For the past three years, I’ve been working on a novel. After countless revisions even before I wrote a single word, false starts, rewritten chapters, and moments when I wondered whether it would ever truly be done, I can finally say—at least with the necessary quotation marks—that it is “finished.”
The novel is titled The Violent Kind. It is a ~81,000-word literary crime novel with elements of rural noir, contemporary Western fiction, and psychological horror. In its current manuscript format, it runs just over 250 pages.
Set on an isolated Montana cattle ranch, the story follows Earl McKinnon, an aging rancher still haunted by the death of his son and struggling to hold together a life that is steadily collapsing around him. When a mysterious drifter named Cal Toomey arrives looking for work, his presence begins to disturb the fragile balance between Earl and Ruth, Earl’s widowed daughter-in-law. Cal proves capable, hardworking, and unexpectedly kind—but as he brings new life to the ranch, Earl’s grief, suspicion, and resentment begin to harden into something far more dangerous.
The novel is bleak, wintry, atmospheric, and deliberately claustrophobic: a story about violence, guilt, masculinity, inheritance, and the terrible lengths people will go to preserve what they believe belongs to them. More than anything, it is about the things we bury and the ways they refuse to remain buried.
Finishing it feels both surreal and enormously relieving. After living with these characters and this landscape for three years, I’m excited — and a little nervous — to begin the next stage: querying literary agents and publishing companies in the hope of finding the novel a home.
I’ve also hired someone to create a cover for the book (fuck AI!), and the work so far looks extremely promising. Seeing the novel begin to take on a visual identity has made the whole project feel more real than ever.
There is still plenty of work ahead, but for the moment, I’m allowing myself to enjoy this milestone. The Violent Kind is finished. Now I have to send it out into the world.
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