The Return of the King

The Last King of California is out in the US November 19

Welcome to the Hammer Party.

It’s been a while, huh? There’s been a lot of madness of my end, and a lot of torpor too, and what started out as these long essays about my theories of the deeper craft of writing sort of fell out of my head, to be replaced mostly with the dumb and ugly truths of showrunning a television show (the less said on that the better). And of course, there has also been the News, and the Discourse, and all those other fell things that populate the Pandæmonium we call the modern psyche. And today, in the interregnum between the election and my next book coming out, I’ve decided to revive Welcome to the Hammer Party. I’m hoping to return to a focus on my craft theories, but for now let’s admit that this is a sales pitch: my novel The Last King of California will be released in the US on November 19th. Here’s how you can order it online, or you can reach out to your local bookstore and get it there.

There’s a forward from the one and only S.A. Cosby, and then there’s the book. It’s a novel about violence and America and wildfires and family, about scars and love and methamphetamines. There is murder and sex and drugs and also a whale. Its opening line is:

See a scar of smoke across the belly of the sky.

Which I quite like. Buy the book, huh? It’ll be out in ebooks and audiobooks too, if that’s your kink.

And Lo! If you live in the LA area, please come to Vroman’s, our finest bookstore, to see me in conversation with my friend and brilliant critic Travis Woods on December 6. We’ll talk about book and many other things.

And as I work on the follow up to Everybody Knows and whatnot, I’ll try to put out some thoughts that are worth sharing.