Six weeks since I lost

Self-publishing has been a ride

Israel being overrun in World War Z

It’s been a hot minute, Substack. Over a month — maybe six weeks — since I decided to take a step back, reduce the output here, and go hard on promoting my debut novel, The Right Members Club. But I have some things to talk about now.

I mean, that’s the truth, really.

I took a step back from Substack because, yeah, I had a book coming out, but also because it felt like I was creatively empty, and that scared me a little bit.

I started writing full time in October 2024, and I just put my head down and got on with it because I loved it — and I still do love it. I wrote three books, hundreds of short stories, blog posts, and Substack pieces, and I was like, this is brilliant. There’s no stopping me.

I had ideas coming out of my proverbial sphincter, and I thought this would never end.

Then I relapsed with OCD. I lost.

Not so much relapsed. It’s always there, but I always imagined that I’d erected walls. A little bit like that film World War Z in Israel — quite an obscure reference.

I erected these walls, and it started to win. It started to creep up.

Now obviously, I’m having a kid at the end of June, which I am absolutely over the moon about, but also terrified by. Scared, anxious, excited, optimistic — just curious, I suppose, about the seismic change it will have on my life.

So all of these things, plus the imposter syndrome that comes with every author —

God, you quit your career, Louis, to do this. Are you even going to make anything of it?

I was really down on the book before it published. I thought,

Oh, I’ve just ended up spitting it out there. It’s probably not the best thing I could have written. It was the first book I wrote. Should I wait? Should I be patient? But if I don’t do it now, will I ever do it?*

I didn’t get picked up through querying, and all these things were going on in my head.

So the OCD got a foothold, climbed over that wall, and started winning. Started invading.

So I went back on tablets. I went back on sertraline, an SSRI. I went back on my original dose and, for the first four, five, six weeks, you know, it gets worse.

I don’t want to say I had suicidal thoughts, but you get the ideation of it. And because intrusive thoughts work in a way where they latch onto the thing you fear most, it plays and it plays and it plays, and you get into a really dark place with it.

It’s more imagining the scenario rather than willing yourself to do it — to be clear for anyone that’s experienced OCD.

Then it started to get a bit better, but not enough. I still felt the failing of the walls, the falling of the walls, the fading of my fight. I ended up increasing my dose to 100 milligrams, and that’s helped immeasurably.

I’m very happy to say I’m in a much brighter place now than I was back then, but it had a knock-on effect.

Doing some research into it, SSRIs do change your behaviour and brain function when it comes to creative things, and I don’t think I’ve adapted to that yet.

I sit down and I have things that I want to write, but the words do not come. They are chalky, obscured, blocky. They don’t fit.

It’s like I’ve got one of those kids’ puzzles and the square peg does not go in the round hole, no matter how much I try.

But it’s okay. I’m taking steps to try and work through it.

It’s even affected things like reading. The concentration just isn’t there.

However, OCD does have, I would say, almost collateral benefits. That’s what I would call it.

I can laser focus on stuff that excites me, and the book launch — how to promote, market, and grow on social media — has been great fun.

I’ve met some wonderful people. I’ve started a podcast over on Instagram with three other brilliant independent authors. I’ve learned how to talk about my books succinctly. I’ve learned about myself in terms of the issues that I care about.

And I’m really pleased to say that, in just over six weeks — I think, yeah, it came out on the 3rd of April — the book has sold around 700 copies and attained number one bestseller status, which it has held for approaching two weeks now in Political Humour. It even crested to number one in Comedy, which is mind-blowing because that is a big category. Political Humour, not so much.

But yeah, by any metric, as an indie author, selling that many books in this short a time span is a success.

I should bank that. I should use that to build confidence and say,

Louis, you can do this as a career if you want to.

Now the royalties — that’s a whole different thing.

I went with Amazon KDP. I can just about afford a coffee and a croissant when I total up everything I’ve spent on editing, cover art, advertising, and all of that good stuff.

But it’s been a wild, wild ride.

And I think that’s maybe the point of today’s blog post: not to be too rigid. To be adaptable. Life isn’t linear in a lot of ways.

I started Substack back in November 2025 and it was brilliant. I always get excited about new things, and the hype’s there, and I pushed hard. I published three things a week, and I grew, and it was great.

Then the magic wore off a little bit.

And it’s in those moments, where the novelty fades and the honeymoon period is over, that you really get a sense of what excites you and what’s going to last.

I need to rethink my relationship with Substack, and I will.

I do want to write more short stories. I have lots of ideas now. I didn’t have them a couple of weeks ago, but I’m not ready to sit down and write full time again at the moment.

But it will come.

The sequel to The Right Members Club is fully fleshed out in my head, and I have The Milks, my zombie novel, which needs a couple of edit passes but could feasibly be released in the next six months if I sort all of the cover art and stuff.

Factor into that all of the stuff with the baby, and maybe you understand why the OCD started to get a foothold again.

I’m in a much stronger place, as I say. I’m excited about the future, but I’m unsure how to predict it.

I am an author. I’ll always be an author now. Publishing a book changes that.

Let’s see what the next six months brings.

So yeah, welcome back to UrbWrites Weekly — but it’s not weekly anymore. It’s monthly. It’s six-weekly. It’s whenever the hell I feel likely.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep updating The Button, which is my ongoing serial in the Stevenage: Liminal Tales section. I have more plans for Liminal Tales over there, and you will see some shorts from me in the future.

So yeah, thank you to everyone who’s supported me and followed the journey — and you know, the 20 or 30 people that will get the notification and read this.

But yeah.

Thanks, everybody.

Have a good one.