I’m very happy with my decision to maintain that silence even while working in the publishing industry. I know a lot of people say that networking is as important for writers as it is for anyone else, but I think that’s crap. Writing should stand on its own. Period. I’d hate for friendship to muddy the waters of a publisher’s decision to take on my work, even if — especially if — that muddying effect were to work in my favour.”

—Jason Hrivnak in conversation with Beth Follett, 2009

Hrivnak has written a single book, The Plight House, which came out in 2009. It’s one of my favorites. There is hardly any presence of him on the internet. The quote above pushes an idea that I think is true, and wish that everyone could realize it. It’s taken me five years, and sometimes I still doubt its veracity.

Ideally, I’d like to be invisible to my imagined audience. Yes, we live in a world where it’s important for the writer to take part in the publicity effort, but I think that The Plight House (and other books like it) work best when the author remains somewhat faceless. In terms of the work itself, I’m reasonably satisfied by the extent to which my desire to disappear has soaked down into the deepest levels of the book. Yes, much of the story is very personal, but that material is so intermixed with pure invention that even readers who know me well won’t be able to “find” me there. I’m not invisible, but I’m next-best-thing-to-invisible.