Here's What I'll Do If You Buy My New Book!
Hello everyone!
My novel Promises Stronger Than Darkness comes out tomorrow. It's the last, and I think the most fun, volume in my young adult trilogy that began with Victories Greater Than Death. The fate of the whole dang galaxy hangs in the balance, and the hero we were all counting on, Tina, is gone. It's going to get intense! There are battles and feels and secrets and tough choices and singing monkey robots.
You can still order a copy of Promises Stronger Than Darkness from your local bookstore, or Bookshop.org, or if you get it from Folio Books at any time, I will sign and personalize with a doodle of a cat doing the job of your choice. Folio will also donate to the wonderful Transgender Gender-variant and Intersex Justice Project, and I will match their donations.
But regardless of where and how you purchase Promises Stronger Than Darkness, here are all the things I will do for you, because I love you and appreciate your support.
I will ship you, by zeroeth class mail, a portable ambient sexifier, which for 24 hours after activation, will render every inanimate object in your vicinity thirty-nine percent sexier. Your drapes will billow sexily. The cracks in the sidewalk will wink salaciously. Newspaper articles about the impending mulchification of civilization will appear diaphanous. The uneaten crusts of your morning toast will salute you.
I will also telepathically beam you a tiny brain pebble which will enable you to embark on a voyage of afterlife dream tourism. Yes, that's exactly what it sounds like — you will be empowered to witness the dreams of any dead historical figure who is currently in the afterlife. I cannot guarantee that this will work for dead religious icons, for obvious reasons. *(Note: please obey the instructions and do not visit the afterlife dreams of Marie Antoinette. They are full of giant dung beetles. I will not pay your therapy bills.)
If you buy the deluxe self-referentially recursive version of Promises Stronger Than Darkness, which literally goes on forever, I will come to your house and install a sad hammock. The plaintive cries of the sad hammock will render it impossible for you to do anything other than lie down in it, at which point it will croon softly about how the weight of your body resting upon it is the only good thing that has ever happened in its otherwise miserable life. You will get so much rest! And its a great spot to do lots of reading.
If you buy one and a half copies of Promises Stronger Than Darkness, I will come to your house and prepare a ninety-nine course meal. I will be one centimeter tall, and dressed in the battle armor of the Inevitable Army of Non-Credible Rationality, and every single dish will be the size of a grain of rice and will have flavors that live in your mouth for seven months after eating.
If you buy two and five-eighths copies of Promises Stronger Than Darkness, I will become a swarm of resplendent jelly moths, my wings refracting the light in day-glo shades of red and green. There may be chunks of fruit inside some of me. I will fly to the top of the tallest building in your town and proclaim in a hauntingly inaudible voice that you have transcended the need for transcendence, and that you have overdrawn the chromatic balance of The federal Color Reserve, to the point where all primary colors will now be federally guaranteed forever.
If you clothe yourself entirely in torn-out pages from Promises Stronger Than Darkness and announce to at least seven employees of the telephone company that you are still naked, because stories are flesh and flesh is a story, then I will marry every adult human on Earth except for you — so that you will be the world's only bachelor or bachelorette or bachelorx. You can then throw yourself a bachelor party that will last for the rest of your life, and continue for at least twenty-seven years after your death.
If you memorize the entire text of Promises Stronger Than Darkness and recite all of it at the shareholder meeting of a company in which you do not own stock, I will transform the command economy into a command-shift-alt-escape economy requiring the masters of industry to hold down several function keys in order to exploit the population and ultimately causing them to call tech support an infinite number of times.
And of course, if you buy the entire trilogy, I will do all of the above. Plus every item you have ever touched and disliked will be transformed into a tote bag with your face on it. There will be tote bags everywhere!
More Eighties Cover Versions I Love
Last week, I gushed about Howard Tate's wonderful cover version of Prince's "Kiss." Here are some other cover versions of eighties songs that are exciting me right now:
"So Far Away" by Katie Reed. I never really liked Dire Straits, to be honest, but wow this slaps. Katie Reed was a piano-playing blues singer and she turned this Dire Straits anthem into a haunting but surprisingly bouncy blues song.
"Slippery People" by Mavis Staples. I already sang the praises of Staples' recent release Live in London, and this is my favorite track. She takes the call-and-response core of the Talking Heads classic and infuses it with gospel realness.
"Bankrobber" by Victor Krummenacher. One of my favorite musicians, also a member of Camper Van Beethoven, released an album of covers called I Was a Nightmare But I'm Not Going to Go There, and he creates a wonderful alt-country version of this Clash song.
"Once in a Lifetime" by Philip Bailey. Another Talking Heads song, now transformed into a jazzy meditation.
"Need You Tonight" by Bonnie Raitt. She rocks so hard, she takes the second best INXS song and makes it rock twice as much as before.
I could keep going, but I'll stop for now — maybe this will become a regular thing.
My Stuff
I feel like I already told you about Promises Stronger Than Darkness, and what I'll do for you if you buy it.
I'm doing a ton of appearances coming up! Including Club Chicxulub in Oakland tomorrow, Green Apple Books on the Park on Friday, Little Shop of Stories in Decatur on Tuesday the 18th in Atlanta, and Georgia Tech Library on Thursday the 20th. Get all the details, plus links to RSVP, on my website.
The second issue of New Mutants: Lethal Legion comes out a week from Wednesday. Escapade, Scout and Cerebella are doing a heist! It's going to great, with no problems whatsoever. Wolfsbane and Morgan are dealing with a sewer dragon. The artwork by Enid Balam, Elisabetta D'Amico and Matt Milla is worth cherishing.
Also, you can get New Mutants Vol. 4, the collected edition that includes the three issues I wrote featuring the U-Men and John Sublime, with art by Alberto J. Alburuerque. Plus goodness from Vita Ayala, Danny Lore, Alyssa Wong and a whole slew of great artists!
I wrote a thing for Teen Vogue about novels where trans, non-binary and gender-nonconforming characters get to have epic adventures and fall in love, instead of just dealing with transphobia and transition.
I'm still doing monthly SFF book roundups for the Washington Post. Check 'em all out here.