On Tour
“Tour” may be an exaggeration. I’m going to a few places. If you want to see me,
come along, and I’ll be all like, “Thanks for coming,” and you can be like,
“That’s cool, man, no problem.”
Columbus, OH • Chicago, IL • New York, NY • Los Angeles, CA • Melbourne, Australia
Columbus, Ohio
By the way, Syrup is simultaneously screening not too far away at the
Waterfront Film Festival
in South Haven, Michigan, with a Q&A with the
director Aram Rappaport and editor Robert Hoffman. If you
think those guys are better.
Saturday June 15, 7:00pm ***UPDATED***
Film screening! Syrup is playing here and I’ll be doing a Q&A
afterward about what it’s like to have a book turn into a movie. I land in Columbus on
the night of the 14th direct from Australia so I can’t
make any guarantees about how I’ll smell. Because of the long flight, I mean. Not because of
Australia. Australia smells fine.
Chicago, Illinois
Sunday June 16, 4pm ***UPDATED***
Hang With Max @ Emporium Arcade Bar
I’ll be in Chicago two days before my book comes out. I can’t do a bookstore
event, but I figured I could meet people at a bar or something. I did this in London
once and didn’t get stabbed at all so I think it’s a good idea. There might be some
Syrup film people there too. So you could come along and talk
about books and films or whatever. Very casual. If you bring a book, I will sign it.
Details to come: I will update this post. And if you know a good venue, please let me know
in the comments.
All good book stores, US & Canada
Tuesday June 18
Book
comes out. I mention this because you probably
want to schedule some time to head to your local bookstore and elbow aside
the crowds.
New York, NY
Wednesday June 19, 7:00pm
Barnes & Noble (Upper East Side)
86th & Lexington Ave.
Ph. 212-369-2180
Book launch! I will read from Lexicon and answer questions
and stuff. You know. It’s a reading. Actually, it’s more of a talking. I talk about things.
I figure you can read the book yourself. I mean, that’s why we had it printed.
I will read for a little while, because that’s expected, and because sometimes people
come to bookstore readings for no particular reason and hear some of the book
and think, “That sounds good.” Then they buy it and I get to continue being an author.
Los Angeles, CA
Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore (Redondo Beach)
Thursday June 20, 7:00pm-8:00pm sharp ***UPDATED***
2810 Artesia Blvd., Redondo Beach
Bookstore event! I read, I answer questions, I sign things. I haven’t been to
Mysterious Galaxy before, but it was LA Weekly’s
Best
Geek Bookstore of 2012. So that’s promising. I only have a few hours in LA, flying
in that day and flying out that night, so this will be the kind of visit
that’s brief and passionate and leaves both of us wanting more, like that time
in high school.
All good book stores, UK
Thursday June 20
Book
comes out in the UK. Sadly, I don’t get to be there. My in-laws moved out of Bedford, did
I mention? They did. I will probably never go to Bedford again in my life. What am I saying,
probably. There is no way I am ever going to Bedford again.
Melbourne, Australia
Tuesday June 25, 6:30pm
Embiggen Books
197-203 Little Lonsdale Street
Australian launch!
On the day of Lexicon’s Australian / New Zealand / South African release
I’ll be launching it here.
Embiggen is awesome. They stock about ten books but they’re all really good. They stock more
than ten books. That was an exaggeration. But you could seriously just wander into Embiggen
with your eyes closed and buy whatever your hands fall on and walk out happy. It’s that kind of place.
By the way, the following day (Wednesday June 26 @ 6:30pm) the Embiggen Book Club is doing Machine Man. Details here!
Other Places
You know I’d come if I could. It’s not you; it’s me. Me, not being near you.
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Lexicon ›
On Tour
Magnets: How do they get into my possession?
Machine Man the novel is out August 9, unless you live in one
of those countries that hates me, like the UK. Seriously, UK. What have I
ever done to you? Aside from those
Bedford blogs. Those were totally
justified. Bedford is horrible.
Anyway,
the point is: look at me with this actual book! The publishers
have started printing. A couple days ago I was asked
whether I’d miss the sensation of holding a physical copy of my book,
since I allegedly believe ebooks are destined to take over from print.
And as much as I wanted to say no, because, hey, bring on the electrons, the answer
was yes. I do find it incredibly rewarding to hold my book, made real. I mean made physical.
Ebooks are real. I never said otherwise. But a thing, a touchable, material
thing, does validate the book’s existence in a straightforward and
undeniable way. When I
dreamed of being a published writer, I was mostly imagining a shelf full
of physical objects. Those objects may not be important, in the long run. They may
be the medium and nothing more. But boy, they are something.
Some promotional stuff is brewing. First, if you’re in Australia, Scribe is doing a very cool thing whereby you can buy the print version and get a Booki.sh e-copy for free. See here under “ebook bundle”. If you’re not in Australia, and can get to San Diego for Comic-Con 2011, Vintage will be giving away Advanced Reader Copies* and more importantly AWESOME MAGNETS. Look at these things. You can mix and match human and artificial parts. You know you want that more than life itself. That isn’t just me.
If
you can’t get to San Diego, you can win magnets and possibly something else
via a competition I haven’t invented yet. The important thing is I promise
there will
be access to magnets. Stay tuned. And suggest some competition ideas. Because
seriously, I need to think of something.
Finally: US book tour. There isn’t one. Or at least, not a physical one. This is mainly because flying an author thousands of miles to sell three dozen copies of a book is not very cost-effective. Especially when that author tends to order a lot of room service and make long international phone calls. But also because I have an idea for a virtual book tour, which is cheaper and appropriate for the novel and solves the problem of people complaining I’m visiting every city in the world except their one. Details to come on that, too. I just wanted to let you know early so you’re not hanging around postponing your vacation in case I come to Tallahassee that precise weekend. Go ahead. Book the flight. You deserve it.
(* Advanced Reader Copies are early versions given out to reviewers and bloggers and, for some reason, Comic-Con 2011 attendees. Sometimes these wind up on ebay and people like you wonder if they should buy them. I think they make neat collectibles, but they’re inferior to the final book in three ways: the text is uncorrected, meaning it contains typos and things I changed at the last minute, the cover and front/back matter is different, and the production quality of the book itself is lower. Also I don’t get paid for ARCs. So that’s four ways.)
God & Bedford
Bedford, England, is a place to make you believe in God, but only
if He is very angry. Gazing across the panorama of desolate streets,
dead, claw-like trees,
and a sluggish black river that smells of sulphur, you can’t help but think,
“Yep, somehow, sometime, someone here really pissed God off.”
Don’t get me wrong; most of rural England is quite picturesque. Even in mid-winter, there are charming little villages. You can even spot the odd animal frolicking in fields, but as you approach Bedford, they look increasingly frightened. Then you arrive. At first, you might think there’s nothing wrong; any town could look like this, if the garbage collectors went on strike for a while. You have an odd, clenched feeling your gut, but that could be a bad hamburger. Bad hamburgers feel like they’re slowly sucking the marrow out of your bones, right? Sure.
It’s only when you’ve been here a while that the true horror of Bedford reveals itself: it’s unrelenting. You think, “All right, so people here look like extras from Dawn of the Dead, but that’s just because they choose not to care about personal grooming for some reason.” (I developed this theory after spotting a guy who looked like Kevin Spacey, if Kevin was drunk and out of shape and didn’t own a hairbrush.) Then you pass a guy afflicted by a plague of boils, and realize: No. It’s not a choice. It’s biblical.
I wrote about Bedford last time we visited, and since then it has managed to get worse. I didn’t think that was possible. I mean, once the entire town is made up of people either begging for money or actively stealing it, what’s left? Once the wail of emergency vehicle sirens is constant, do you really notice any more of them? But then I ran alongside the river Ouse, past what at first I thought was a rubbish dump but turned out to just be someone’s back yard, and a goose tried to mug me. I think it had a switchblade.
So it’s almost 2008. I’m very much looking forward to ‘08, because, writing-wise, 2007 blew. It started off well. It’s just that it then took a sharp turn into soul-destroying, heart-breaking stultification. I think this must be what happens when you start the year with a blog that says, “Man, I’ve got this writing thing nailed.” So: okay. Lesson learned, ha ha!
Yep, I’m feeling much better about 2008. I won’t have a book published, or a movie released. But I will write.
And, with luck, I will get out of Bedford without being stabbed.
It’s good to have goals.
Thank you for following along my web site, and reading my stuff, and caring, even if only a little. It means an enormous amount to me. Sorry for the hold-up, but give me a little time and I’ll have some books that are worthy of you.
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Max ›
God & Bedford
City of Vociferous Angels
I knew I was in Los Angeles when I saw the crazy guy on the sidewalk corner,
screaming abuse at a security guard. I mean, the 14-hour flight was a tip-off.
You don’t go through that and not notice. And US Customs was as cheery
and welcoming as always. (“Your daughter… we want her fingerprints.”) But
nothing says LA like a 50-year-old guy with thinning hair shrieking, “I hope
you feel good about yourself! I hope you feel like you’ve really achieved something
here!”
See, he wasn’t actually crazy. In most other parts of the world, somebody completely losing it in public means they have a serious mental illness. But I think this guy was just annoyed. He even looked a bit like Larry David. Yes, I was in LA.
People here are very friendly. Of course, I’m comparing it to the only other American city in which I’ve spent serious time, New York, so I would probably be impressed by anything other than open hostility. And I am in Santa Monica, which is one of the nicer parts of LA. But there is a good feeling. On the road, people give me plenty of room. Maybe this is because I’m not used to driving on the right side and tend to veer over to the left when not concentrating. But I like to think it’s politeness.
I’m here with Jen and Fin because we’re going to England, and it’s on the way. When you’re traveling from Melbourne to London, anywhere is on the way. It’s one of the properties of flying halfway around the world. We’re spending most of the next two months with Jen’s family in Bedford, the mucous membranes of England, and there are some movie things happening (in a possibly-kinda-let’s-see way), so here I am.
The first thing I did upon arrival was pick up a throat infection. Actually, I might have done that on the plane. Either way, it’s been a snotty few days. Now for the big question: Disneyland or Sea World?
P.S. US Customs doesn’t actually fingerprint children upon entry. I just said that because it feels like they might. I asked the Customs guy how old you had to be before they started fingerprinting you, and he said 13. So there you go: the United States is woefully unprepared for attacks from 12-year-olds. I hope you can sleep at night.
Farewell, my Bedford
As you know, I’ve spent most of the last two months in Bedford, England.
No, you do. I mentioned it, like, just a few weeks ago. See, right
here. Well I don’t care if you
do get a lot of e-mail; I thought you’d care enough to remember. Well
I guess not. Well maybe you should. Fine. No, I said, fine! Don’t
take that; that was a present!
Anyway, I am now back home, but before I left, I decided to take a few snaps of Bedford for you. Now, these aren’t of Bedford’s tourist attractions. That’s because Bedford doesn’t have any. Instead I just walked around the block. That was all I needed to capture the real essence of Bedford, I think you’ll agree.
First, this car was parked outside the house. I took this photo because it’s what every car in Bedford looks like. Actually, that’s not true; some have more flags.
(Click for larger versions.)
The flags are because of the World Cup, by the way. Just in case you were thinking there must be some really rabid nationalism going on in Bedford. I mean, there could be, but the flags don’t prove it.
A few doors down was a youth social center with high walls and barred windows. I’m not totally sure, but I think this is the kind of center where the youths aren’t actually permitted to leave. This was on the walls:
I spent some time trying to work out what “Coo-Var Anti-Climb Paint” actually is. My first guess was that it’s really sticky, so when people try to climb the fence they get stuck halfway up, and dangle there until the police come and hose them off. But I touched the wall and it didn’t seem sticky. It didn’t seem smooth, either, or smelly, or anything else that might discourage climbing. But if I jumped really high I could see a kind of black smear on the top of the wall, so I guessed that was it. And when I touched it, it was sticky. But not that sticky. So I’m still confused about what this product is meant to do.
Around the back of the block, I passed these helpfully labeled bins:
This raised a lot of questions for me. I was tempted to knock on the door and ask the owner a few questions about exactly how he thought this anti-theft protection scheme might work. He seemed to have some insights into the criminal mind that were escaping me. But that probably would have gotten me stabbed, so I didn’t.
Note: After my previous Bedford blog, a friend wrote to tell me that Christopher Reeve used to live in Bedford. This left me confused and bewildered. I kept asking myself: Why? God, why? Then I discovered he lived in Bedford, New York, and the world made sense again.
Have a Beer with Max in London
As I mentioned, I’m not doing any publicity while I’m in England.
But I do intend to have a beer at
the Warrington Hotel
[Map]
at 2pm this Sunday the 28th. So if you’re in range, and you care, you
could come along.
I don’t really know how this will work, but I am imagining something like this: you see a 6’2” guy with no hair speaking in an Australian accent, wander over, and say, “Are you Max?” And I say, “Yes, yes I am. Who are you?” And we take it from there. My only rule—and it’s a very strict one—is that there shall be no mention of the Ashes.
I won’t have any books to sell, but I’m happy to sign anything you bring along. And I mean anything. Underwear, other people’s books, you name it. I’m desperate for recognition.
By the way, I was originally thinking of inviting people to a pub in Bedford, but realized I couldn’t live with the stain of that crime on my soul.
Update: Well that was great fun! Thanks to those who turned up. I gotta say, it’s pretty damn cool to be able to gather an instant mini-party of interesting people just by posting on my blog.