A published author…surreal.

This feels surreal.

            The Monsters Among Us is only a few weeks away from being published, and this feels surreal.

            I’ve mentioned this before, perhaps not here but generally, that The Monsters Among Us took six years to write. The concept was first conceived way back in 2016. That alone felt surreal to write. I was a mere boy then and now I feel so much older. But that’s when the book was first born, in its naïve state, in all its raw incompleteness. A form that is completely unrecognizable, in that initial stage. But then I went to college. For me, to further myself and succeed in life, but also to write this book.

            Well, it wasn’t for the book at first. It was purely to figure out what I wanted to do with myself. I wasn’t even an author then. Though I did have a love for storytelling. Which was something drudged up when I sought out career advice from a professor at my first school, Dutchess Community College. He offered guidance to the class and I took him up on it. After much deliberation, we kept returning to a single point: throughout my entire life, I’ve had a love for storytelling.

            Stories have helped me survive my struggle with bipolar disorder. No matter how bad my depression, how horrid my anxiety, I had stories. First in the form of video games, manga and comics, then of course novels. My life circled storytelling—the core of who I am.

            So that professor suggested that I write him a short story in lieu of my final paper— “I’m aware of your writing abilities already, so just write a two-page paper instead of the full eight, just so I have something on file. I know you would ace it anyway. But in addition, write me a short story, and I’ll give you my thoughts when you turn in your final,” is what he said to me.

            I was nervous, but ecstatic. This was something new—I had never written fiction before. But this was exciting, it was something new, something that would change my life forever.

            “Kent! I really enjoyed this!” he said. “This is even more complex than a short story though and I can see this being developed into a two-hundred-page novel!”

            To be fair, I’m paraphrasing when quoting this professor. It’s been nine years, after all. But this was the essence of what he said. His enthusiasm, his belief in me. The fact that he definitely specified that it could be a two-hundred-page novel. That part I remember word for word.

            And I’m happy to say that I’ve developed it much further than he anticipated. The Monsters Among Us being a 360-page novel, with an even longer sequel to come in May, and two more books to capstone the series later. He made that possible, by believing that I could do it. Considering where I was in life at that point, feeling alone, worthless, no one to believe I could do anything (I even went off to college out of spite, for my parents didn’t think I could do it. Being bipolar and all, and due to how society views people with neurodivergence. I’m happy to say I proved everyone wrong about that, but more on that in a moment). Thanks to that professor, I believed I could, and therefore I did. A theme ever-present within The Monsters Among Us.

            Two years after that fortuitus short story, the naïve origins of The Monsters Among Us, I graduated from Dutchess Community College and went on to continue my academic career at Bard College. My talents would be pushed to their limits and then even further there. And I am thankful for every moment of it.

            As if the courses weren’t challenging enough, I spent the entire two and a half years there with The Monsters Among Us in the back of my mind. Brewing, fermenting, festering¸ expanding alongside my intellectual growth. And during my downtime, winter and summer breaks, throughout those two years, I dove deep into philosophical waters, having read The Will to Power, Beyond Good and Evil, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. For these texts had something I needed to be able to write The Monsters Among Us to the best of my ability. When you read the book on September 9th, you’ll see these names pop up, alongside quotes at the beginning of each part of the book. But that’s all I can say on that. The purpose of this blog post isn’t to spoil but to recount the years of effort that went into writing The Monsters Among Us.

            But I strategically read those books in time for my senior year, when I would have to write the novel for real. I had written a draft in 2018, but it had been criticized to hell during my moderation, which is what Bard College calls the process of declaring a major. It was so harshly criticized that I was convinced I would be denied entry into the Written Arts department, as was a real possibility. But I guess something about my work was good, as I was admitted in the end. I was of course happy about that, but even more (at least retrospectively) that they criticized The Monsters Among Us, for it was in that moment I decided to rework everything in accordance to their criticisms and use the new and improved version of The Monsters Among Us as my senior project.

            And thus began an extraordinarily stressful year. But in the end, it was thoroughly worth it.

            My advisor, Joseph O’Neill, PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of Netherland, called my senior project, or Sproj as it was often called, a marvelous work and gave me an honors grade. He also went on to blurb the book more recently, stating:

"Kent Priore writes like a natural about the supernatural, and The Monsters Among Us is a marvelously dark and true novel. American fiction has found a terrific new voice."

During my time at Bard, Joseph O’Neill had only read the first half of the book (I finished it six months later after graduation), so this blurb is fresh and in reference to the book as a whole.

            On the topic of professors who enjoyed The Monsters Among Us, I mentioned in a blog post in June about a professor who passed away, another mentor to me, what she said about the book:

“In all my years of teaching, I’ve never read such an extraordinary piece of work.”

So, I succeeded in college, and in writing this book. But years still would go by before it would get picked up by Rowan Prose Publishing. Two years and over 300 rejections…I worried it would never get published and even gave up, for a moment. I was planning on shelving it, giving up the dream. But thankfully, unlike when I first started college, I have an amazing support system now in the form of my incredible, amazing fiancée, Katarina Markota. She convinced me not to give up, to keep trying, “someone will publish it eventually,” she said. And what do you know, two weeks later, fittingly on Valentine’s Day, I signed the publishing contract for The Monsters Among Us.

            Believe me, the trek to get here has been long and far more tempestuous than I can possibly convey here on my blog. Multiple friendships shattered, relationships soured, mental health plummeting so abysmally low that I eventually ended up in the hospital. The road has been rough, to say the absolute least.

But in three weeks’ time, the book will finally be published. And believe me, the fact that you all will be reading it, that it’ll be on your shelves both digitally and physically, makes me happier than I can possibly state. But I can tell you this—the struggle was worth it.

And it feels surreal.