An Introduction
This post is the same as the welcome email for new subscribers. If you received and read that, you can skip this.
Nothing is more valuable to an author than time, attention, and support. By subscribing, you're being generous with all three. Thank you for that.
I'm Matt Kilby, a writer with six novels in progress who only learns by getting things wrong. In over 26 years of writing, I've done that plenty, but art is an experiment—try everything, discard what doesn't work.
True to that experimental mindset, my work bounces around in the genre spectrum. One of my overall goals is to wade into each at some point, in my way, which often resembles the witches’ potion at the beginning of Macbeth (most of my characters see their fair share of toil and trouble).
When I’m not writing, I copyedit for research journals, which I’ve been doing freelance for 15 years, and read whatever I can get my hands on. I also referee a house in central North Carolina with a wife, newly teenaged daughter, a cat, and a dog, all of whom are determined to prove “self-employed” doesn’t mean I don’t have a boss (or four).
The Road Cain Walks has been my constant guinea pig. It taught me to write and rewrite and helped me figure out my process. If you're interested in that kind of thing, you can read about all the bumps in my road and what I learned from them at mattkilbybooks.com. I’ve recently started moving these posts to Substack and will publish one every two weeks (on weeks I don’t post chapters).
As for The Road Cain Walks:
In the small town of Pine Haven, North Carolina, young love blossoms and fades, a successful career is a devil's deal away, and not much can't be solved by a bite of Ms. Finch's fried chicken. But an approaching storm promises to change the town, whether by an unsolved chain of murders keeping the sheriff's department busy or the local inmate claiming to be possessed by a sadistic spirit. As a deputy and visiting psychologist search separately for answers, their fates and that of Pine Haven become forever entwined along a single bloody road.
The Road Cain Walks is in the final stages of its prepublished life, with a large portion of it ready for readers' eyes. I'll add a chapter every other Wednesday, broken into digestible portions throughout the day. The first 13 chapters will be free and the rest accessible to paid subscribers. Trust me, I know. If I could survive as an artist and give away my work, I absolutely would. Until that day comes, I need to pay some bills.
HOWEVER, since this is a platform chock full of starving artists, I’m offering a workaround. If you provide feedback on a chapter or like and restack, I’ll comp you access to paid content for a week.
Free subscribers will also have access to monthly posts focusing on different aspects of the novel: its evolution from concept to final draft, the inspiration for its setting and characters, and candid thoughts about recently posted chapters.
Again, my sincerest thanks for any and every level of support you provide. I hope these characters mean half as much to you as they do me.