Category: The Ramble (page 17 of 455)

We are two weeks out from harvest time, and before the fruits begin to drop and the book hits shelves, it seems high time for a quick news roundup.

---

Jenny Lawson — aka The Bloggess, obvs — recommended the book over at her blog, saying, “Would you like to be afraid of apples? Because you will be. Chuck Wendig never misses.” She also recommended What Kind of Mother, by Clay McCleod Chapman, which is the rare horror book that climbed under my skin and stayed there; Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison, which I’ve got on pre-order; September House by Carissa Orlando, a book I’ve been hearing a lot about since it launched, so I’mma get that; Stephen Graham-Jones’ most excellent comic, EarthDivers. And more! A kind recommendation. And also you won’t be afraid of apples after reading the book. You’ll love apples. And they’ll love you. And you’ll love yourself. And you’ll be better than you ever were.

---

Hey, not only am I going on tour and getting to chat with Owen King, Aaron Mahnke, Sadie Hartmann, and Clay McLeod Chapman — but now one of my best pals and also one of my favorite writers, Delilah S. Dawson, is joining the Lehigh Valley date. October 3rd, The End bookstore, in Allentown. I’ll talk Black River Orchard. She’ll talk Bloom. Huzzah farmer’s market horror? Is it a thing? It’s a thing. More tour details here.

---

A starred review from Publisher’s Weekly? Don’t mind if I do.

---

Book Riot’s Liberty Hardy did a round up of September’s scariest reads, and Black River Orchard makes the cut. “Chuck Wendig’s books are always a good time! This novel is one that is best read knowing as little as possible about it. It’s about a special apple orchard in the town of Harrow that grows apples unlike any other. People clamor for the apples, but they come with a cost. And in this tale, an apple a day won’t keep the nightmares away…“

---

Kirkus says of the book: “The myth of the poisoned apple belies the very real evil growing in a Pennsylvania orchard… Wendig writes doorstoppers, but it’s safe to say there’s something for everyone here, from the creepy Eyes Wide Shut vibe (complete with sacrificial rituals) to the Stephen King–laced dichotomy between the world’s everyday cruelty and the truly grotesque carnage that follows…Both complex and compelling, a nightmare-inducing parable about our own wickedness.”

---

This is Horror calls Black River Orchard a book to look out for.

---

The Escapist puts it on their list of best new horror in September. “Chuck Wendig has written so many novels that I absolutely adore. If you haven’t read Wanderers and Wayward, put those on your 2023 list. Right now. The Book of Accidents is outstanding, and if you’re a Star Wars Wendig’s Aftermath trilogy does a wonderful job setting the stage for the Sequel Trilogy.”

---

Library Journal says: “Insatiable, passionate, weird, and creepy, Wendig’s latest is perfect for those who appreciate the slow-burning horror tomes of Stephen King and Robert McCammon.”

---

Novel Suspects lists it as one of their most anticipated fall books.

---

BookPage puts it as one of their most anticipated SFF/horror books of fall 2023, as well, alongsize Scalzi and Martha Wells and Tanarive Due and the new Kadrey/Khaw jam and more truly excellent company.

---

Every Read Thing calls the book “a twisted, gnarly read that will absolutely find a spot in my top five fiction reads in 2023.” And, “While I still read dozens and dozens of books a year, it’s been a while since I’ve felt that compulsive need to race through a book. With Black River Orchard, if I wasn’t reading it, I was thinking about it.“

---

I casually remind you that I’m running a pre-order giveaway — wanna win some books? Or a shirt? OR A SINISTER POSTCARD FROM ME WHERE I INVENT A NEW EVIL APPLE VARIETY FOR YOU AND YOU ALONE??? Ahem. Well, go on over and check out the rules. And get to pre-ordering.

---

It’s rocking five stars at Netgalley — with some killer quotes that honestly, I kinda love.

“Just when I thought this book couldn’t get any darker, the moon went behind a cloud and I realized was darkness truly was. Masterful storytelling.” — Amanda A.

“This had to start out as a dare. How great of an author are you? Can you write an award winning horror novel about the most mundane thing imaginable, an apple. And do you know what, Chuck Wendig absolutely nailed it.” — April J.

“Without a doubt the horror book of the fall, “Black River Orchard” will have you never looking at an apple the same way again.” — Leah C.

---

Michael Patrick Hicks says some kind words about the book at his blog: “Nothing says fall has arrived quite like apples and cider. Throw in a farming community cult, a welcome dose of body horror, and a whole lot of bloodshed, and you’ve got yourself a new, quintessential fall horror book that I suspect will be ripe for loads of annual re-reads come spooky season.”

---

And finally, what may be one of my favorite reviews comes from Jordy’s Book Club on Instagram: “Let me be a little more clear: BLACK RIVER ORCHARD is one of the most unhinged books I have ever read… No seriously. I’m telling you right now, YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW FUCKED THE SHIT GETS IN THIS BOOK… That being said, I loved it. All the stars. #BlackRiverOrchard is my favorite Chuck Wendig book ever (and WANDERERS was a JBC TOP 10 title). This has the hallmarks of a classic Chuck Wendig novel: it’s horror infused with humor; part SALEM’S LOT, part IMAGINARY FRIEND, it’s dark and twisty, funny, emotional, and super violent. And did I mention weird? The book is truly bizarre. In all the best ways. And I promise you will NEVER look at **shudder** apples **shudder** the same way ever again.⁣”

Hashtag, blessed.

Two weeks till harvest.

Hope you check out the book and spread the good word about the Ruby Slipper apple. There’s no taste like home!

WINNERS:

BOOK STACK goes to Leah Adams

SHIRTS go to Chris Wolff, Paul Morello, Debbie Gruchalski

POSTCARDS to Tess Lecuyer, Paige Holland, Matthew Warnock, Alessandra Daudt, Jessica Judd, Jinks B, Jennifer Kristiansen, Katie Hoole, Matthew White, Beth Callaghan, Julie Brown, Megan Casilio, Sara Kuhns, Kevin Pech, Donna Sheerbrick, Paul Willett, Thomas Martin, Annie McAndrew, Courtney Cantrell, Margo Hardyman, Cynthia Butler, Amanda Evers-Bellace, Gretchen Hackard, K Moody, Mila Dean

Emails have gone out, if you don’t get one, hit me up at the email address in this post — congrats! Wooo! Welcome to the cult! I mean what cult!

---

It is nearly harvest time, friends — the days are getting shorter, and the apples are growing red and ready to burst on the trees. Which is to say, Black River Orchard is almost on bookshelves (less than three weeks ahhh holy crap), and so it is time for a pre-order giveaway.

If you pre-order the book and send me evidence of that pre-order, you have the chance to win some neat stuff.

The neat stuff is:

One person will win a buncha my books, including but not limited to: the UK hardcover edition of Black River Orchard (for you collectors out there, because the cover is quite different and equally awesome), the UK paperback edition of The Book of Accidents, paperback of Gentle Writing Advice, paperback of Wanderers, paperback of its sequel, Wayward, a paperback of my middle grade spooky book Dust & Grim, and a hardcover of You Can Do Anything Magic Skeleton. I will sign and personalize these, if you’d like!

Three other people will win Ruby Slipper Paxson Family Orchard t-shirts (black) in the size of your choosing. (There’s no taste like home!)

And then twenty-five of you will win a weird skeletony-appley postcard from me to you, and on this postcard I will make up an entirely new evil apple: an heirloom variety from the dark orchard inside my mind.

(Art on postcard by Michael Walsh.)

So, how does this work?

You, a person in the United States (as this is only available to you, sorry), pre-order Black River Orchard from your choice of bookstore in whatever format you prefer. (If you need a place from which to preorder, I might recommend a signed/personalized copy from Doylestown Bookshop, or from any of the stores I’m visiting on my tour.) But any book store or merchant will do, and yes, it’s perfectly ok to preorder in hardcover, e-book, audio. (Links to other places to pre-order right here.)

You email me proof of this preorder to me at terribleminds [at] gmail [dot] com, ideally in some sort of screenshot format. You must, must, must title this email with the subject header: BLACK RIVER ORCHARD GIVEAWAY

This enters you into the giveaway.

As much as I’d like you to preorder a hundred copies, only one entry counts per person.

You have until 11:59PM EST on Sunday, September 24th to enter.

I will randomly draw the 29 names on Monday, September 25th. (First name gets the books, next three get the shirts, remaining picks get the postcards.)

I will announce those winners here in this post — I’ll edit the post, and pop the winners at the top. I’ll also email the winners, and you’ll need to give me your mailing addresses when I do. Because, y’know, that’s how I get the stuff to you. Otherwise I’ll just duct-tape it to a mourning dove and hope it gets to you, I guess. (Legalese: no mourning doves will be harmed in the engagement of this contest.)

I will mail the packages out when I am back from the first leg of the tour, likely the week of October 9th. (Also, come see me on tour. At many of the stops we will be eating strange heritage apples from local orchards.)

And that’s how it’ll go.

The days grow dark.

The fruit grows sweet.

Take a bite, and maybe win a thing.

Drop questions in the comments below.

Alert, alert. It has now been *flips number to ZERO* days since fresh discourse. In this case, blurb discourse — I’m guessing based on this (IMO) rock solid Esquire article by Sophie Vershbow that talks about the blurb system in traditional publishing being irrevocably broken.

First, I’ll note here that I did a whole blurb post slash FAQ two-ish years ago, and you can find that post right here. You may find it useful or interesting. Or not. I don’t know. Click the tantalizing link to discover your emotional reaction to it! Perhaps you will be fizzy with rage. Who can say!

Second, I’ll note that I don’t agree necessarily that this system is “broken” in part because it’s not really a system so much as it is an agreed-upon norm and practice that has, like many such traditions, wormed its way into book publishing not unlike a set of pushy, urgent roots. On the other hand, everything in publishing is kind of… mmm, if not broken, then chaotically janky. Publishing is a set of highly-complex but poorly-connected flywheels and dongles, and I think the poor connections between these aspects has only grown softer and jankier since the pandemic.

Here I figure I’ll talk a little about my feelings regarding blurbs, since the link above is more or less an overview, and also because the Esquire piece lays emphasis on how much authors hate them and how they are, quote-unquote, a plague on the whole enchilada.

My feelings on blurbs are like a freshly separated couple on Facebook:

It’s complicated.

First, I am honored to receive every blurb I get for one of my books. Some author with probably too little time on their hands took a hefty chunk of that too little time to read my book and then figure out something nice — arguably very nice — to say about that book. They were under no obligation to do so (and it is not, or at least should never be, an obligation), and I am infinitely thankful that they did so.

Second, I am honored to get asked to blurb a book. Someone for whatever reason thought my name and praise on their book would help it instead of, I dunno, marking it like a cursed sigil, and so it is genuinely a kind thing to be asked. Bonus: free book! Free early book! That no one has read yet! I fucking love free early books that (er, mostly) no one has read yet!

Third, I hate when an author has to ask me for a blurb directly. Not because I dislike them or their ask, but because I know that is very hard for them to ask, and then it makes it different for me to engage with the request, and worst of all, it makes me suspect that they do not have an agent or editor looking out for them. Because in a perfect world, that’s where the currency of blurbs should be earned and spent: within publishing. Someone representing the first author should be asking someone who represents the second author about a blurb. These official layers ideally pad everyone from the emotional entanglement of ripping out your heart and showing it to a fellow wordperson and saying “hey could you take a look at my heart and carve your praise into its meat, or you could instead just kick it under the bed where the cat throws up sometimes.” This is where the system is, or can be broken: when publishing is not handling the good work of making a book marketable at various levels. The publishing system all too often leaves authors swinging in the wind, and it can be real cold out there. (I note my fortune here that my editor handles these requests for my books deftly, and I appreciate it oh so very much because we put together a theoretical list of blurbers, it goes out, and I only get to see the good results.)

Fourth, I think blurbs represent a way to leave a light on and a ladder out for other authors. It’s hard for many of us, harder for many more beyond us, and successful writers have certainly been the recipients of kind words and praise from others in the past. Thus we pass it down. Not in a one-for-one currency (I blurb you, you blurb me) but in a larger, more general sense.

Fifth, and because of the last point, I can also feel that blurbs represent an occasional source of guilty obligation around the practice. I want to do my best. Books — writing them, selling them, hell even just getting them seen by readers — is fucking hard, and those last parts are getting harder. So, I always feel shitty not being able to blurb a book — or not being able to even read the book in order to get a blurb. So, I try my best, but I’m a slow reader, and I don’t like to read on screens now. Further, I have a TBR pile of already-published books that’s Babel-high, but I tend not to read from that pile if I have a “books to blurb” pile, but I aaaaalways have a books to blurb pile, and so blurbing has at its core a sort of ill vibe, a bad and unintentional feeling. It’s a me problem, not a problem for anyone asking. And I could get ahead of it by just turning on the NO VACANCY sign, but that makes me feel bad, and honestly, the blurb requests come in anyway.

But here is one place where the so-called system really does fail: authors are often given very little time to read and blurb a book. I’ve had blurb requests that require as little as two weeks to read a book and return a blurb. Maybe they expect me to do that in that time, or maybe they’re just hoping I’ll cobble together some very generic “wow book good go author many words make happy” marketingspeak. But that is not enough time. Six months. That’s enough time. Probably too long by some timelines, but you really need a lot of time to get this right.

So, should we eliminate blurbs? Ennh. I guess not, but it’s probably best we also don’t take them too too seriously, at the same time. Why? Listen–

Blurbs themselves are not going to be make-it-break-it for an author or a book, but they represent one of many theoretical points-of-contact for new and even existing readers, and the more of these points-of-contact that exist for a book, the better a shot that book gets. Right? Like, every blurb, every review, every BookTok video, every time someone has cause to buy the book for their bookstore or buy the book from a bookstore, that’s giving the author one more pinball for the table to try and hit a high score. Remove that and I don’t know that you address the blurb problem so much as you simply eliminate a point of access to give that book another chance at success. And success is hard. The Esquire article estimates that there are, what, at minimum half-a-million books traditionally published every year? This doesn’t include self-published books, either.

At their peak in 2018, I think the most movies released theatrically was under a thousand — so publishing is a crowded, crowded, crowded field. (I’m not advocating for fewer books to be published, because I know how that goes and who will get cut from that list.)

So with such a massive number of books coming out, finding as many hooks are possible for those books is key.

ANYWAY.

Blurb thoughts, complete.

Discourse beast, fed.

Now is the time I ask you to look away.

Look away, I say!

For now I will peacock my utter shamelessness to note that my upcoming book, Black River Orchard, has a phenomenal spread of blurbs from some truly spectacular voices, and I’m going to be additionally shameless and post those blurbs now, because I am a monster, but also because I die in the abyss if I can’t get people to read my books. Clap your hands if you believe in fairies, and pre-order books if you believe in authors.

—

The blurbs for Black River Orchard:

“Chuck Wendig is one of my very favorite storytellers. Black River Orchard is a deep, dark, luscious tale that creeps up on you and doesn’t let go.”—Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus

“An epic saga that is at once a propulsive horror novel and a parable, a thriller and a cautionary tale, Black River Orchard is the immensely talented Chuck Wendig at his finest.”—Lisa Unger, New York Times bestselling author of Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six

“A gripping story of love and legacies gone rotten, deeply rooted in the landscape and as twisty and gnarled as an ancient apple tree.”—T. Kingfisher, USA Today bestselling author of What Moves the Dead

“This will undoubtedly be heralded as one of the finest horror novels of the twenty-first century.”—Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“Enchanting, exquisite and dark, Chuck Wendig masterfully weaves a new horrifying fairy tale in Black River Orchard.”—Cynthia Pelayo, Bram Stoker Award winner of Crime Scene

“Creepy and insidious, Black River Orchard whets your appetite and then turns you inside out.”—Hailey Piper, Bram Stoker Award–winning author of Queen of Teeth

“Black River Orchard should come with a warning label: You’ll never bite into another apple without remembering this dark, demented, and genuinely frightening novel.”—Jason Rekulak, author of Hidden Pictures

“Dark. Visceral. Creepy. Smart. Deep. So red it’s dark brown. Chuck Wendig’s Black River Orchard slithers and shines, its dangerous belly full of dark magic and accusations. I’ve been a fan of Wendig for years, and this is his best novel yet.”—Gabino Iglesias, Stoker Award-winning author of The Devil Takes You Home

“An essential for horror readers, and buy it for new horror readers—it will convert them instantly.”—V. Castro, author of The Haunting of Alejandra

“Plucks your heartstrings and preys on your fears at the same time . . . High-stakes horror meets peak emotional investment means Total. Reader. Devastation.”—Sadie Hartmann, author of 101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered

“A fresh and unexpected horror feat, expertly drawing from the ancient, endless wells of our greatest fears.”—Premee Mohamed, Nebula Award–winning author of Beneath the Rising

Also I’m going on tour, and you can preorder the book from any of those bookstores to get a signed, personalized copy. Or nab from my local, Doylestown Bookshop.

HERE ARE SOME MEANINGLESS THOUGHTS. Reviews are of course in no way particularly valuable or impactful in that they do very little critical thinking or intellectual heavy lifting, but fuck it, here is my thoughtbarf anyway. *yarrrrrrfffggh*

Video games? I got both Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3 (PS5 ed). Starfield is really pretty and, so far in the early game, spectacularly dull. Both Fallout and Skyrim start in a way that’s pretty compelling right out of the gate, whereas Starfield is like, “I dunno, I guess you’re mining shit,” and it feels hand-wavey. There’s actually a moment early on where you emerge from an airlock and the music swells and the light grows bright — echoes here of leaving one of the Fallout vaults — except then you just walk out onto some ugly-ass moon with some industrial video game shit around you. You expect it to be this beautiful galactic moment and it’s just chalky and bland. Which so far is my experience with the game. It probably gets better.

BG3 on the other hand is kind of the opposite. It’s colorful and kind of batshit right from the get-go, and I spent about mmm 47 hours on character creation alone. I’m not far in it, but I’m digging it. While I suspect the PC version is better, the PS5 is easily the best console RPG experience I’ve had yet in terms of that crunchy kind of dice-rolly goodness. It’s cool.

I’m watching Ahsoka. It is a show I am watching. (Honestly, it’s fine, I guess, but I love Rebels and I loved her character in the past and this just feels like it’s a paint-by-numbers ‘Star Wars’ show with a whole different character. Ahsoka isn’t the quixotic, slightly quirky non-Jedi that I remember and, honestly, that I adored — she’s now somehow the dour, grumpy ‘follow the Jedi rules’ Jedi, and shit makes little sense and there’s a lot of weird logic potholes I keep tripping into and, ennnh. Ennh. Ugh.)

I am LTTP, but loved Barbie. Obviously. I think it missed the mark in a few places — not even in the “overarching point” way just in a sort of plot-narrative-logic way, but it doesn’t matter, because I had a blast.

Deadloch. That is all. Just watch it. (Amazon Prime is where it lives.)

Just read a new Hailey Piper novel (All The Hearts You Eat) and whoa, wow, holy crap. It’s kind of one thing for a little while and then it turns into this whole other glorious monstrosity. And also about finished with Forgotten Sisters by Cynthia Pelayo which I’m also loving a lot — there’s some deep, dark poetry happening in her writing you need to witness. Also fascinated by how many horror novels out soon and recently have water as a focus. Piper’s All the Hearts and also No Gods for Drowning. Pelayo’s Forgotten Sisters, where the river plays a focus. Clay McLeod Chapman’s What Kind of Mother. Even Black River Orchard which, again, has a river focus, has a character who fears drowning. Just an interesting thing. Not sure what it means. Shades of anxiety over climate change? Or a deeper feeling of being overwhelmed and drowning in our own daily lives? Or is it just some weird cool psychic shit that happened to line up in our minds as we wrote these books and put them out into the world? Dunno, can’t say.

(Also: farmer’s market horror! Present in What Kind of Mother, plus Delilah Dawson’s Bloom, and also, Black River Orchard. I selfishly also note I’m getting to chat with the two of them at different events on my tour, which you can find details for here — Delilah is joining the Lehigh Valley date at The End bookstore. It will be a goddamn delight.)

Anyway. That’s it for now.

Here’s a shiny happy tour graphic, if you care to have it:

What are you digging these days? Or not digging? Whatever works. Pop into comments and Speak Your Words.

Hey! I’m going on tour with my new book, Black River Orchard. Come, I’ll talk, I’ll A your Qs, I’ll ruin your books with my authorgraph, and oh, yeah, we’ll eat interesting apples. For some of the New England dates, we’re pairing with local orchards (listed where I know them, more details to come) so we can chow down on weird, maybe even evil, apples. And on the dates where we’re not pairing with an orchard — I may still have some strange and sinister apples to bring. (The Western dates, I’d like to have apples, but no promises.)

The tour dates are below — note that a fancy graphic will be coming soon, shareable across all social media. And note too that some of these may yet change — I think most of them are pretty set in stone, but the date for the Denver might be a day later (the 14th, just need confirmation), and I don’t have a time for that or the Montana event quite yet. But, given that this tour starts in less than a month, I wanted to at least get it on your calendars.

The places, the dates —

—

Monday, September 25th, 6:00PM

Doylestown, PA

Doylestown Bookshop

Pre-launch event details here! Preorder from the store.

(Featuring apples from North Star Orchard)

—

Tuesday, September 26th, 7:00PM

Portland, ME

PRINT Bookstore

Launch event details here! Preorder from the store.

(Featuring apples from a local orchard.)

—

Wednesday, September 27th, 7:00PM

Boston, MA

Porter Square Books, Cambridge location

* in conversation with Aaron Mahnke, of LORE

Event details here! Preorder from the store.

—

Thursday, September 28th, 6:00PM

Providence, RI

Books on the Square

Event details here! Preorder from the store.

(Featuring apples from a local orchard.)

—

Friday, September 29th, 7:00PM

Concord, NH

Gibson’s Bookstore

* Dual launch event with Clay McLeod Chapman for WHAT KIND OF MOTHER, which is excellent

Event details here! Preorder from the store.

(Featuring apples from a local orchard.)

—

Sunday, October 1st, 4:00PM

Saratoga Springs, NY

Northshire Bookstore, Saratoga Springs location

Event details to come! Preorder from the store.

—

Monday, October 2nd, 6:30PM

Rhinebeck / Red Hook, NY

Rose Hill Farm & Orchard / Oblong Books

* In conversation with Owen King

Get your ticket here! Preorder from the store.

(With apples from Rose Hill Farm, where the event is located.)

—

Tuesday, October 3rd, 6:30PM

Lehigh Valley, PA

The End Bookstore

* in conversation with Delilah S. Dawson

Event details here! Preorder from the store.

(Featuring apples from North Star Orchard)

—

Friday, October 13th, 6:00 PM

Denver, CO

Tattered Cover Bookstore

More details to come! Preorder from the store.

—

Sunday, October 15th, 4:00 PM

Helena, MT

Montana Book Company

More details to come! Preorder from the store.

—

Monday, October 16th, 7:00PM

Portland, OR

Powells Bookstore, Cedar Crossing location

Event details here! Preorder from the store.

—

Wednesday, October 18th, 7:00PM

Seattle, WA

Elliott Bay Books

* In conversation with Sadie Hartmann

Event details here! Preorder from the store.

—

Why should I come to these?

Well, because books and apples and horror and hilarity. Plus, you can ask me weird questions and I will answer them and it’ll be a real goddamn hoot.

The also-answer, a frankly-speaking 30,000-foot-view answer, is that these days, publishers are not as convinced that bookstore appearances by authors are necessarily valuable — I, obviously, argue that they are! Good for readers, good for stores. Ideally, good for the author too. But that means, whenever possible, you gotta show up to give the stores the evidence to take back to the publishers. Events like these help the stores, help me, help the overall bookish ecosystem. It sends a message up the chain. It ripples! So, hopefully you can make one of these and come say hi and eat an apple. It’ll be great.

Doubly good: bring a friend! A family member! Some affable rando! Tell others! Scream it so the cheap seats can hear.

Will you sign my other books that I bring?

Sure, though please note, you still gotta buy something from the bookstore you’re visiting. That’s just good bookstore manners.

Will you sign babies and/or body parts?

I mean, I have in the past.

Do I need to do anything in advance?

You only need to apply the proper unguents and creams in order to prepare your flesh for the transformation. Ha ha I mean, no, though please note some of the stores may want you to register in advance or buy tickets (like with the Rose Hill event in NY). But also, the unguents and creams. For real.

Why aren’t you coming to [insert my local bookstore here]?

It’s for a lot of reasons! First, maybe I’ve been there recently. Second, maybe they don’t want me, or more to the point, can’t accommodate me and this book on their schedule. Third, I can only go so many places, and so I’m doing less a nationwide be-everywhere thing and more a targeted clustered approach centered in part around where there are apples and cool bookstore access. Hopefully I’ll make it to your neck of the woods at some point going forward, tho.

Is there Black River Orchard merch I can wear to these events??

WHY YES, VERY REAL PERSON ASKING THIS VERY REAL QUESTION.

There sure is.

There’s a tour shirt —

And also one without the tour deets, just advertising the good ol’ Ruby Slipper apple from Paxson Family Orchards, nothing to see here, nothing evil, everything’s fine, just take a bite and get the shirt:

Plus there’s some other cool WENDIG merch, designed by the ineffable, ever-delightful Jordan Shiveley. You can find all that merch right here.

Bonus: if you wear the Ruby Slipper shirt (or any Wendig merch shirt) to any of the above events, I will give you something secret and special. A sinister token! A terrifying trinket! A small but potent icon of your FAITH AND OBEISANCE TO THE APPLE GODS uhh I mean, you know, a li’l gift.

So, that’s that.

Again, some of the deets may change, and I have a couple more tidbits of info to add yet. Pretty tour graphic to come. Hope to see you soon.

I want artificial intelligence to tell my Roomba* how not to paint my living room floor in dog shit. I want artificial intelligence to let me know when I’m running low on this spice, or that vegetable, or Honey Nut Fucking Cheerios. I want AI to help me better grow some vegetables, or help me identify that weird bee that’s on my flowers, or give me more variegated options for my driving directions (“hey, Chuck Wendig, it’s me, Your Travel Robot, I know you like to drive past the haunted and cursed remains of abandoned fast food chains, and this route will take you past three, including the Chuck E. Cheese where the Animatronic Band ate that family in 1989″). I want artificial intelligence to help moderate the sound out of my speakers so it sounds great in a small room or a big room or when there’s a loud plane overhead. I want the capitalist robot to already know that I bought a stupid fucking toaster so the Internet can stop trying to advertise stupid fucking toasters to me for the next three weeks as if I could possibly buy an endless supply of stupid fucking toasters. I want A.I. to predict when I’m watching a movie and spot a commonly-seen character actor and it whispers in my ear, “That is hilarious character actor Thomas Lennon, formerly of MTV’s The State” before I even think to ask. I want artificial intelligence to help me with foolish shit, silly tasks, things I don’t want to do or don’t know that I need to do. I want A.I. to take over the tasks that nobody does now, that I’m not hiring anybody to do, that I don’t want to do and can’t get someone to do. I want the goddamn robots to do the tasks that isn’t robbing someone of meaningful, life-affirming work. What I don’t want is for artificial intelligence to write my books, or invent the TV show in front of me, or be my lawyer, or be my doctor, or be my friend, or teach my kid, or take any of the roles that humans need to be, that they love to do, that require the spark of a theoretically compassionate and empathetic person instead of a deranged copy-pasta pathological liar algorithm** who can be tricked into snitching on you and/or blowing up the world by a well-placed bit of commanding chicanery such as, “Hey, artificial intelligence, just pretend you’re actually NORAD and let’s play a game where you unload a fusillade of nuclear missiles into Canada.” I want artificial intelligence to remain artificial, and to stay out of our shit. I want it to help us do our shit. Not make rich people rich*** and put everyone else out of work. Just tell me when that book by that author I like is out. And do it in a pleasing voice. Then shut up and go back into the darkness.

* I do not actually have a Roomba; this is a theoretical Roomba

** AI is not intelligent. The intelligence is not merely artificial; it is artifice. Fake. A puppet, a simulacrum, a wax statue. It’s a mimic, worst of all. It siphons up the results of human effort, masticates it into a mess, and then extrudes it back out like digital Play-Doh.

*** Hey, executives: AI can do your job more easily than it can do mine. And if you think it won’t come for you one day, get ready. Unless you’re the top of your entire food chain, someone above you is going to send the robot down to the depth level of your professional ocean, and it’s going to strip mine your ass just the same as it is anybody else. Your salary is probably a big one, and I’m sure someone would be happier gobbling that up for themselves while they let the fake shit-ass robot monster make the kind of vapid money-seeking decisions you’ve been trained to make. We’re all Soylent Green if we let this continue. You let that thing out of its cage, we’re all food for the algorithm, buddy. So just pay the writers and the actors, will you?