Scott Semegran Goes Back to His Indie Roots

Scott Semegran was a military brat who spent half his childhood in San Antonio before moving to Austin in 1989 to earn an English degree from UT. Then he started reading the writers that weren’t on his degree plan – iconoclasts like Bukowski, Robbins, and Vonnegut – and drew inspiration from their direct, often subversive works. By 1995 he created Mutt Press so that he might emulate the dark humor of his new muses, self-publishing nine of his first 10 books and four of his first five audiobooks over the past 30 years.

In other words, Semegran is not exactly the protagonist of this newest DIY offering, Starman After Midnight, a novel told in stories whose audiobook dropped Nov. 3. Published in print in March, the book follows the easygoing Seff, a fiction writer whose recent boon of a book deal vanished all too quickly, saddling him and his wife Laura Ann with all the unexpected costs and anxiety of being first-time homeowners. This leads to an unprofitable case of writer’s block, and with only one income coming in, by the story’s end, Laura Ann is forced to bake a pie to try and barter for the services of her MAGA hat-wearing neighbor Big Dave, a larger-than-life plumber who likes to come over and split six packs with his new “weird” writer friend as they social distance on his back patio. 

“Friendship is often the core or theme I come back to. I thought, ‘How could I be friends with a MAGA person?’ It would have to be a neighbor that would make me see past all the political nonsense on Twitter,” Semegran tells the Chronicle, his quiet voice almost cracking as he praises Seff’s contradictory counterpart. “Because Big Dave has a big heart, even though I don’t agree with most of the stuff he says. But he’ll take the shirt off his back for you.” 

Early in the book, after some of the neighborhood pets go missing and a beloved cat is found mutilated, Big Dave buys Seff and himself a pair of security cameras to try and solve the mystery, not realizing that they are about to uncover another of their quiet subdivision’s dark secrets. The development prods this unlikely pair of compatriots to form an eclectic posse to see if they can’t make sense of their little corner of the world, where, as the book jacket suggests, “Things are not what they seem.”

When asked why he went back to the self-publishing route for Starman after finding an agent, press, and audiobook deal for his previous novel, 2024’s The Codger and the Sparrow, Semegran sings the familiar refrain about how, according to industry experts, short story collections don’t sell – not even a well-crafted collage of the tangential and intertwined lives and stories that make up Wells Port, a fictional suburb of Austin like so many others – full of joy, sadness, love, angst, violence, mystery, and even a little magic. The opening incantation, a free-verse poem called “The Neighborhood Awakens,” sets the tone of the book perfectly: “Lawns bathed in dew and spilt beer/ Barbeque pits smoldering and marital discord quelled as the workweek begins anew.” But Semegran saves his best for the end in a short story called “After Midnight,” where we finally meet the titular Starman and the underlying forces that lead him to such insipid behavior and ignominious fate.

In this case, the industry’s aversion to the medium was misplaced. Narrated by versatile voice actor Brian P. Craig, who knocked Codger out of the park, the audio version of Starman arrives just in time for the holidays – perfect for conservative cousins who, like Big Dave, might take a certain amount of pride in their lack of reading, but, who, like just about everyone, enjoy a well-performed yarn that reaffirms what they think they know about the people next door, even if they’re a little – or a lot – off base. Semegran probably wouldn’t mind Seff’s six-figure book deal, but as his scrappy 10th offering proves, he’s doing just fine without it. 

This article appears in November 7 • 2025.