I’ve Been Hiding This From You

Why War After War Comes First Now & what the Author Room will show you as I build it in public

Why did I hide it? Maybe because there’s always a first, and we never know we’re watching it.

There was a first modern human, the first one whose mind could hold an idea that wasn’t in front of his face. Not memory. Not instinct. Imagination. That leap forward. The ability to conjure a thing that isn’t there, to see a story before it exists.

And with that new power, he disappeared into the dark caverns to meet what the mind can summon when the lights go out. He came back trying to translate the vision, trying to give the tribe language for what he saw. And the tribe did what tribes do when fear gets embarrassed: they called it madness, they called it evil, they tried to silence him.

Later, some tribes learned to protect the shaman instead of burning him, but the old reflex never died. It just changes costumes…from inquisitions to Salem to the little modern rituals of ridicule.

And that’s the part that should make this easier: you’re not reading this in a village that burns people at the edge of town.

Substack, at its best, is the rare tribe that protects its shamans. It’s a place where the one who goes into the cave can come back out and be heard, even if the vision is strange at first, even if it makes people uncomfortable, even if it refuses to fit inside the neat little boxes the world hands us.

And still…my fear persists. Because the oldest fears don’t need torches anymore. They live in us. They sound like laughter you haven’t even heard yet. They look like a blank stare. They feel like that moment right before you admit, out loud, this is what you’re called to do and you worry the room will decide you’re ridiculous.

Here’s the ugly bind you live in when you’re the kind of person who reads, studies, and keeps reaching for understanding: the tribe treats you like contraband and currency at the same time. One day you’re the “know-it-all,” the try-hard, the one who “thinks too much.” The next day, when the room is on fire, everybody suddenly wants your map.

Even the Bible mirrors that tension. In Genesis, the Tree of Knowledge isn’t framed as a cute upgrade. No. It’s the moment innocence collapses and consciousness turns on. And notice what happens socially: when the leap toward knowing brings consequences, the story funnels blame onto a woman. Eve becomes the face of the disruption, the one the tribe can point to so it doesn’t have to face its own hunger for comfort. The pattern is ancient: when knowledge changes the social order, somebody gets tagged as the problem.

So if you’ve ever felt that hesitation, ever dimmed your curiosity, softened your intelligence, played smaller so you wouldn’t be mocked or resented then you’re not imagining things. You’re feeling the old tribal reflex pressing on you: know, but don’t make us uncomfortable with what you know.

So here’s the reveal. The “this” I’ve been hiding from you isn’t a scandal. It’s a book.

For nearly a decade I’ve been carrying a novel called War After War. It follows two childhood friends who grow up on the same plantation with one born into slavery, the other the son of the plantation owner and they get thrown into the violent reordering of the world. After the war, they don’t just walk away and call it peace. They join forces in the fight to preserve freedom during Reconstruction, when the country starts trying to take back, through terror and law, what it couldn’t hold onto on the battlefield.

And I’ve been hiding it for the same reason you’ve hidden parts of yourself: because saying it out loud turns the private calling into a public risk.

Now that you know what I’ve been carrying, the only honest thing left is to stop treating it like a private hobby and start building it in public.

So let me ask you to imagine something: what if George Lucas had a platform like this while he was still wrestling Star Wars into existence? Not the finished myth, no, the messy becoming. The false starts. The character problems. The days the story wouldn’t cooperate. The little breakthroughs that finally made it click. You wouldn’t just be a consumer of the final novel film adaptation you’d be a witness to the forge.

That’s what the Author Room is going to be here. Alongside the receipts and the analysis you came for, you’ll also get the book in motion: pages, problems, choices, and the hidden scaffolding and also why a character needs a particular wound, why a scene has to hurt, why a single sentence can take a week.

And in the next Author Room, I’m going to tell you what started this decade-long obsession in the first place as to what haunted me, what image wouldn’t lift, what question kept reopening. Once I name it, you’ll understand why War After War wouldn’t let me go… and why I’m done hiding it.

If you want to help me bring War After War across the finish line, join the Author’s Room (default $99, minimum $81). You’ll watch this novel get built in public with draft updates, research receipts, character framing plus one exclusive excerpt and one live Q&A, and when the book is published you’ll receive an author-signed copy of War After War.

And to be clear: this is historical fiction. It’s a novel meant to move you, entertain you, and haunt you in the best way. This is not a documentary. But the bones are real: Reconstruction is the buried origin story of so many modern battles over votes, bodies, and who the law protects, and fiction is sometimes the only way truth gets past the guards in our heads.

Set your amount: $99+ gets you in. You can fill in this field and lower it close to $80 if that’s your lane or set it as high as the sky if you want to really underwrite this work. Adjust up or down as you need but either way, you’re helping prove there’s an audience for stories bigger than another cape.