Hey everyone, hope you’re doing well. This has been a strange time for me — for all of us, I’m sure — and I’m actually releasing a second book this month! It’s been a wild ride, here’s the story of how it happened.
Inside the Dedication: Mom & Dad
Back in 2017, I won a hackathon with a very bright team of people I was instantly good friends with. We decided to start a tech company. My mom and dad helped as much as they could, but at the end of the day our fledgling company folded because we didn’t have the network to build investment or traffic. We were also rookies, which basically just meant people didn’t want to take the concept seriously.
I got my foot into the world of startup founders, though, and as the company’s condition deteriorated after a falling out between myself and my cofounder, I had some time on my hands. My parents through all of this did everything they could think of to support me both financially and emotionally through one of the most difficult experiences of my life, and at the end of the day, all that’s really left from any of it is the book I wrote as I tried to get my life back together once I realized my company was doomed.
The Writing
The writing phase of A Murder in the Silicon Hills took two parts to complete and get right. I was on a time crunch the first time around, so I had to work extra hard to try to get the book to press on time. I opted to try to win an Amazon book deal. I actually scrapped the project entirely to work on my philosophy and find better paying work when this novel route to publication didn’t work out.
I spent a lot of time in coffee shops from January 2018 to the beginning of March, 2018, and what I was doing was mostly just hammering out the first draft of the work. I had hoped the outlandish plot would reflect the nihilism I felt during this dark time in my life and draw attention from people who wanted fresh voices to promote.
Though it ended up not working out, I didn’t throw the manuscript away. Instead the book sat on the shelf for two years until I discovered my new favorite social network, Cent.
The Re-write
The final draft of A Murder in the Silicon Hills actually came out concurrently with the development of Bring Back Satire. I committed to releasing two chapters per week (go to beta.cent.co and search for A Murder in the Silicon Hills: Chapter (number) to have a peek at the progress thus far) until the whole book was out, with the idea that I would release it to Amazon as another self-published work in due course.
I was forced to go back and cut the work into shorter chapters as one of the first things. The audience didn’t want to read more than about 1500 words in one sitting. That was fine with me, it meant I got to delay some of my proofing until the end, but I also was able to develop a bit of a feel for what was exciting to my readers as I watched the audience engage differently with different chapters.
The most interesting thing about the experience came when I accidentally forgot to release chapters on given days — the audience, which I had assumed would be upset, actually responded by encouraging me with more seeds the next time I was able to make it on time. An interesting development indeed.
The Plan, Moving Forward
I’d already finished the manuscript when Bring Back Satire was launched, but there was a lot of detail work that needed to be attended to. Formatting, spacing — it takes a lot of work to put a quality paperback together!
I needed a bit of time to get all of this work knocked out, and after launching Bring Back Satire I had plenty. The darkness of the plot, the cruelty of the characters to one another, and the strange conclusion it all came to happened on the fly, during the first write. My task during revision was mainly to make sure everything made sense, that the chapters were opened and closed on appropriate notes, and that the characters were relatable.
I also felt a prime value point for the reader was the fact that I could use the text to explain the general concept of AI in a novel, instructive way. I remember reading an action book years ago that was called Sandstorm. The author actually took the time to explain buckyballs and some other interesting physics — I was hooked on the detail!
Naturally, A Murder in the Silicon Hills took a similar form. It is simultaneously an exploration of the ethics of a startup and the difficult relationship between cofounders, as well as a dark commentary on the role of capital in the VC-backed startup world. As it delves into AI from the theoretical perspective in a very sci-fi type of way, it also delves into the culture which has so much in common with this technology.
The plan, moving forward, is to finish releasing a book about tech and VC on a VC-backed tech platform known as Cent, where the first 30 odd chapters have already gone out. I find this to be an ironic, fitting mechanism to introduce the world to the work with. The community there really enjoys the work, and I’m thrilled to say it’s ready to pick up at Amazon.com if you want to read the whole thing. I actually have four books for sale there, to date, so go have a look if you're interested!
