I spent yesterday at Simon and Schuster in Rockefeller Center. It is quite the impressive place.
Also, Rockefeller Center has that really giant Christmas tree.
It is an unstoppable Christmas tree.
I have a hard time with books. I left Simon and Schuster with a bag filled with books.
Making books is probably the greatest thing that humankind has ever done, if you think about it. Books probably do not offset all the awful things humankind has done, but they do offer some brief respite from our evident bend toward evolutionary nihilism.
I could easily have gotten lost in that last paragraph. I could also have gotten lost walking around inside Simon and Schuster. I must have looked like an acidhead walking through Disneyland. Good thing my editor, David Gale, stayed with me so I didn't get sucked into all the pretty colors. Everywhere, naturally, were books and books and books. And there were posters and cover art, artists' examples of images worked and re-worked.
It was very hard to pay attention. But I have that thing where it is always very hard to pay attention.
At Simon and Schuster, I noticed that all the people I met -- when I was introduced as the person who wrote Winger -- got broad smiles of recognition, like, oh, that's the guy who wrote that book. Clearly, they like my book.
It is very different.
I also got to meet the art director who will be overseeing the artistic design of the book, because it has some weird stuff (go figure) in it, like comic strips and graphs and notes, pie charts, random drawings, stuff like that. Anyway, I came out of that meeting convinced that this book (which is coming out in early 2013) is going to look and read like no other book you have ever seen. I know early 2013 sounds like a very long time from now, but it's not.
And the ARCs will most likely be out in the coming fall, so you can live with that, right?
You know what else will be coming out in the fall?
Passenger.
And the paperback edition of The Marbury Lens.
I spent the evening with my great friends at Feiwel and Friends. It was probably the best evening ever. I signed books for people in the Flatiron, and got to see some friends I hadn't seen face-to-face in quite a while. It was really nice. Better than anything.
So I ran into Rich Deas, the amazing artist behind the cover of The Marbury Lens, which, face it, was probably the best book cover of 2010.
Rich is amazing. He works in absolute secret. Naturally, the first thing I assaulted him with was a half-joking demand to see what he was doing for the cover for Passenger.
Nobody in the world knows what Rich has been doing.
But he did tell me a story about something he did to get a visual idea for what he might put on the cover, and all I can say is this: Holy Shit.
Later today, I am going to get to meet up with author Joe Lunievicz, who wrote Open Wounds, one of the best books of the last few years.
Tomorrow will be an epic day that I will try to record in as honest and unbiased a manner possible: I am going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with copyeditor Anne, whom you know as hellskitchen.
