Sarah Langan's Blog, page 2

Into the Labyrinth #2

Hi, folks! This one’ll be quick.

First– friends, family, and fans– thank you for signing up. I appreciate it.

I’m glad you’re here.  I just finished reading Isabel Allende’s HOUSE OF SPIRITS. It’s great, and reminded me a lot of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100 YEARS OF SOLITUDE. I bookmarked a passage I thought was brilliant and had planned to transcribe for you all, but then I transcribed it and thought: meh. You’ll be okay without a long thing on the workers of the world and wage slavery. We’re good!

I’m right now reading OUT THERE, a collection of stories by Kate Folk, published last year and it’s great.

Some events on the horizon —  hope you can make them!
April 9 6pm – A BETTER WORLD launches at Dark Delicacies in Burbank
April 10 – A BETTER WORLD event at Village Books in Culver City
April 14, noon – A BETTER WORLD, in conversation with Hilarie Burton in Rhinebeck, NY via Oblong Books, More info to come
April 16, 6-7pm – A BETTER WORLD, in conversation with Victor LaValle at Mysterious Bookshop in NYC.   

I’d love to tour all the other places, so if you’re a librarian or bookstore owner, let me know!

The Good Reads giveaway is still happening. You can sign up here for your galley.
NetGalley is also still open for reviewers and press.
Good Neighbors is cheap all month on Kindle!  


Having just rehabilitated my garage office after it flooded last year, it flooded again! Maybe drywall is not for me. I do not deserve drywall.

In other news, I have a giveaway contest coming up. There’s a mythological creature in A BETTER WORLD, and from my kid Clementine’s drawing, I had it made into a stuffy. As soon as those stuffies come in, I’ll post pictures. It’s a cute, weird, little guy.

I had intended to do my taxes and learn how to make this newsletter pretty last week. As you can see, I failed. Instead, I wrote another 6,000 word short story called “I Miss You Too Much.” At this rate of procrastination, I’ll be writing three novels a year just to avoid watching online tutorials.

Until next week, stay dry!

Into the Labyrinth #1

I finally named my newsletter! And maybe I can cut and paste from mailjet?? We shall see.

Hi, folks!I hope you’ve had a good month. It’s been eventful over here. For instance, it’s raining inside my garage office, thanks to LA’s atmospheric river. JT and I have been trying to find the source of the leak for months now, and last night realized it’s all the sources. It’s the deck, its the cellar, it’s all the things! On the plus side, writing amidst plinking metal pails makes me feel like a character from Delicatessen (1991, dirs. Caro and Jeunet) , and the joint was getting too classy for me, anyway.

In other news, I just returned from the Palm Springs Reader’s Festival, sponsored by The Best Bookstore in Palm Springs .  The store has named A Better World its April book club pick. I’ll be zooming in. Owners Sarah Lacy and Paul Carr are excellent people. Being in Palm Springs feels like being in a movie about Palm Springs. Only with more color. I made an effort to look professional on the first day, realized nobody cared, and relaxed into my typical overalls on day two.

I got to meet lots of new writers and readers. What was especially nice was spending time with two other members of my writing group — Sarah Tomlinson, whose excellent first novel THE LAST DAYS OF THE MIDNIGHT RAMBLERS comes out next week, and J. Ryan Stradal, who spent a lot of his time introducing me to people. It is unfortunate that I’m so terrible with names.  A great thing happened Friday night. Frances and I went to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where we heard movies scores selected by John Williams, conducted by Alfred Newman. It’s been a long while since I felt awe in art, but I felt it then. My favorite was Bernard Herman’s Vertigo, followed closely by Williams’ Close Encounters. We got the cheap seats facing the conductor.

In writing news, A Better World’s launch approaches! It’s happening at Dark Delicacies on April 9. More to come. If you want me to sign a book for you there, pre order here.

The next event booked is with Hilarie Burton on April 14 at noon in Rhinebeck. More details to come.

The book continues to receive good advance reviews, including a starred review from Booklist, and a shout-out as a best book of 2024 from Nerdette (Chicago NPR).

My publicist has rightfully asked me to remind people who have read and liked the book to review it on Netgalley and Good Reads. In the dystopia, these things make a difference.

On that note, Netgalley copies are still available to reviewers and bookstore owners. Request a copy here.

Good Reads is having another giveaway! You can request a copy and if you win, they’ll mail it to you!

There’s also a deal on Good Neighbors — it’s $1.99 on Kindle right now.

My first novel The Keeper is coming out as a re-release from Canelo Books in a few days. The cover’s spanking new and very pretty. Which I’d attach, but I can’t figure out how.

The Missing is also getting a re-release from Canelo. Paul Tremblay wrote the introduction. I can’t wait for people to read it.

My 12k short story, “The Upgrade” is coming out from Lightspeed Magazine very soon. It’s about a world dominated by a company called Congo, and the tech upgrade Congo releases that changes human physiology.

I’m on a writing bender, where I keep trying to pump out short stories for anthologies I’ve promised work to. But the stories go rogue. For example, “Gyle” is 9k. It’s set at an art colony in Northern California, about power, sacrifice, and voice. I got the idea from a dream, woke up, and couldn’t go back to sleep before working on it.

My other short story, “Pam Wolinski is a Monster,” is now clocking in as a 30k novella. I hope I find a home for it, as I think people will like it a lot.

I head back to work on my next novel, THE PARENT TRAP this week.

Folks– this newsletter could look a lot prettier. I promise, this is the month I figure out mailjet and Quickbooks.

A few final notes – It would have been my dad’s 80th birthday on the 28th of January. What would have been my mom’s 82nd birthday is coming up this week. I’ll close with the sonnet I read to my dad a few days before he died —

Sonnet #3:

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest,

Now is the time that face should form another,

Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,

Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

For where is she so fair whose uneared womb

Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

Or who is he so fond will be the tomb

Of his self-love, to stop posterity?

Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee

Calls back the lovely April of her prime;

So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,

Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.

    But if thou live rememb’red not to be,

    Die single, and thine image dies with thee.


Shakespeare’s making an unnecessary case– plenty of people without kids live totally fulfilling, challenging lives. Plenty of people with kids never grow up. But I do like the idea that, when applied correctly, children turn a mirror into a window.

I think that’s everything!? Until next time, don’t get none on you. And take care. 

Sincerely,Sarah

Evil Dead II (1987)

I thought I’d seen this Sam Rami movie, but it turns out that Friday night’s screening at Vidiots in Eagle Rock was new to me. And I loved it.

When I was in middle school, I rented Evil Dead (1981), directed by Sam Rami, and it upset me. For one, tree rape. For another, I was twelve years old and in my parents’ basement, 100% freaked out. Evil Dead feels as if its been made by an intelligent insane person. I remember feeling literally trapped inside a screwed-up person’s mind, too mesmerized to press pause. It’s got a Texas Chainsaw or Audition feel, only it’s splattery and jokey at the same time.

Over the years, I somehow convinced myself I’d seen the rest of the movies, probably because I knew that as a horror nerd I should; I just didn’t want to.

But then my husband got tickets to the showing Friday night. It’s the same movie as its predecessor, only an actual comedy (and without the rape). The distinction is that we’re still in the mind of a genuine maniac, who is also a genuine artist. It’s not safe anymore, but it’s also not intending to frighten us. It just wants us to know that this whole thing called reality is kind of absurd. And it that’s upsetting for us to hear, well, so it goes.

This iteration really worked for me. Bruce Campbell has the physical chops of Jim Carey in his prime, but he also gets the wildly oscillating tone of this movie, at points laughing and crying in the same moment. It’s so believable that we feel tragedy within comedy within tragedy within farce within lampoon. And that unease: it’s not because we’re scared of what’s happening in the plot; we’re feeling honest to god existential dread.

I can’t stop thinking about the moment when the house and everything inside it begins laughing, and then Cambell, emotionally destroyed, laughs right back. A laughing lamp bends and pops back up, repeatedly, and Campbell follows along, mimicking the lamp. It’s one of the most magic scenes in film I’ve ever watched.

Happy New Year!

I’m writing this from my sister and brother -in-law’s house in Baltimore. They are great hosts to us every year. My sister in law has a giant library full of all the books I’ve been meaning to read but haven’t. I typically spend entire days perusing.

I prefer the East Coast. Things move faster here and people speak more plainly. I feel a lot less like a bull in a China shop, or evil James T Kirk from “The Enemy Within.” Star Trek reference!

JT, the kids and I have lived in Los Angeles for a long time now. Seven-plus years ago, we packed our Brooklyn stuff into a Ford Tarus and drove West, enrolling the kids in the local public school with only a few days to spare. Laurel Canyon has been a good place to raise kids. My blood pressure is a lot lower. At night I hear coyotes and owls. Work-wise, LA has been good, too. JT is constantly busy. I never announced this, but I developed a television pilot for Good Neighbors and pitched it to the top executives in the industry. Like, the TOP executives. Some great people were attached. Hopefully, you’ll all get the chance to see that work one day.

I’ve been posting a lot about A Better World. It’s getting positive early reader and critical reactions. I know some authors are very good at weaving tidbits or recipes or pictures of food into their posts so they seem less like advertisements and more personal. I am not those authors. My approach to social media is not to trust it. So, with my apologies, expect more of the same.

My favorite movie of the year was “Landscape with Invisible Hand,” adapted from a novel by the brilliant MT Anderson. It’s perfect, but was largely ignored or panned by the critics. It was marketed as a teen romance when it’s in fact a scathing commentary on end-stage Capitalism, its ideas utterly adult.

I didn’t see a ton of movies this year, but of those I did see, I also particularly liked “Barbie,” “Oppenheimer,” “Anatomy of a Fall,” and “Bottoms.” I loved the novel EILEEN and intend to see the movie. “Linoleum” was strange and imperfect but also ambitious and mesmerizing.

This season of “Fargo” is fantastic.

In books, I got into a few classics this year. Favorites there include: THE GROUP by Mary McCarthy, a definitive novel about post-collegiate women in New York before Betty Friedan came along. A good companion to that novel is Rona Jaffe’s THE BEST OF EVERYTHING. These books serve as nice rejoinders to Matt Weiner’s “Mad Men,” in the same way Helen Z. Smith’s NOT SO QUIET conversed with Remarque’s ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT.

Another great read was Graham Greene’s THE QUIET AMERICAN, about the occupation of Vietnam, and all those good intentions.

Next year, I’m looking forward to several books. Kiley Reid’s COME AND GET IT comes out in January. Kelly Link’s first novel, a 600-page whopper called THE BOOK OF LOVE comes out in February. On April 9 (the same day A BETTER WORLD gets released!), eager readers will finally get their hands on the sequel to MY FAVORITE THING IS MONSTERS from Emil Ferris. In July, Paul Tremblay’s HORROR MOVIE comes out. I read and loved it. And also felt queasy about it. Which is exactly how I felt when reading HEAD FULL of GHOSTS, so mission accomplished, Tremblay!

Some of you may have been following the most recent Good Reads controversy. Essentially, a debut YA author invented several fake accounts in order to pan (“review bomb”) competitors. These competitors were mostly writers of color. The debut author’s book is now canceled.

Some points to make: The author got in trouble, but what are the consequences for Good Reads? Good Reads makes money without accountability. We’ve known this for some time. Trolls gotta hate. But do they hate randomly? What I’d like to know is whether and how deeply reviews are skewed according to gender and ethnicity. Eventually, this stuff is going to be run by AI. We’re feeding skewed data to AI. It’s bad. It needs addressing.

And back to A Better World. You should pre-order it!

A Better World made two most anticipated lists — Book Riot and Off the Shelf. Reviews have been calling it a masterpiece.

Two new blurbs!

“A woman in a troubled marriage moves to a perfect town riddled with secrets, and starts to question everything. Part dystopian horror, part domestic thriller, with a core of wry social commentary, A better World is gripping literary fiction at its finest.” –Sarah Pinborough, BEHIND HER EYES

“A Better World is a fearless, frightening, yet strangely reassuring book that takes a pitiless look at the world we’re in the process of building for our children–and then introduces us to a family doing its best to navigate that terrifying world with love, compassion, creativity, and humor. I loved it.” -Kristen Roupenian, author of “Cat Person”

Finally, I’ve been resistant to putting the word horror on my covers because so many people won’t read horror. But I’m starting to come around. I’m right now reading Mona Awad’s BUNNY, which is categorized as horror. Who knew? Anyway, if you’ve got an opinion on that, let me know.

I hope this year’s been good for you.

Sincerely,

Sarah

Thanksgiving Update

Hi folks!

A few updates –

Galleys of A BETTER WORLD are in! If you’re a reviewer, request one here. So far, reviews are strong. The book comes out in April and you can pre-order here.

The galleys have some errors in them and people have written to me with concerns. Fret not! My process is to noodle with every line and sentence until the book is taken away from me. It makes for a messier process and a messier galley, but we’ve had lots of readers through all stages and the finished book will be error-free.

At the end of this email are some blurbs the book has received so far.

In other news, I’m working on a story for THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT: TALES OF STEPHEN KING’S THE STAND, edited by Chris Golden and Brian Keene. The family and I visited Death Valley over the summer for research. Weirdly, Death Valley now has a natural lake in it.

I’m also taking a quick break from THE PARENT TRAP to work on a novella about a journalist writing a hit piece on her old high school enemy, who’s now a famous psychic medium. It’s called “Madam Pamela is a Monster.”

My daughter Frances and I saw “Inherit the Wind” at the Pasadena Playhouse. It’s a great play. Highly recommend. I was my husband JT’s plus-one for a screening of “The Holdovers” at the DGA. We attended an after party with Alexander Payne, who bumped elbows with me twice and seemed both cheerful and approachable. The movie is great and seemed to me about loss — the loss of loved ones, the surrendering of the expectations we had for our own lives. Finally, I saw “Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” the Hunger Games’ prequel. It’s not for everyone– there’s a clunkiness in the novel it’s adapted from that makes the movie challenging. But it seems fitting to me. Collins wrote a call to revolution years ago. The update is the story of corruption within.

I read THE FRAUD, Zadie Smith’s most recent book. I found it sluggish, but am told it’s the kind of book that needs to be read twice. Also of note, THE FUTURE FROM ANOTHER TIMELINE, by Analee Newitz, about punk-rock feminist time travelers. Super fun. Stephen Graham Jones’ MONGRELS is beautifully written. Alma Katsu’s got a story up on Amazon called BLACK VAULT and it’s a real treat.

Finally, I nagged Paul Tremblay into sending his latest manuscript, HORROR MOVIE, due out in the summer. What I love about Paul’s work is that it doesn’t wince. It goes for the scare/dread/think in a way that’s both brave and respectful of its audience. HORROR MOVIE is special.

Finally, we got a new rabbit. We are slowly introducing her to Holly, the existing rabbit. She’s adorable!

Henrietta, six months old.

Holly, 5 years old.

The blurbs –

“Sarah Langan never ceases to amaze: A Better World is terrifying, shocking, sinister…and yet heartfelt and often hilarious. Langan has created a United States of the future that feels darkly reconizable—a depository of our current fears about environment, government, health. Her bright, shiny, twisted little town of tomorrow, Plymouth Valley, is a dark, thrilling indictment on the choices we make today.” – Gillian Flynn

“It’s like Shirley Jackson on mushrooms,” – Hilarie Burton

“A Better World is truly fantastic. A marriage story, an apocalyptic story, a moving portrait of a woman trying to save her family in a poisoned world. Imagine if H.G. Wells and Lorrie Moore collaborated on a novel. Then add in some weird-ass birds. Mordant wit, insightful social commentary, and so much heart, Sarah Langan has written a gloriously humane novel.” – Victor LaValle, author of THE CHANGELING

“Perfectly constructed social horror with emotional heft.  A Rorschach test of all our modern fears anchored by the honest, human, heroic characters at the heart of it. A brilliant piece of writing.” – Alma Katsu, author of The Fervor

“A chilling, heartbreaking exploration of our modern psyche, full of fear, desperation, and terrifying truth. Sarah Langan has never been better or more insightful. There’s more than one way to sell your soul, and Langan knows them all.”
—Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of ROAD OF BONES and THE HOUSE OF LAST RESORT

Brundlefly

Last night I’d planned to catch the first ten minutes of Cronenberg’s The Fly and wound-up watching the whole thing. It’s still relevant, still heartbreaking. What interested me most in this viewing was the sexual politics.

From the opening, brilliant scientist Seth Brundle is trying to bed journalist Ronnie Quaife. What follows is a charming negotiation between dueling ambitions. In the background, we have Ronnie’s awful ex, who showers in her apartment using a key who won’t return. Having lost all his poker chips, he’s abandoned charming negotiation to get her back and resorts to worminess and blackmail.

Seemingly, Ronnie’s found a better guy.

But wait! As soon as he gets Ronnie, Seth goes full jerk, too (also half fly). No more negotiation. It’s his way or no way. Heartbroken Ronnie’s stuck between these two clowns. What interesting is that the ex suddenly becomes supportive — a stand-up guy. Whose hand gets digested.

It’s a double tragedy– the surface one, in which a nice guy gets fused with a fly– and a more subtle one, about the ways emotions and baggage strip away civility in relationships, turning participants into tyrants. Tellingly, the unchanged character here is Ronnie.

Happy Halloween!

Hi, folks!

I’ve been meaning to send this out for a while now. But it turns out my husband and I are now professional chauffeurs. We spend a stunning amount of time carting kids all over the city. But We’re happy about it. There are tennis and soccer games, play dates, birthday parties, extra classes, band practice, and even a punk rock gig — all things we very much missed in 2021. Quarantine feels more and more like a bad memory.

Next week I’ve got two events —

1) I’ll be reading with Colin Hinckley at Chevalier Books on Monday, October 23 at 7pm. Colin’s debut, BLACK LORD is out, and now that I’ve got a copy I’m excited to dig in. He’s also a bookseller at Village Well Books in Culver City, which is how we met. Book people get around! Anyway, if you’re local, please come out. I’m looking forward to it.

2) I’ll be speaking virtually at the Swampscott Public Library on Thursday, October 26 at 6pm EST. Registration required. Sign up here. Fret not at the last notice. It appears 73 spots are still available.

In other news, though I don’t yet have galleys for A BETTER WORLD, some colleagues are starting to read the bound manuscript. To my delight, this is what Alma Katsu had to say: “Perfectly constructed social horror with emotional heft. A Rorschach test of all our modern fears anchored by the honest, human, heroic characters at the heart of it. A brilliant piece of writing.” Alma Katsu, author of The Fervor. Alma has written some great books and I’ve wanted to meet her for some time, so I’m delighted. Also, she used to be a spy!

If you’re like: Wait, is this horror? I don’t read horror! You gotta trust me on this. A BETTER WORLD is up your alley.

In other news, I’ve started the next novel, THE PARENT TRAP, set on Long Island, in a house called Swamp House. It’s been a joy to work on, which is usually a good sign.

My eleven year old turned twelve today. She and her dad made an awesome Pinata based on the cover of Stephen King’s novel Pet Semetary and asked me to tag King on Twitter to see if he’d wish her a happy birthday. So I’m about to do that. What I’d like to point out: 1) she loves SK and her room is covered with SK posters. 2) She knows her mom is hoping to a get blurb from him on A BETTER WORLD, and I suspect the Twitter thing is to help catch his attention. This is reason number 3006 that Frances Petty is cool.

I’ll close with a Halloween horror story. I finally had sinus surgery last month as I’ve been complaining for over five years about a frustrating tendency for my left nasal passage to collect infection, and then I wind-up sick for weeks and months longer than most people. It took a third opinion before someone finally looked at an old CT scan and said, “I see something in there. Let’s go in and check it out.” So they did, and friends, after a 2.5 hour surgery, they removed what is apparently termed a fungal ball. I’m fine now, and told I’ll get sick far less often now that my little invader is gone.

Shockingly, I no longer have any problems drinking red wine. Which begs the question: Do fungus like red wine?

Book Trailer (and other stuff)!

My editor Loan Le at Atria made this very fun and very funny book trailer (whose size I’m going to have to figure out how to get right) for A Better World. Though it’s silly, it captures the essence of the story and the things A Better World lampoons in what I hope is a thoughtful way. It’s not every writer whose editor does this kind of thing and I’m very appreciative.

My dad used to tell me that his favorite painter Velazquez never finished everything – it was taken away from him, or he’d have worked on it forever. My dad felt I was similar in disposition, and I’ve lately been noticing the evidence, as I keep thinking of lines I want to tweak in A Better World. I’ll have time for this, though I’m not convinced it’s as necessary as I tell myself. I just finished reading Elmore Leonard’s Black Dahlia, which I suspect he wrote straight through with few edits. It’s nonetheless riveting, nonetheless, and even when he hits wrong notes I don’t care.

This week, I went over cover and sales copy with my editor. It’s hard to know how to sell something or what slant to take when a book doesn’t fit an exact box. I spent a good fifteen hours on two pages of material, changing clauses and specific words like I was solving world peace. In our last exchange my editor wrote: You’re done! And I thought: Okay, yeah, that was a little much for all involved.

Juan de Pareja, one of my dad’s favorite Velazquez paintings. de Pareja was a painter in his own right, and Velazquez’ slave for twenty years. There’s a good article about him here. This is The Calling of St. Matthew, a painting BY Juan de Pareja after he was freed, with a self-portrait on the left. From The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Anyway, I’m onto finishing a short story, then writing one more for that research I did in Death Valley. It’ll be fun to announce the anthology for that story, as a lot of you will probably have read the genre classic it references. After that I’ll work on the next book, which I’ve outlined and for which I have about fifty written pages.

School started in Los Angeles on Monday. My husband and I suddenly have time to work again, which is great, though it strikes me as crazy that kids should be in school mid-August. The good news is, they’re now attending the same school and they take a bus.

My kids and I watched “American Beauty” last night. There’s still a lot to like about it, though some of its politics are dated (and the Suvari side plot is treated… badly). For instance, Kevin Spacey’s character craps all over his wife for her dinner music selection. Meanwhile, though she works too, there’s no evidence he’s ever cooked, bought groceries, decorated and cleaned the house, or kept track of their daughter’s schedule. Sure, she’s a shrew. But maybe she’s got reasons. Even so, the movie’s still a great/weird indictment of… everything.

Speaking of , who makes the role of the housewife in “American Beauty” tolerable, I have two recommendations – “Girl Most Likely” a Kristin Wiig vehicle from 2012, in which Benning is at her charming best, as a wacky, gambling addicted mom who shacks up with her “international spy” boyfriend Matt Dillon. This movie is a total joy, and I think a reference to the 1973 Stockard Channing TV movie “Girl Most Likely to…” As a kid watching too much television, I saw this movie repeatedly on WORTV Channel 9 in New York and was fascinated. It was written by Agnes Gallin and Joan Rivers, about a smart girl who can’t get a date because she’s not pretty. But then she goes crazy. Like, CRAZY.

I’m in the writer’s guild and the strike continues. It’s a strike I agree with and enough has been said on it that I don’t need to say more. But I guess the one note here is, if AI could paint line Velazquez, would it feel the same? If a random algorithm wrote my work, would you still want to read it? Or would the weird part that makes a thing art– the funny conversations and meandering and sinkhole choices that don’t make sense except for an internal logic — feel like mistakes when there’s no human on the other end?

That’s it for now. As I catch up on books on my nightstand, I’m also looking for recommendations. Send any you got.

-sl

Death Valley is so Hot!

Hi, folks! 

For research on a very fun story, I recently took a road trip with the family to Death Valley, the hottest place on earth, having reached a record 134 degrees in 1913. Happily, the hotel had air conditioning. The picture above is the evidence. Bad Water is the lowest point on earth, at 282 feet below sea level. All around it are salt flats, which look like cartoon water mirages in the distance. The stars at night in death valley are gorgeous. 

We also went to Meow Wolf in Las Vegas, an interactive art installation that tells the story of the Omega Mart supermarket. I know I was supposed to like it, as the whole thing was definitely my wheelhouse, but while skewering consumerism, it was reveling in consumerism, and mostly it made me tired. There’s a fun mystery embedded in the show, which my daughters Clem and Frances enjoyed solving. I did love Sleep No More in New York, another interactive show based on Macbeth, but then again I’m a huge Shakespeare fan. 

Finally, we went kayaking on the Colorado River. This was great fun. The water was about 50 degrees, and as I’m part polar bear I found it very refreshing.

A BETTER WORLD is now in copy edits, which means I’m done. I’m proud of the book. Upon reading it, I thought, “I never want to work this hard again. I’d never even try writing something like this again,” which is exactly how I hope to feel when finishing any book. I’d never write Keeper, or Good Neighbors again, either. A book ought to be so hard and unique that you think: Well, holy crap. I don’t know whether I’ll succeed commercially, but I can’t believe I wrote that. The hours, months, and years actually amounted to something. 

You can pre-order it here.

Until next time, thanks for reading and don’t get none on you.

A Better World (S&S April, 2024)

A BETTER WORLD (S&S, April, 2023). I love this cover so much!!!

In other fantastic news, Canelo Books announced that it’s starting a new horror imprint. It will be publishing from my backlist and I’m very, very excited. More on that to come. The books will be out and in bookstores soon, possibly before the end of 2023

Formerly known as Mom’s Night Out, and more aptly titled A BETTER WORLD, you can preorder it by clicking the image or here.

Pre-ordering helps me out a lot. My ability to sell new books depends on previous sales. What’s also very helpful is requesting it from your local library. For instance it turns out Good Neighbors is not at my own library in West Hollywood. So I requested my own book!

I’m excited to talk about A BETTER WORLD. It’s set under the shadow of the modern nuclear threat, during a time when jobs are scarce and it seems like things are only getting worse. A family lucks into a cloistered company town that offers not just survival, via the town’s labyrinthine underground bomb shelter, but a future for generations to come.

But the rich residents, closed off from the world, are hiding a secret. They adhere to a group of customs and beliefs which they’ve collectively named Hollow. What’s the story behind this underground labyrinth, and why are the family told at all the Hollow festivals to “Beware the Sacrifice?” Linda Farmer, Russell Bowen, and their teen twins know that all isn’t what it seems. They even have an idea that the powerful here are probably very corrupt. But how bad is it? And what point will it be too late to get out?

It’s such a fun book, and chock full of fun themes. I was thinking “The Lottery” meets “Rosemary’s Baby.”

Some other things —
This summer was a sad one. My dad passed away from cancer. I had never seen someone die so close up before, and all I can say is cancer is really mean. Avoid it if you can. For realz. Do all the things. Avoid it. He died well. Was always himself, always brave and thinking of everyone else. My admiration was renewed, my heart doubly broken.

In other news, my husband and I celebrated our fifteenth wedding anniversary. We spent it in Ojai, eating oysters, which is what everyone should do. Unhappily, back home the heat caused a blackout. So special thanks to my best friend for coming over to stay with the girls and make ice cream sundaes, otherwise we’d have had to race home.

We also went to Morrow Bay and Hearst Castle some weeks ago as a family. There’s an unworldly bird sanctuary in Morrow Bay, populated by so many odd creatures that I felt like I was in a Doctor Suess book. This is in keeping with A Better World, where the town mascot is a weird looking Caladrius. Hearst Castle was silly. Clementine summed it up best: “I like Teddy Roosevelt’s house better. It felt like people actually lived there.”

I’ve had some letters regarding my back list. I finally got rights back from my original publisher, so they’re out of print. I have copies of all the books and will be touring at conventions with them pretty soon. You may also want to wait for Canelo’s versions.

Finally, there’s a kindle deal until the end of this month — Good Neighbors for cheap ($1.99) at any place that sells ebooks.

I’ll close with a painting by my dad. He made it for the cover of Good Neighbors, back when it was still entitled Empty Houses.

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