If the work is supposed to speak for itself, why is it so damn quiet?

I spent two months writing a book, another month polishing it, and when Kindle Direct Publishing took eight days to choke on my manuscript before rejecting it, my world fell apart.

In three months, I haven’t had the headspace to write a blog.

In three months, I haven’t had the headspace to work on new projects.

In three months, I haven’t had the headspace to do anything but obsess entirely over finishing my new novel.

That’s the problem with this compulsive need to complete: it consumes my mental energy, leaving few resources for the helpful things that would distract me from this current crisis.

So while this eight-plus day period of manuscript malcontent has been a useless, idiotic mental hellscape, outwardly, at least, it’s been pretty damn quiet.

Creative work is supposed to speak for itself, which means it should be so good that people can’t ignore it.

But if that’s the case, why does it feel like “letting the work speak for itself” is tantamount to doing nothing?

Okay, my braincase hasn’t been entirely preoccupied with OCD-driven completionism. I’ve still been able to do utterly useless, bullshit social media crap.

In these last three months, I’ve been quasi-active on Twitter, doling out helpful writing nuggets.

In these last three months, I’ve been practicing a new-to-me, hand-drawn titling technique (while simultaneously dipping my toes into the world of YouTube Shorts).

On the subject of videos and shorts, you may have noticed a new video header on the home page of this website. I overhauled the page, paring it down to the “novelist” essentials while moving my professional creative portfolio to a dedicated subpage. The new video has a corresponding YouTube/Twitter edit with some next-level typography.

And again, in these last three months, I also wrote a novel.

Well, technically, it was done in two months, but the final edits, proofing, and publishing really added up. The book is called “Don’t Be a Monster, Dick!” and this is the official description:

Look, it’s a story about a guy whose penis falls off, turns into a monster, and then terrorizes the city. There’s a military defense contractor, so there’s a lot of toxic phallic imagery. Speaking of phallic, there’s also a wannabe governor campaigning on state’s rights to WMDs. Also, the eponymous monster dick may or may not jump across multiple bodies, regardless of gender.

A dude plays the flute. Another dude beatboxes. There’s a restaurant called “Nips & Sips.” Toxic masculinity meets the symbiotic power of creative expression ... but with lots of dick.

Critically, this story will never be made into a feature film because there isn’t a single studio or platform with the courage to go all in on all dick. I could tell you more, but let’s be honest -- you already know if you’re going to read this one or not. Merry Penis, every one!

At over 70k words, “Monster, Dick!” is the longest book I’ve ever written. Also, per the description, I originally developed the story as a movie. It’s cinematic as fuck, would cut down to a tight 90 minutes, and has key musical elements that simply aren’t as effective in written form. (Although I tried my best.) “Monster, Dick!” also features the eponymous monster dick, which I’m pretty sure would be persona non grata in Hollywood.

And that brings us back to that age-old question, embedded in the very fabric of our reality: what’s the point of writing something if no one is ever going to read it?

The monster dick story excited me (hehehe), and the idea of a novelization was compelling. What could never live on the silver screen could easily be plastered across the digital pages of a Kindle release!

(Cue the suspenseful stinger.)

... or so I thought?

After polishing the manuscript, I launched my new novel on the ebook platform to rule all ebook platforms: Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Publishing is reasonably simple, and after cultivating my small library of books, I’m pretty confident in the process.

After generating a .docx file, I used Kindle Create to format the manuscript. That included adding a copyright page, Author’s Note, About the Author, related books, and a preview of this year’s other novel, “Abraham Owens is Punched, Drunk, & All Out of F*cks!”. Kindle Create exported the manuscript as a single file, ready for upload to KDP.

On the KDP side, I added my description, genre, keywords, and uploaded the Kindle Create manuscript. After setting the pricing and a few other details, my new novel was ready to be reviewed by the Gods of Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.

Typically, the title sits through a short “In Review” process before progressing to “Publishing.” All told, a book goes live in 72 hours, but usually a little quicker.

On the one hand, the “In Review” phase for “Monster, Dick!” went basically as expected.

On the other hand, the “Publishing” phase lasted a solid seven days.

That’s a lot of fucking page refreshes and wondering what the hell is going on. Were they putting new releases onto a hard drive, launching them into space, and reviewing them on the Amazon Moonbase Distribution Colony?

(jkjk -- I know it’s the Moonbase Distribution Center. Amazon doesn’t make their employees live on the moon.)

On the eighth day -- bright and early, before the sun had a chance to rise -- the status of my novel finally changed.

My book was “BLOCKED.”

I checked my email accounts (local and server-side) and spam folders. No email, no notifications. No explanation for why the book was “BLOCKED,” but I could take a wild guess: in addition to the story being about a dude’s dick falling off and turning into a Venom-like mutant monster, there’s a prologue that involves underage sexual abuse that immediately resolves itself with a brutal, 80s-themed castration. There’s even a content warning that explicitly states “underage sexual abuse.”

A theoretical content scraping algorithm doesn’t have to look hard for offending keywords. I even put them in bold.

While the prologue isn’t the most extreme thing ever written (pick a random episode of primetime Law & Order: SVU!), it serves critical narrative functions. First, it’s essential backstory for the story’s main villain. Second (and more importantly), it creates a layer of suspense as to who that villain actually is.

Stay tuned for an exciting third-act reveal!

With the lack of communication from KDP, my anxiety bloomed -- fueled further by that crippling compulsion to finish the fucking project. It should also be noted that the same OCD drive to close out “Monster, Dick!” has kept me from working on anything else of substance. I have an outline (and the first chapter) for the next Abe Owens novel, as well as the first chapter written for another screenplay adaptation -- but I can’t turn my focus to these new endeavors (or, you know, blog) until “Monster, Dick!” is truly, finally, click-here-to-buy finished.

It’s fucking exhausting.

It’s been three months, and I’m ready for it to be done.

I’m ready to move on to the next thing, but I still need closure.

As of this writing, I’m cautiously optimistic: after spending those fateful 24 hours working out how to break up with Amazon KDP (nothing but reasonable, measured responses over here) and growing more furious over a generic, soulless algorithm pushing puritanical guidelines onto my creative narrative ... I finally received a response from Amazon. Two, actually.

The first: the book was blocked -- not because of subject matter or violation of those puritanical guidelines -- but because of one or more smileys in the manuscript.

... pardon me, I just fucking died.

Suddenly, I knew exactly what the issue was. I have a standardized list of review pull quotes in my About the Author blurb. Two of those quotes are for my short story “#TextMe😘” and for some reason, Kindle has a hard time rendering emojis.

My book was blocked because of an emoji in a short story title that had absolutely nothing to do with my “Monster, Dick!” novel.

But wait ... there’s more!

The second response I got from Amazon said they reviewed the information I provided (“I’m pretty sure I set it up like all my other books!”) and had approved the book for publishing, no changes.

... okay. Wow.

I still edited the manuscript to take out the two emojis (as opposed to coming up with a different prologue -- I’ll fucking torch those emojis myself!) and can report that the book is marked “Live,” and the updates are in review. I’m not entirely sure what “Live” means in this instance because there is no live product page.

But it’s a step in the right direction. Like I said: I’m cautiously optimistic.

Plus: on my morning walk, I started working through the details of a new short story (sans emojis), so maybe this OCD completionist nightmare is almost over?

In the end, yes, the work should speak for itself. But what the hell is the point if no one can hear it?

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