The Futile is Officially Out Everywhere!!!

My debut novel, The Futile, is available everywhere as of Tuesday, April 5th!!!

(What follows is a rather long winded bit about how this book came to be, but if you don't feel like reading all that the "I'm happy for you or I'm sorry that happened" of it is: The Futile has been six years in the making and I'm so happy it's finally out.)

I started writing the Futile in winter 2016, drafting a short scene of a band dealing with the aftermath of their beloved van breaking down. That scene, and many like it, was of course inspired by my own experience playing in bands. Whether it was Alliswell's ill-fated "tour" that saw us only playing 3 of a scheduled 7 shows (one was in an Orlando parking garage which was actually awesome and another was a daytime spot at a North Carolina skatepark populated by juggalos, which was less awesome) or countless late night drives between home and Nashville for Ravenhill shows where we were promised this label or that one would be at the show (they almost never were), I felt this desire to capture the highs and lows of trying to create something meaningful with your best friends.

For that first year or two, The Futile was a fun little distraction while my first novel (Title Track!) was on submission to publishers/editors. At the time, I thought Title Track would be the one to help me break through. After all, it landed me an agent (and drew an offer from another) after less than a year of querying. My new agent was stoked about the book and I was too. This dream wouldn't be like a heartbreaking drive to Jacksonville, Florida where the show gets cancelled because a dude hardcore danced through a window, this one would come through for sure.

Months passed with nothing but crickets from the majority of the editors who held my cherished manuscript. When we did hear anything, it was lackluster rejection ("the writing is good, but the pacing is too slow") after lackluster rejection ("the pacing is perfect but the writing didn't grab me") until eventually in September 2017, just days before my 35th birthday, we hear back from an editor with a small press: they love the book and want to take it to acquisitions! Awesome. I cried reading the email in the kitchen. I cried some more telling Stacy over the phone.

Then, it was a lot like that time Ravenhill had a meeting with Tooth & Nail Records ("I'd sign you guys right here on the spot if I could, but I need to run it by our numbers people first") where that moment of jubilation was soon followed by months and months of silence. Until, in December 2017, I got the email, the numbers didn't add up, the small press was going to pass. We still had some subs out with Title Track so we decided to push on. As always when dealing with dashed hopes, I dug into my perpetually-refilling hope supply. One of my friends and I's favorite statement of our band days was: the band's going to make it! This was our buoyant refrain whether met with good news or bad. We were going to make it. This book was going to make it.

A seemingly-never ending avalanche of lukewarm rejections followed. I kept track for a long time until it became too much and I stopped. Eventually, in Spring 2018, my agent and I decided to "shelve" Title Track for the time being, which felt a lot like Michael Scott yelling "I declare bankruptcy!" in it's officialness. That book was dead, but I had another. The band's still gonna make it.

I had made a lot of headway on The Futile through this time, but it still didn't feel up to par. Taking note of the most consistent reason for rejection on Title Track (the pacing!), I read book after book on story and craft, and even made a huge board (see below) laying out every plot point and character arc for The Futile. I have to admit while writing Title Track, I played it safe in a lot of ways, but with The Futile, I was finally unafraid of rejection or failure (haha not really), I had nothing left to lose, so I threw everything I had into it, writing the story I had always wanted to. I hoped my agent would like it, but even if she didn't, that didn't matter because I loved it.

Turns out, my agent loved it too! After I turned The Futile into her on Sept 2018, she soon emailed me back with a triumphant barrage of joyful expletives. I had successfully written a second book and this one (THIS ONE) was going to make it. We went on submission to publishers in October 2018. Unrelenting silence followed with a few passive rejections trickling in. Until July 2019, a reputable editor emailed that they loved the Futile and wanted to take it to acquisitions. Hell yes. I never doubted this book or my abilities as a writer.

You can zoom in for spoilers if you’d like but you probably can’t read my handwriting.

Then...a month later. The reputable editor emailed something like: "the numbers don't add up to bring on The Futile. I love this weird, quirky story though and I have no doubt someone else will snatch it up."

No one else snatched it up.

More bleh-did-they-even-read-the-thing rejections followed. A brief respite came when one editor emailed that she loved The Futile, even citing a joke from the final act, BUT she didn't love the story enough to bring it on right now. That one sadly brightened my day some, because at least someone read the story, but still, by Fall 2019, my agent and I decide to shelve The Futile and I returned to my never-draining Great Well of Hope.

Maybe I could rewrite The Futile as a graphic novel? I tried, scrambling. "Okay, go for it,” my agent signed off on the idea. I read a couple books about how to write graphic novel scripts and took a few months to rewrite/convert The Futile over to that format. After a couple rounds of edits, we went back out on sub with The Futile Graphic Novel in January 2020. No one was interested. Then the pandemic happened.

In Fall 2020, we decided to shelve The Futile Graphic Novel. By that time, I had started writing a new YA novel (Our Extended Universe!). I turned it into my agent in Spring 2021. She gave me some light edit notes and words of encouragement, but then more or less said that she was moving away from YA and focusing strictly on children's writers and illustrators, which was understandable. So we split amicably and I found myself back at where I started 6+ years earlier. Sure, I had three complete manuscripts but I felt like a fraud to call myself a writer let alone an author. It wasn't like being in a band where you can continually play shows and share your music, steadily building your audience. I had just been treading water, going nowhere, or so it felt like. The band was not going to make it.

I wallowed in this feeling for several days (more like weeks). Not wanting to write or read anything I had written. Maybe I would never put anything out. Maybe I would wait and try again when my kids were older. It had taken a while but the rejections began to feel like an indictment not just on my worth as a writer but as a person too. It wasn't fun. But then I went back to read the novel that I remembered loving so much. The one I had the most fun writing and the one that felt the most like "me." Though I was scared I would discover that it actually sucked, I read The Futile after not looking at it for a year or two and...I loved it. It was dark yet hopeful, silly yet earnest, weird yet relatable, and, perhaps most importantly, here right in front of me was this story of sincere creatives desperate for validation who only discover along the way that they don't need anyone's approval but their own (spoiler, I guess?). It was exactly the story I needed. Maybe it could be that for someone else.

I dusted it off and began rewriting the story, working with an editor and a fresh round of beta-readers, finding a renewed sense of purpose in finishing this book and putting it out, which brings us to today: The Futile is available wherever you buy books. If you don't have a copy but are interested in getting one you can do so here: https://linktr.ee/danejohns . If you want it in your regular bookstore or library, then you should be able to request they order it without any issue.

Big shout out to all my friends, family, co-workers, and acquaintances that have been so incredibly supportive after this book was announced. It has been so rewarding to finally put this book out into the world and to see that people care. Thank you to all my friends who read early drafts of Title Track (back when it was called Social Caterpillar) and/or read The Futile and/or Our Extended Universe, encouraging me through all the rejections and daily failures. Thank you to Joshua Andrew Clifton and HONEY GOLD Records for helping me put it out without a millisecond of hesitation. And, most importantly, thank you to Stacy, without whom I wouldn't have ever believed in myself enough to try to do this in the first place. I hope you all love the book or like it or at least feel a small tinge of pride when you see it on your shelves.

The band's going to make it.