Christopher Farnsworth's Blog, page 3

FLASHMOB on sale 7.11.17

You can now see the cover for the next adventure of John Smith: FLASHMOB. On sale July 11, 2017. Available for pre-order from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, iBooks, and through your local independent bookstore via IndieBound.

FLASHMOB on sale 6.27.17

You can now see the cover for the next adventure of John Smith: FLASHMOB. On sale June 27, 2017. Available for pre-order from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, iBooks, and through your local independent bookstore via IndieBound.

Presidents And Monsters

With any luck, by Wednesday, Hillary Clinton will be the next President of the United States, and Donald Trump can move on to create his own alt-right TV channel or Viagra ads or whatever scheme occurs to him.

I’ve resisted the urge to comment on this election so far because it’s seemed fairly obvious what’s at stake, and I didn’t believe I would change anyone’s mind with whatever I said. From early on, I saw that for Trump supporters — and I have family and friends in that group —  there is no last straw.

I remember a time when Republicans thought Bill Clinton was a Russian agent because he went on a trip to Moscow as a student. Now Trump openly praises Putin and asks Russian hackers to target his opponent, and they cheer for him. I remember when Republicans would call you a traitor if you spoke out against any American war. Now Trump calls the generals and soldiers fighting in Iraq “losers.” I remember when Republicans mocked John Kerry for his Purple Heart. Trump, who dodged the draft with bone spurs, took a veteran’s Purple Heart and was applauded for it. I remember when Republicans gave speeches about family values. Now they wholeheartedly support a sexual predator.

It’s pretty clear that Spider-Man could have torn off Trump’s mask at a speech and revealed him to be the Green Goblin, and his core group would have remained loyal.

Still, I was never surprised. Trump may well be the last wave of toxic waste from the 20th Century washing up on the shore of the 21st. He’s used bigotry and prejudice to advance himself, and has the support of white supremacists and anti-Semites.  He’s a cartoon stereotype of a billionaire. But he is offering easy, understandable answers to complex problems. He tells everyone that he can solve everything if we just give him the chance. To a lot of people who are scared or angry, or who just hate the idea that the world is changing, that sounds pretty great.

This is what happens when we act like consumers in an election, rather than citizens. Democracy is not like ordering a pizza. You don’t get exactly what you want in 30 minutes or less. You have to compromise. You have to give up some of what you want. And you have to wait, sometimes for years.

Elections are not how we fix everything, so we can go back to ignoring politics for another four years. Elections are just where we start.

Gregory McDonald put it this way in Fletch and The Man Who:

A president’s job is not to give us everything we want, or make us feel better about ourselves. A president isn’t the manager at TGIFriday’s who offers to comp your potato skins because you weren’t happy with the service. A president has to represent people who hate her ever-living guts. She has to answer to billionaires and people living in homeless shelters at the same time. And she has to hold onto the power to end all human life on the planet and not crack under the strain.

We’ve come to expect our presidents to do everything, blaming them for anything in the world that goes wrong, and ignoring the often violent and ugly side of our actions in the world. There is no U.S. President, no matter how decent a person in the office, who does not have blood on his hands. We ask them to take that burden  for us.

Hillary Clinton is willing to take that responsibility. I do not agree with her on everything, but as P.J. O’Rourke said, she is wrong within normal parameters. She is eminently qualified. She understands the levers of power, and she’s willing to pull them. She is fighting against the laziness and entitlement of people who want their choices easy and their answers simple and their solutions perfect. We don’t live in that world. We live in this one, and I believe she will do what she can to make things better. At the end of the day, like Barack Obama, she does not want a revolution. She wants this country to work as well as it can for as many people as it can. She wants people to go to bed well-fed and safe.

That is a president’s job. I believe Hillary Clinton will do it well, and I wish her luck.

I could be wrong about all of this. I could wake up on Wednesday and find that Trump is my president, too. And that would sadden me, because it would mean that I am not living in the country I thought I was, and we would all be in for some dark times ahead.

But I choose to believe that we are not ready to jump off that cliff, that the people who want to burn it all down are vastly outnumbered by the ones who want to build something new, or at least preserve what we have.

We ask our presidents to do inhuman things, so we shouldn’t be surprised when monsters apply for the job. And we treat our democracy like a joke, so we shouldn’t be surprised when clowns show up. Trump is the perfect combination of both. (It’s  no coincidence that we had another wave of phantom clowns around the country during this election.)

I believe we are better than that. That we want more than an easy answer. That we’re still willing to put aside our differences and try to be the people we always wanted to be. I believe in elections as a chance to vote for the best version of ourselves. On Wednesday, I hope to wake up with my daughters and my wife and find that most of you have made the same choice.

And then, the real work will begin.

KILLFILE Book Signings: The Photos

For all those who could not be in Santa Monica or Huntington Beach for the first two signings for KILLFILE, here are some photos of the events. Many, many thanks to everyone who showed up. It’s because of you that I get to do what I do, and I am incredibly grateful. (And thanks to the C of I alums who showed up last night in HB. Always good to have #yotefam on your side.)

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

So here’s the winner to that Great Big Honking Giveaway I announced a while back. More than 200 people signed up. I got such a great response I decided to expand it to two winners.



 


For those who want to know the method I used to select the winners, I asked my daughters to pick random numbers. I used the first to select a winner from out of the total number, and then divided the total number by the second to find the second winner. I think that made it random enough.




 


The first winner of the Great Big Honking Prize Package — including a signed, hardback copy of KILLFILE; a signed, hardback copy of THE ETERNAL WORLD; the audiobook of THE ETERNAL WORLD; a signed copy of the UK edition of RED, WHITE, AND BLOOD; the rare CD audiobook of RED, WHITE, AND BLOOD; a BLOOD OATH presidential seal pin; the very last Nathaniel Cade baseball cap in existence, and a $25 gift card is — Rebecca Stark!


 


The second winner of the Great Big Honking (Slightly Smaller) Prize Package — which includes all of the above except the Cade baseball cap, since that was the last one — is Ashley Vera!


 


Thank you to everyone who participated. I will be in touch with the winners to send them their prizes.


 


And thank you all for your support and spreading the word about KILLFILE. I really appreciate it.

KILLFILE On Sale Now

So today’s the big day. My latest novel KILLFILE is on sale everywhere. Here’s a round-up of everything you need to know, and then some.

John Smith possesses a special gift that seems more like a curse: he can access other people’s thoughts. He hears the songs stuck in their heads, knows their most private traumas and fears, and relives their most painful memories. The CIA honed his skills until he was one of their most powerful operatives, but John fled the agency and now works as a private consultant, trying to keep the dark potentials of his gift in check — and himself out of trouble.

Unfortunately, John is plunged into dangerous waters when his latest client, billionaire software genius Everett Sloan, hires him to investigate a former employee — a tech whiz kid named Eli Preston — and search his thoughts for some very valuable intellectual property Sloan is convinced he’s stolen. But before John can probe Preston’s mind, his identity is compromised and he’s on the run for his life, along with Sloan’s young associate Kelsey Foster.

Hunted by shadowy enemies with extensive resources and unknown motives, John and Kelsey must go off the grid. John knows that using his powers to their fullest potential is their only hope for survival — even if it means putting his own sanity at risk.

You can read the first chapter of the novel here. And if you like it, you can order it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, iBooks, Kobo, or from your local independent bookstore through IndieBound.

If you’d prefer to test your luck, there are a number of people holding giveaways for the book. You can enter here, here, and here. For my UK readers, you still have a chance to enter for an advance copy here.

Here are some early reviews of KILLFILE:

Booklist: “An intriguing premise makes the latest thriller from Farnsworth shine…. Farnsworth keeps the action and originality flowing. James Rollins, Michael Crichton, and Jeremy Robinson fans should definitely think about picking this one up. Hopefully a sequel with John Smith will be coming soon.”

Kirkus Reviews: A “flip, unusually compelling hero… Farnsworth stands to expand his following with this clever, offbeat thriller.”

The Big Thrill Magazine: “Farnsworth’s creation of John Smith is masterful… Within the first couple of pages, Smith’s world was reality for me. Add in relentless action and humor drier than martini-dissolved bone, and you have a winner.”

Publishers Weekly: “John’s psychic abilities save them time and again in a series of entertaining variations on mental suggestion and illusion, convincing would-be assassins to overlook his presence and attack one another.”

Kings River Life Magazine: “Farnsworth keeps the pace pedal pressed to the metal creating a thrill ride worthy of an amusement park or a movie screen.”

The early readers on Amazon also like it: “Start this novel and you won’t put it down. I recommend it highly.” “Killfile had me missing TV shows, avoiding the internet, and missing out on sleep – very sticky indeed!” “I zoomed through this book, enjoying every minute of it… I’m not usually a fan of series books but I’d like to read more about John Smith in future adventures.”

KILLFILE also made The Verge and Kirkus Reviews’ lists of top sci-fi and fantasy titles for August.

And here are some interviews I’ve done:

The Orange County Register

Forces of Geek

Inverse.com

Interviewing Authors with Tim Knox

I wrote about technology and telepathy for the New Statesman, and how the U.S. government once tried to create real psychic soldiers for Sirens of Suspense. I also wrote about my top five fictional telepaths for SciFi Bulletin.

If you’re in the SoCal area, you can see me make bad jokes and read from the book at the Barnes & Noble in Santa Monica tonight, or at the Barnes & Noble in Huntington Beach tomorrow night, or at the magnificent Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego on Saturday. I hope to see you there.

As always, I know I am tremendously lucky to get to do what I do, and I appreciate all of your support and your help. I had a lot of fun writing this book, and I hope it’s just as much fun for you to read.

Thank you all.

Comic-Con 2016

Had a blast at Comic-Con. For anyone who didn’t make it this year — and it seems like that’s not many of you — here’s the video of my panel with J. Patrick Black (Ninth City Burning), Blake Crouch (Dark Matter, the Wayward Pines trilogy), Patrick Hemstreet (The God Wave), Leah Thomas (Because You’ll Never Meet Me), Andy Weir (The Martian), and moderated by the insanely great Brendan Reichs (author of the Virals series and Nemesis). The other authors were funny and smart, and the audience was incredibly kind. We had a packed house, and once again, I feel lucky I got to be onstage there.

Also, for anyone who missed my constant tweeting and Facebooking, here are my pics from the con floor.

KILLFILE is (almost) here

The hardcover of KILLFILE just arrived. This is my fifth novel, and I’m still excited every time. Thank you to Ernie Cline, Nick Cutter, Ian Tregillis, and Boyd Morrison for their advance praise. And thank you, as always, to Rachel Kahan, my peerless editor, and Alexandra Machinist, my brilliant agent.

But you don’t have to judge the book by its (admittedly awesome) cover. You can take a look inside and read the first chapter in an exclusive sneak preview here.

Hope you enjoy it. I had a lot of fun writing this one, and I’m proud of it. KILLFILE comes out August 9 in the United States from William Morrow at bookstores everywhere. You can pre-order a copy here or from your local independent bookstore through IndieBound. It arrives in the UK on August 11 from Bonnier/Zaffre.

Fighting Our Demons

Some days, it’s easier to believe in the demons than others. This is one of those days.

If I had written some of these events a week ago, they would have seemed like pulp fiction. A police officer shoots a man in a car with his girlfriend and 4-year-old, and we see the aftermath immediately as she livestreams the video. A sniper attacks the police, and a robot takes him out. Today, these things are news. They’re real.

But it’s important to remember that despite what we are seeing today, despite the constant drumbeat of pain and suffering and violence, that we are living in a time where we are killing fewer of one another than ever before in human history. We are actually more peaceful than we were even a century ago.

That’s not to say the problems we see do not exist. It’s just that we feel them more. The greatest accomplishment and the greatest weakness of the Internet is that it has become our nervous system, and it is bombarding us with signals from places we didn’t even know we hurt.

Like any other animal, when we feel pain, we recoil, we snarl, and we even lash out.

Most of the time, we look for something or someone to blame. As usual, Kurt Vonnegut said it better than I can: “It is a tragedy, perhaps, that human beings can get so much energy and enthusiasm from hate… Hate beats pure cocaine every day.”

That’s the primitive wiring in our heads, the part that hasn’t had an upgrade in maybe 250 million years. These are the instincts that lead us to distrust each other, to bare our teeth, to attack. That’s where those demons live.

But even on days like today, I refuse to believe that we are that limited. We have put our feet on the moon. We have built cars that drive themselves and everyone walks around with a supercomputer and miniature TV station in their pockets. We have tamed and destroyed diseases that once tangled us in knots of pain and death.

As far as we have come, I refuse to believe we can be beaten by prehistoric demons living in our primate brains.

I know social media outrage is cheap and easy, but I felt I needed to say this today. Yes, there is still so much to do, but I believe we can do it, because I look at how much we’ve done already.

There is a reason children and adults alike are wearing  Superman T-shirts and mobbing the theaters when the latest Marvel movie hits. We are looking for heroes. We are waiting for someone to save the day.

I believe it’s up to us. I believe our capacity for heroism is greater than our capacity for horror.

I believe in the future, and that we will get there together. Because we already are. I believe we can be better than this, because we are better than this.

Today I choose to believe in the angels. They’re inside us, too. We just have to remember it.

(I wrote a slightly different version of this post on my Facebook page, and decided to publish it here as well.)

New Giveaway!

My latest book, KILLFILE, hits stores AUGUST 9. As you probably know by now, it features a psychic soldier-for-hire named John Smith, a man with a gift that’s more like a curse: the ability to read minds. His talent once made him one of the CIA’s top operatives, but he left the agency to go into business for himself, solving the problems of the people rich enough to afford his special skills. Now Smith finds himself running for his life when he goes up against a boy-genius software billionaire who will kill to keep Smith from getting inside his head.

To celebrate, I’m giving away a massive prize package to one lucky winner.

Prize package includes: A signed, hardback copy of KILLFILE; a signed, hardback copy of THE ETERNAL WORLD; the audiobook of THE ETERNAL WORLD; a signed copy of the UK edition of RED, WHITE, AND BLOOD; the rare CD audiobook of RED, WHITE, AND BLOOD; a BLOOD OATH presidential seal pin; the very last Nathaniel Cade baseball cap in existence, and a $25 gift card.

Here’s how you enter:

Like my author page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorChrisFarnsworth/

Or follow me on Twitter: @chrisfarnsworth

Then share or tweet this link — https://goo.gl/Rxjb85 — and let people know about KILLFILE. That’s it. Just help me spread the word, and you are entered in the random drawing to win the prize package. (One entry per person.)

IMPORTANT: REMEMBER TO LET ME KNOW YOU’VE SHARED THE LINK. Tag me on Facebook or include my Twitter username in the tweet, or email me at . I HAVE TO KNOW YOU LINKED TO THE BOOK FOR YOU TO BE ENTERED. So email me or link me, but let me know.

If you don’t want to do any of that, you can still enter by sending me a postcard with the words PSYCHIC SPY on it at this address:

Christopher Farnsworth

3435 Ocean Park Blvd. #107

PMB 70

Santa Monica, CA  90405

The winner will be randomly selected from all entries on August 9, KILLFILE’S U.S. publication date. Sorry, this giveaway is U.S. only. (I will do another giveaway for UK readers after this one.) No entries accepted after August 9. No purchase necessary. Rules may change without notice. One entry per person. Void where prohibited. Good luck.

And remember, it’s not too late to pre-order and get your free fake psychic reading, too.