Welcome to the Margaux Chronicles

Welcome to The Margaux Chronicles.

Many of you know me from On The Shelf, where I’ve shared essays and short fiction over the past six months. Some of you may have read my novels—Butterfly Dreams and Margaux & the Vicious Circle. If so, you may already know Margaux and how much of myself I put into telling her story.

Like a lot of indie literary fiction writers, I’ve struggled to gain traction. I’ve done things right. I’ve entered writing competitions, and won accolades for my writing, received strong reviews, and I’ve invested in professional editing, design, and marketing—because I believe the work deserves it. But I haven’t come close to breaking even. Part of me doesn’t mind. I love writing. I’d do it even if no one read it.

But I want people to read it.

So I’m trying something new: I’m serializing Margaux & the Vicious Circle here on Substack. A few chapters will be free—I haven’t decided how many. The rest will be for subscribers—monthly ($5) or annual ($50). All paid subscribers will also receive a free download of the full eBook, so you can read ahead if you want. Founding subscribers (pledging more than $60 per year) will receive a signed hardcopy of my book, and the opportunity to talk to me one-on-one, in addition to the same perks that free and paid subscribers get.

This isn’t a money-making scheme. It’s a sustainability experiment. If enough readers chip in even for one month, I can afford to professionally edit Fiddler’s Point, the next book in the Margaux Chronicles.

It’s an ask—but also an offering.

Think of this as an ongoing story place, where fiction gets layered over memory, and mystery and magic become a way of seeing the world. If you’ve ever loved a character who felt more real than some people you know, or gotten lost in a book that helped you remember things from your own life—this one might be for you.

And here’s the teaser for Margaux & the Vicious Circle:

A missing girl. A rejected manuscript. A literary agency with secrets of its own.

Margaux Andrews lives alone in a dingy Lower Manhattan walk-up. By day, she nannies. By night, she writes novels no one seems to want—until one mysterious agency says yes.

As Margaux is pulled deeper into a literary world that blurs fiction, memory, and magic, she begins to suspect that her childhood stories aren’t just inspiration. They’re clues.

To what? To who she is, and who she’ll be. To what really happened to her and her family. And, to the childhood friends who vanished.

New chapters will drop every week or so. And, I’ll keep On the Shelf free and alive for as long as I can—weekly short fiction, essays, memoir, and poetry.

Thanks for reading, and for sharing. This whole thing only works if it reaches someone who needs and wants it. Maybe that’s you? I hope so.