Book News: Vyx Starts the Mythpocalypse

A long-awaited writing update

During the pandemic lockdown, I wrote a book about traveling across the United States. Before March 2020 changed all our lives, I had planned a trip by train across the country, towards Chicago and then California, and back through the South. I was going to write a book from my sleeper cabin, about a child whose parents were taken by the government. I had postcards printed with a piece of art by my friend Asha Ganpat that had inspired the story, and I love the artwork, but a much different story emerged as I began to write. I was going to call it Fox Girl Running.

Vyx became older than the girl riding the fox, with stars for eyes. To keep myself going, I wrote a chapter a week, and posted it on Patreon every Sunday. This kept me from being able to go back and edit, which was very freeing at the time. To my amazement, I crafted a working story with a proper arc in exactly 30 chapters. When I edited it into a book, I performed necessary housekeeping, applying foreshadowing, explaining things better, and ensuring everything followed from the premise. But the story itself, and all the characters, remained as they were when I wrote them.

Sometimes stories work out this way. Blade of Dishonor was much the same; I set a framework of three parts, had vague ideas of where they led, and in six months I had an adventure novel that spanned from World War II to a secret fight club in modern-day Tokyo, and a nationalist cult that wanted to foment another war with North Korea. Other times, as with Bad Boy Boogie, what hatches from the egg is entirely different from the hen. That began as a NaNoWriMo challenge that I called Bury the Hatchet, and focused not on Jay Desmarteaux, but his friend Tony, and was more of a comic novel than a thriller.

It worked out in the end. Fox Girl Running became Vyx Starts the Mythpocalypse, as Vyx is still figuring things out, and in their words, “I’m just me.” At twelve, Vyx is very much a child, if a smart and resourceful one, who makes some very helpful friends. Still young enough to wear a homemade fox hoodie, but smart enough to know when to run to Grandpa’s house. Even if he lives clear across the country in the mountains of California. On the way, Vyx will face monsters and make allies both human and mythical, as the walls between our worlds come crumbling down.

You’ll meet Vyx and friends soon. This art is by my good friend Kim Parkhurst, and I couldn’t ask for a better artist to capture the world in the book.

And for posterity’s sake, here is the postcard with Asha’s art, the old title, and the first page of the handwritten novel. If you came here from Patreon, you likely read the first draft of this book. I am working with my longtime editor and book designer Jaye Manus to publish both an ebook and a print edition in the coming months. Signed copies will be available directly from me. I will try to have at least one signing at a local bookshop. I’ll keep you updated via this newsletter.

The sequel, Vyx Stops Weathergeddon, is already pushing me to write it. If I do so, it will be through Substack, in the same weekly fashion that I used for the first book. If you’re not a paid subscriber, you can see a preview (much like the stories in my Archive) and join with a 7-day free trial. My Pine Baron adventures and other posts will remain free, as always, with comments open to all readers. I wouldn’t have it any other way.