The unfinished trilogy.

So, I’m here interviewing Doug Hulick. Doug is a fine writer and a successful one who I've been aware of since I was first published. He's an interesting guy and what happened to him is well worth understanding.

Unashamedly, one topic I'll be focusing on is how after beginning a very successful trilogy, Doug was unable to deliver book 3 into the hands of his eager readers.

Whether there's any insight to be gained here into other even more famous authors who haven't managed to produced book three of their trilogy or book 6 of their septology is not something I can say. Clearly, everyone's struggle is unique to them, but at the very least, it should help anyone with an empathy deficit to try a bit harder to understand that such events are not all about them, nor some kind of crime committed against their right to read.

This is a long interview because, much to the annoyance of many, this is a complicated business full of nuance and also experience that most of us have been lucky enough not to have had to contend with.

I hope you read it all, but if not, three takeaway points are:

i) There are no short easy answers.

ii) Doug is 6'7" and rapier vs rapier he'd likely mess you up.

iii) Among Thieves is a fine read whether or not you decide to follow on to book 2. 

 

Back in 2011, when my first book was published, I had my eye on the other new fantasy authors who were mentioned either along side me, or (more often) without me, as people to watch.

 

Top among those names were Peter Orullian with The Unremembered (look out for his upcoming anthology, Unbroken, in which I have a Snorri short story) and Elspeth Cooper with Songs of the Earth. But rising, seemingly out of nowhere, selling his book hand over fist, was Douglas Hulick with Among Thieves, book one of a planned trilogy titled Tales of the Kin.

 

Since Doug’s debut book came out 4 months before mine, I watched his progress closely, trying to figure out what to expect and what to do. I had no idea what being an author was going to be like. But if it went well, then it was going to look rather like whatever Doug had going on.

 

I did, of course, read Among Thieves. And it’s a fine book. The closest I can think of to its vibe is The Lies of Locke Lamora. It has that same post-medieval Venice feel to it – minus the canals, and the fighting is done with rapier and dagger, and for reasons of style and speed people don’t bother with armour. That and the fact they’re out there living their lives in the city.

 

The focus of this interview, however, is not on the books but on the process of writing them. Among Thieves was followed three years later by book 2: Sworn in Steel. And … then … nothing. In 2017, rather than leave his readers in limbo, Doug announced that book 3: Court of Lies would not be published. He explained the reasons and made his apologies.

 

I’m hoping, with nine years for the dust to settle, to revisit the matter and see what insights are to be had.

 

So, after that really long intro:

 

Hi Doug. Three questions to start us off:

 

How long did it take you to write Among Thieves?

 

Hi Mark. Thanks for reaching out and asking me to discuss this. Hopefully my experiences will be of interest to some, and maybe even a bit enlightening here and there. So, with that said....

 

I started AMONG THIEVES while my wife was doing a month-long visiting medical residency in Juneau, Alaska. I was there as well, and with my days basically free of work and any other responsibilities, I decided it was time to get started on the book I'd been meaning to write for ages. This was back in 1995, I think? I started off by re-reading three other novels I felt captured the feel of what I wanted to go for and outlined their pace and structures. Then I outlined my first three chapters and got started.

 

Now, I don't want people to think this was an an-going, or even constant, process. Once we returned from Alaska, we had to prepare for a move from Illinois to Minnesota, find a place to live, and so on and so forth. A lot of the groundwork on that fell to me. Likewise, afterwards we had to get settled in, I had to look for work - all the usual things. So my time to write was sporadic at best. Then we had our first child. I was the stay-at-home parent, so things got even busier. Add in another move, another child, hobbies, life, and...well, you get the picture.

 

Nor was the writing a straight line. A couple years after getting settled, I found a writer's group called The Wyrdsmiths. I auditioned, got in, and got ready to have them begin reading what I'd written of my novel so far. Except I wasn't happy with what I had. So I started re-writing my draft from the beginning as I handed it out to the group a bit at a time. (In case it isn't clear, I'm more than a wee bit of a perfectionist.) I don't know when exactly this was, but it basically meant I began a complete re-write part way through my initial draft.

 

I can't tell you when I typed "The End." Nor do I remember how long I spent on revisions after that. My default answer to how long it took is ten years, but that's ten years of starts, stops, interruptions, and so on. But yeah, I didn't set any land-speed records with my first novel.

 

Did you think it might get you a book deal?

 

Honestly, I didn't know if my book would sell or not. Besides being a perfectionist, I'm also my own worst critic. I knew the writing was good, but the overall book? I'd been so close to it for so long, I couldn't appreciate the whole thing. All I could see were the flaws. So I didn't really know whether an agent, let alone a publisher, would bite. In fact, I was so uncertain I started writing a completely different book - an urban fantasy set in the Twin Cities in Minnesota - in case my first novel didn't sell. I didn't want to start working on a sequel to a book that might never see the light of day. (In retrospect, this was a mistake on my part, but at the time I thought it made sense.)

 

As it turned out, the first agent who read AMONG THIEVES signed me, and the first publishing house he showed it to bought it. So once it was finally out the door, things moved pretty fast. Which surprised me, since most of the stories you hear from aspiring authors involve queries no one responds to, manuscripts languishing on agents' and editors' desks, otherwise good books that are never picked up for market reasons, and other minor horror stories. I'd steeled myself for a long slog. When the book sold right out of the gate, I was a bit stunned.

 

Did that early success have any impact on you?

 

I don't know if I saw it as success? Or at least, not how I'd learned to judge success. It was picked up in a very basic deal, with a standard (read: small) first-time author advance. It was being released as a mass market paperback, rather than as a trade paperback or even a hardcover. Marketing support was the standard single mention in a trade magazine by the publisher. The only book signings that happened were ones I arranged, and then only at two stores. So it wasn't as if my book was being treated any different than hundreds of others my publisher was putting out that year. As I saw it, I was a debut author hoping to shoot for mid-list author status (if I was lucky).

 

The first hint that things might be developing a bit differently was when my US publisher sold foreign rights at auction in the UK before the book was even published. And even then, the only reason I knew it had gone to auction was because my British editor mentioned it in passing during our initial phone conversation. Other foreign rights sales followed, but again, word trickled in sporadically, usually by e-mail, with minimal information. So while I knew it was uncommon to sell foreign rights right out of the gate for a debut fantasy novel, I didn't realize how unusual it was in terms of how I was performing.

 

Someone described the book at that time as a "sleeper" that rose up and surprised everyone. I think that's a good way to put it. In retrospect, I now realize AMONG THIEVES performed far better and had more success than I had any right to expect, and that I was extremely fortunate it struck a chord with as many people as it did. But at the time I believed the book was doing just a bit of above average in the grand scheme of things, and so I blithely continued on as if nothing exceptional was happening.

 

Your attitude to the possibility of success mirrors both my practice and advice to others. I didn’t write a sequel to Prince of Thorns until I had a book deal for a trilogy. And if my opinion is canvassed on the subject by other writers, I tell them to let their unsold book 1 lie and write a new book. That way they have two things to interest agents/publishers/the audience. Writers that forge ahead with book 5 of a series when between zero and half a dozen people read the first … well, they’re not wasting their time if they’re having fun … but if they hope for success, they’ve got better odds trying again.

 

It sounds as if your lack of awareness of quite how well you were doing should have insulated you from a lot of the ‘expectation pressure’ that might have been associated with the second book. How did the experience of writing book 2 differ from that of writing book 1? You spoke about your perfectionism. But you did manage to call Among Thieves finished and move on to something else. And whilst the three years taken to get Sworn in Steel to the shelves wasn’t the book-per-year industry goal, it wasn’t an unreasonable wait either.

 

I think the biggest challenge I had with book 2 (SWORN IN STEEL) was figuring out how to write it.

 

Let me explain:

 

I'd written my first book, yes, but that had been over the leisurely pace of a decade. That gives you a lot of time to fiddle, back track, re-write, play with plot, and so on. In other words, lots of time to indulge my perfectionist bent. By the time AT went out the door, I'd tweaked it to death, all with no consequences. I could take as long as I liked because no one was waiting on it.

 

Now, with the sale of my book and a contract for two more, I suddenly had a deadline. I'm horrible with deadlines. My entire college career had largely been me sitting at the computer banging out papers the night before they were due - and even then, a fair number got extensions or were handed in late. The idea of producing around one hundred thousand words in twelve to eighteen months (I had extra time between the signing of the contract and the initial release of book 1) sounded doable on paper, and even in my head. But the reality? That was less rosy.

 

See, now I had to do what I had done over ten years in less than two. "Among Thieves" was the first book I'd ever written, so it's not as if I'd had a chance to get the format down or figure out my writing rhythm over the course of a couple trunk novels. I was, in a very real sense, jumping in cold when it came to writing a book in a limited time frame. And what's worse? I didn't even know what the next book was going to about. I mean, I'd set myself a few possible roads to follow in the first book, but there wasn't a direct line running from the first book to the second (or even third) in my head. I had envisioned the Tales of the Kin as an on-going project, with each book dealing with its own main story, and the background imperial plot unfolding over a longer course of time. It was never meant to be a trilogy in my head - rather, I saw it as a series of inter-related books with a connecting thread that would, eventually, be tied off somewhere down the line.

 

Ambitious? Yes. Probably overly so. But that was my initial vision. And while the second book did build on the first, it took a while for me to figure out how I was going to do that. There were a couple false starts, but I finally found the plot. However, I'm a slow writer, so any puzzling or changes on my part tended to bog things down even more.

 

Also, by that time, I'd sold in enough foreign markets and heard enough low-level buzz that I knew I was hitting harder than your average debut. So there was some pressure, both from the outside world and in my own head. As the deadline grew closer, my stress increased. My editor and publisher were incredibly understanding and supportive, but that didn't change the fact that not only did I have a US publisher waiting on me, but also UK, German, Russian, etc. ones as well. In the end, the deadline got extended several times, and I grew increasingly stressed about my word count and the story's progress. By the time I sent the manuscript off, there was enough of a rush to get the book to market that my publisher had me do both the revisions and the copy edits at the same time. But it did get done, and did finally hit the shelves. Except now I had to turn around and start writing another book almost immediately

 

You're right that the standard turn around is a book a year in our field. That isn't typical for every genre or type of writing, but the model (and expectations) in our corner of the publishing world are built around it (unless you're a huge name). I know my sales numbers for the second book took a hit due to the long gap between titles. Readers have been conditioned to a one year release schedule in the fantasy and sci-fi realm, and any break in that pattern can cost an author momentum. SiS did well, but not near the numbers of AT. And I lost the interest of at least one foreign publisher, meaning they canceled the rights for that and subsequent books as a result. So it did have a direct impact.

 

So yes, a three-year gap wasn't horrible, but I could see the effect it had on my career. Plus, the mental pressure of failing to hit my deadline time after time after time, while other writers I knew were hitting theirs (or even handing manuscripts in early), took a big toll on me. Combine that with the stress of my non-writing life at the time and other obligations, and it all meant that I staggered into book 3 already worn down and mentally exhausted. I think I took a whole week off between sending the final version of book 2 in before I felt compelled to start on book 3.

 

The drop off you experienced between book 1 and book 2 was actually not that bad. 57% of readers followed through into King of Thorns, which came out a year after Prince of Thorns. 42% of readers followed through into Sworn in Steel from Among Thieves, despite the three-year gap. I think if you beat 50%, you’re doing pretty well, and you came close despite the wait.

A fairly recent fantasy book that got a big push but wasn’t very well received only had 14% follow through into book 2, despite the gap being just one year.

 

I understand that it felt much worse than it was though, given the circumstances.

 

How much actual writing were you doing in those three years it took to bring Sworn in Steel to the shelves? Were you generating tons of words and throwing tons of words away? Were you writing just a handful of words a day? Were you sitting staring at a screen and finding no way forward. Or were you avoiding the whole thing for long periods because it had become a burden and a torment?

 

How much of book three did you write, and how long did it take to admit defeat?

 

I appreciate your running the numbers on the follow-through sales. And you're right, at the time it didn't feel like it was generating the kind of sales or interest I might have been hoping for. But by that point, I was already fighting Book 3. Anything short of a huge splash on the second book's part wouldn't have registered with me - not out of ego, but because I felt I was behind the eight ball. I'd missed an opportunity to build on the first book by hitting the "traditional" industry release schedule. Add to that the fact that most of my writing peers at that time (people who had sold their first books around the same time I had) were getting their books in on or near their deadlines, and I felt like I was either falling short or playing catch up. (Nobody was saying this to me, of course - it was just something I kept beating myself up with.)

 

As for writing Sworn in Steel, I honestly don't remember my process for that book - it's all a bit of a blur now. I know it took me a while to even figure out what the book was going to be about, and there were a couple of false starts. I tried to write most days (I was raising two young boys at the time, so scheduling could be chaotic), and there were a good number of scrapped words and scenes. I'm neither the most efficient nor fastest writer, so "words written vs words retained" tends to be a disturbingly unpleasant ratio. Nor was it a straight shot - I spent a fair amount of time either trying to figure out what came next or circling back to change or adjust things.

 

So while I got my second book done in two years, it was a grueling slog. By the time I was done, I was mentally and emotionally exhausted. Nor was I happy with the final product. As I said, the revisions and copy editing had been done in one go. They're usually separate processes, but my publisher had wanted to get the book out quickly after all the delays, so the two got compressed into a single step. That means I had a bit of a divided brain when I went through SiS's manuscript, since I was jumping back and forth between word-level edits and story-level rewrites. It was awful. I ended up missing a number of things I would have normally addressed.

 

I recall telling another writer after Sword in Steel came out that I hated every other word in the book. That's hyperbole, of course, and speaks more to my mental state at the time than anything else. I certainly wouldn't say that about the book now. But it gives you an idea of the place I was inhabiting when I turned to Book 3.

 

I jumped directly into Book 3 right after getting things wrapped up with Sword in Steel. As I said earlier, I think I took maybe a week off? (Though I suppose it wasn't really time off because I knew I needed to get to work soon.)

 

I'd had an idea in my head as to the structure of the third book for several years - I wanted to divide the viewpoint between Drothe (the main character in my first two books) and his sister, Christiana. I had thought it would be fun to not only see Drothe from the outside but also tell part of the story from a different point of view. And it was. Nor was it like this was a big stretch - I'd written short stories and my back-up novel this way. Unfortunately, though, while I had a narrative structure, I didn't have an actual story in mind. Once again, I was flying blind.

 

Normally, I'd like to think I could have overcome this in other circumstances. But I think it's safe to say that, by this point, I had something akin to a siege mentality when it came to writing. I'd missed my last deadline repeatedly and was determined not to do so this time; but that simply meant I was putting more pressure on myself to write both fast and effectively. Other parts of my life began to fall away: writing became the only thing I felt I could do. If I wasn't writing, I felt guilty for not doing so; if I was writing, it was never enough. Never enough words, never a clean enough idea of the story, never enough forward momentum. It became a vicious cycle I couldn't get my head out of. Family, hobbies, free time - they all fell away. My world narrowed down to writing, word count, and all of problems I perceived within the story.

 

At its worst, I'd go to bed thinking about what I needed to write the next day, only to wake up aware of all of the errors and shortfalls I'd made the day before. I started circling back within the book, re-writing and revising scenes and chapters based on what might come next in the story, only to have to circle back yet again when what I wrote inevitably didn't match what I had planned. Or as began to happen more often, when I questioned myself and changed the plan again and again.

 

Naturally, I started missing deadlines. And just as naturally, this only increased the pressure and the doubt and the guilt on my end. What little process I had broke down. I started forgetting which version of the story I'd written before, how things did or didn't fit together. At times, I couldn't even be sure about what chapters were done and which weren't. I also had a couple of panic attacks somewhere in there and got diagnosed with depression as well.

 

Now, I want to say that through ALL of this, my editor Anne Sowards and the people at Penguin were nothing but supportive. Every time I needed to move the deadline, Anne obliged me. Any problems I had with writing they took in stride. Frankly, they gave me FAR more rope (and grace) than I had any right to expect. It wasn't until Penguin merged with Random House and the new publishers decided that all outstanding books needed to be finished by a hard deadline that I got any true pressure from them. And even then, right up until the day my third book was due, Anne was trying to help me get something - anything - over the finish line. As long as there was enough to work with, she was going to fight for more time for me.

 

So, on the day before the book was truly, finally due, I compiled what I had so I could send it on to my editor. I figured I was about half-way done, maybe the short side of two-thirds. But when I compiled what I had, I realized two things: 1) my "half" of the book was something like 200,000 or 300,000 words (most fantasy novels run around 100,000 to 150,00), and 2) many of the chapters I'd thought were done earlier in the book? They weren't. What I had after all that time was a collection of inter-connected fragments. There was cohesion to it, but not in any presentable sense outside of the story in my head.

 

All told, I probably wrote over 600,000 words for Book 3, although two thirds ended up in various trash files. And none of it was presentable. I'd been so buried in the trenches and lost in my own mental maelstrom, I hadn't realized that I'd essentially been flailing for nearly two years.

 

When I saw the state of things, I called Anne and told her we needed to cancel my contract for Book 3. There was no way I was going to get her something she could argue for, let alone a finished manuscript, in any kind of workable time frame. Even then, she was understanding and supportive, still trying to pull something out right up until the end.

 

Making that call was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I'd dreamed of being a fantasy novelist since I was around 12 years old. To have to cancel my publishing contract not for any outside reason, but because I hadn't been able to live up to the expectations of the job? Well, I'm still coming to terms with it. But I'll also say this: when I hung up the phone after making that call, I felt like five anvils had been instantly lifted off my shoulders. For the first time in maybe five years, I felt like I could breathe.

 

Why did it happen like this? Why was I so damn hard on myself? Why did getting what I'd always hoped for end up beating me into the ground? I can name a dozen possible reasons, and they will all change from day to day. And none are more correct (or incorrect) than any others. In the end, it's what happened. I won't say I've made peace with that, but I've at least accepted it. I guess that'll have to be enough.

 

Have you written fantasy (or fiction) since? Have you felt the urge?

 

For several years after I cancelled my contract, I thought about it, but it never came to anything. Eventually, I realized I wasn't trying to write because I wanted to; I was hacking away at the page because I wanted to hold onto my identity as "A Writer". But that had been part of the problem - I'd put so much emotional weight into the word "Writer", it had overwhelmed me. I needed to let it go. So I stopped trying to write anything for a good long time, just to see how it went. (Good thing, too - I ended up having a number of health issues that would have interfered with any serious writing I might have tried.)

When people talk about writing, there are always those who say they have to write, or must put words down to feel complete, or they feel compelled to do it. And that's great for them. But it's never been me. While I like Having Written, I'm not the biggest fan of the process itself. Some days I enjoy it, but most of the time it's a fight to get my butt in the chair and produce any amount of words. I'm just as happy doing almost anything else besides writing. But here's the kicker: I always, always feel better after I've written something. Turns out the act of making art helps me level off and feel more content in my life. (Just, apparently, not when I'm on a deadline.)

 

So yeah, I've begun to feel the stirrings of an urge in the last few years. I wrote a couple of short stories I still need to sit down and revise, as well as the skeleton and early musculature of something that, while it was meant to be a short, may turn into a novelette. (None of these are set in the world of my previous books, btw.) I've also got solid ideas for a couple different stand-alone fantasy novels. So far I've been hopping back and forth between them when it comes to research, character sketches, plot ideas, and so on, but I know I'm going to have to choose one if I actually want to get started. And I do want to get started at some point. My brain is getting itchy to tell stories again. Finally.

 

You've talked about pressure to deliver, and about writing difficulties. It feels - correct me if I'm wrong - as if that pressure was (until the Penguin Random House merger at least) largely self-imposed. And that the difficulties were (with zero comment on whether they were fundamental or not) entirely based on your own estimation of the work? Did you have a beta reader/s that you shared the work with as you did it? If so, did they share your reservations? And did the feedback from readers in the form of blog reviews, Goodreads etc reach you at all, and if so, did it add pressure ... or even lessen it?

 

Oh, the pressure was absolutely self-imposed. I mean, my editor did ask about the status of things, but only as deadlines grew near, and then she was always willing to give me an extension/look things over/offer support/what have you. For whatever reason, having a deadline completely undercut me. I think that part of that was the fact that, as I said, I hadn't written anything as complicated as a novel in anything resembling a reasonable time frame (at least as the SFF publishing industry defines "reasonable"). Another part was the dual pressure I was putting on myself to be 1) A Writer, and 2) put out a work that met my own unrealistic standards. Voltaire's "Perfect is the enemy of good" applies to me right down to my bones - I have a hell of a time accepting that good enough is good enough, be it at the sentence, paragraph, chapter, or even book level.

 

As for beta readers, I had them in the form of my writer's group for the first novel and part of the second. But I (and other members of my group) found that publishing deadlines made it hard to make the group's reading schedule and the necessary production rate mesh. In at least a couple of cases, you'd end up having to finish and submit the manuscript before the writer's group got half way through the material you'd been handing out (which in many cases was only a portion of the manuscript because, again, we were all reading each others' work on a rotating basis).

 

Aside from the writer's group, I never had beta readers reading as I wrote. For me, a beta reader was always someone who read the work after the first draft was completed. I'm not sure why it got cemented in my head that way, but the notion of handing pieces off as I wrote them never occurred. Looking back at things now, it seems a rather limited and narrow view of what could be a valuable resource, but that was my mindset. Would it have helped? Maybe. Would it have made the pressure to produce worse? Also maybe. I really have no way of knowing. I expect it could have helped me get out of my own head when it came to Book 3, but I was so fatigued at that point (and had such tunnel vision) it's hard to say for certain. And, again, I have a natural aversion to handing out anything less than clean prose, so it would have been a challenge regardless.

 

I don't recall the reason why any more, but after Among Thieves I stopped reading reviews. There wasn't any great traumatic event behind it - no particularly nasty or harsh reviews that scarred me or the like - but I think I just got tired of some of the silly or petty reasons people would pan a book. I know not every book is for every person, and I'm fine with people not liking something I've written. My attitude has always been that once the books goes to print, it's no longer mine in some ways. I can't control how a person approaches it, what frame of mind they're in when the crack the cover, their personal preferences, and so on. Art is meant to be experienced by the individual partaking of it - the artist's intent behind the creation of that art has to take a back seat to those considerations. I can't tell you how to read my book or what it should mean to you: that's for you to decide. But when people cite things that weren't in the work? When they accuse you, the author, of things that have nothing to do with the work but rather their own agenda? When some people are mean just for the sake of being mean? Well, you can certainly feel that way and write what you want, but it doesn't mean I have to read it.

 

That's not to say that some reviews can't be insightful or even thought provoking, and I'm flattered (and humbled) when people put that much effort and time into talking about my work. And I'm fortunate that I've had far more good reviews than negative ones. But at some point, I decided I didn't want to have to sift through the dross to find the gems. Does that make me defensive of my work? Possibly (I mean, I have an ego like everyone else). But I also believe that most reviews function as a kind of conversation between readers (or potential readers), rather than between the reader and the author. After all, readers can comment on one another's reviews, have a discussion on reddit about a work, and so on. But once an author steps into that discussion? It changes the dynamic of the conversation, usually for the worse.

  

You mentioned a depression diagnosis.  Did you learn anything about the interaction of the condition with the creative process? Do you think the depression grew from the circumstances? Or perhaps it’s a chemical thing that came like weather comes and had to be endured in the same way? Did the pressure to write exacerbate the depression. Did writing ever help with depression in any way?

 

I was diagnosed with depression while I was working on Book 3, so in my mind there's a connection between the two. Prior to that, I didn't really display any symptoms or behaviors associated with the diagnosis. Does that mean the writing caused the problems? Or was I chemically predisposed somehow? Did the act of trying to create under so much stress simply triggered something that was going to happen anyway? Or would it have never happened otherwise? I can't say. All I know for certain is that my depression truly, recognizably, and definitively manifested itself while I was working on my third book. If there was any kind of ramp-up period prior to that, neither I nor no one around me noticed it.

 

And the thing is, I know I'm a different person now. My outlook has shifted. The way I approach things, feel about them, interact with people - it's all subtly different. I've had other health issues since that have provided additional challenges, but the depression...it seems to sit at the center of things. It may ebb and flow, but it's always there, hanging out, like a second shadow attached to your shoes.

 

In the case of writing, yes, there was a distinct break. A hard before-and-after line drawn by my depression. How I used to approach writing, how I thought about it, how I sat down and actually did it, is another land to me. I've tried to recreate it, but I can't go back. Now, writing is harder. It comes with more doubt, more stress, more uncertainty. More discomfort. And yet part of me still wants to do it. Only now, another part of me no longer cares if I do. And I hate that latter part.

Many thanks, Doug. I hope the depression wanes and that writing can be more joy, less chore. I'm sure that what you've shared here will be something someone needed to hear, and it has certainly helped me to better understand the struggle.