escaping from escapism

Another quote, I've been thinking about, that I believe is a paraphrase because I can't quite find the origins:

“Jailers love escapism. What they hate is escape.” Michael Moorcock, apparently, via China Miéville (in response to Tolkein’s drippy belief in the transportive potential of fantasy literature).

I'm going to leave it here, absent my own commentary for now, and instead share my interview with the great, fun and funny podcast This Machine Kills this week (which includes more than a few complementary ideas).

If you are curious about my novel — having read it or planning to or even not planning to — this interview is a great place to begin. In addition to discussion about the book, there’s a shocking confession from me about my past and I refuse to spoil the surprise here. Just listen.

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Wrong Way is OUT NOW. It might be a little tricky to find in stores at the moment but I know there are a bunch at Skylight in LA and at Harvard Book Store in Cambridge. In New York, there are a handful at the McNally Jackson Soho location and the B&N in Union Square. Copies are at Powells in Portland, Oregon and 57th Street Books in Chicago and East Bay Booksellers in Oakland. But any store should be able to order it and receive it in a few days.

Or you can order it from Massive Bookshop which has it right now marked down to $12 following the pre-order campaign which raised $750 for MAAP with over a hundred preorders (Thanks everyone! )

There was also a little trouble getting galleys out. If you plan on writing about the book, and need a copy, just let me know and I’ll make sure you get one.

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I'm not exactly the most sociable person on earth but at some point I realized I'd need to get reasonably okay at public speaking to have a writing career. I practiced and practiced, but honestly I think the thing that helped and continued to help the most is wearing these lucky beads that an internet friend once made for me. Haven’t failed me yet.

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I appreciated this comprehensive review of the novel in The Atlantic as the critic read the book from my intentions including the unconventional structure of it.

I know a question it raises is, can a book with so many scenes set in the past claim space on a science fiction / speculative fiction shelf? It’s in conversation with genre books but is it genre itself? Can it, if M. John Harrison’s Light, among other books, was a profound influences? I felt I had to, in some way, write beyond the limits of the genre because the genre in its contemporary state has given up on writers like me. But that I discuss in the TMK podcast too — the need for another New Wave-style era of experimentation as a counter to the cynically packaged sci-fi literature as something edifying and compliant with industry.

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Yesterday, at my book talk at Fall River MoCA, Brittni Ann Harvey told me she had never read about a town like where she grew up or jobs she has had in a book like this before. That meant a lot to me.

I have a few more events coming up:

Tomorrow (Monday), catch me at Harvard Book Store with Juliana Castro Varón, founder of Cita Press.

Then, on Tuesday, in Providence, I am reading at Riffraff Books with Matthew Lawrence, publisher of Headmaster.

And 12/4 Monday in Brooklyn — a week from tomorrow — I’m in conversation with Zito Madu, author of The Minotaur at Calle Lanza, at Wonderville. more on that:

Please come and say hi!

More about things (other than me) soon. In the meantime….

Thanks for reading.