I Return From Tour, Weary Yet Invigorated

Home again, home again, jiggity jig!

Two-and-a-half weeks out there on the road sharing the gospel good word of demons, demons everywhere with readers, and I gotta tell you, it was both a very exciting and also incredibly wearying tour.

The exciting: I mean, every event was legit great, with tons of cool readers coming out. I visited excellent bookstores. I got to chat with delightful writing partners. I saw friends new and old! I recognized a few people from their avatars online, which is rare, because frequently at events I’m so mentally overwhelmed by stimulus that I might not even recognize people I know quite well. (“And you are?” “I’m your mother.” “I’m pretty sure you died seven years ago.” *undead wail*). I ate heirloom apples from a killer Wisconsin orchard. Oh, and I went to the Minnesota State Fair, thanks to pals Bill Childs and Stacy Schwartz. What a hoot! A greasy, sugary, foodie hoot!

(Some photos below.)

On the other hand, there was the wearying.

Because when I wasn’t doing all the cool things?

I was doing the uncool things. Which mostly consisted of:

a) driving

b) existing in a hotel room

c) driving more, or being driven

d) hurriedly eating middling food where I had to be careful not to ingest diarrhea lettuce or salmonella cilantro or shrimp made of fiberglass or whatever the newest thing is that RFK Jr is out there licking

e) sleeping

(oh, there was also the part where I did get a gut-bug in Minneapolis, which caused me to miss my Denver event, very sorry Rocky Mountain People, I do love you and hope to see you again someday)

I mean, no, it wasn’t all that way, but it was more that than I wanted it to be — part of it, I think, was down to the choice to drive the tour and also have the tour be largely through the Midwest, which isn’t always the most exciting drive. The drives tend to be long and most highway driving anyway is very good at sort of sanding down all the interesting characteristics of a location and letting it just be “asphalt plus maybe some trees here and there.”

(That said, I think the drive through Wisconsin is actually quite lovely. Wisconsin, you and Minnesota are great states. Don’t let anybody give you any shit.)

So those between-times, which were the dominant times, I often felt quite — I don’t know. Lonely? Unmoored from the universe? Internally greige? It wasn’t great. Again, I dunno if it’s just the era, or my age, or the nature and shape of how I transited from place to place. But it’s fine now. I only decapitated three hitchhikers. Which is good for me! It’s good! I deserve a cookie now.

Let’s see, what else is going on?

Website got hacked while I was on the road, so that was annoying.

I met a Venezuelan Lyft driver who was very angry about “the Muslims” and how they weren’t “real Americans.”

I did eat a bunch of heirloom apples, and I will be posting reviews of them here.

At the fair I ate something called an Apple Donut Ham Grinder, which was also my stripper name back in the early-2000s.

I turned into an ambulatory column of human sweat at the (truly delightful) Belmont Lit Fest just outside Charlotte, NC.

So, yeah.

Thanks to all my most excellent chat partners out there on the road: Todd Keisling, Tracy Townsend, Richard Kadrey, ML Rio, Nat Cassidy, Clay McLeod Chapman, Sarah Read, Eric Asher, JH Markert, and I’m sorry for missing Benjamin Percy and Erika Wurth! Good times and hope to see y’all again real soon.

I remind folks that I’ve still got a little life left in this tour come October —

I’m no longer attending NYCC (some family stuff nudged into the way), but —

10/13 is Gibson’s in NH with BFF Delilah Dawson, who releases her phenomenal Monstera that day.

10/14 is both of us at Phoenix Books in Burlington, Vermont.

Then I’m off to Canada — Can*Con that weekend.

Finally, 10/20 takes me to Oblong Books with Sam Rebelein!

Cool? Cool.

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Now: The Calamities.

It’s out. It’s… I guess doing its thing? I have no idea. I hope people are picking it up and enjoying it. If you are, I do hope you’ll tell your friends, your family, your rogue’s gallery of supervillains that follows you around and interrupts your daily tasks. I also hope you’ll be so kind as to leave a review somewhere online, because that helps.

Booklist reviewed it recently, saying: “Meet Mourning Mayne: eventual inheritor of great, almost unfathomable wealth, who’s not entirely sure he wants it all. Struggling to forge a life apart from his powerful family, he’s forced to return home at a summons from his father, which is impossible to ignore. He’s forced to decide, finally, whether he wants to rejoin the family or turn his back on it forever. At its heart a story about the allure and terror of absolute power and the struggle to retain individuality within a family, The Calamities is Wendig at his very best: a horror story with elements of dark fantasy. Billed as the first book in a new series, The Fiends, which gives you a pretty good idea about where the author is going with his story, this novel features a host of otherworldly characters and the kind of detailed world building that makes Wendig’s novels such a tactile experience for his readers. A great start to what should be a spectacular series.”

So, yeah. Listen to them. Go get the book.

(And you can 100% still get the book signed and personalized by me from my local, Doylestown Bookshop. Click here and tell ’em what you want.)

Uhhhh, that’s it, I think? I should go and write this here sequel, I guess…

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But first, photos: