16 June 2026

Why I'm rewriting The Many Truths of Josef Batten.

The Many Truths of Josef Batten was first published in August 2025.

I never intended to become a novelist, I'm more a visual artist, but getting this story out has mattered to me.

This was my first novel. I don't yet know if I will write another. Understandably, most first novels don't succeed, and I'm fine with that. But somehow, I think this story deserves a second chance.

Many early readers have generously let me know that in the first edition I was telling rather than showing, and they were right. As a war photographer, Josef's emotional landscape was something they, the reader, should have been given the chance to surface for themselves, rather than be told about.

So I'm undertaking a rewrite, this time with an editor who is patiently offering me the guidance and experience I need. As a result, the revised edition is becoming leaner. It shows more and tells less. It trusts the reader to sit with uncertainty and, I hope, to come out the other side having understood something they couldn't have been told.

I've unpublished the original edition while I finish this work. If you were an early reader, thank you.

I intend for the revised novel to become available again later this year. What follows is a draft that prefaces the entirely refreshed edition of The Many Truths of Josef Batten. It describes why this story matters to me.

→Read More