The Sol Majestic Is Out Today! Go Forth And Consume Its Delicious Words!
So after months of anticipation, my “Anthony Bourdain meets space-opera by way of Baz Luhrmann and Wes Anderson” book The Sol Majestic is out for purchase. And if you like:
- Food Network-style investigations of fine cuisine in space
- Delicate gay romances between two awkward teenagers
- Families coming together to create great art and great people
- Mysterious casks of alien yeast
THEN THIS IS THE BOOK FOR YOU.
So many of you have already supported me I feel guilty asking y’all to do it again – but if you want to help this weirdie little book spread its wings and fly, then there’s three things you can do:
- Purchase. Buying the author’s books is the greatest thing you can always do for them, since it encourages publishers to buy more books and keep their careers going. The Sol Majestic is available at pretty much any bookstore – Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powells (where it’s a staff pick twice over), and various indie booksellers. (I don’t care where you buy it, as long as you did buy it, and thank you.)
- Promote. There’s a lot of books out there, and a single Tweet or Facebook update saying, “Hey, {$Author} has a book out today!” helps a lot. People mostly buy books recommended by their friends. You even mentioning it is a stealth recommendation, so your social push helps more than you can know.
- Review. Retailers push books that have more reviews. They say that 50+ reviews on Amazon is the magic number. So even if you don’t like the book and leave a negative review, that helps the book. (And of course to my mind, you’re not obligated to like it, although most of the people who liked Flex/et al seem to also like this book.) So when you’re done, figure out how many stars it’s worth and type up a sentence or two. It really helps.
- See The Author On His Book Tour. This year I’ll be in Denver (tonight!), Ann Arbor, and San Francisco. Showing up to say hello convinces book stores that hey, it’s worth having this person out here. Also it makes a socially anxious author like, you know, me feel less anxious knowing you’re coming.
Anyway. Below are all the links for The Sol Majestic. Thank you if you choose to mention it anywhere. If you purchase it, I hope it satisfies this hunger for an odd set of tastes you didn’t know you had – much like the famed restaurant The Sol Majestic itself.
Buy The Sol Majestic at Amazon
Buy The Sol Majestic at Barnes and Noble
My Own Green Relationship Flags
There’s a good meme going around that says, “Fuck red flags in relationships. Tell me about some green flags, the flags that make you go FUCK YEAH THIS IS HEALTHY BEHAVIOR.” And since the meme encouraged me to add my own, I would also mention:
Making Space For Each Other In Group Conversations.
If a couple is like, “Oh, you have this great story, you should tell it!” or directing attention back to their partner during a raucous conversation when their point had been overlooked, that’s a win for me.
Proactive Checkins That Aren’t Definitive Denials.
Saying, “I don’t know about that, lemme check in with my sweetie and see if that’s an issue” is music to my ears – mainly because it tells me that a) they’re attuned enough to their partner(s) that they know when something is likely to require a discussion, and b) they’re not proactively turning you down because they’re terrified of their sweetie’s dismissal, they’re just wanting to make sure that everyone’s on the same page.
Accepting That The Stupid Things Can Matter.
Sometimes, things irrationally bug you so thoroughly that it would take way more effort for you to untangle all the panic and/or irritation than it would for, you know, your partner to stop doing that. A partner who can look a thoroughly silly request in the eye – “I know it’s silly, but you rolling up the toothpaste the wrong way makes me feel disrespected” – and say, “Cool, I’ll stop that” is teh sexxors.
Conversely: Acknowledging The Stupid Things.
A partner who doesn’t have to back up all their quirks and tics with firm logic, rearranging the universe so that it suits all of their personal desires, is a wonderful thing. Usually, “I am a strictly logical being” translates to “I am very skilled at arguing, and I will elevate my preferences to absolute law while undermining your delights.”
It’s nice to be able to say, “I like the toothpaste better this way” without having to navigate a twenty-bullet Powerpoint presentation entitled “WHY MY TOOTHPASTE ROLLING TECHNIQUE IS OBJECTIVELY SUPERIOR.”
Ignited Delights.
Partners who actively look for things to love in their partners’ hobbies are wonderful. I’m not particularly knowledgable about quilting, nor even that into fabric arts – but I’ll happily go to a quilting exhibition while my wife explains to me all the reasons why this quilt is made by a quilting master.
You don’t have to love what your partner loves, but you should at least be cataloguing the reasons why they love it.
Unselfishly Speaking Their Love Language.
If someone’s not particularly into touching but realizes their partner thirsts for cuddles on a bad day, giving big snuggly bed-hugs is a total victory in my book. If a laconic person is married to a “needs words of assurance” person, them struggling to put their love into verbal forms is beautiful.
As I’ve said before, Your Second Love Language Is Always Scripted, and it feels weird when you want to bring your partner flowers but what really speaks support to them is “Scrubbing the floor and paying the bills.” But those who make that effort are the ones who tend to be really worth the time.
I’m In Chicago Next Week! And Denver The Week After! Come Visit?
So the announcements for my book tour for The Sol Majestic (this is your last week to get the preorder swag!) are running late thanks to a whole bunch of personal issues – I mean, my daughter’s getting married, I’m building a wedding trellis for her, yadda yadda. But I will be in Chicago next week with Sarah Gailey and their upcoming book Magic For Liars, which I assure you will be the next big thing: I’ve read it and it is awesome.
In any case, if you wanna help, RSVPing to the event on social media will do wonders. In this age of “We all interact only through Facebook,” clicking the “I’m going” or “I’m interested” button boosts the event and gets more people going. So even if you know you can’t go, saying “I’m interested” (or even better, sharing the event with your buddies) helps your authors of choice a lot.
Chicago, next Wednesday at 7:00 pm:
Volumes Bookstore
1474 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, Illinois 60622
Denver, Tuesday June 11th at 7:00 pm:
Tattered Cover, Aspen Grove
7301 S Santa Fe Dr, Unit 240, Littleton, Colorado 80120
Ann Arbor, Tuesday June 18th at 7:00 pm:
Literati Bookstore
124 E Washington St, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104
San Francisco, Saturday June 22nd at 3:00 pm:
Borderlands Books
866 Valencia Street, San Francisco, California 94110
Read My Favorite Part Of THE SOL MAJESTIC!
So! Were you looking for a book about:
- Lavish descriptions of exotic, luscious foods made with science-fiction technologies
- Acts of staggering kindness done by strangers for beautiful reasons
- A manic artist who is obsessed with creating the perfect meal, continually crashing into the cold accountant who controls his purse-strings
- And the tale of an abandoned boy who needs to figure out who he is before he implodes from loneliness and self-doubt?
Boy, I sure hope so, because that’s what The Sol Majestic is about! And thankfully, Tor has provided the sample chapter I think best gives the flavor of this weirdie little tome – it’s the selection I read at conventions, the one where the abandoned boy meets the manic artist.
If you want to know what The Sol Majestic is really about, well, hie thee forth and go read the excerpt – I think you’ll like it. This is honestly, probably, the best thing I’ll ever write.
And the good news is, if you like that (or just feel like taking a chance on some random weasel’s books), if you preorder The Sol Majestic you’ll get in on the pre-order swag I have coming out, including signed bookplates and awesome drink recipes! All you have to do is email me; the details are here.
But anyway, if you’re interested in sweeping galactic tales about soup, love, and commerce, well, The Sol Majestic’s got it for you. So go look, go think about it, and on Friday I’ll be holding a contest about the coolest foods you can imagine where you can win a free advance copy!
But still. Go look!
Our Latest Dorky Adventures
My wife hates trinkets – she wants a clean house, and all the little promo items we pick up at conventions are her enemy. So we’ll get a free collectible coin for seeing ENDGAME on opening night, and she’ll toss it. If work sends me a promotional Magic mat, she’ll give it away to our godchildren. She wants nothing – nothing – in the house that is not functional.
But when I bought Sekiro, a PlayStation game, they gave me a plastic samurai sword letter opener. It even came on a little stand. And she was away that weekend, so I became attached.
“Get rid of it,” she said.
“It’s useful!” I cried.
“What the hell use do you have for a cheap plastic letter opener?”
I stared her right in the eye. “Home defense.”
“Home defense?”
“It’s small. It’s concealable. They’ll never see it coming.”
She rolled her eyes and left me alone.
And then, hours later, when she was lying on the couch reading a book, I walked up for a kiss. She puckered her lips, and – AH HA! –
Samurai sword at her throat.
She never saw it coming.
“See?” I said, then kissed her on her stunned lips and danced away.
Over the next few weeks, she came to understand the power of stealth that was a cheap knockoff promo samurai sword. She’d be in the tub. She’d be downstairs sewing. She’d be going in for a cuddle, and – AH HA! –
Samurai sword.
I was, indeed, a ninja.
But the sword vanished the day after trash day, so I figured that Gini had finally gotten tired of me being a dork and had chucked it, which, you know, fair enough. Certainly I got more entertainment out of that than most plastic. And we curled up on the couch to watch Game of Thrones, when – AH HA!
Samurai sword at my throat.
“You are not the only ninja,” she said, and I realized that a war had begun.
A Happy Community Would Be A Smaller Community: Why Social Media Sucks
Yesterday, the hobo-in-chief of Twitter got up on stage to say that their solution to online abuse was not to ban people who make death threats, or to crack down on bot-made accounts, or to even maaaybe consider getting rid of the Nazis, but instead to concentrate on topics instead of people!
This solution obviously sucks, because people show up at Twitter for the people. You choose the folks who entertain you and see what they have to say. The idea that Neil Gaiman or Kanye West might personally reply to you is one of Twitter’s slim draws, as is the concept that your clever microposts might make you into a Twitter superstar.
The problem is, of course, that some people are dicks – and worse, some people are dedicated dicks. The more famous you get on Twitter, particularly if it’s for political reasons, the more likely it is that you’ll be specifically targeted for destruction by a lot of people whose sole goal is to drive you off of Twitter.
In other words, like a lot of social media, Twitter has a weird problem: the more you use it, the more likely it is that you’ll be made miserable by its most dickish users.
But the solution is simple, right? If someone’s acting mean, ban them. There should be clear rules of conduct, enforced consistently, to tell people stuff that making comments like “You’ll get gassed like your grandparents” are way out of line.
Ah, but that’s not the way the stock market works.
See, the stock market rewards only one thing for social media: growth. Constant, cancerous growth. You have to have new users signing up all the time – your stock market goal is to beat Facebook – and if you can’t have new users continually signing up, then you have to beat Facebook’s metrics in terms of daily interactions and user return rates in order to keep getting that money flowing.
Now. If you ban a user, that’s one less person to tout on your quarterly reports.
Heck, let’s take it one further: if you ban a bot, a computerized user created solely for harassment, that is also one less user to show to your stockholders.
So they are disincentivized to ban anyone, let alone large swathes of the ill-behaving users.
But worse: they’re actually, secretly, incentivized to encourage trolls and whackjobs. Because, say what you will, the guy frantically searching for liberal tweets and typing “MAGA SUCK IT LIBS” seven hundred times a day into Twitter is, in fact, a really good user from Twitter’s perspective. He’s creating content, he’s seeing all the ads they’re selling, and if he says something really outrageous then a ton of libs, who do not wish to suck it, will link to him and generate more traffic.
The problem with social media is that trolls are some of their most valuable users. And you can’t just ignore them; in the world of Twitter, they’ll seek you out, and the Internet bleeds into the real world anyway in the sense that these dorks can occasionally call a SWAT team into your house.
Now, Twitter’s not alone here. YouTube has a similar problem, and so does Facebook. And part of the problem is that training humans to moderate debates is both expensive and soul-draining on the trained humans in question, and the social media folks are convinced that they can somehow automate the process of getting people to play nice.
But the actual problem is this:
A nicer community would be a smaller community.
The minute you start enforcing any guidelines that would encourage people to be kind – no matter how you define those guidelines – then you have to start kicking people off. Because the ugly truth is that “dumping everyone into the same room” doesn’t create a functioning community – a community is only forged when people agree on certain core values, and some people just don’t take to those values, so you have to remove them from that community to make it function.
(You see that with Facebook all the time. Their whole idea of “user engagement” is that “you’re connected with everyone you know equally,” and so if you friend freely there’s this continual weirdness of posting in places where your co-workers and your squash teammates – who were part of a different community – are suddenly transplanted into your community of so-called friends, often with disastrous results. There’s nothing wrong with just being workout buddies, but the core values of “We help each other to lift better” is often at odds with the core values of “Let’s talk about why we don’t need socialized health care.”)
So if Twitter said, “Okay, no more death threats! To anyone! Even if you’re just implying the world would be better off with these people dead!” then they’d lose some significant portion of their audience, both liberal and conservative, who really like telling people to fuck off and die. And then their numbers would drop, and the user engagement from the folks hammering “SUCK ON AN EXHAUST PIPE MOTHERFUCKER” into their keyboards over and over would drop, and suddenly their stock would drop.
So Twitter – and every other social media – is continually dancing around this core issue of “How can we fix this problem without fixing the obvious problem?” Because the obvious solution is right out: you can’t ban people. We need people. All the people. Even the complete buttmunchers, and maybe especially them.
What Twitter needs is community standards, and the institutional willpower to enforce them. And to a certain extent, it doesn’t matter what those standards are; in time, after enough bannings, people will get the idea of what to expect and either hang around, or not.
But that would involve jettisoning people. And the American version of capitalism doesn’t reward that. The American version of capitalism wants THE BIGGEST, and sadly THE BIGGEST is at serious odds with THE HAPPIEST.
So it goes.