In this edition:
I'm back…
Oh boy, did I cause a commotion. I sent out yesterday's newsletter, went to lunch, then looked at my phone once I got back to the car. Holy smokes, Batman! Kaplow! Blap! Bif! Bam!
Apparently, my subtle humor leaned way too far on the side of subtle. For the record, sending it on April Fools would have been too obvious, so I thought I'd load it with enough absurdity that you wouldn't believe the retirement news. So many of you wrote saying it was clickbait, a joke, no way they're buying it. What it really was was a passionate book recommendation, a nod to Mr. Frank Conroy, who is the Pat Metheny of words.
Others read all the way to the end, including the PS and knew I was just joshing. They are my A+ students of the moment. You must always read the PS. Or, they wrote kind notes wishing me the best on my new journey, whatever that might be, and saying that I was breaking their hearts.
My favorite responses:
My agent texted: Are you trying to give me a heart attack? (But she added a laughing emoji because she gets me.)
A reader named Elle: You even scared my mule out back! (Winner of best comment in the world's history. Side note: At first, I thought she was Jo in California, another reader who has a mule in her backyard, but no, it's apparently a thing, having backyard mules.)
Another reader, Linda, said: You're such a scamp. I was about to fly to Maine and shake the dust bunnies out of you. (Scamp is such a noble word; also, little does she knew I have no dust bunnies!)
I am not retiring. I'm not retiring! In fact, you're stuck with me. I bet I have twenty-five more books in me, and a few screenplays too. Also, I always think it's funny when artists announce retirement. Nothing against Cate Blanchett, who I adore and did exactly that recently. Unless things change, I don't think I'll make any announcements. I'll just slip away into the ether in about fifty years. And I really hope by then I will have gotten my post-Apoc zombie novel in.
To those of you who wrote me such frustrated and sad notes: read my initial email again, including the postscript. You might see I was full of it from the get-go. Did you catch halfway through that I'd never speak again? You didn't believe that, did you? And haven't you read my books? Don't you know me by now? Does this mean many of you are guilty of scanning, reading the subject of the email and then scanning the contents like I was your boss writing about that TCP report that's due? You dastardly scanners! Anyway, what I mostly feel is your love for actually being sad about me leaving the writing biz. Thanks for that.
Moving on, the reason I'm not retiring is that I've learned that I can enlist Artificial Intelligence to write all my books. I input an idea and let ChatGPT rip. 120k words in minutes. It's soooooo much less work for me. I might actually start doing five books a year, all written by AI. Do I need to push this further? With AI, I could release twenty to thirty books a year. Imagine what would happen in Red Mountain Roaring, Book 234. Otis will still be alive, of course, still fighting the good fight. Margot is now a celebrity chef with her own television show. Brooks might just have found true love. (Nah, probably not.) And Emilia will have gray hairs and grandchildren.
Joking. All of it is jokes. Just imagine my life for a second. My wife is always rolling her eyes at me. My son never believes a word I say. You probably shouldn't either. Riggs's standard response when I say something he doubts: “How can I ever believe you? You basically lie for a living.” Fair enough. If you ever pass me on the road, you'll see my Maine license plate says FICTION. (Can you believe Stephen King didn't get that one?) Actually, I was going to wait and send this email next week just to keep that beautiful tension, like how I feel when I'm forced to put down a good book to do real-life adulting, but my advisers are making me confess today.
The truth is…I'm going to write tons more books, and they will come out of this wacky brain of mine and be typed by me with ideas that are all mine! And I will retire when they pry my computer out of my cold, dead phalanges. Hopefully when I'm about 118.
Now that we're clear…one thing should be noted. I'm going to change genres for a while. I'm tired of non-genre, high-impact, book-club fiction. I'm even worn out by mysteries and thrillers. Maybe not tired, but ready for a change. Don't get your underoos in a bunch. I'm still creating, but now I'm going to write…
(dun, dun, duuuun…)
Drum rollllllllllllllllll!
Space romance!
You're going to love it! With an unreliable narrator taboot. I'm out on Peaks Island at my writer's cottage, brainstorming right now. How do astronauts make love and could they use anti-gravity to their advantage? Can aliens have character arcs? What if an astronaut fell in love with an alien (who was actually cute with small ears), but she had to return to her home planet to get a vital mineral that's required for her survival? Would he (let's call him Saber just for a super edgy sensibility) follow her and would he stay? Talk about the ultimate expat. I wonder if they have their own version of Stephen King on this other planet. What if they don't read!? Would they ever let Saber run for office, or do they have a rule that you must be born on the planet? Hold on, if they don't have books, he could bring all the great masterworks back from Earth and pretend like he wrote them. Well, he'd have to learn their alien language and then translate them. But he'd be rich in alien coin! And what if all these aliens are under four-feet, and Saber at 5'11", a man whose genetics kept him from chasing his hoops dream back on Earth, becomes the greatest basketball player in the history of their world?
OKAY.
I better stop. I'm actually just procrastinating from this book due in August about four expats in Bologna, and I better get back to it. I have a call with my editor today and have to clarify that I'm definitely not retiring and that I'll make my deadline! I just hope she's okay with Space Romance with a hint of paranormal thrown in.
