I think my novella is done.
I may tweak it a little more while I wait for the paperback proof to come, but it’s “done”.
The title is:
The cool quote on the front cover, lifted from the story, says:
“They Watch, They Wait, They Take”
I’m publishing under a pen name: “J. D. Brownlee”, to distance it from my tech books.
The paperback is on Amazon and it’s listed on GoodReads, but if you’re crazy enough to read this blog and you want to read it, email me and I send through a PDF.
Here’s the cover:
Here are the keywords I chose for it:
- Cosmic Horror
- Psychological Thriller
- Australian Outback Mystery
- Ancient Aboriginal Lore
- Archaeological Horror
- Supernatural Suspense
- Found Footage
It is fiction dressed up as non-fiction.
I nominally wrote it for my 13 y/o son, who loves reading epistolary books, especially The Illuminae Files.
I wanted to write an epistolary for him that had more of a “House of Leaves” and “The Unauthorized Biography Of Ezra Maas” feel. And also be a little more complex to read, more work.
I also wanted to make it Australian-focused and jam in a lot of little bits of Australian history.
Finally, I wanted the general theme to be “societal amnesia about cultural + environmental destruction”.
Here’s some more stuff about it:
- It’s about 30k words (~150 pages), takes about 1.5-2 hours to read, so it’s fast.
- It’s in the “found document” style, e.g. epistolary.
- Multiple levels of narration (me, wiki collective, blog author), all unreliable.
- Ergodic literature (reader has to do work to piece things together)
- Mixed media (blog posts, footnotes, emails, redacted docs, etc.)
- Light horror, like an X-Files ep.
- Australian theme, e.g.: Indigenous myths, Western Australia, etc.
Here’s the blurb:
Back Cover Blurb:
Something beneath the Pilbara’s red dust has been taking people for centuries.
In 2008, Australis Minerals demolished Jindee, an ancient Aboriginal rock shelter, shattering a sacred site older than the pyramids. Journalism student Evan Marshall sets out to expose the truth for his capstone project, expecting a tale of corporate greed. Instead, he uncovers a chilling pattern: prospectors, settlers, miners—vanishing near Jindee for generations.
Obsession takes hold as Evan sifts through forgotten journals, hushed Ngarluma legends, and a hidden cave where fresh rock art—etched with oval-eyed watchers—defies the site’s destruction. Each clue drags him deeper into a mystery that blurs history and nightmare, pointing to something alive beneath the rubble, guarding a boundary no one was meant to cross.
Assembled from Evan’s frantic blog posts, a vanished researcher’s manuscript, and a reluctant publisher’s warnings, this fractured archive captures his spiral into madness—and the fate that swallowed him whole.
For fans of House of Leaves, The Blair Witch Project, and cosmic horror where reality frays at the edges.
In Jindee, they watch. They wait. They take.
Back Cover Author Info:
J. D. Brownlee never planned to publish this book. A reluctant publisher known for technical guides, Brownlee was pulled into the Jindee mystery when an anonymous researcher—known only as ResearcherB—sent him a manuscript. Compiled from the archived blog posts of journalism student Evan Marshall and the investigative notes of the JindeeMystery wiki contributors, the document unravelled a chilling tale Brownlee couldn’t ignore.
It was a lot of fun to write and I learned a lot.
I’ll write up “lessons learned” another day, I think.
For now, I’m sending it to friends and family for comment/feedback and I’ll give it to my son to read next week or the week after. He wanted to wait for “the final product”, which will be the final approved paperback.
I suspect the book leans too hard on my preferences than his, that it’s cool for me and probably boring/too slow for him, and everyone else. Oh well.