It's You & Me

There’s a lot to catch up on, so let’s start with one of the most exciting things. For many years I’ve chronicled my journey here to completing my first novel. These would be all the entries on this site mentioning “Wake the Drowned”, though I have since renamed it to the more palatable “Now Leaving Middleton”. In my own real-life plot twist, Now Leaving Middleton did not end up being the first novel I actually completed.

Back in October 2022, around the 19th anniversary of when my wife and I started darting, an insane idea popped into my head. We often mused at the time that our story felt straight out of a teen romcom movie, so I thought, why not make that a reality? And why not make that a gift to her for our 20th anniversary?
I had less than twelve months to plan, outline, write, edit and format for printing an entire novel, even though I’ve never completed one before, nor have I ever written romance. At the end of the day, a perfectly realistic goal, right?

Well apparently it is, when it’s fueled by love and dedication. Pardon the corny. It also didn’t hurt that I knew the subject matter pretty intimately. And though I took many, and sometimes significant, artistic liberties in order to fit our story into a proper romance arc, there are huge chunks of the novel that match nearly one-for-one to true events. The secret mutual crushes, back-stabbing friends and unsupportive bigoted parents that exist within the pages were all based on real life. The resulting book was as much a market-ready teen romance book as it was a true family chronicle.
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The one thing I really wanted out of this project though was an actual physical book, and here it is in all its glory:

Now, let’s be clear, this is not published, but it is printed, with only six copies in existence, all of which are at our house. Formatting this from scratch to look like a real published book when you open it was a tonne of fun, as well as designing my own cover, back cover and spine. Here’s a sample of what it looks like on the inside:

One last note I want to make is on the title. Aside from the obvious reference to my wife and me, it’s also a play on our own song, which played the same important role in our relationship as it did for Aurora and Connor, the heroes of the book. Except in our case, the song was Lifehouse’s “Hanging by a Moment” rather than the titular “You and Me”.

And that’s the story of how a labour of love turned into the first novel that I’ve ever completed. Getting this milestone out of the way and proving to myself that I can do it was immensely important in removing some mental roadblocks for me. I quickly finished my second novel soon after, and have a couple of other projects on the go I’m excited about. It also opened up for me an opportunity to test out the querying world and trying to get an agent to get the book published, and that story is worth its own post.
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The hardest part though was probably working on such a large writing project and not being able to share anything about it with my wife. Though the surprise at the end was completely worth it. And if you think I’ve learned my lesson, think again, because I’m currently working on another inspired by and dedicated to her novel. Good thing she doesn’t check this website.