sidebar- is this not the most beautiful cat you have ever seen?
Do you suffer from a pervasive emptiness after having finished my book? Um, sorry. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope the characters stay with you and I hope you had a few laughs. As I’ve written elsewhere, this was very much a pandemic book (it was written before the pandemic, but the entire business end of selling and marketing the book occurred during the pandemic) so if I was able to take you away from it all for a few hours, mission accomplished.
I am writing this on Monday, September 6th, the day before my book officially goes on sale tomorrow. My launch event happens to fall on Saturday, September 11th, the 20 year anniversary of the terrorist attacks. The past two years have been very strange: my little fictional book with its made up characters and problems feels tiny compared the the huge, daunting problems that face us in real life: political instability, climate change, COVID, I could go on. I don’t think of myself as an “important” writer, someone who has profound things to say about the zeitgeist or whatever—I am a popcorn writer who leans towards intelligent. During the pandemic I was not reading War and Peace, learning a new language, or getting into the best shape of my life. I went for long, meandering walks while listening to podcasts. I stared at clouds. When I did consume media, it was comfort watches that took me away: rewatching Breaking Bad for the 100th time, rewatching Lost for inexplicable reasons, becoming obsessed with Full Metal Alchemist and The Expanse. I am not a gamer, but I obsessively played and consumed Skyrim material for most of the summer of 2020. I could not really leave my house as COVID was spiking, but at least in that fictional world I could wander around gathering flowers to make potions, defeat enemies, and stand less than 6 feet away from someone at a tavern (actually I couldn’t if I was wearing Ebony Mail, which poisons people if you stand too close shout out to the one person reading this who’s played Skyrim.) There is nothing wrong in wanting to get lost in a fictional world.
Well, when can you next enter one of my fictional worlds? Um.. I’m not sure? I’m not currently under contract, but I am working on another book. If you want a book exactly like Never Saw Me Coming I will inevitably disappoint you. If the book felt fresh it was because I was doing things with characters and tropes you weren’t expecting. I’m not ever going to be a writer who keeps hitting the same notes over and over to make “different” songs. If you like my actual style of writing, my humor, my focus on characters, you’re going to like my next book. I promise. It will surprise you because it’s different. When exactly you’ll get to read it, I have no idea. It’s going to take me a while to write and then, you know, it has to be edited and printed and stuff.
In the meanwhile, I have a backlog of other stuff you can read right now, which I will tee up here!
Guava Summer
Guava Summer is a chapbook (novella—a very long short story) published by Radix Media as part of their Futures science fiction boxed set of chapbooks. You can buy it singularly or as part of the set. (This novella is only available in print.) The picture doesn’t quite do it justice, but each chapbook was individually designed, and each has their own personal touches (mine has an inset of colorful guavas). In fact, Radix won an award for Book and Cover design from AIGA’s 50 Books 50 Covers 2019 competition.
The story focuses on an unnamed, schlubby detective living with a sexy android (yes there’s a backstory there) in a totalitarian society where the government sees all, people are carted off in the dead of night, and corruption abounds. When Sebastian Black, a corrupt mobster-turned-politician and former client emerges as the leading presidential candidate, the detective prepares for another sham election. But with the summer heat comes the unexpected…
Guava Summer is one of my most favorite things I have written. If you’re a regular thriller reader, but not a sci fi reader, give it a chance; all of my stories are fundamentally about character, but this one is also strongly about creating a new and interesting world, and the political context within it. It also has the best ending I have ever written. (Sadly, because the story is too long, I will never get to read it out loud for an audience.)
Twelve Years, Eight-hundred and Seventy-two Miles
Twelve Years, Eight-Hundred and Seventy-Two Miles is literary fiction, a novella about two brothers going on a road trip to see their father executed on death row. Here’s the blurb:
For twelve years, Zeke Honeycutt has been waiting for his father to be executed on death row.
Haunted by the crime he witnessed as a child, he has been scraping together a living to raise his brother, Will—now fifteen years old—ever since they left foster care. Unlike Zeke, Will, an oddball budding filmmaker, was too young to remember their parents, and to him their mother’s murder is just a case file. Nonetheless, Zeke takes his brother on a road trip across the eight-hundred and seventy-two miles that stretch between LA and the Eyman Prison complex in Arizona to view the execution. As they drive through the desert in their beat-up car, they keep up a steady banter about the mundane—school, girls, and everything in between. But as they move closer to their destination, each must confront the family history that left an indelible imprint on their lives.
This one is always interesting to tee up because it is about something awful and tragic, but it’s also a comedy. For me, there’s often an element of comedy in things that are dark, dreadful, or scary. Here are two boys with a different set of memories, and different feelings about the death penalty. One thinks the execution will bring him a resolution—the other doubts this. I love this story for having a lot of heart and a lot of humor (also it would make a good movie cough cough). The greatest compliment I received about it was a friend who told me that it made him “ugly sob” when he was running on a treadmill. (People can read while running???)
Other Short Fiction
If you head over to this section of my website there are a few more short stories (more of the short variety that the above two) that are available online.
Semi-Gone Girl
All of the work and publicity that goes into the later stages of getting a book out there—well, it’s a lot. A lot of what I have counted as “writing” in the past few months has actually been the business end of getting this book out into the world. I am still saying yes to most publicity things (in as much as I can) and supporting the other 2021 debuts who are coming out later this year through the rest of the year, but what I would love to do is get back to writing a new book. I will still be active on social media in support of the above, but maybe not as active. I will still be doing events, and am still open to doing book clubs (see that section of my website if interested—I would love to finally talk about Never Saw Me Coming without having to worry about spoilers.) But really it’s best if writers are left to do what they do best, which is write. I might delete Twitter off my phone or put some strictures on non-writing stuff I do, but that’s because what I need to be doing is sitting my ass down and writing. If you loved my book, great, thank you, please rate and leave a review and mention it to a friend or two. I hope if you loved it, you’ll continue to support my career, wherever that may take us. I promise it will be interesting.