We're in a Writing Renaissance: Sam Kahn on Substack Fiction and Democratic Publishing

PILCROW is Substack's first Serialized Novel Competition . Each quarter, we will present excerpts from the unpublished novels of three rigorously selected finalists and invite our subscribers to vote on one to be fully serialized on our Substack. Quarterly winners will receive $1,000 and both finalists $500. Our first contest deadline is October 22nd. To learn more about this project and our submission guidelines, visit us at pilcrowmag.com.

Today we're joined by Sam Kahn, author of the novel Henchman, which he's in the process of serializing on his own Substack, Castalia. He also edits the Substack The Republic of Letters.

PILCROW: Welcome Sam.

SAM: Thank you. Nice radio voice. Really appreciate your having me.

PILCROW: Do you want to tell us a bit about both the novel itself and why you decided to serialize it on Substack? You have different irons in the fire on Substack, so when this came to you, why the decision to serialize it?

SAM: So the novel is called Henchman, it's the extra-territorial and interplanetary adventures of Banx Mulvaney, who starts off as the henchman, as the head of inner perimeter security to Ernest Stavro Blofeld, and then after that base is blown up he goes on a journey to serve different henchmen, to serve different masters, eventually to reach super-villainy himself, and it's basically a workplace comedy. But it was also, I almost can't imagine having more fun writing something than I had with this so. So I finished it and the decision to serialize was in a sense pretty easy, because I really didn't have another venue, I just don't have any publishing industry contacts. And I’ve just become less and less interested in that, and for me Substack is a huge deal. I've been on it for several years. I write on it all the time. I’m just a fervent fanatic about it. So I wanted to give it a go publishing fiction in serialized form and I knew actually that it wasn't going to do very well I think especially when I was starting off on Substack, I published a lot of short stories, and I really always saw it as a vehicle for fiction. ...