Hi all!

This was a heavy week! Setting aside the Eschatological Altogether, I had a lot more solo childcare than usual, and my COVID vaccine booster. I’m working on an essay about unreliable narrators, but you’ll have to trust me (hah) that it will be a better essay if I give it more time. Also, giving it more time will let me divert this week’s sparse writing cycles toward my next book. Climactic confrontations don’t write themselves, especially not longhand!

In lieu of the usual routine, how about a question? I’m (maybe) reading Homestuck for the first time, after bouncing off the first act back in ‘09, and I’m curious—what’s a cultural phenomenon that you just missed? Ideally: something in your general orbit, something that in retrospect might have been your jam but which you sailed, for reasons of timing or preference or random chance, not so much even past but through, like a Federation starship in a phased cloaking device? &, if this is a comfortable question to answer: How do you feel about that now? Relief, regret, wonder? Confusion? Have you ever gone back?

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LAST EXIT got an excellent starred review from Publisher’s Weekly! “Gladstone weaves magic and mathematics in vivid and poetic prose. There’s a wonderful diversity of characters and relationships, with deep insight on how the characters’ differing traumas and marginalizations influence what they want out of the alternate worlds. The result blends fantasy, horror, and science fiction to produce a stunning, insightful novel that wants a better world just as much as its protagonists do.” Preorder today!

Also, Titan Books will be publishing LAST EXIT in the United Kingdom. I’m really excited to be working with the fine folks at Titan; here’s the cover you’ll see on that side of the ocean.

And check out this Russian cover of Time War! I love how many editions there are of this book, now. Each one a new take on our change agents!

That’s what I’ve got for now. Take care of yourselves. Work for the liberation of all sentient beings.