“A winning story that is hard to put down."

Awarding FIVE STARS...

"What a great book about writing, reading, and the business of believing in yourself! I really enjoyed this story :)"

Thanks so much, Courtney!

Sandra Cruz at SA Examiner has published her review of The Accidental Future of Dean Harris:

"Insightful and ultimately hopeful, it’s a gentle reminder of the  importance of finding meaning not in the future we imagine, but in the  life unfolding right before us."

Scroll down to the Teasers, Excerpts, and Commentaries section for some opening passages (or just click here).

Want the full sample? Request a PDF or ePub version by hitting the button below! (Or email mail@papillon-du-pere.com.)

“The delivery of Dean’s misadventures and literary pursuits assumes an unusual form that invites readers into his perceptions and experiences from its opening lines.”

– D. Donovan, Sr. Reviewer, Midwest Book Review 

The Kindle e-book is now available for pre-order, ahead of its Monday June 15 release. The paperback will be available Friday June 12 to order for delivery on (or even before!) publication day.

“What works best here is Dean’s voice. He is funny, self-lacerating, observant, and grandiose enough to stay interesting.”

– Kyle Eaton, Manhattan Book Review [rated 4.5/5]

Manhattan Book Review will publish its review of The Accidental Future of Dean Harris.

Kyle Eaton at Manhattan Book Review loves Dean Harris!

Rating the book 4 1/2 out of 5, here's some of what he had to say: 

“Derek McFadden’s The Accidental Future of Dean Harris is a novel about artistic ambition that understands how humiliating ambition can feel from the inside. Dean is an unpublished writer, an underpaid literary gatekeeper, a man with cerebral palsy, and the sort of person who keeps building his life around the conviction that the real version of himself is still just ahead. McFadden gives him a nonlinear six-part structure to move through therapy sessions, family history, romantic memory, professional frustration, grief, and the stubborn hope that a future self might still arrive. That structure sounds fussy on paper, but it suits a book obsessed with revision, not only of manuscripts, but of the stories people tell about their own lives.

What works best here is Dean’s voice. He is funny, self-lacerating, observant, and grandiose enough to stay interesting. The novel gets real mileage out of his relationships, especially with Claire, his partner in both emotional survival and the doomed-sounding bakery-bookstore dream Treats and Tomes, and with the older literary champion Charles Corning, who keeps pushing Dean to stop being afraid of the truth in his own work. McFadden is also sharp on the small abrasions of literary culture: unpaid labor, agent rejections, ego disguised as mentorship, and the way talent can curdle into self-protection...

Readers will find this is a smart and emotionally candid novel about art, disability, love, and the dangerous comfort of waiting for your life to begin."

Diane Donovan, senior. reviewer at Midwest Book Review, enjoyed finding out about The Accidental Future of Dean Harris.

"The Accidental Future of Dean Harris is a novel presented in vignettes about a writer who searches for and achieves literary success – only to find that his heart’s desire brings with it a challenge to his ideals of life, death, and achievement.

The delivery of Dean’s misadventures and literary pursuits assumes an unusual form that invites readers into his perceptions and experiences from its opening lines:

We’re seated next to each other, you and me, in a warm, metaphorical train car aboard a sleek, metaphorical train when you stop reading your book, insert a bookmark, glance over, and ask me what I do for work. I’m not sure why you ask. Maybe the temperature invites discourse. I work at all hours, I tell you. Then I realize—in part thanks to the quizzical look on your face—that you aren’t in search of a vague, opaque answer from me. You want more. A real conversation to pass the time.

What Dean does is write. His output syncs with his inner concept of who he is—until everything changes. Derek McFadden chronicles Dean’s evolutionary process in six sections of revelations which are interconnected, but fluctuate in time, place, and considerations. These may challenge readers used to a linear timeline of events and sequential discoveries, but will thoroughly delight in drawing close connections between the visions of disabled Dean, literary achiever Dean, and other incarnations as he considers the courses of his life and impact of both chance and his choices:

A young Dean Harris was impressed but remained appropriately dubious. I didn’t think his Heaven was the real Heaven, but there was a chance Dad and I were unfair years ago in our judgment of the book and the man. If Heaven’s Gate was right, then when I got up there, my palsy would be gone, and people wouldn’t see me as a disabled drain on society (as my drunk stepfather did, and as I too often saw myself). I’d be the writer Dad and I had always known I could be, and folks would demand early access to my latest heavenly releases!

Readers contemplate a plethora of influences, from a father’s relationship with his son to the importance of Dean’s dog,Blackberry, to Dean’s relationship with girlfriend Claire, plus his living with a disability, regrets and self-permission, and more. The dovetailing of personalities, themes, life cycles and encounters, and the ultimate question of whether Dean’s future is truly accidental makes for a thought-provoking journey that considers the ultimate impacts of all kinds of events and choices.

Librarians seeking a literary novel that puts disability and achievement in a different light will welcome how The Accidental Future of Dean Harris builds its characters and revised images of success, failure, and what lies in between.

Its ability to draw with dreams, visions of the future, and revised connections makes for a winning story that is hard to put down."

The review publishes in the July edition of Midwest Book Review.

Part 3 of our Q&A with Derek McFadden about his new novel What Death Taught Terrence. Last 2 questions, but they might be the most interesting…

“What do you hope readers will take away from reading The Accidental Future of Dean Harris?

Ah, the $64k question! Well, I guess a feeling of ownership over their own lives, which for many, I think, is getting increasingly hard to wrangle.

For someone born when I was, in the early ’80s, we were told we could be whatever we wanted to be, as long… as we just said “no” and let those pesky economics trickle down. I think now a lot of us know the American dream is, for so many, just that—a dream, a fantasy espoused by boomers who’d seen their parents come home from war to picket fences and 2.5 kids. Many of those same boomers went off to war themselves, but they didn’t come back home to the dream. They got to know disillusionment really well.

I think it’s time that we tackle the lives we’re living and, to the extent that we can, turn them into the lives we want to live. Your future might feel accidental if it’s not the one you saw for yourself at the outset, but there’s really and truly nothing wrong with that. And if your life isn’t the one you want, only you can change it.

Tell us about the novel inside the novel, What Lucas Learned From Life. It feels deliciously meta. What’s going on with that?

I can assure you, Mark Zuckerberg had nothing to do with it! So, I think stories within stories are fun. It’s like tinkering in two separate but connected universes. You can also make points more easily if a writer is your main character and something happens in his real life—otherwise known as the plot. He can transfer that to his story, the meta portion of the narrative. Maybe he sees the connection. Maybe he thinks he came up with a new plot twist out of thin air. Either way, my hope is that the reader sees the connection I intend for them to see. There are times when, as a writer, I want readers to see the seams of the quilt, and there are times when I like to hide them.”

Here more from Derek, here on site, in the coming days and weeks. 

We've got 4 more questions and answers today (since it turns out we had 11 questions, not 10!):

"How much outlining did you do before beginning the first draft? Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Definitely a pantser! I know some great authors who are plotters. I find many of them live in genre fiction, which The Accidental Future of Dean Harris is not. I mentioned before I don’t really outline. I write and then I pray to the writing gods to bring me in for a safe landing.

Did the setting of the novel play a significant role in shaping the narrative?

I was about to say “no,” outright. “Next question, please!” I write character studies, so usually my characters are more important than my settings. But this one also takes place in part during COVID, and so that setting couldn’t help but leak into the story. Don’t worry, though. I’m not here to depress you, and neither is Dean!

How do you balance character development with plot progression?

For me, character development is the holy grail of writing. Without character development, you can’t know what your character’s story arc will be, and if they don’t develop, if they don’t evolve, that’s just plain boring.

There are times when plot informs character, though. You know, like, “There’s going to be an earthquake. Let’s see how our characters handle that." For me, though, in most cases, if the character hasn’t been well developed, the reader won’t care what happens to them in a disaster. They’ll just move on to the next book on the TBR, and I can’t blame them.

What themes or messages are particularly important to you in this story?

Hmm, I feel like answering that gets into spoiler territory! I guess the most important feeling I can give you as the author of a work is the feeling I leave you with when you turn the last page—stemming from the message in the last pages of the piece. And all of that stems from the characters and who they are and who they become. Mainly I hope you leave uplifted. (And I hope you recommend the book to others!)"

That’s the 8 of the 11 now wrapped! Check back later in the week for the last 2.

Meantime, if you haven’t gotten your sample yet, either grab it off Amazon by hitting the button below, or mail us for one: mail@papillon-du-pere.com (with the subject line: “TAFoDH sample” and state .pdf or .ePub file).

We posed 10 questions about the writing and creation of The Accidental Future of Dean Harris to author Derek. Here are the first 5 for you to enjoy:

“Tell us about the initial spark for The Accidental Future of Dean Harris. How did the story develop from there?

It was actually “anger”! As my therapist and my partner often note, it’s a secondary emotion—something else sparks the anger itself. I think my dad sent me a particularly annoying text. (Funny thing is, as angry as I was then, I don't remember now what he wrote.)

All this to say that the first part of this novel came out of anger. I will remain eternally grateful to my publisher and editor because, when I showed it to him, he said something along the lines of, “This is great… We can't do anything with it! Build a story and let’s talk.” 

I built a story from there, and we talked.

The Accidental Future of Dean Harris is a better book for all the collaborating I entered into while writing it. Readers you trust and editors who refuse to steer you wrong allow for good books, and in this case they allowed me to develop one that, for me is my absolute best.

Did Dean Harris as a character come to you fully formed, or did he evolve during the writing process?

Dean was probably as broken at the beginning of the writing process as I felt. I could not see his full story arc until I saw past my anger. I could not see what this story was going to be until it dawned on me what it needed to be, and that I had the chops to get it done. I had to believe that before I could do it.

One of the authors I've interviewed on my podcast, Writing While Handicapped, the great Sonya Walger (author of Lion, 2025) said to me that, at the end of writing a novel, an author knows exactly how to write that novel but that this almost doesn't help them at all with the next one or the one after that. I think she’s dead on.

The title suggests a strong theme of fate or chance. Can you discuss how those themes are explored in the novel?

I’ve always gravitated to media that explore the idea of a life ending up differently than the protagonist imagined. Think It’s A Wonderful Life, for example. If George Bailey weren’t around, there would have been no Harry Bailey after he fell through the ice, and so many lives would have been adversely affected.

We can’t see the whole picture while we’re in the picture. I think that’s really why this particular story kept gnawing at me like an insistent pup to be told. Dean can’t see the picture, and neither can any of his contemporaries. All they can do is the best they can with what they have and what they know. 

All we can do is the best we can. So if a pandemic hits, or the book you worked so hard to get into the world doesn’t sell like hotcakes, how much of that is your fault? And how much of that is just the way the universe felt like expanding that particular day? 

I loved writing this book, and one of the reasons is how it explores how much of life is in our control and how so much of it is not.

What was the most challenging part of writing the story?

I think probably not knowing the ending was the toughest part for me. I don’t usually outline, so I often don’t know the endings in my work. But there was definitely a point when I’d written about 200 of the best pages I felt I’d ever cobbled together, and yet the ending just would not come to me. Stephen King said once that an author isn’t paid to begin a novel; he’s paid to finish them. I was genuinely afraid I’d never finish this one. It felt like swimming in a deep lake and realizing you were in trouble. It’s so easy to panic at a moment like that. Then the ever-expanding universe threw me a life preserver. I won’t tell you what that is so as not to spoil the fun!

Are there any particular authors or inspirations that influenced this book?

Oh, yes, sure. I’ve even interviewed some of those authors on my podcasts. None of my interviews, I should note, have ever gone as badly as Dean’s interview with his hero/inspiration goes. My own inspiration for the interview scenes came from a movie you might not have heard of. It’s from 1957 and is called A Face in the Crowd. It stars the great Andy Griffith in one of his few dramatic roles. Check it out.”

That’s the first 5 wrapped! Check back next week for the next 5.

Meantime, if you haven’t gotten your sample yet, either grab it off Amazon by hitting the button below, or mail us for one: mail@papillon-du-pere.com (with the subject line: “TAFoDH sample” and state .pdf or .ePub file).