Short but exciting post today: Rose Metal Press has accepted my book, It All Felt Impossible, for publication. You can read the full release here. Many more details, including release date, cover, pre-orders, etc. to come, but I’m very excited to work with such a great independent press.
It looks like this.
That's also my thumb.
The back looks like this:
It comes out in April, but you can pre-order it right now at just about any online outlet.
This is a short, but pretty important, update: I have a new book coming in April 2018. I love the cover (though I never would have guessed I'd be a guy with two books with roses on the cover), and I love the publisher, and I feel extremely grateful to be publishing books at all, let alone to be working with such talented, energetic people. When I showed the manuscript to my agent, she said she loved it, but then warned me that we might not find anyone who's willing to publish it; it's a dark book, and it's a little weird, and so I feel even more fortunate that Liveright is willing to take a chance on this one.
I'll wait to share all the details, but for now I can say: this is the closest I've ever come to writing the kind of book I've always wanted to write. I tried so many times, but was always too young, or too afraid to take chances, or something. So I am extraordinarily excited to have this book on the way.
More details soon! Until then, you can pre-order from Amazon and add it to your list on Goodreads (or tell your local indie bookstore you'd like them to order it).
And, hey, if you've read and enjoyed The Young Widower's Handbook, please consider leaving a review at one of those places. User reviews matter more than you might think, and they really help other people find the book.
Another quick post just to note that I had two new essays published last week.
First, this piece at The Review Review, in which I offer advice to writers on how to conduct themselves at readings when promoting their books. Here's a sample:
“A lot of these tips, I admit, come down to issues of personality. Your job is to just try to act normal for a couple hours. This is difficult for some people; if you’re an asshole, you can’t fix it, but you can at least try to hide it for a while. Some days, selling even a single book seems impossible. You need to do everything you can to improve the odds.”
Next, Miracle Monocle, the literary magazine from the University of Louisville, released their latest issue, which includes my travel essay, "The Least Authentic of All Experiences." It's a little longer than the travel essays I wrote on this site last summer, and it's about Italy, romance, authenticity, vanity, and a lot of other stuff. A sample of this one:
“ On this trip, we will see so many priceless artifacts that I will get tired of seeing them. Before this vacation, a friend described seeing the Pietà as one of the most moving experiences of his life, witnessing such a profound testament of love and beauty. I look at it for a long time and agree it is well-made, and then I look longer, wondering why I haven’t been moved in the same away. I take a picture and walk to the next sculpture. When we get to the Sistine Chapel, the woman in front of me falls to her knees in tears, and my first thought is: okay, we get it. You’re moved. And my second thought is a deep well of regret for being so cynical I would assume this emotional reaction is contrived. I want very much to be the sort of person who sees amazing art and falls to his knees in wonder, but this doesn’t seem like something you will yourself toward.”
A couple weeks ago, I drove down to Baltimore for the NAIBA 2016 conference, to meet booksellers and other authors, and, after a very long production process, it felt like I was finally beginning the next (fun) stage of the book process.
And now, in the past week or so, we've gotten two bits of really good news.
1. The first review, from Kirkus, calls The Young Widower's Handbook, "A quirky, well-told fiction debut." Read the rest.
2. Barnes & Noble included the novel on their Discover Great New Writers list for Spring 2017. I've been trying to play it cool and act like this isn't very exciting, but it actually is, and I am very grateful to have the whole team at Algonquin (and The Book Group) supporting this thing.