EARLY SUPPORTER THANK YOU
I wrote SHADOWS OF THE FATHERS because I love this genre. That is the whole origin story. No business plan, no audience in mind, just a guy who loves a good spy novel and wanted to see if he could build one.
What happened next is the part I didn’t plan.
Somewhere between typing the last page and this Tuesday, a book that belonged to me for a long time started to belong to other people. Readers who gave honest feedback. Bookstagrammers who made it look better than I ever could. Podcast hosts who handed a first-time author a microphone. Fellow authors who answered my questions. Friends who told a friend.
So before launch day, I want to pull back the curtain on the journey. What I tried, what I learned, and who carried me. And I want to be clear about something up front: I am not the hero of this story. You are.
The Desk
Hunter Long starts his story at a desk. He is a CIA analyst, good with information and untested everywhere else. He knows how the world works on paper. He has never had to prove it in the field.
I know desks. My career has been in commercial roles at large companies, building relationships, running campaigns, and learning to read what people need before they say it. But it’s much different to stand in front of strangers and ask them to trust a story you made up.
Hunter and I both spent years getting very good at one world. Then something pulled us toward another.
Before you all, family helped me along the way. My wife has always been my biggest supporter, as she encouraged me to write, to do what I had been talking about doing sometime in the future. During early drafts of Shadows of the Fathers, my youngest daughter (now almost two) hung out in her crib as I took the early morning shift with her. While she slept or drank a bottle, I used the rocking chair in her room and a pink fuzzy pillow between my lap and my laptop for my makeshift desk.
The Moonshot
I set a moonshot goal for this launch: 10,000 preorders. I knew it was a long shot. That was the point.
A goal that big does something a reasonable goal cannot. It forces you to ask better questions. How do readers actually find a debut thriller? Who already trusts the people I want to reach? What can one person do in a few months that a publisher would have a department for? Every one of those questions sent me somewhere I had never been, and I learned something in every place.
The moonshot did its job. It was never about the number. It was about who I became while chasing it.
Six Lanes, One Education
I ran the launch like a campaign with six lanes. Each one was a classroom.
The first lane was Instagram and Meta. I posted almost every day, tested ad creative and short video, and gave every link its own tag so I could see what actually moved. That lane taught me something that sounds obvious once it is written down: a big following is a place to build trust, and readers are the people who buy. Learning to tell the two apart changed how I spent my time.
The second lane was Amazon ads. I ran campaigns, audited them, and tested different ways of targeting readers by author, title and keyword. It was my first real lesson in patience and structure. Test small, read the results honestly, then decide. Guessing is expensive, and so is quitting too early.
The third was BookBub ads, where I aimed small budgets at the audiences of comparable authors. That lane showed me that who you aim at matters as much as what you say. The same message lands very differently depending on whose readers are looking at it.
The fourth lane was creators and influencers. I built a list and mailed out TOP SECRET packages, a physical surprise that went along with the book. I learned that fit beats size, and that a real object in someone’s hands says something a post never can. It’s been a lot of fun hearing from people after getting their package, finding the secret code with their UV light, and getting access to the restricted files on my website.
The fifth was reader communities, and it may have been the most rewarding. Podcasts, Spybrary, Goodreads, NetGalley and other advance reader programs all put the book in front of people who genuinely love this genre. Conversations traveled further than posts ever did, and honest early readers turned out to be worth more than any ad placement.
The sixth was the indie author community. I created a free-to-apply Indie Author Scholarship and reached out to writing groups, because I wanted this launch to help someone else’s book get written too. Sometimes giving back, paying it forward, opens doors that asking never will.
And around those six lanes sat the work that does not fit in a box. Outreach to dozens of groups and shows. Group book buys. Bookplates with independent bookstores like Raven, Watermark, and Mysterious Bookshop. Independent reviews from Kirkus and BookLife. Events at colleges, indie bookstores, and even Barnes & Noble.
From the Desk to the Field
The longer I worked on this launch, the more I noticed that my road looked a lot like Hunter’s. I did not plan that. It is what happens when you write a character, and then have to live a small version of his story.
No spoilers here. Just the shape of the road.
It starts with the familiar world. Hunter knows the world through reports and screens, and he is excellent at it. I knew mine through sales and marketing at big companies, where I had learned how businesses buy, how decisions get made, how to read a room, and how to influence an outcome. We were both comfortable, and we were both good at what we did.
Then comes the call. For Hunter, the work pulls him out from behind the desk and into the field, whether he is ready or not. For me, it was a story I could not stop thinking about, and then a decision to publish it myself. Adventure found us.
Then comes the doubt. Hunter is untested and carrying a family past he did not choose, and he is not sure he is the right man for the job. I had no agent, no publisher, no team and no roadmap, and I could hear a few people wondering out loud whether this was wise. The truth is that I wondered too.
Then comes the crossing. Hunter steps into a world where the rules are different and mistakes cost something real. I stepped into ads, outreach, podcasts and bookstores with no guide, no map and no one to tell me which door to knock on first. In both cases the first steps are clumsy; that’s part of the deal.
Along the way, you learn who to trust. Hunter has to work out who is really on his side, and who is not. I was luckier. The people who showed up for me, readers, hosts, booksellers and fellow authors, turned out to be exactly who they appeared to be, a gift I don’t take for granted.
Then the trials arrive, and the mission gets harder than anyone told him it would. Mine did too. Some early campaigns fizzled. Doors stayed closed. Plans had to be rewritten midstream. But every trial taught me something I couldn’t have learned any other way, and I wouldn’t trade a single one.
And somewhere along the road, the person starts to change. Hunter begins to see who he might become. I stopped thinking of myself as a guy with a manuscript and started to see myself as an author. Neither transformation is finished. That’s exactly why this feels like a beginning.
Hunter also carries a name and a legacy he didn’t choose. That’s the heart of the book: what we inherit, and what we decide to do with it. My own version is smaller but real. I inherited a lot from a life and career spent talking to people and hearing no. It turned out to be the best training I could have had.
When the Answer Is No
If there is one thing this journey was made of, it was no.
No, we are not taking guests right now. No, that does not fit our list. No reply at all, which is the loudest no there is. And a few people who thought a first-time author launching on his own was a long way to run on a short runway.
Here is one thing a sales career teaches you: a no is rarely the end of the conversation. It is information. It tells you to try a different door, a different angle, a different person, or a different week. Hit a roadblock? Go over, around, under, or straight through. So I kept finding the side entrance. When one outreach went quiet, I wrote another. When one plan stalled, I built a second. I followed up once, kindly, and moved on without hard feelings.
And the naysayers? I laughed. Not at them, exactly. Just with the quiet confidence of someone who has already heard the worst answer and is still standing. The people who doubt you are usually describing their limits, not yours.
I learned a long time ago that a lot of things can help your success, but persistence beats everything in the long run.
The All-Star Cast
Every hero’s story has a cast that makes the difference. In this one, that cast is you.
Start with the early readers, because you were the first to walk into this story. You read a book that was still working out how to introduce itself to the world, and you told me the truth about it. You followed along, you lifted me up, and you made a first-time author feel like he might be onto something. Some of you wrote ratings and reviews, and those words are the reason a stranger has anything to go on when they meet this book. Thank you.
To the bookstagrammers and creators: you took a book from a guy you had never met and gave it your photos, your time and your eye. You made it look like it belonged in a bookstore window. You shared it with your followers, and you made a mystery package look like the most fun thing on the internet. Generosity like that is rare, and I noticed every bit of it.
To the media, including podcast hosts at No Limits: The Thriller Podcast, Spybrary, Best Thriller Books, and One Final Twist: you gave a debut author your listeners’ and readers’ trust. You asked questions that made me think harder about my own book, and you let me share what it is really about, which is family, legacy and the things we inherit. Because of you, people who had never heard my name heard my voice.
To my fellow authors: you answered my questions, shared what you learned the hard way, and never once made me feel like the new kid in the room. Writing is a lonely job, and you reminded me that it does not have to be.
And to the booksellers and everyone in my corner: the stores that said yes to a name they had never heard, the readers who sent a word of encouragement on a hard day, the friends who told a friend, and everyone who asked a question, shared a post or offered feedback. Those small things were never small to me. Each one was a hand on my back at a moment I needed it.
Here is what you did, in plain terms. You shared. You asked questions. You offered feedback. You encouraged. You told someone else. Every one of those is a link in the chain that carried this book to launch day.
I wrote this book for me, because I love the genre. But I am so glad to be sharing it with you. Thank you all; you know who you are.
The Starting Line
This whole launch felt like training for a marathon. Months of unglamorous miles. Early mornings, small experiments, plenty of wrong turns, and a lot of people handing me water along the way.
It’s pub week. Tuesday, October 20, is not the finish line. It is the starting line.
Just as this is Hunter Long’s first journey, launch day is where mine really begins. The book is leaving my hands. Hunter will take on a life of his own in yours. So will SHADOWS OF THE FATHERS. I cannot wait to see where they go.
Spies. Lies. Family ties. SHADOWS OF THE FATHERS is out Tuesday, October 20, in ebook, paperback and audiobook. Everything lives here: https://www.crowleyclark.com/shadowsofthefathers
For the Kansas folks: I would love to see you at Watermark Books and Café in Wichita on Thursday, October 29, from 6 to 7 p.m., or at Barnes & Noble at Bradley Fair Wichita on Saturday, October 31, from 1 to 4 p.m. Come say hello.
Thank you for being in my corner.
Crowley
