Today’s the day! Our book This Is How You Die is officially released. Some people on Twitter are reporting having received their pre-ordered copies already!
Halfway through the latest episode of #jjgo and look what shows up at my door. cc/ @malki @JesseThorn @Jordan_Morris pic.twitter.com/kbkldfuUwI
— Ernesto Ramirez (@eramirez) July 15, 2013
(The above tweet is in reference to my guest appearance on the podcast Jordan, Jesse, GO this week!)
We’re also super excited that The A.V. Club gave the book a solid A grade:
…But what is consistently surprising about This Is How You Die: Stories Of The Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine Of Death is the range and quality of the stories. Machine Of Death was smart and sophisticated. The stories often had twist endings, but they tended to be O. Henry-style twists, based in well-realized characters and the inevitability of fate, rather than cheap reversals or shock-driven rug-pulls. The sequel keeps the insight and the commitment to solid storytelling, but broadens the scope considerably. The editors challenged contributors to take the central concept in bold new directions, and the result is a much wilder collection that stretches around the globe, spans a range of genres, and experiments with the short-story form.
The review goes on to point out delightful things about several of the stories individually. It’s always funny…you work on something like this for a long time, with nothing but your own taste and judgment to guide you, and it’s so gratifying when people like it! Maybe this whole thing makes sense after all.
OKAY so you ALREADY KNOW you can buy the book on Amazon or your favorite bookstore. BUT WHAT CAN YOU READ FOR FREE? Here’s all the chunks of the book you can read without paying a single dime:
• Here are EIGHT OF THE STORIES as a free PDF. Ninety pages! That’s a pretty healthy chunk.
• The publisher’s website also has a preview featuring FOUR FREE STORIES. Two of these are also in the PDF above; two aren’t.
• Lightspeed Magazine has Ryan North’s story “Cancer” on their site, in both text and audio. It’s a lovely, heartfelt story, and really funny too. There’s an interview with Ryan as well!
• The publisher also has a short preview of the audiobook here — not an entire story, but still a fun excerpt to listen to. I’m trying to get them to send me one of the full stories, so I can post it on our MOD podcast.
And I assume at some point Amazon will enable the “Look Inside the Book” feature as well.
Hopefully this gives you a pretty good sense of whether the whole book is something you might like! OR, just read these, and enjoy them!
IF YOU’VE ALREADY ORDERED THE BOOK: thank you so much! Send me a picture on Twitter when you get your copy!!
BONUS LINK: Contributing author ’Nathan Burgoine has been reading and reviewing the stories in the book one by one, if you’d like to read even more about the different pieces that make up the collection!
BONUS LINK 2: here are a bunch of puppies looking adorable and confused