Can an Indie Thriller Break Through?

I’m going to do something authors probably aren’t supposed to do and admit that I am not sure how this is going to turn out.

Shadows of the Fathers comes out October 20, which means I’m officially inside the final month before publication. Over the past few weeks, I’ve shared some of the more interesting parts of getting here, including sending early copies into the world, creating the TOP SECRET packages, working with artists, and watching something that lived on my computer for years slowly turn into an actual book. Now we’re getting to the part where things become a little less predictable.

I decided a long time ago that if I was going to publish this book independently, I didn’t want to treat “independent” as an excuse to think small. I wanted the cover, editing, audiobook, artwork, and everything else surrounding the book to compete with what readers expect from a major publisher. Somewhere along the way, that philosophy turned into a much more ridiculous question: how far could I take this?

Could a debut indie author generate enough momentum to compete, even briefly, with established authors and books backed by major publishers? Could Shadows of the Fathers become a bestseller? I don’t know, but with 29 days left until publication, I intend to find out.

The Experiment

There are some obvious disadvantages to publishing a first novel independently. I don’t have a major publisher putting thousands of copies into bookstores, I don’t have an established readership waiting for Hunter Long’s next adventure, and nobody has been waiting five years for my next book. Until fairly recently, almost nobody knew who Crowley Clark was, which turns out to be a marketing problem when you’re trying to convince people to buy a Crowley Clark novel.

What I do have is a book I believe in, an increasingly enthusiastic group of early readers, some incredibly generous people in the thriller community willing to give a debut author a chance, and a growing number of people interested in following along to see what happens. So I’ve started treating the launch like an experiment.

I’ve tested advertising, sent books to reviewers, authors, podcasters, bookstores, and readers, created an audiobook, commissioned artwork, built strange classified packages in my house, started an Indie Author Scholarship, recorded podcasts, contacted bookstores, given away books, and probably confused my mail carrier. Some of those things have worked better than others, and I’m still figuring out exactly which is which.

There is one part of the experiment, though, that advertising can’t manufacture: readers who genuinely care about a book enough to tell somebody else about it. And over the last few weeks, I’ve started seeing signs that might actually be happening.

Something Is Starting to Happen

My natural instinct is to downplay everything until October 20, mostly because I know how much can still happen between now and then. But that would also ignore something important: a lot of people have already started showing up for this book, and they deserve some recognition for it.

More than 100 ARC readers and audiobook listeners have joined the launch team. Shadows of the Fathers has now crossed 30 Goodreads reviews while maintaining roughly a 4.5-star average. Preorders are coming in. Ryan Pote, bestselling author of The Ghost City, offered an endorsement that I’m incredibly proud to have attached to the book. ThrillerPod has supported the book and invited me onto the show, I have an upcoming appearance with One Final Twist, and Spybrary will be featuring me as we get closer to launch.

Then there are moments I never really expected when I started this. Best Thriller Books, a site I’ve followed as a thriller reader myself, reviewed Shadows of the Fathers alongside books from authors I’m accustomed to seeing on bookstore shelves rather than next to my own name. Their praise meant a lot to me, particularly because it came from people who spend a tremendous amount of time reading and reviewing books in this genre.

I’ve also been paying attention to other espionage thrillers publishing around the same time, partly because I’m trying to understand what healthy prepublication momentum actually looks like. I’m not going to name names or pretend that Goodreads reviews tell us anything definitive about eventual sales, but there are traditionally published espionage thrillers from established authors releasing around this same period, including books arriving several weeks before mine, and Shadows of the Fathers already has more written Goodreads reviews than some of them.

I want to be careful about what that means. It doesn’t mean we’re outselling those books, and it doesn’t suddenly put an independently published debut on equal footing with an established author backed by a major publisher. What it does give me is a leading indicator that I didn’t necessarily expect to see this early: people are reading the book, finishing it, and taking the time to talk about it. For a novel that doesn’t come out for another month, that feels significant.

More importantly, I didn’t do that by myself. Every person who accepted an ARC and read it, every audiobook listener who spent hours with Eric G. Dove in their headphones, every person who left an honest review, every author who answered an email or opened a package, every podcaster who gave me part of an episode, every person who shared a post, and every reader who clicked preorder has moved this experiment a little farther forward.

So before I ask anyone to do another thing, thank you. We still have a long way to go, and I’m not ready to declare anything a success before the book is even published. But the early indicators are encouraging enough that the ridiculous goal feels worth continuing to chase. And if you’ve been watching from the sidelines wondering whether there’s anything you can do to help, there is.

Read. Review. Recruit.

With less than a month remaining, I’m asking for some help, but that doesn’t necessarily mean spending money. There are three things that can make an enormous difference right now, and I’ve started thinking about them as the three Rs of this increasingly complicated experiment: Read. Review. Recruit.

Read

If Shadows of the Fathers sounds like your kind of book, preorder it. The ebook is $2.99, as I’ve tried to keep the barrier to taking a chance on SotF pretty low.

Every preorder matters, particularly for a book without an established readership behind it. More importantly, every preorder represents an actual person willing to meet Hunter Long before the rest of the world does, which still feels surreal after spending so much time with these characters when nobody else knew they existed. If you’ve already preordered the book, thank you. You’ve already done something meaningful for this experiment.

Review

If you received an ARC, ALC, print copy, or another early edition of Shadows of the Fathers, this may be the single most useful thing you can do right now: finish it and tell people what you actually thought.

I don’t mean tell people what you think I want you to say, and I certainly don’t mean give it five stars because you know me, follow me, received a free copy, or got one of those suspicious packages in the mail. I mean leave an honest review. Goodreads and BookBub allow readers to review the book before publication, and retailer reviews can follow as they become available.

Those reviews give the next reader something I can’t give them myself: an opinion from someone who has actually read the book. I can tell everyone that Shadows of the Fathers is good, but I wrote it (and bragging too much isn’t my style).

Recruit

This may be the most interesting part of the experiment because it doesn’t require buying anything or writing a review. If you know someone who loves espionage thrillers, geopolitical thrillers, cartel stories, James Bond, Tom Clancy, Jack Carr, Mark Greaney, Don Winslow, or stories involving spies making questionable decisions in foreign countries, tell them about Shadows of the Fathers. Send them this post, send them the preorder page, or tag them the next time you see me talking about the book on Instagram.

Independent books spread differently. There isn’t a copy of Shadows of the Fathers sitting on a table inside every bookstore in America waiting for someone to walk past it, so readers become part of the distribution system. One person tells another person, who tells someone else, and eventually a reader I could never have reached through Instagram discovers the book because someone they trust told them it was worth their time.

That kind of recommendation may ultimately matter more than any advertisement I can buy.

I’ll Show You What Happens

I’ve decided there’s another part of this experiment that might be worth sharing: the results. Over the next four weeks, I’m going to keep talking about what is working, what isn’t, and what I’m learning.

We have a very ambitious goal, and we aren’t there yet. There’s a lot of ground to cover between now and October 20, and that is exactly what makes this interesting to me. Whatever happens, there’s value in showing what it actually looks like to try.

One More Reason This Matters

There’s another part of this launch that has become increasingly important to me. I created the Crowley Clark Indie Author Scholarship because this entire process has taught me just how difficult it is for an independent writer to get a book into the world.

Writing the thing is only the beginning. Then come editing, covers, formatting, audiobooks, distribution, advertising, reviews, bookstores, metadata, and about seventeen other things you don’t know exist until you suddenly find yourself Googling them at midnight.

The scholarship starts at $1,000 and grows as the campaign reaches its milestones. There is also a free way to participate, because nobody should have to buy my book simply to take part in the scholarship. That was important to me from the beginning.

29 Days to Find Out

Twenty-nine days from today, Shadows of the Fathers officially enters the world, and something I’ve spent years controlling will suddenly be largely outside of my control. Hunter Long won’t belong primarily to me anymore. Readers will decide whether they like him, hate him, root for him, yell at him, or wonder why he keeps making questionable decisions.

They’ll also decide whether the book works and, ultimately, how far it goes. That’s why the mission for these final 29 days is pretty simple: Read. Review. Recruit. If the book sounds like something you’d enjoy, preorder it. If you’ve already read an advance copy, leave an honest review. And if you know someone who should be reading it, bring them along.

Shadows of the Fathers launches October 20, 2026. We have 29 days to find out how far this indie thriller can go, and enough has happened already that I’m very curious to see where we end up. Thank you for getting it this far. Now let’s see what we can do with the next 29 days.

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