This first paragraph is a paradox. I want you to go to a funding campaign and click on a button and support a project. But the project is one that expects you to be the kind of person who loves reading. I personally think there might be a slight amount of people who don’t have much time to read but respect the idea of someone making a nine book series and helping them to promote it. For those people, click here. Otherwise, keep reading.

When we want to amuse ourselves, Chris Orcutt and I calculate out how long we’ve been friends, because the number is massive by most standards and it’s one of our little consistencies through our individual, chaotic lives. The number as of this writing is 43 years.

We are no-holds-barred fans of each other, and of our divergent goals and efforts in our paths. The bias is deep-seated and profound, palpable really. If you’re building up a court case against one of us, the other will not join you, and in fact you may find yourself with a spoon in your neck before the proposal gets out of your mouth. We are bonded and we back each other up.

This round, it’s my turn.

After being literally across the street from the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001, Chris recalibrated his life and career away from (very good) copywriting for businesses and CEOs, and took his previous years as a journalist, and became a full-time novelist, which was always his dream. He’s been doing it ever since.

And not just doing it – excelling at it. His books have sold very well, and it is possible to grab them immediately. That is, a significant amount of times, he has set off on a book writing project, spent the years doing the drafts, refining, editing, and then publishing it where others can enjoy it. His books exist. The ratings are excellent. The boy can write.

In his 40s, he found himself at a bit of a crossroads.

He’d written some solid mystery novels, a number of anthologies, and more. And while writing is everything from frustrating to solid-state euphoria, and creating books was his heart and soul, he didn’t want to go into the ground having made “a bunch of books”.

He wanted to make something substantial. Something you could have an opinion on, but that opinion couldn’t include the words “slight” or “okay”. A piece of work you had to at least take off your hat for a moment and mutter “mother of god” before either reaching for it, or backing away. An accomplishment.

Ten years later, he’s there.

This is ten years of no nights out, scant visits to family and friends and events, and long walks with Dashiell the Dog in parks and trails working out the endless puzzles of a nine-part novel series.

Nine parts! Nearly two million words! I struggle to give context to this sort of dedication to the project. Chris has estimated he’s spent at least 30,000 hours over the decade writing the novel, but we all know you have to count all the time considering possibilities, discarding approaches, suddenly realizing you’ve been swimming laps but were deep in a scene.

I prefer percentages: Chris has spent 20 percent of his life on this project.

If nothing else, acknowledge the effort. Coming to the end of a project this massive, this involved, this concentrated diamond of goal, stands among very few who set off on such a journey. He fuckin’ did it.

I will refrain from describing the depths Chris went to in making his novel, which takes place in the 1980s, as accurately as possible. But one small overlap with me naturally sticks in my mind:

In the book, his main character Avery Craig writes a letter on his Macintosh. Chris wanted the feel of the keyboard and the experience of a real Mac to guide his words, so he asked me, and I arranged, to have a vintage Mac, carrying case and all, available to use to make it authentic:

I respect the relentless hustle to do right by his project, to take the full walk around, to not guess but research and find out the true and real world he’s bringing together in this monument of printed pages.

Now, like Chris, you stand at a crossroads.

The nine-volume series begins to come out in 2026, with additional books to come out across a timeline. You can close this window and probably hear about the books coming out then, and buy the first one, fall in love with the tale and tell a friend, or just enjoy them however you enjoy your books.

or.

You can help an author of authentic skill, who redirected his laser-like abilities away from churning out noir after romance after adventure tale, who worked on a truly gigantic project, what very well seems to be the first teen epic, properly promote and prepare this series for a proper literary lifespan.

You see, books suffer.

Not from being able to get somewhere after being printed, to sell some copies after being put on shelves or online, to get a bit of an audience after being out there….

…they suffer because they need promotion and support and a hundred little costs to break through the membrane of life’s distractions and cacaphony to gain a foothold in universal awareness.

This novel series is coming out – that’s not a question. It’s done, getting the kind of polish as it goes to printers and gets distributed through various platforms. It’s going to happen. That’s not what Chris and his family and I are asking of you.

We’re asking for people to contribute support to the campaign and efforts to give this book series the respect and treatment it deserves.

The goal is simple: NO CHEAPING OUT.

No using clip art and basic fonts for the covers. No relying on a couple notes here and there to let people know about the project. No avoiding spending money on talented people in the field of promotion and awareness. The plan, evocatively described on their fundraising page, and the result of years of planning, is to put the same sweat equity into the promotion and sale of this project as was put into its creation, year in and year out, up to this point. The plan, taking up a whole wall of a hallway in their home, is to spend five years on this, half of what it took to make the series in the first place.

And to do that, they need funding. People who are looking to drop not just a few bucks expecting a printed series in their mailbox or inbox in a year or so…. but people who go to the page the Orcutts set up, read the pitch and plan, and said “OK, now this is quality.” People who will, impulsively or after great amounts of thought, put serious coin in the Orcutts’ hands with the understanding they are using this money to bring the all-important promotion of this life’s work to the greatest audience they can find.

The Orcutts will be doing this, what they promise on their page. I will personally refund your money if they don’t. That’s how much I believe in them.

They’ve described the whole project in detail. They’ve laid out the plan. They’ve set out all the good silverware and they’re inviting you in to see what they’re going to do. You either will go “well, uh, see you when it’s out” or you understand, from a person who himself has spent years and years on projects, that now is the time to be shockingly generous. Your contribution will have great ramifications for what this series can do to bring attention to what it is.

Here’s the link.

Just do it. Tell them I sent you.

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