I'm your number one fan.

Today's the day my book comes out. 

This book, Number One Fan, came from a lot of places. It came out of a night when I got drunk and got into an Uber and lost track of where I was. When I woke up in front of my own house, I knew I was lucky. I could have found myself anywhere. 

It came from my re-reading of Stephen King's 1983 nail-biting captivity narrative Misery and thinking about how hard it is for a big-deal author to go missing now vs then. Imagine Paul Sheldon in 2022: he's on TikTok, he's on Twitter, he's taking GRRM's side in an argument and he's in talks with HBO about the Misery Chastain cinematic universe. We're so much more accessible than the 1980 model of the well-known author. I started to think hard about what it would mean for a writer that famous to disappear. 

Number One Fan came from some of the weird letters, threats, and DMs I've gotten over the years. I've seen the way that people project their unfulfilled wishes and free-floating rage on to authors and creators— especially women. I think every artist gets to the point where they're putting their weirdest feedback into a blender to make the world a bitter smoothie. Here, I brought you a straw. 

Today, you can get my book at Barnes & Noble, at your library, on your Kindle, or anywhere at all. Thursday, if you're in Chicago, you can have me sign it. If you're at Worldcon in Chicago, I hope you'll say hello. I'll be visiting my old haunts in southern California in September, and if you're in the neighborhood I hope you'll stop by. 

I know a lot of you have already pre-ordered the book. So many of you have posted it to Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and TikTok and I'm so grateful for your help in spreading the word. It makes a huge difference to me, and it also warms my cold little lunchmeat heart. 

This week I'm reading The Sleepless by Victor Manibo. I picked it up because Victor is appearing with me at my book launch in Chicago (along with Nino Cipri! the lineup!), but it's a shockingly tight neo-noir murder mystery set in a future where 25% of the population doesn't sleep anymore. This is one of those books that holds a million threads and just as you're about to start wondering where they all lead, they pull taut around your throat. I highly recommend this one to my sci-fi and mystery friends alike. 

Along with Number One Fan, I also got published in two anthologies this month. One is a collection of short stories that are hopeful about the way the world might be. Edited by Jonathan Strahan, this one is called Tomorrow's Parties, and I'm in it with Malka Older, Tade Thompson, Daryl Gregory, and a bunch of other great writers. 

The other is Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn, edited by Brian Merchant. This one is a greatest hits collection from Vice's Terraform vertical, and I'm very proud of all the stories I've published there. This volume features Tochi Onyebuchi, Jeff VanderMeer, Cory Doctorow, and loads of other talent. 

It's a good day, it's a good week, and we're winding down on a good summer. Thank you for being here with me in it, thank you for your pompoms and your big foam fingers. It's a hard world to make art for, and you all make it softer. In the end, I'm your number one fan. 

Don't stop til you get enough, 

Meg