2018 has been a(nother) terrible year nationally (goes for both my countries), but very good personally. Thank you to those of you who made it so. Happy holidays.
December 21, 2018
Santa Must Die
It's been eleven years since I wrote this holiday-themed page for El Jueves. It was one of my first contributions to that magazine, and it's still one of my all-time favorites, so I just translated it to English. Art is by the beautiful Catalan cartoonist Gras.
2018 has been a(nother) terrible year nationally (goes for both my countries), but very good personally. Thank you to those of you who made it so. Happy holidays.
2018 has been a(nother) terrible year nationally (goes for both my countries), but very good personally. Thank you to those of you who made it so. Happy holidays.
November 8, 2018
The Process
Often in panels and Q&A's comes up a question about the writing process, so it's reasonable to think this might interest somebody.
- I start writing long before I have a plan, the minute I come up with a first paragraph. I don't do lay-outs or synopsis. Usually all I have is a premise, and an idea for a climax; I'll come up with the middle as I go.
- I write in the order people will read it, never skip ahead. Not a chapter, not a graph. If I'm stuck thinking of a good joke, I'm stuck. I don't write a bad joke, I don't write "[insert joke]".
- I don't write drafts. The first version has to read like a finished work. It's not the finished work; I edit a lot; but it has to be a finished work.
- I don't bother to figure out things that won't be in the book. If I'm not talking about a character's background, they don't have one.
- I try to keep the number of characters at a minimum.
- I do little research. It's boring, and it tends to contradict or nuance the more interesting scenario that I had envisioned.
- Brevity is an underestimated quality.
- None of the above.
Rules I usually follow when I write
- I start writing long before I have a plan, the minute I come up with a first paragraph. I don't do lay-outs or synopsis. Usually all I have is a premise, and an idea for a climax; I'll come up with the middle as I go.
- I write in the order people will read it, never skip ahead. Not a chapter, not a graph. If I'm stuck thinking of a good joke, I'm stuck. I don't write a bad joke, I don't write "[insert joke]".
- I don't write drafts. The first version has to read like a finished work. It's not the finished work; I edit a lot; but it has to be a finished work.
- I don't bother to figure out things that won't be in the book. If I'm not talking about a character's background, they don't have one.
- I try to keep the number of characters at a minimum.
- I do little research. It's boring, and it tends to contradict or nuance the more interesting scenario that I had envisioned.
- Brevity is an underestimated quality.
Rules I'm following in my current work in progress
- None of the above.
October 16, 2018
The Meddler
So let's say you read Meddling Kids. Let's say you liked it.
Let's say you thought, "I wish there was a sequel."
"The Meddler." A quick short story set in the aftermath of Meddling Kids. Part of the Spooky Short Stories collection by Penguin Random House, now online. For free. Please enjoy.
WARNING: Huge spoilers for Meddling Kids ahead.
Let's say you thought, "I wish there was a sequel."
"The Meddler." A quick short story set in the aftermath of Meddling Kids. Part of the Spooky Short Stories collection by Penguin Random House, now online. For free. Please enjoy.
WARNING: Huge spoilers for Meddling Kids ahead.
September 19, 2018
Event Alert: New York Comic Con!
My schedule for NYCC 2018. Check yours, see if we can meet.
SIGNING
- Sunday, October 7, 12-1 pm- Knopf Doubleday Group Booth (2204-J)
PANEL: "Weirdness Accessible"
- 1:30 pm.- Room 1A18
POST-PANEL SIGNING
- 2:45 pm.- Hall 1A Author Autographing Area
All locations at Javits Center. 655 W 34th St, New York, NY
August 29, 2018
Dark Corners
I'm excited to have contributed a story—my first short story in English!—to Dark Corners, a new collection of horror fiction coming out on September 27, featuring all original works by big authors like Lisa Unger, Joyce Carol Oates, Jennifer McMahon, Emily Raboteau, Adam Haslett, and Brandi Reeds.
My story is called There's a Giant Trapdoor Spider Under Your Bed. It's about this big effing trapdoor spider under someone's bed, so don't you dare say I don't deliver. And you can pre-order it now.
August 12, 2018
Event Alert: Bookmarks Festival!
I'll be attending Bookmarks' 14th Annual Festival of Books and Authors on September 8 in Winston-Salem, NC. There'll be panels and readings and signings and sumptuous author dinners and unspeakable late night requests to room service. Or so I heard. Anyway, you should totally catch me for some of the first three things. Most events on Saturday are free too, so swing by, and bring me something to draw on!
- Saturday, September 8th. Winston-Salem. North Carolina. More info here.
August 4, 2018
A Mid-Tour Message
Last Tuesday was A.Z. Kimrean's birthday. Their first novel release date, and their actual birthday too. I just decided that. It's canon now.
I was in Houston at the time. I'd had an event in Jersey City the previous day, I flew on to Dallas on the next. It's been a crazy week. It's being a crazy summer. But as Kimrean's spokesperson (yeah, like they need more voices) let me take this break to say, thank you. To the bookstores who are hosting the events and betting so much in this new book, often out of love for Meddling Kids. To the people who attend the events and stand in line for one on my famously time-consuming autographs. To fans who cosplay (yes, that happened). To narrator January LaVoy, actual provider of Kimreans' voice(s) in the audiobook, for star-guesting at the event in Brooklyn. To all those enthusiastic early reviewers, bookstagrammers, podcasts and critics. And to the people in Doubleday who show much faith in what I pitched as a small amuse-bouche between "big" books.
Monday, we're back on the road. And there are more events to come (I'm looking at you, NC). Stay tuned.
I was in Houston at the time. I'd had an event in Jersey City the previous day, I flew on to Dallas on the next. It's been a crazy week. It's being a crazy summer. But as Kimrean's spokesperson (yeah, like they need more voices) let me take this break to say, thank you. To the bookstores who are hosting the events and betting so much in this new book, often out of love for Meddling Kids. To the people who attend the events and stand in line for one on my famously time-consuming autographs. To fans who cosplay (yes, that happened). To narrator January LaVoy, actual provider of Kimreans' voice(s) in the audiobook, for star-guesting at the event in Brooklyn. To all those enthusiastic early reviewers, bookstagrammers, podcasts and critics. And to the people in Doubleday who show much faith in what I pitched as a small amuse-bouche between "big" books.
Monday, we're back on the road. And there are more events to come (I'm looking at you, NC). Stay tuned.
July 9, 2018
Event Alert: San Diego Comic Con!
Are you going? Because I'll be going. Will you be in cosplay? I won't. I'm supposed to be working.
SIGNING
- Thursday, July 19, 10:30 am- KDPG booth (1515-I)
PANEL + SIGNING: "The Thrill of the Chase: Pursuing the Truth"
- Friday, July 20, 3 pm.- Room 29AB
- Post-panel signing starting 4.30 pm at Autographing Area 9
July 2, 2018
Event Alert: #Problematic Tour!
The Kimreans hit the stores on July 31, and I'll be hitting the road with them! Come meet the twins, see me try to read as the stupid text keeps blasting through fourth walls like a wrecking ball and get your copy of This Body's Not Big Enough for Both of Us doodled, signed, and fresh from the press. See you!
July 30 - 7 pm @ WORD Jersey City (123 Newark Ave - Jersey City, NJ)
July 31 - 6:30 pm @ Murder by the Book (2342 Bissonnet Street - Houston, TX)
August 1 - 7 pm @ Interabang (10720 Preston Rd. Ste. 1009B - Dallas, TX)
August 2 - 6 pm @ Full Circle Books (50 Penn Place, 1900 NW Expressway - Oklahoma City, OK)
August 3 - 7:30 pm @ Books Are Magic (225 Smith St. - Brooklyn, NY)
August 6 - 7 pm @ Poisoned Pen (4014 N Goldwater Blvd - Scottsdale, AZ)
August 7 - 7 pm @ Bookshop West Portal (80 West Portal Avenue - San Francisco, CA)
August 8 - 7 pm @ Copperfield's - (140 Kentucky St. - Petaluma, CA)
August 9 - 7 pm @ Elliott Bay Books (1521 Tenth Avenue - Seattle, WA)
July 30 - 7 pm @ WORD Jersey City (123 Newark Ave - Jersey City, NJ)
July 31 - 6:30 pm @ Murder by the Book (2342 Bissonnet Street - Houston, TX)
August 1 - 7 pm @ Interabang (10720 Preston Rd. Ste. 1009B - Dallas, TX)
August 2 - 6 pm @ Full Circle Books (50 Penn Place, 1900 NW Expressway - Oklahoma City, OK)
August 3 - 7:30 pm @ Books Are Magic (225 Smith St. - Brooklyn, NY)
August 6 - 7 pm @ Poisoned Pen (4014 N Goldwater Blvd - Scottsdale, AZ)
August 7 - 7 pm @ Bookshop West Portal (80 West Portal Avenue - San Francisco, CA)
August 8 - 7 pm @ Copperfield's - (140 Kentucky St. - Petaluma, CA)
August 9 - 7 pm @ Elliott Bay Books (1521 Tenth Avenue - Seattle, WA)
June 25, 2018
Nobody Does It Better Than Scooby
I wrote a little piece for CrimeReads about genre fiction and the high standards that children's entertainment sets for trope exploitation. You can guess my position by comparing Meddling Kids or even The Supernatural Enhancements with a certain Saturday morning cartoon. Or comparing my upcoming novel with this Spanish comic-book from 1989. Kids know where the good stuff is.
June 19, 2018
Hangover
Just a few words in the aftermath of the Meddling Tour: THANK YOU. To the stores, to my hosts, and to every fan who came by. It was amazing to meet you. I am oozing endorphines.
To those who couldn't make it, there should be at least a few doodled paperbacks of Meddling Kids available in Subtext, Boswell and Bookpeople. To those in other cities: stay tuned.
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| Photo by @masterbookmonster |
To those who couldn't make it, there should be at least a few doodled paperbacks of Meddling Kids available in Subtext, Boswell and Bookpeople. To those in other cities: stay tuned.
June 12, 2018
My question is in six parts and actually an interview
While I'm packing for the big Meddling Tour starting tomorrow, make sure to check this preliminary interview with Matt Wild before I have a chat with him at the Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee on June 14. Did you know Nate almost never made it to the book? It's a fact now, cause I said it in an interview.
Catch me at Boswell or any of the other venues this week, and ask your own questions! I change my mind on a daily basis!
Catch me at Boswell or any of the other venues this week, and ask your own questions! I change my mind on a daily basis!
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| Photo by @gandalfandunicorns |
June 7, 2018
My Denver Comic Con schedule
I'm going to be in Denver for three days, speaking in public, in my third language, and without a script about several subjects I have never thought about for too long. So if I were you, I wouldn't miss it.
Friday June 15, 2018
- 1:30 pm to 2:20 pm
Scared Silly. Room 402/403 - Authors - 2:30 pm to 3:20 pm
Our Secret Monstrous Obsession. Room 402/403 - Authors - 4:00 pm to 4:50 pm
Signing @ Author Signing Booth 2
Saturday June 16, 2018
- 12:00 pm to 12:50 pm
Query Rescue: Fine Tuning Your First Author Impression. Coast City Room - Mile High Ballroom DCCP6 - 1:00 pm to 1:50 pm
Veterans of the Writing Wars. Room 406/407 - Authors - 2:00 pm to 2:55 pm
Signing @ Author Signing Booth 2
Sunday June 17, 2018
- 11:00 am to 11:55 am
Signing @ Author Signing Booth 2 - 12:30 pm to 1:20 pm
Old plot, New Twist. Room 405 - Authors - 2:00 pm to 2:50 pm
The Devil is in the Details. Keystone City Room - Mile High Ballroom DCCP4 - 3:00 pm to 3:50 pm
Writing Against Xenophobia: "Otherness" in Fiction. Room 406/407 - Authors - 5:00 pm to 5:50 pm
Tackling Novel Writing Demons. Room 406/407 - Authors
May 29, 2018
Event Alert: Meddling Tour!
The paperback edition of Meddling Kids is officially out! Perfect excuse to tick off a few states in my bucket list! I will read, I will sign, I will struggle not to mix three different accents in the same sentence—and fail spectacularly! Get your gang together, jump into your sleuthmobile and join me!
June 13 @ Subtext Books (6 West 5th Street, St. Paul, MN)
June 14 @ Boswell Books (2559 N. Downer Ave., Milwaukee, WI)
June 15-17 @ Denver Comic Con with Tattered Cover (Colorado Convention Center, Denver, CO)
June 18 @ Book People (603 N. Lamar Blvd., Austin, TX)
June 13 @ Subtext Books (6 West 5th Street, St. Paul, MN)
June 14 @ Boswell Books (2559 N. Downer Ave., Milwaukee, WI)
June 15-17 @ Denver Comic Con with Tattered Cover (Colorado Convention Center, Denver, CO)
June 18 @ Book People (603 N. Lamar Blvd., Austin, TX)
May 3, 2018
And now for some extras
I just received my copies of the Meddling Kids paperback, published by Anchor Books. They're smol. They're shiny.
And they're two pages longer.
On sale May 29. :)
And they're two pages longer.
On sale May 29. :)
April 1, 2018
This post will be mostly images
The UK edition of Meddling Kids, published by Titan Books, on sale April 3.
The US paperback edition of Meddling Kids by Anchor Books, coming May 29. It's the same, only smaller! (DISCLAIMER: NO, IT ISN'T. It's actually a few pages fatter because of all the extra content.)
And last but not least...
This Body's Not Big Enough for Both of Us. The new novel, courtesy of Doubleday, to land on July 31 (not Fall anymore, children!)
That's it for now. Next post will be mostly text, because I have to tell you about my tour. :D
February 2, 2018
& Blanc
So, as I was telling you the other day, by early 2013 I had finished a manuscript in Spanish, with Noir as the setting and, in my opinion, an interesting enough private eye. Eyes. It's complicated.
While I was writing it though, my English debut The Supernatural Enhancements was sold to Doubleday. The size of that deal, added to the fact that I was being thoroughly ignored by publishers in Barcelona, forced me to focus on my work in English. However, I didn't give up on the other languages. This picture, taken in March 2014, shows the galley edition of TSE between two finished manuscripts: Catalan on the left, Spanish on the right. The Spanish one is the Noir novel.
Because my Catalan- and Spanish-speaking characters longed for the spotlight, they poked their way into the English books. The leads in the manuscript on the left are glimpsed by the Eye in The Supernatural Enhancements. And the P.I. from the Noir novel sneaked into one chapter of Meddling Kids.
Despite my editor's suspicions, this doesn't mean I'm building a sort of "Canteroverse". That would require an architect's mind, and I'm a 36-year-old man who can't use a day planner. If anything, these crossovers mean that I can't focus in a single work. But they also mean that my new novel stars at least one (1) background character from Meddling Kids. And I've been dropping clues.
Oh, and Doubleday just showed the title on Tumblr yesterday, so enough with the hush-hush.
This Body's Not Big Enough For Both Of Us: my new novel, coming Fall 2018. *Blows party horn.*
While I was writing it though, my English debut The Supernatural Enhancements was sold to Doubleday. The size of that deal, added to the fact that I was being thoroughly ignored by publishers in Barcelona, forced me to focus on my work in English. However, I didn't give up on the other languages. This picture, taken in March 2014, shows the galley edition of TSE between two finished manuscripts: Catalan on the left, Spanish on the right. The Spanish one is the Noir novel.
Because my Catalan- and Spanish-speaking characters longed for the spotlight, they poked their way into the English books. The leads in the manuscript on the left are glimpsed by the Eye in The Supernatural Enhancements. And the P.I. from the Noir novel sneaked into one chapter of Meddling Kids.
Despite my editor's suspicions, this doesn't mean I'm building a sort of "Canteroverse". That would require an architect's mind, and I'm a 36-year-old man who can't use a day planner. If anything, these crossovers mean that I can't focus in a single work. But they also mean that my new novel stars at least one (1) background character from Meddling Kids. And I've been dropping clues.
Oh, and Doubleday just showed the title on Tumblr yesterday, so enough with the hush-hush.
 |
| Source: tumblr/doubledaybooks |
This Body's Not Big Enough For Both Of Us: my new novel, coming Fall 2018. *Blows party horn.*
January 17, 2018
Noir
For years now I've been a regular contributor to Spanish satirical magazine El Jueves. In late 2010 I began publishing a series of super short stories under the title Noir. They built upon detective fiction clichés (the dramatic sunlight through closed blinders, the laid-back private eye narrating in the first person) allowing me to skip through the descriptions and jump into the jokes. I guess I'd been reading Raymond Chandler at the time and wanted to try it. They looked like this.
Noir ran for twenty weeks, whereupon I switched to the horror genre with a new series, Gotik, but I was always proud of some of the material and wanted to expand it into something longer, provided I found some genre-breaking element to throw in. Hopefully that would be an original detective, because my first-person narrators have this annoying tendency to resemble me.
When I came up with the detective, I wrote a novel. This was late 2012; I had just finished The Supernatural Enhancements in English, but nobody had yet confirmed it was intelligible, so I exerted caution and went with Spanish for this one. I showed it to several publishers in the following years; they all passed. In late 2016 I translated it to English and showed it to my agent and my editor at Doubleday. Both said, "It's the best thing you've ever written." And it's my upcoming book. :)
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| I don't feel like translating it. Take it from me: it's hilarious. |
Noir ran for twenty weeks, whereupon I switched to the horror genre with a new series, Gotik, but I was always proud of some of the material and wanted to expand it into something longer, provided I found some genre-breaking element to throw in. Hopefully that would be an original detective, because my first-person narrators have this annoying tendency to resemble me.
When I came up with the detective, I wrote a novel. This was late 2012; I had just finished The Supernatural Enhancements in English, but nobody had yet confirmed it was intelligible, so I exerted caution and went with Spanish for this one. I showed it to several publishers in the following years; they all passed. In late 2016 I translated it to English and showed it to my agent and my editor at Doubleday. Both said, "It's the best thing you've ever written." And it's my upcoming book. :)
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