LAST EXIT (cover reveal)

My next novel, coming next February

A bit of housekeeping: if you’re a subscriber both to this newsletter and to my more traditional announcements-only list, you’ll receive two copies of this email (less this little note!). There’s more to talk about here—maybe next time (or later this week if the time presents itself I’ll write about how it felt to handwrite a whole book for the first time since middle school, or about techniques and challenges for writing by hand)—but I’ll keep it brief for the moment, since I’m about to go run around the internet doing author things and, after a couple years living in a cave with my family and scribbling away in comparative solitude, I find the prospect of emerging into the light, let’s deploy understatement and call it ‘daunting.’ I’m really excited for this book. Take care of yourselves. -mg

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It’s easy to focus on the page. There’s your paper, your pen, the bloody trail of ink. 

But a book is the accumulated weight of a couple hundred thousand small decisions. It’s hard to see the whole from a distance, when you know every corner, when you’ve weighed every word and polished every sentence.

It’s this tangled and haunting dream, full of thorns and sharp edges. It’s a part of you. What would it even mean, for that to exist as a book in a store? What cover would you put on it?

It’s impossible to imagine, sometimes. And then you see it.

A little under ten years ago, I had an idea for a book. I wrote it. The world changed around me, and out from under the book. It didn’t feel right any more. 

Two years ago, for the first time since high school, I found myself unable to use computers to write. I’d sit down in front of a blinking cursor and my attention would seep into cracks in the world. I’d find myself drawn into dark dreams. Maybe you’ve had a similar experience. 

I found a notebook and a pen, and I started to write that book again. It became something else. It went dark, and it went big, and it went deep. And on February 22, you can join me.

A little over a decade ago, Zelda and her friends graduated from college, and set off on the road trip of a lifetime: into the alts, into alternate realities, to change, and maybe save, the world.

It didn’t work. They lost someone. They came home, broken. They split up.

Ten years passed. The world got darker.

Zelda’s still out there, fighting the rot that creeps through the cracks in the world. Trying to make up for her failure.

But that won’t be enough. The cracks are widening. A storm gathers. Someone’s coming home, from beyond the edge of the world. And Zelda hears the click of cowboy boots on the road behind her.

It’s time to get the band back together.

It’s a hell of a book—about loss, and possibility, and mending, and rage, and failure, and love, and what’s past and what’s to come. About monsters: fighting them, being them, and what they sound like when they whisper to you. About space, and driving, and about fighting back beyond your last shred of self. Every day when I sat down, it found some new way to surprise me. I feel lucky to have written it. I hope I’ve done it justice. Join me on the road, and see what you think.