My most famous novel is one of those rare books that is considered an ultimate read by its most fervent proponents. A reader told me, “I’ll take this book to the grave with me, and if I still have it in the afterlife, I know I’ll be in heaven.”

Originally published by Villard as a hardcover (US$125,000 contract), then a Pinnacle paperback, still available as an e-book, 𝘽𝙡𝙖𝙘𝙠 𝘽𝙤𝙙𝙮 is a 244,000-word tome about a beautiful family who happen to be witches. Here I present the book in its original state, before it became a book, the first draft: a handwritten manuscript of some 900 pages.

This manuscript has been following me from home to home for decades. There are pages missing (probably stolen by jealous warlocks), but you are buying a historical document, not two reams of paper. This is the only one of its kind, handwritten by the author like 879 separate drawings, and every stroke has meaning.

This stack of paper began as many spiral-bound notebooks. Because I hate bent corners, I rounded off every page of every notebook with a single-edge razor blade. After filling each notebook, I removed the binding to make accessing the individual pages easier. You might notice that each page has a vertical strike-through line. Here’s why: I set up these pages in front of my computer and entered every word, letter by letter, then marked through each page to show I had finished with it. Yes, after writing 244,000 words by hand, I entered 1,376,308 characters into my computer (without wearing out the keyboard).

This is where it started.

(This NFT represents the physical manuscript, which will be delivered anywhere on the planet. The archival box that holds the manuscript is 8 x 10 inches.)