POLL: Should I take a break from nonfiction to write another John Wells novel?

I cannot do everything (as much as I'd like to)... and I'm very interested in whether you want more Wells.

Before Unreported Truths, there was John Wells.

In 2006, Random House published The Faithful Spy, my debut novel, featuring the story of John Wells, an American CIA operative under deep cover in Afghanistan. In 2007, it won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel - still my only real writing prize.

It’s no lie to say Wells, fictional though he is, made Unreported Truths real. He freed me to leave the New York Times and start the path that led here. I spent the 2010s writing more Wells novels, 12 in all. The most recent, The Deceivers, came out in 2018.

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(Thanks to you, I can keep my fiction and non-fiction separate. I wish every Substacker felt the same.)

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Twelve Wells novels. That’s a lot of gritty heroics, CIA cynicism, and betrayal. I was ready for a break - a break that has now stretched almost a decade. I even wrote a non-Wells novel in 2021, The Power Couple. I really like it, but it didn’t inspire readers the way Wells does (it’s the story of a troubled marriage, and both the main characters are tough to root for).

But readers don’t seem to have forgotten Wells. Most weeks, I get several emails about the series. Some readers have just found it; others are wondering when (or if) Wells might be back.

Now I’m wondering too. The Deceivers ends on a cliffhanger, and I’m starting to think I owe readers a resolution to the series - a final happy (or unhappy) ending to the Wells saga.

I have some thoughts about what that novel might be. The world has changed since 2006. But the wolves still howl in the night. And we still need men like Wells, dangerous, violent men who nonetheless want peace and justice, men who will do what they must even when they wish they could find another way.

The problem is time.

I have already postponed my nonfiction book about drugs and gambling because I haven’t been able to clear the decks. (I’ve even thought about it simplifying it to a gambling-only book, which I could write more quickly.) A Wells novel would probably take the best part of a year — a serious commitment, though I would still be able to write a little for the Stack, maybe once a week or so.

I could see if Putnam, which published the series, or another traditional publishing house wants Wells back. But I think I’d rather presell a novel directly to readers through a Kickstarter program. I’m pretty comfortable self-publishing these days, and that way I’d have a better sense of what the minimum sales might be. This would be a hardcover, probably in the $30 range. (I might offer big fans a chance at a few hundred signed and numbered copies for more.)

So, before I go any further down this road, I ask all of you — from those who have been reading Wells from his first days in Afghanistan to those who’ve never heard of him:

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This poll matters. It won’t determine if I do write the book, but it could determine if I don’t…

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I leave you with the back cover of The Faithful Spy.

Oh, to be young(ish) again!