My Other Job Involves Spaceships

A brief notice that I have a new novel coming out this month and you should read it and stuff!

Hello, fellow Garbagetowners!

I’m working on a new pair of essays, slowed temporarily by having had very painful surgery on my hands, which do tend to be helpful when it comes to typing letters into machines in satisfactory order. But also slowed by the flurry of activity that goes along with publishing a new novel.

Yes! It’s true! I do not actually make my living yelling creative profanities at American politics and/or the internet at large! I’M NOT LIVING THAT $400K A MONTH PUTINBESTIE PLATINUM TIER MLM LIFE.

Nah, I’m a science fiction, fantasy, and horror novelist and short story writer. In fact, “Garbagetown” in “Welcome to Garbagetown” isn’t just a reference to how rubbish this world truly has become, but also a reference to my climate dystopian book The Past Is Red. I’ve been doing this thing for twenty years, and book #49 is coming out next Tuesday.

There she is, looking all shiny and new! Space Oddity is the sequel to Space Opera, the most elaborate result of an idle Twitter dare ever, and one which rather a lot of people turned out to be very fond of. Both together are possibly the most ridiculous things I’ve ever done—Eurovision in space, but also political commentary, and then also gonzo comedy on top of that. Look, it’s easier to show you. Here is how Space Oddity starts:

Once upon a time, in a very large, very elegant, shockingly belligerent galaxy, there lived a rather troublesome planet about whose precise character no one could quite agree except to begrudgingly admit, at the conclusion of a number of publicly broadcast hearings, that it was most certainly blue. 

Ish.

On this (allegedly) blue world, there happened to evolve all three of the following, though not at the same time: a Dutch sea captain by the name of Willem de Vlamingh, a Lebanese hedge fund manager called Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and a very large, very elegant, shockingly belligerent bird called a swan… 

Wait! Don’t run away! Yes, if you follow me elsewhere (Mastodon, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook) you’ve probably already seen posts like this and BELIEVE YOU ME, I get that they’re annoying in just precisely the same way as PBS pledge-drive breaks, but it’s my job and I have to, so let’s get through this together and we’ll all move on to the bar.

Posting this gif-you-can-hear in a state of extreme authorial self-cringe since 2004

So, ya know, anyway, ahem, you should definitely pre-order (or regular order if you’re reading this after 9/24) the ebook or hardback or amazing audiobook performance, because of how much I and my 1st grader and my animals enjoy eating and being inside when it rains. And honestly, if you like the way I write here, this book will definitely be your jam, baby.

If you’re reasonably local to Portland, Maine or NYC, I’ll be having a bookstore launch party this thursday, 9/27, at 7pm at my extraordinary local indie bookshop, Print: A Bookstore here in PWM (and anything of mine you order from them you can get signed for free before shipping), a Eurovision karaoke book party Friday night (9/28) at 8pm here where I live on Peaks Island at the American Legion (hush, it’s rad) though I don’t expect many islanders are Garbagetown readers, then reading at Brooklyn Books & Booze in…uh…Brooklyn, on 10/15. Come if you can!

And finally, as I mentioned before, I’ve set a casual sort of stretch goal here, in which I offered to commit to a regular posting schedule if we could get 500 paid subscribers (to which number I’ve included new Patreon patrons who told me they got there from here as well) and I’m thrilled to say we’re up to 401 all-inclusive as a result of that, so only 99 to go! Double digits! If you were waffling, now would be a great time to sign up. Paid subscribers here get access to a companion piece to every public essay, in which all my too-spicy-for-me-to-want-to-deal-with-sea-lions opinions wait to yell even louder.

That about wraps it up for admin business for the moment! New pair of essays next week! Swans everywhere! Let’s get back to cathartic swearing! If nothing else, we have all of us had a better week than at least one guy in North Carolina!

In conclusion, this is Fiona. She is a very beautiful and intelligent border collie. She has fetched herself a copy and would like treats. She thinks you should also have copies. Just saying.

Fiona is just saying, obviously. I would never. I am very quiet and unobtrusive. But border collies? FULL OF BEES AND INSISTENCE.

I swear I didn’t even tell her to put her paw on the book, she just got tired of it falling over and was like HERE IS THIS WHAT YOU’RE TRYING TO DO? JFC, HUMAN, IT’S NOT HARD. I SHOULD GO INTO PR.