Today's ODDity: I'm Publishing My Debut Novel. I'm 64.

In my welcome post, “This Is ODD,” I said that I would share more about being a journeyman writer. Well, that’s going to have to wait because I’ve just reached a big milestone in my writerly journey—a publication deal for my debut novel, Milksop.

Milksop will be published next spring by Chicken House Press. (Given the prevalence of chickens in my life and my fiction, the publisher and I are a perfect match!) Here’s a link to the acquisition announcement.

Next spring, I turn 65. What a lovely retirement present to myself. (It will also make a wonderful present to give yourself, as well as your family and friends—even, perhaps, your enemies [never too early to start promoting your book].)

What’s a Milksop?

“But what is a milksop,” you ask, “and why in the world would I want to read a novel with such an odd title.” A milksop is someone who’s indecisive and lacks courage. The word comes from Late Middle English, combining “milk” and “sop,” literally a piece of bread soaked with milk, as typically eaten by children and invalids.

My main character, Evan Mulder, gets called a milksop a lot, especially by his older brother. But in the novel, Evan gets to defend himself. And he finally gets to speak for himself.

If you’re familiar with Moonshine Promises or my short stories published in journals and magazines, you may recall that they are told by a third person narrator, essentially a projection of me. Well, Evan got sick of me telling his stories and wants to tell one himself. In Milksop, he will, and he’s so happy that I have to shut up while he gets his turn to talk.

Here’s how he’s planning to start his story:

I’m dumped in a farm laneway, a dark tunnel beneath a canopy of trees. That, children, is where my story begins. Standing with a small suitcase held by both hands in front of me, I face four strangers and a large dog with black-rimmed eyes while the sound of a car leaving fades to silence.

A Milksop’s Coming of Age

What in the world kind of story is this, you might ask? According to Evan, it’s his coming-of-age story, both funny and sad, kind of like him. At one and the same time, it’s a tale of unrequited love and the story of how he meets the woman who will eventually become his wife. In June 1979, he’s dumped in that farm laneway in Huron County, Ontario. A normally studious, math-loving 17-year-old, he’s unexpectedly dropped out of school. The result? His family have sent him for work therapy to a dairy farm north of the city where he lives with his intense Dutch-immigrant parents and overachieving siblings, Jeff and Annalise. Jeff, whose nickname for Evan is “Milksop,” has conspired with their father to land Evan at Niall and Connie Logan’s farm in hopes that eight weeks of country living and manual labour will fix him. If it doesn’t, he’s finished with school and condemned to begin the night shift at Cameron Confectionaries, where his dad’s a salesman. The question is whether country living and hard work will transform Evan from an indecisive, cowardly milksop—or show him there are worse things to be.

Milksops of the World, Unite

Right now, the world is filled with more than enough enormous egos. It’s time for the little people, the milksops of this world, to unite. (Membership in U-MAW—the United Milksop Association of the World—is free.)

If you’re interested in joining, please check out that acquisition announcement for Milksop, and if you’re moved by the spirit, please share my good news far and wide. And as the date gets close for Evan’s coming-of-age story to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world, look for updates here.

Photo by Shoeib Abolhassani on Unsplash