What Comes First? Rethinking the Release, the Plan, and the Relationship Between Two Books

While we wait for The Wake of Expectations to officially release on June 3, I wanted to share a bit of perspective—on the release plan, the shape of the story, and how two very different books ended up being parts of the same whole.

A Pleasant Fiction Is Finished

The Wake of Expectations has been with me for two decades. It was written years ago, rewritten many times, and quietly set aside. It’s the kind of book you finish when you’re still trying to understand what it is you’re really saying.

Then I wrote A Pleasant Fiction. I didn’t plan it. It came quickly, and it came with clarity. And in doing so, it gave me what I needed to finally return to Wake and see it through.

If not for A Pleasant Fiction, The Wake of Expectations would never have seen print.

Now both books are ready. Wake will release first, on June 3. A Pleasant Fiction will follow shortly after. The cover is almost done, and when it’s ready, I’ll announce the official release date in a separate post—along with a proper cover reveal.

Not a Sequel. Not a Prequel. A Duology.

At first, I thought A Pleasant Fiction was a sequel. But the more I sat with the two books side by side, the clearer it became: that word doesn’t fit.

These are not two halves of one story. They are two complete works, told from different angles, shaped by different voices, separated by time and tone.

The Wake of Expectations is 30-year-old me reflecting on 20-year-old Calvin.
A Pleasant Fiction is 50-year-old Calvin, written by 50-year-old me.

That difference in distance changes everything.

Wake is filtered through youth—its mistakes, its longing, the immediate hindsight of it.
APF is quieter, heavier, more measured. It carries the weight of grief, of reflection, of having lived through what the earlier book only feared.

You can appreciate each on its own.
But together, they offer something greater.
Not just a story, but a continuum.
A dual consciousness.
A conversation across time.

One book captures the momentum of becoming.
The other explores the stillness of being.

Wake is about chasing something you can’t quite catch.
APF is about letting go of what you already had.

They exist in dialogue, not in sequence.

The Length Was Always Going to Be an Issue

There’s no getting around it: The Wake of Expectations is long. That’s been a barrier for some readers and a non-starter for most reviewers. And I understood that risk from the beginning.

That’s part of why I self-published. It’s why I created Chapelle Dorée Publishing. Because I knew traditional publishers and agents would likely pass based on word count alone.

But I wasn’t interested in cutting it just to make it shorter. I wasn’t trying to get it down to some arbitrary page count. I had an editor. I went through multiple revisions. The original version of The Wake of Expectations was over a thousand pages—so yes, I made significant cuts. I tightened what needed tightening.

But I wasn’t going to carve out its heart just to fit a mold.
I knew what the book was. I knew what it needed to be.
And I made the decision to release it as-is—with full confidence in its shape, its length, and its purpose.

The Irony: I Didn't Solve the Length Problem—I Doubled Down on It

When I first finished A Pleasant Fiction, I thought, “This is the shorter book. This will be the accessible one.” And it is—by word count, by structure, by pace.

But once I stepped back and saw the way these two books speak to each other, I realized something else:

I didn’t solve the length problem. I just exacerbated it.

The one long book that people already found intimidating now has a counterpart.
Not a follow-up. Not an appendix. A second full volume that reframes and deepens everything the first one set in motion.

Instead of asking readers to commit to one ambitious novel, I’m now asking them to commit to two. And yes, that’s a big ask, but the story demands it. Because only when both books exist—together—can the full picture come into focus.

So yes, I doubled down on the risk.
But I also doubled down on the vision.
And I stand by it.

What Happens Now

The Wake of Expectations releases June 3.
A Pleasant Fiction will follow soon after.

They are not parts of a linear series.
They are not first and second.

They are two books—two lenses—revealing different truths, reshaping your understanding of one another the deeper you go. You can start with either. But to see the full picture, you’ll need both.

This is a duology in the truest sense:
Not two stories stitched together—
but one lived life, seen from opposite ends of time.

And I get it—this is a big commitment to ask of a reader from a debut novelist.
You don’t know who I am. Not yet.
But after you read this, you will.

And maybe—just maybe—you’ll have a better idea of who you are, too.

Javier

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