Bit Flip Turns One

It’s hard to believe a year has gone by since the release of my debut novel, Bit Flip. It seems like just yesterday I was celebrating with many of you at book events around the country, from San Francisco to New York, Seattle to Chicago, and a dozen other locations in between, including my home town of Appleton, Wisconsin.

The live events, which varied in format from book signings to fireside chats, panel discussions to book groups, are my fondest memories of the launch. As an author, those forums are a chance to engage directly with readers about your work and the topics and questions you hope to raise. To my gratification, the discussions mostly focused on exactly what I intended the book to be—a critique of Silicon Valley tech culture, told through a cautionary tale.

For all of you who have come out to events, bought the book, read the book, reviewed the book, and recommended it to others, I am enormously grateful. Writing novels is something I do because I love doing it, certainly not for any aspirations of fame or fortune. More than anything, through my work, I simply hope to stimulate self-reflection and thought provoking conversations. And I hope I’ve done that with this book, as well as the subsequent discussions I’ve had in interviews, articles, podcasts, and other media forums. 

Another fun activity around the launch was my Bit Flip Virtual Book Tour—a series of over twenty short videos posted on my YouTube channel in which I explore different real-world locations that have cameos in the book. Although shooting these with my tripod and iPhone garnered plenty of curious onlookers, they have, to my astonishment, collectively garnered over 75,000 views—or about one view per person-year of time I put into producing them. So check them out.

My other observation a year later is I feel like I’m finally just now starting to get in the groove of being an author—and the constant context switches this vocation demands. Publishing any book requires three main phases of effort: writing the book, editing the book, and promoting the book. I currently have a novel in each of those three phases. I’m still promoting Bit Flip while I’m in the final editing stages of my second novel, Burner, and I'm busy writing my third novel, Outage. The baton pass of each of these projects will happen nearly in tandem. With this one-year milestone, the promotional efforts on Bit Flip will wind down, and I’ll shift my promotional focus to Burner, which comes out April 16, 2024. At the same time, as Outage moves into the editing phase, I’ll begin writing my next novel.

Doing this for the first time, I have a newfound respect for authors who crank out a book a year and have ten, twenty, thirty or more books to their name. It’s a never-ending cycle, requiring very different brain power—from the uninterrupted flow-state of writing, to the meticulous attention to detail of editing, to the tireless whirlwind of activity of promotion. But I’ve found I enjoy each phase for different reasons—in part, precisely because each exercises different parts of my brain. I feel very fortunate to have found such a gratifying new career at this stage in my life, and I strive to continuously improve as an author.

So happy birthday to what will always be my first literary baby. And thank you all again for your support.