Six Days Until Three Parts Dead!

Three Parts Dead goes live on October 2!  At least one pre-orderer has already received it from his bookstore.  Those of you who pre-ordered from brick and mortar stores might well have a surprise in the next couple days.

As for me, I’m feeling the good version of this Johnny Cash song:

I’m incredibly excited, which presents new challenges to focus.  Jazz helps.  Coffee doesn’t, but when have you known  a writer willing to give up coffee?  For non-religious reasons, I mean.

(Interesting note: there’s a word in Chinese for giving something as part of a religious or personal vow – jie4.  This is a good verb to know if you’re a vegetarian traveling on the mainland–a phrase like “I don’t eat meat” wo3 bu4 chi1 rou4 doesn’t carry the same weight, or hasn’t in my experience, partly because sometimes people don’t think the word rou4 includes less obviously meaty substances like chicken stock, and partly because the sentence “I don’t eat meat” doesn’t carry a weight of finality.  You could just mean “I won’t eat meat on this occasion.”  The vow tells people you mean business. [Apologies for the pinyin - I need to fix wordpress to support chinese characters again.])

But anyway.  There’s still time to pre-order the book, and to get the word out.  And if you’re in the Boston area, and can make it, I’d love to see you at one of my two signings next week: at Harvard Book Store on October 3, and Pandemonium on October 4.  For more information, and links, see the events page.