Hey, Boston Folks! Need A Ride To See, Uh, Me?

So I’m signing in Boston this Saturday – or, as I’ve been calling it, Bostonish.  Because I wanted to support indie book stores, and as such I’m signing at Annie’s Book Stop, which is in Worcester, about half an hour away from Boston proper.
(I’m told. I never know where anything is. I just follow the GPS.)
ANyway, some folks have mentioned they don’t have a car, or don’t want to make that trip alone.  But never fear!  Because Annie’s is smart and proactive, they’ve created a ride-sharing thread where Ferrett-minded Boston people can gather together to figure out how to burrow out of your snow-caves and see a weasel.  So if you wanna compare notes or find someone to come on out, then that totally works.
Anyone who arrives at Annie’s, for all the trouble it’s worth, gets extra-big hugs from me.

I Wonder How Many People Hawkeye's Drinking Killed.

Gini and I have been watching reruns of MASH on Netflix, and holy God does this show hold up; there’s a lot of sitcoms from the 1970s that have become embarrassingly dated, but MASH deals with situations that are still actually shocking by modern standards. There’s a whole episode devoted to Hawkeye’s being unable to get it up because he’s so stressed about the war – and while it’s couched in 1970s network standards-and-practices censorship terminology, it’s still pretty explicit.
Yet I wonder how many people Hawkeye killed.
Thing is, it’s made clear in MASH that the choppers can drop off wounded men at the surgical unit at any time, often at the worst times, almost always without warning.  And there’s much hullaballoo made of the fact that it never ends.
Yet somehow, whenever Hawkeye and BJ go on a bender, getting laughing-drunk shitfaced, the choppers never come.
Oh, I know: the MASH 4077th is allowed to operate in this distinctly unmilitary fashion because they have a 97% survival rate, a fact that’s hammered home time and time again in the course of the show.  Which seems unrealistic – how good a surgeon is Hawkeye, to make up for Frank’s blatant and routine incompetence?  I mean, if 97 out of 100 wounded men who make it to the MASH unit survive, doesn’t that make Frank actually a brilliant surgeon, just not as good as Hawkeye and company?  Or is Frank entirely responsible for those 3% dead, and is Hawkeye’s moral duty to shoot Frank in the head so he can achieve a saintlike 100% survival?
And come on, man.  Benders take a while to recover from, and these guys are getting plastered.  Surely the choppers came in while Hawkeye was too soused to see.  Surely Hawkeye had to resect a perforated bowel while he was sweating bathtub gin, some poor bastard of a soldier dying because of bad timing, unconscious and unaware that Hawkeye’s hand-eye coordination with the scalpel deep in his guts has been obliterated due to booze.
I still like MASH.  But I wonder about these things.  I can’t not wonder.

So What's It Like To Have Your First Book Release Party?

“I shouldn’t do this,” I said to Gini, huddling back in the car seat as we rode over to the bookstore.
She didn’t even look away from the road.  “Of course you should.”
“It just feels so… indulgent,” I said.  “Egotistic.  A whole party devoted to me.”
“To celebrate something you worked for all your life.”
“But… I went too crazy!  There’s a cake!  And my book-themed nails!  And I’m wearing this suit, like it’s a costume!  I should have just had a get-together in our living room.  Loganberry books will hate me.”
“You talked with all those writers at ConFusion, and they told you that it was okay for you to go nuts on your first book party.  They all did. And besides, when are you going to have another first book release party?”
“I shouldn’t do this,” I said, and turned up the radio.
But when I got there fifteen minutes early, I ran into two friends from the clubs that I hadn’t expected to see there.  They waved happily.  That was a good sign.  And when I walked through the door, there was a thick stack of books, covering an entire table – my books, so many it barely seemed possible that this many copies of Flex existed.
And I went back, and there were three more people, and a Very Large Room filled with chairs.  Too many chairs.  And a lectern, wherein I discovered that everyone but me had thought, “Surely, Ferrett will be doing a reading from his new book!”  But fortunately, there will be a special audio production of one of the climactic chapters of Flex, and so I’d prepared a specialized excerpt designed as an introduction for new readers, even if I would have to read it off of a teeny teeny screen.
And still more people.
And more people.
And more people.
All friends of mine, but who knew I had that many friends?  Just a stream of my beloveds walking through the door – some of them folks I hadn’t seen in years.  And it was chaos, because I could barely shake their hand and have two minutes of conversation with them before someone else I adored showed up and I had to hug them, but…
…some of them had read the book.  And they had that surprised excitement in their eyes, that thrill that said I started reading this book because you were my friend, Ferrett, but then I couldn’t put it down and I finished it in a day.  That happiness of not having to feign excitement, of actually having excitement, because they weren’t just here for me, they were here because the book was good and they wanted to be here when it all started.
(Which was still weird, because Flex is getting largely good reviews, and the GoodReads rating keeps going up the more people who review it, and I keep getting tagged on Facebook and getting texts from people and I just got my first fanmail from someone who’d never heard of me yesterday, and all this is a series of firsts with luck I cannot believe.)
And I was too nervous to have cake.  Not then.  Not yet.
But that big old room filled up.  With sixty-plus people.  The bookstore owner, Harriett, seemed surprised and thrilled.
And that table of books sold.  Every one.  I had to run out to the car to sell them my author’s copies.
And I read, and the audience laughed in the right places and seemed tense in the tense ones, and when it was done that wave of applause broke over me.

And I signed books, so many books, fifty-plus books, and each one I numbered and gave a personal insignia, and there was even a guy there who didn’t know me, the book just sounded interesting, and that was awesome.
And I discovered that when you do a signing like this, each signature is a little moment, this tiny microcosm where you say hello and greet and have a little mini-waltz of friendship, and it was like this repeated pocket of hello, how are you doing, oh that’s wonderful, so glad to see you, how shall I sign it, hugs, goodbye, goodbye.

And then it was over, and I ate cake, and the cake frosting was dyed black to match the book, and it turned your teeth and your tongue black but I didn’t care if it gave me Orc mouth this was my cake of triumph and I ate it, I ate it so happily.
And I thought of the upcoming dates: New York next Friday. Boston(ish) next Saturday. Then Seattle and Portland the week after that, and San Diego, and San Francisco, and I worried that maybe people wouldn’t show up at those signings, that it would be the stereotypical bad signing – a sad little author at a sad little folding-card table, making sad eye contact with passing customers in the hopes of attracting their interest, a stack of unsold books on the table.
And it may still be that.  Maybe nobody will come to those other signings – because that, too, is egotistical, this bizarre hybrid of a vacation and a book tour, just me wanting to go to other cities and see some friends and see who’ll show up to celebrate with me.  And see the Special Flex-themed nails that you can only see if you come see me on this tour, which is ridiculous, but also strangely secretive and awesome.
But this night?  It was untouchable.  It was better than I’d dreamed, this glorious room that looked like a movie set (and seriously, if you like it, check out Loganberry books), and this future ahead of me, and all of these people in a room that bubbled over with friendship.
All the love.  So much love.

The Best Review I'll Ever Get

“You actually read it?” I asked, surprised.
“Yeah!” My goddaughter clutched my book to her chest, seeming a little confused that I’d be confused.
“But…”  I tried to put this delicately. “You don’t like reading.”
“I don’t!”  She beamed.  “But I loved this book.”
So I hugged my goddaughter, and felt happy.
And then I checked the Amazon page for Flex and found that she liked the book so much she had to leave a review:

Kat’s daughter Carolyn- This book was the most interesting and emotional book I have ever read. This book pulled me in and made me think that Flex is a reality. This MUST be made into a movie. I can see and picture it already,in other words this book is just PERFECT. Good job Ferrett,good job.

But my favorite line from any review I’ve ever gotten ever is this:

I would recommend this book to people ages 15+ because f*** is in the book on almost every page.

Ask Me Anything! No, Not Here. On Reddit!

ZOMG GUYS, I’m doing my first serious “Ask Me Anything” today over on Reddit. I’m all nervous that nobody will have any questions, so if y’all have a Reddit account and feel like asking me whatever you feel like, then go over there and start peppering me.
Such a little country mouse, I am.