) is now out of my hands.

The only thing left to fulfill is the first-draft version of The Ghost Tablet, complete with author’s notes on every chapter. Limited-edition backers will get these; maybe I’ll make them available through the newsletter later on. Something to think about.

Writing Updates

SPOOKY SEQUEL // Waiting games are hard. But the edit starts soon!

SPOOKY THREEQUEL // I finished drafting chapter 7 this morning. Now that the first big action sequence is done, I get to slow down with some character work, which always surprises me with how fun it can be. Excerpt from earlier this week:

IVORY // Current objective: figuring out the why of the story. With the premise set and the characters being fleshed out, I’m working out why this story matters to me. If it doesn’t matter to me, it won’t matter to the reader.

Remember, digital ARCs are only available to the first 100 applicants! Reply to this email with “ARC” to get on the list.