That’s right. An actual novel.
Which is still a slightly surreal sentence for me to type.
If you’ve followed Product Management Meets Pop Culture for a while, you may have noticed that I slowed down publishing here for a bit. Part of the reason for that? I needed to make room in my schedule to do some long-form writing.
Around 2020, I found myself wishing there were more stories for teenagers, especially boys, that were exciting, a little dark and weird, and also treated things like truth, faith, courage, family and friendship seriously.
Eventually I decided I should stop wishing somebody would write a story like that and try writing one myself.
The result is a supernatural fantasy/suspense story called Sam Vale: The Sword of Truth, the first book in the Coldwater Chronicles.
Writing the novel turned out to be a bit harder than having an idea for the novel. And in some ways, writing and self-publishing Sam Vale was a surprisingly good product management exercise. You have a target audience, a problem you’re trying to solve, an enormous backlog of things you could add or change… and eventually you have to stop iterating and ship the thing.
What’s Sam Vale: The Sword of Truth About?
Sam is a teenager who has always made sense of the world through his sketchbook. But something is wrong in his hometown of Coldwater. People aren’t acting like themselves. Authority figures can’t necessarily be trusted. And the things Sam sketches?
They’re not staying on the page.
And something ancient has been watching him draw.
Early reviewers have compared it to Stranger Things, which I take as a compliment. So if you like that show, there’s a decent chance you’ll like this too.
So here’s the shameless plug part: If it sounds like your kind of story, or you know a teenager who might enjoy it, I’d love for you to check it out.
Sam Vale is available on Amazon on Kindle (free with Kindle Unlimited), paperback, and hardcover.
And if you do read it, an honest Amazon or Goodreads review (good, bad, and/or ugly) would mean a lot.
Bonus Content
Apparently, product managers writing novels is a thing. A small thing, but still a thing. Check these out:
- Aldona Martynenka, a PM in Sweden, published her debut novel The Snow Melted in August in 2024
- Tara Tai is a product manager at Google and published their debut novel Single Player in 2025
- Christine Smonk, a PM based in Toronto, has her debut novel The Minute Givers debuting in January 2027
Are you planning to join the club?
New Around Here?
- Connect on LinkedIn
- Follow me on X
- Schedule time to talk product
- Join the product management community on Gartner Peer Insights
