I wanted to let those of you on the newsletter know what I'm planning for the early readers. Right now I'm deep in chapters two, three, and four. Once those are finished and I've had a chance to live with them for a little while, I'm going to send the first four chapters of Mill City to everyone on the newsletter list.

It feels right to offer the beginning of the story to the people who have already shown an interest in following along. These early chapters are still very much in motion, but I think there will be something valuable in letting a few of you see where the book is headed before it reaches a wider audience.

I'll send it as a clean, simple document — nothing fancy, just the text as it stands at that moment. No promises on how polished it will be, but it will be the real thing, straight from the desk.

If you're not on the list yet and would like to receive the chapters when they're ready, you can sign up on the home page. I'll make an announcement here as well once the files are on their way.

Thank you for reading, and for being willing to follow along with the story this early.

-C.S. Wilson

Names have become one of the more delicate questions in the writing of this book, carrying a weight I didn't fully anticipate when I first began putting these stories down.

Some of the people in these pages are drawn closely from real life, and I'm trying to decide how to handle that. Part of me wants to keep certain names intact—the ones that feel inseparable from the person, where a substitute would ring false on the page. But the more I sit with it, the more I think the cleaner path is to change everyone's name, both for legal reasons and so I'm not putting anyone in a position they didn't ask to be in. Even kindly drawn portraits can land in unexpected ways once they're in print, and I'd rather err on the side of protecting the people who, knowingly or not, shaped this story. I haven't fully made up my mind yet, but I'm leaning toward a full set of changes, and possibly a brief author's note acknowledging that the work is rooted in real places, real lives, and real events even if the names on the page are not.

The names may change, but the people remain. That, I think, is the part worth getting right.

-C.S. Wilson

Hello, and welcome. I've added this space for occasional dispatches—thoughts on the writing life, progress reports on the Mill City series, notes from the Oregon woods, and anything else that feels worth sharing.

The first chapter is complete, and that feels like a small milestone worth marking, even if the rest of the book is still very much in motion. I keep going back and forth on the timeline—how much of the early history to lay down before the main story takes hold, and whether certain events belong in scene or only in memory. Chapters two through four are the ones giving me the most trouble right now. I have a rough sense of what each needs to do, but the order keeps shifting on me. Some days I'm convinced one thread has to come first; other days I'm sure it should be held back and revealed later. I suspect this is just the shape of drafting a series, where every early choice echoes forward and you can't always tell which echoes matter until you hear them. For now, I'm letting the chapters argue with each other on the page and trusting that the right sequence will eventually make itself obvious.

I don't intend to post on any fixed schedule. When something feels ready, it will appear here. In the meantime, you can find me through the newsletter or on X.com.

Thank you for reading. The forest is wide, and the work continues.

-C.S. Wilson