My Wife Would Like A Word With You About My New Novel

So the first chapter in my novel The Cathedral of Portals is up on Royal Road today (scroll down until you see “Prologue: Sky” to read) - and it’s also my birthday. If you want to give me a birthday prezzie and help this experiment along, at least click through to the prologue/link to it and help my traffic for this critical first-chapter debut, 24-hour time period.

(If you don’t plan on reading it chapter-by-chapter as it’s published M/W/F, you can just buy it in advance from Amazon for when it releases on October 30th. Thanks if you have!)

But! I told you how I wrote The Cathedral of Portals for my wife - and Gini herself wanted to tell you why you should read it the long way, starting today, at Royal Road.

Like many authors, Ferrett used to worry that I, his loving wife, was simply indulging him when it came to reviewing his work.

…until the day he handed me the second chapter of a book (not this one!)—and before I completed a full page of his latest draft, I flung his laptop back at him. “No! What are you doing?” I cried. “You lost everything unique about the voice you had in that first chapter! How could you screw it up this badly?!?”

Homie don’t play that.

So when I tell you that the end of this book caused me to pull over to the side of the road and sob for fifteen minutes before we could go on, I’m not kidding. It was so beautiful that I couldn’t function until I had time to absorb it all.

There were also times during its writing that I was so furious with Ferrett that I couldn’t speak to him for at least an hour—what do you mean that’s all you’ve written? How can you leave me like this?!

Originally, Ferrett wrote this book as a gift to me. We had talked about the concept, and I was enraptured and excited. (And very dubious I could pull off the genderless, mercantile religious order I was describing - T.F.) I had so many visions of where it could go and what could happen.

I got almost none of those visions fulfilled (though I’m seeing some of them in the sequel, which he is slowly writing now…).

The book unspooled over the course of two years, with me experiencing the good fortune of having it read aloud to me, a chapter at a time. Over long car trips and curled up in bed, I lived in the Chill and got glimpses of the Incandescent. I fretted for families and clenched my fists in fury over political maneuvering. I cried—but I also laughed.

And shouted with triumph.

And, yes, I tried to pry spoilers out of the author.

I had to wait through the times when Ferrett was too busy to write, or life was too crazy for read-aloud time. But the reward was always worth it.

And now you have a chance to enjoy a taste of my experience. Chapters dropping every few days is not quite the same as waiting for a week or more, and you don’t get the delight of having him read it aloud.

But you can have that community sharing and speculating about what’s coming next. A shared reading experience is the best.

So go read The Cathedral of Portals, and join me.

Also, I told you that if you joined my Patreon at any paid level, I’d donate half the money to the Transgender Law Center to help fight the good fight for trans folk everywhere. Much to my delight, the first month looked like this:

So I did this:

And because someone else didn’t want to use Patreon thanks to fluctuating international rates but did pay in advance for an annual subscription, I donated that whole shebang to the TGLC:

Just keeping it honest.

(Also, obviously if you sign up for the Patreon at the paid level you can read the next two chapters right now, etc etc etc)

One other thing: My birthday is July 3rd. I was an only child - and the only grandchild for the first eight years of my life. So every birthday, I got swept up by a large crowd of loving relatives, brought to my grandparents’ house by Long Island Sound, and we sat on the porch to watch the fireworks glitter over the ocean while they fed me cake.

I thought the fireworks were for me.

Obviously, I caught on at some point - but before that, I was generous. I liked that everyone got to share in my fireworks. And even after I caught on, I still secretly thought of them as my fireworks, made for me but meant for everybody.

A lot of you may be having mixed feelings about our country on its 250th. Some of you may not wanna celebrate, well, for the very reasons I’m donating so much to the trans legal funds.

But I’d hate for you to miss out on the fireworks, if you like them.

So if you want, this weekend doesn’t have to be about, well, that. If it helps, think of it as another birthday celebration, a big gift from a never-grown child who only wants to cheer you up on his birthday.

Anyway. I hope if you do click through to read The Cathedral of Portals that you enjoy it. (And that you do click through!)

Sincerely,

T.F.