A talk with Kyle Wolfson about the apocalypse.

Today, an interview with my client Kyle Wolfson, author of the surprisingly funny and unsurprisingly harrowing post-apocalyptic political thriller "DERT"

Originally published at the Jason Pettus newsletter on January 20, 2024, and republished here at this website on the same day.

Happy 2024! As mentioned in the last issue, I'm changing the format of this newsletter a bit this year, making them smaller in length but published more often (hopefully every Friday this year...and I mean it this time, I swear to Bob), and mostly concentrating now on interviews with my clients whose books have recently come out. Today that's with Kyle K. Wolfson, a Georgian who isn't new to publishing (he's already self-published the 2018 literary experiment The Haunting of Abraham Lincoln) but who has really hit a big new high point in his career with the recent release of his political thriller, DERT.

Set in a day-after-tomorrow future in which climate change has gotten even worse than it currently is, it's the story of a political radical who manages to get elected President based on mass fear from the population, then once in office creates a cult of personality that leads to an authoritarian dictatorship, using the legitimate instruments of power to create quasi-illegal new organizations in which to do their bidding, such as the new Cabinet-level Department of Environmental Reclamation and Trust (the "DERT" of the book's title), giving their almost religious political organization unprecedented powers that feel like they should be illegal, if they hadn't manipulated the system to make them perfectly legit in the eyes of the law. The clever twist? Instead of this being a male far-right conservative who veers into fascism, the person at the center is a female far-left liberal who veers into Stalinism; and instead of a Department of Homeland Security engaging in torture at Guantanamo Bay like in real life, the members of DERT (the “Gaia” political party) set up re-education camps across the Midwest in the style of Mao's Cultural Revolution, where brainwashing and brutal beatings are used to turn a nation of middle-class suburban capitalists into "Gaia true believers."

It's freaking amazing, and I'm not just saying that because I got paid to edit it (although, as always, for the sake of my professional ethics, let me remind you that I did get paid to edit all the books I feature here at this newsletter). In fact, I can honestly say that this is a manuscript I would've signed to my own small press back in the day, if it had come in as a submission back then; and I can only say that once or twice a year as a freelancer, so it's pretty much the highest compliment I can pay a book. After a long production process that lasted almost a year, the book is now finally out, and I'm so excited to kick things off here in 2024 with this extended talk I recently had with Kyle about it. I hope you find this both interesting and informative for your own publishing journey.

So first, let's talk about the fact that you already self-published a book before this one, a historical novel called The Haunting of Abraham Lincoln that cleverly takes a look at the dreams of him, John Wilkes Booth and others to tell the story of the last days of Lincoln's life. What kind of experience did you have with that, in terms of bringing in outside help versus how much you did yourself, and how did that influence the way you went into DERT when it finally came time to ramp that manuscript up to publication?

I really enjoyed writing that novel. It was the first book I ever wrote, and I think it was a great first project, being historical in nature, a large amount of the story already existed. Since the history books provide the framework of events, it made it a lot easier to build a story around it. I don’t know if I could have managed to write a novel from scratch on the first try.

However, the self-publishing aspect of it was a complete failure. Once I finished writing the manuscript, I had a friend who was an author do the editing, for $300 she edited my entire book. I queried a bunch of agents to no success and then decided to self-publish on Amazon. That resulted in an embarrassingly formatted paperback book with a blurry self-made cover. It obviously resulted in zero sales, even though I believed I really had a bestseller on my hands.

I enjoyed writing and crafting stories in my free time, but I didn’t really have any interest in doing the legwork necessary to sell copies. My feeling was that I had a good book, and people would recognize that on their own and bring fame and riches to me out of the goodness of their heart.

A few years later, the woman who had edited my book contacted me about re-publishing the story with a new title, cover and a full development/copy edit with her newly started publishing company. I agreed and finally saw what a real edit of a book looks like. However, yet again it registered hardly any sales before sinking to the bottom of the Amazon wastelands. In my mind, the publisher should handle all of the extra work and I just write new stories. That strategy didn’t pan out either.

That brings us to the beginning of 2022. In addition to the already published Lincoln novel, I had three other manuscripts that I wanted to move forward with. I had enough experience to realize the very first thing I needed was a high-quality editor and that led me to you.

I think the biggest thing with my self-publishing experience this time around is a commitment to doing all the work.

I’m not a social media person, but I must do it.

I don’t want to have a newsletter, but I must do it.

And that goes with every aspect of getting a book to market, there are endless amounts of grunt work to be done and if you want to sell books, you have to do it. I think so many authors starting out have the same view I did when I started, “I wrote a book, isn’t that enough?”

Easily what I think is the most interesting thing about DERT is how you subvert expectations for a post-apocalyptic novel -- the President who ends up becoming sort of an authoritarian dictator is actually a radical liberal, who uses climate change to bend the laws in the same way the Bush administration used terrorism to pass the Patriot Act, create the Department of Homeland Security, etc. Meanwhile, our heroes are a middle-class suburban couple who in a previous age might be described as moderate Republicans. Yet you write about these subjects in a complex, nuanced way, so that they're still very interesting and thought-provoking without being polemic. What made you decide to come at the story from this angle, versus the very well-known trope of the right-wing fascist authoritarian who creates a new Nazi state, and the plucky activists who rage against the system?

This is probably the hardest question for me to answer, because I feel like I could go on for hours discussing the nuances between different dictatorships, the political dynamics at work and how I feel about them.

But the reasonably short answer is that this book was written with the Chinese Communist party and Chairman Mao as its inspiration for the villains.

I think the Nazis are a great template for writing villains, but there are plenty of other monsters out there as well. My issue with how Nazism would play in this context has to do a lot with my understanding of history.

• The Nazis generally were exporters of terror. Their biggest crimes were committed outside of Germany’s borders and against foreign populations. DERT is about what is happening inside the USA.

• The Nazis were not overly concerned with converting people to their ideology. It’s hard to convince people who aren’t Aryan to support Aryan supremacy. In general, if people submitted to the Nazis' control, the Nazis wouldn’t worry about their private thoughts. DERT is about an ideology that demands to be embraced, tolerating it isn’t good enough.

So, the ideology explored in DERT is based on my readings of the re-education camps and thought reform that was administered on the Chinese population after the Communists seized control of the country. It also stems from my beliefs when it comes to fascism. To me, at its core, the principle of fascism is control. Nationalism, racism, right-wing, etc. are just symptoms of the disease, the desire to control people is the driving force.

That is what we deal with in DERT, is the desire of the Gaia party to control the population and the easiest way to do that is to rely on the tactics of the Communists. In a country the size of the US, it’s hard to control the population with authoritarian tactics from the get-go, you are going to get a lot of pushback.

But by wielding non-lethal tools (public humiliation, self-criticism, societal pressure, stripping status and assets and a bit of FOMO of being on the wrong side), The Gaia Party gains the levers over power peaceably, and then has free reign to rely more heavily on violence to cement their control.

Studying the Chinese Communist methods is a little hard, because there isn’t a lot written about them. But if you do get a chance to read about what was done during and after the revolution, it is astounding. The term “Brainwashing” was invented to describe the methods of control that Mao’s acolytes force on the people. That is something I tried to explore in DERT. When our main characters are in the camps, everything would be easier if they just gave in and accepted the teachings, instead of clinging to what they believe to be true.

As for the main characters, they are obviously based on my wife and I, the desire to raise them up as champions of the little people, to give them heroic storylines where they topple to the evil government and repay all the injustices against them is very strong. But I decided that wasn’t the type of book I wanted to write. This isn’t about being heroes, it’s about surviving. So they are presented as two regular people who possess a normal level of skill. The goal is to write a realistic story, not a self-aggrandizing story about how if given the chance all I would need is a knife and a faithful dog and I could solve the nation’s problems.

Speaking of that, one of the most clever things I think you do in this book is have our perpetually fleeing heroes end up in three different settlement camps of sorts, with one of them being run by far-right conservatives and the other by far-left liberals, and showing how both of them were equal nightmares to our protagonists, just in different ways. [For newsletter people who are curious, the third settlement is a harshly pastoral Luddite matriarchal community out in deep Illinois farmland.] How do you find a good way to talk about politics without making the book itself political?

I think I stuck with the general writing advice of writing about big things in a small manner. DERT isn’t about solving the eternal question on what government is best, it’s about how these characters fit in a changing world.

As I got deeper into the book, it became clearer to me that this was not about politics at all, but about human nature. Our characters are not driven to their respective sides because they feel a certain way about a certain issue, they choose sides because of how they want to be viewed, how they view themselves or what they value. Environmentalism is the core issue in the book, but I think it’s hard to find a character that truly cares about the environment in a real way, instead it’s a tool to make them feel the way they want to feel, to be perceived as they want to be perceived.

Dystopian books are a dime a dozen that rely on the clear-cut tropes of heroic white men who fend off the atheistic hordes with his assault rifle and Bible. But I tried hard to not commit my book to one side or the other, I hope that people of all political persuasion can find something interesting in DERT and how it approaches these topics. It tries to be less manifesto and more discussion.

One of my favorite comedians is Mike Birbiglia, he does these one man shows where he really digs into an important topic (marriage, parenthood, death) and talks about the lessons he has learned. I think what makes his shows connect so well with me is that he doesn’t present the lessons as a lecture about how you should behave, but instead a story of how he learned something. It’s a much more effective tool to share your experience with the audience instead of preaching at them.

You had an unusually long manuscript when you came to me, and in fact one of the things we initially discussed was tightening up the word count. Where did you get your initial numbers for what constitutes a "too long" novel? Did you just feel it yourself, or did early readers tell you? Now that your book is published and has been out a bit, what has the reality been versus what you heard about this subject beforehand? Are you happy with the smaller version, or do you pine for the "Wolfson Cut?"

My goal with a novel when I start is 100K words. If I get over that number, I feel like I’m overachieving, if I fall short it feels like I skimped somewhere.

My personal preference is to shy away from overly descriptive segments. I don’t enjoy reading books that rely heavily on that writing style, I want to get to the point. However, I always worry that it negatively impacts my own writing. I cut things too short, skim over details and end up with chapters that are abrupt and books that don’t feel complete. That’s an ongoing battle that I don’t think I will ever win.

It's really hard when you are writing to look at your work with an honest eye, in my writer’s mind if I wrote it, it must be important. So, I think every story I bring to you as the editor will be a battle of “Is this really necessary?” and “Is that all you wanted to say here?”

I think DERT benefited tremendously from being cut down, especially in the political elements that we just talked about. If it takes half a page to get my point across, then I’m not really getting my point across. So, cutting it down, getting to the point faster and clearer made for a much better read and much clearer statement.

I don’t think there is any benefit to the “Wolfson Cut” of DERT, it’s longer, less concise, and more indulgent. 

One of the things I find extremely interesting about your post-publication marketing campaign is that you tried out these recommendations that usually are only done by self-publishers cranking out fast and cheap genre thrillers exclusively for Kindle Unlimited, where the whole point is to poop out a book every month and then SEO and keyword the hell out of it; yet you wrote much more of what would be called a literary-fiction thriller, something very smart and dense and in the category of books that get discussed on NPR, which is simply never going to happen with Knocked Up by the Billionaire Mobster, as much as I love my romance clients who write those kinds of books. So what happened?! Have you been able to sell a thick, meaty literary thriller using the techniques of the monthly genre quickies? Would you recommend this for other literary writers?

My marketing campaign is guided mostly by trial and error.

When I embarked on my current self-publishing endeavor, I tried to commit myself to being clearsighted about my novel. It’s not a masterpiece, I am not a literary genius and fabulous success is not going to just show up at my doorstep because I got 100K words into a single document. The only way it’s going to have any success is hard work and commitment.

Of course, this desire to be honest leads to a different form of self-delusion. I tried applying genre fiction tactics to my own novel, that doesn’t really fit into that genre. My book is a dystopian tale but doesn’t look anything like the best-selling Kindle books in that category. My desire to be humble told me that if it was working for them, then I needed to follow the trail blazed by the category leaders.

So, it took a while and some guidance from you to accept that my book is different, it fits in the literary fiction category more than it does the relevant Kindle categories.

Of course, the path forward for literary fiction is far murkier than genre fiction, so I’m working on trying to find what can be incorporated into my plan and what I can abandon.

Part of the issue is that when you search out self-publishing help online, it skews heavily to genre fiction tactics, but without the disclaimer of saying that it only applies to certain type of books.

Still, I think trying everything and then figuring out what works is a better strategy than trying to pick and choose to start with. If I had been pickier, I probably wouldn’t have tried anything at all other than some FB post and given up in frustration again. So, I may have wasted a fair amount of time collecting emails of people that will never read my book, but I gain experience and commitment to figuring it out.

What’s worked best is collecting ARC readers via Instagram, I got good reviews for my book and a building block of people interested in reviewing my next novel. For advertising, most of my sales have come from Facebook Ads.

And speaking of this, you've decided to write a sequel! What has that process been like so far, and how much are you worrying in it about catching people up who didn't read the first book? You never give a definitive answer at the end of the first novel as to the ultimate fate of this post-breakup apocalyptic America, where the federal government right now is only really keeping full control over the area of New England immediately surrounding Washington, so there's always an opportunity for an entire "Wolfsonverse" if you wanted. Is that something you've ever thought of doing? Or perhaps porting the concept out into other media like a roleplaying game? How much do you like the idea of adhering to a genre series, and how much of you just wants to move on to an entirely different kind of book?

DERT was a story about marriage and my wife. We were newly engaged when I started writing the story and it was a bit of a love story by the end of it. I conceived the story for the sequel to DERT just before the arrival of my first child. I was working on an edit of DERT and thought about how I would react in a civil war type of situation now that I have a wife and child that depend on me. I love my country and have a strong desire to fight for my values and beliefs, but there is a counter feeling that my first duty is to my family. No matter what faction gains control of the country, my wife and daughter will have a better life if I am alive. How should a man answer that question?

I imagine it as a trilogy, the first book is about the father, second about the mother and third is about the child growing up in this dystopian world. I have the first draft of the first book done. Hoping to have it ready for you soon. It is not a direct sequel; it predates the original DERT in the timeline by a few months.

I do hope to build a bit of a “DERTverse.” So far, I have only told very narrow stories focused on individuals, but I think there is room to expand the direction of the story to include the outcome of the war and the fate of the country.

This book is really the first book I’ve written that is in the same genre as a previous book. I hope to keep writing the stories that inspire me instead of just picking a formula and sticking to it.

And to end things along those same lines, I don't think it hurts to admit that we're currently editing your newest novel as we speak. I'll leave it up to you to decide how much you'll want to talk about it in public while we're still working on it, but I think it's safe to state that it's not connected to the DERT universe at all, and is in fact an entirely different kind of story in a brand-new genre altogether. How does it feel to be actively working on that at the same time you're still marketing and promoting DERT?

My current promotion of DERT is mostly driven by Ads on FB and Amazon, which don’t require much attention. However, I am currently working on writing two new books, I have two other manuscripts that are just waiting around for when I have time to address them and we are editing The Vegas Flop to get it ready for release in May, plus all the work I am trying to do on getting the pieces lined up for a successful release, so my biggest complaint is not enough time.

I really believe that writing also comes first, it’s the easy thing to let slide to another day, but it’s the most important. So, I try to focus on my writing first each day and get done whatever other tasks I have time for, which with two kids isn’t much. I keep hoping I will find a sweet spot of time when I can get ahead on all of my to-do items, but I haven’t gotten there yet.

And then finally, I think I'm going to try an experiment this year and ask all the self-publishing authors I talk with on this newsletter the same two questions, so I can compile the answers at the end of the year and we can compare what everyone had to say. First, could you tell us about something you spent money on that it turned out you shouldn't have or you regret doing, either in making the book or marketing it afterwards? And second, what's something unexpected that's turned out to be a positive or make a big difference?

I spent money and time writing and promoting a sample chapter for DERT. I don’t feel like it made any difference in the overall sales, but I don’t know if it qualifies as a regret because I do think I learned from the experience.

For the unexpected it’s probably the cold call messages I sent out on Instagram looking for ARC reviews. It’s a very small percentage of people that respond and a smaller number that follow through on the reading. But it’s the beginning of my “street team” that are engaged and excited with my work.

My thanks again to Kyle, for taking the time to really show us how the sausage got made with his book. DERT is available this moment at Amazon, and then afterwards you should join me over at Goodreads and post a review. Are you an author who published a book recently? Want to come on the newsletter and talk about it? Drop me a line at ilikejason@gmail.com and let me know!

And as long as I'm here, let me welcome you to the brand-new freelancing website, over at Pettus.rocks! (Yeah I do!) Remember, if you book a job with me through that and remind me you're a newsletter subscriber, you get 25% off your final bill -- all jobs, all bills. This is one of those things I've been saying for an entire year that I'll "one day get around to doing," so let me profusely thank Letitia Henville and the entire staff over at the really admirable "ethical marketing" freelancing consultancy Antihustle.ca, who in the week between Christmas and New Year's invited all their personal friends to an eight-hour, one-day workshop, in which we basically checked in with each other over Zoom once every two hours, but otherwise spent the entire day getting one more big project checked off our lists before the year ended. That's when I built the entire freelancing website, over the course of just one big eight-hour stretch, so I'm grateful to Antihustle for sponsoring this workshop and getting me off my butt. I've got lots of great interviews with fascinating, talented writer clients of mine coming up, so please stop by pettus.rocks/newsletter and sign up for the new version of this newsletter if you still haven't. Talk with you again next Friday! I MEAN IT THIS TIME!!!!!!1!!