Ch, Ch, Ch, Ch, Changes

Twenty-four stories dead in Kyoto.

A week before I set off for Japan, I bundled a collection of stories written over the last two years and shipped them off to the agent that represented my memoir Finisterre.

Assembling them, I liked what I saw: particularly Howl, Pigeons, Jack London, and A Box of Rain. But nine others hold their own. I’m deeply proud of the work, and it kills me that I’ll have to tell my agent that I spent their first publication rights on Substack. They may find new life in a collection, but otherwise I’m sitting shiva.

Twenty-four stories dead in Kyoto.

Publishing a story a month has been the source of the deepest joy for me. To throw oneself into a story and then have the heady pleasure of being read, right then and there, what a thrill that is. To Click Post and Be Known. How I’ll miss it. It is a guilty spiritual pleasure, but it’s spending all of your money on the way to the fair. It needs to stop.

But there’s more to it. Substack is an awful place for fiction. Awful, awful, awful. It’s too long for inboxes. It asks far too much from readers. It is a graveyard for nuance. I’m chasing after readers while they are jogging.

I have the same number of subscribers in April of 2026 as I had April of 2025, and I’m writing better than I’ve ever written.

Pigeons, for fuck’s sake.

*

So voila, a reimagined site: Kneejerks.

I know some of you are sitting shiva now. Some stories disappeared before you even read them. But it’s still me. I still have opinions, a penchant for make-believe, a funny bone and soft spots. As do you. I hope you’ll stay with me on this new trajectory.

I’m constraining posts by length and time. Under five hundred words, I will post to everyone. When I drift over, the posts are for paid. This will both keep me honest — I want lots and lots and lots of people to read me — and it will make sure paid subscriptions receive distinct value. Because, honestly, I do run over.

I plan to write creatively as well. Compact. Less beginning, middle and end. More back-of-napkin. More often, I hope.

*

I have never done the marketing legwork my writing demands. The clock is ticking. I have not abandoned my one hundred stories mission. I have the backbone of a sprawling trilogy:

Gabriel’s Horn

Amanita and Clathrus. The Grey Men and the Fish Lady. Terror. Tattoos. The depths of adolescent loneliness. Stand clear.

Bow.

Readers, I want you to hold my work standing by a bookshelf in a bookstore — oh, hell, I’ll go all in: you’re standing in a bookstore in Kyoto — and I want you to think, “I know that guy. He writes Kneejerks.”

Stick with me.