CONFIDENTIAL TO THE PEOPLE AT THE SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON CHECKING THIS BEFORE 11AM ON FRIDAY MORNING: Come to booth #1116 (pictured above) at 11 for our This Is How You Die signing! We’ll have several of the book’s authors and illustrators on hand to SCRIBBLE AWAY in a copy that you can take home and cherish.

And/or come on by my own booth (#1229) for a Roll-a-Sketch! Like THESE LOVELY PEOPLE DID (I’ll post bigger pictures of the drawings themselves later):

CONFIDENTIAL TO EVERYBODY ELSE: We have just TWO DAYS LEFT to tally copies of This Is How You Die to count toward our attempt to make the New York Times bestseller list!

If you like, here’s another free preview story from TIHYD — Ryan Estrada’s tale of a MOD call center operative, featured on Wired:

“While overall the percentage of ironic readings is forty-nine percent,” Manisha answered, “with your reading in particular it’s been pretty straightforward. One hundred percent of those we’ve gathered data on have in fact been killed by locomotives.”

“Well, the reason I’m asking is because I just started a new job, and I begin training tomorrow,” the customer interjected nervously.

“No need to be concerned, sir.” Manisha knew what he was getting at. “If training were your cause of death, the card would certainly say ‘training’ or ‘trainer.’ Not simply ‘train.’ While unexpected synonyms are often the cause of ironic readings, the machine always gets the grammar right.”

Training might be the death of me, though, Manisha thought, remembering she had to be in three hours early for her next shift. For the third time in a month she was going to have to trade sleep for a mandatory training session…

We’re also very grateful for kind mentions about TIHYD this week from Vimeo (our video was named a Vimeo Staff Pick); Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing, and bestselling author Brandon Sanderson:

I think the concept is a great one, and the first book is quite entertaining. If you’ve read the first volume and are wondering if you should read the second, you may have noticed that one issue with the first is that a number of the stories tread the same ground, making a few of them a bit repetitive. The second book breaks that mold — the editors specifically put out a call for stories that took the concept in new and interesting directions.

I’ve read the second volume, and it certainly does that! A few of the stories do start out seeming like they’re going to be retreads and then you realize that something is wildly different…

What if you haven’t read the first volume? Don’t worry. These are both concept anthologies, not a coherent narrative. Each story stands on its own. All you need to know is the initial concept of a machine that predicts how you die, and you’re good to go. The stories can be read in any order or no order. If you haven’t read the first volume, don’t hesitate to read the second one now and decide later whether you want to read the first one. These are the cream of the crop (though the first volume also has some very good stories.)

Thanks, Brandon! If you haven’t gotten the book yet, I have only one request: DON’T WAIT. And if you have, thank you so much!!

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

We are in EXTREME COUNTDOWN MODE for the Machine of Death sequel, This Is How You Die! Here are some IMPORTANT BULLET POINTS:

• We’ve made a super-cool video to introduce the MOD concept to people! My friend Michael Mohan directed it. WARNING: it features violence and attractive people in swimwear so DON’T WATCH IT if you don’t like that stuff.

• FRIDAY, JULY 12 – 9:30 AM Pacific / 12:30 PM Eastern – I’ll be doing a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) interview along with Machine of Death co-editors Ryan North and Matt Bennardo, as well as many of the contributors to MOD Volume 1! We’ll be joining authors Cherie Priest and Robert Charles Wilson as we discuss the newest Humble eBook Bundle, which features the first Machine of Death book!

If you’re not familiar, the Humble Bundle allows you to name your own price for a whole bundle of top-shelf ebooks (by Neil Gaiman! Cory Doctorow! Wil Wheaton! Randall Munroe!) and support great charities at the same time. If you haven’t read the first MOD, this is one great way to get it, in whatever ebook format you choose, for a price that you choose.

Once it’s live, the AMA will be linked from this page.

• Regarding This Is How You Die. Matt, Ryan and I have worked super hard to make it the best book we can. It’s filled with great illustrations and comics by tons of cool artists whom you probably know (Aaron Diaz, Meredith Gran, Trudy Cooper, Ramón Pérez, Graham Annable, KC Green, Kris Straub, Ryan Pequin, Anthony Clark, THE LIST GOES ON). And the stories are our very favorites from the nearly 2,000 submissions we received from writers around the world. It’s a book we couldn’t be more proud and excited to share with you.

Last time, as you may recall, you helped us drive the first Machine of Death book all the way to #1 on Amazon. It was an amazing success that opened a lot of doors for us — including paving the way to make this book possible, which we love just as much as the first one (and which is a little longer, even!) We’re so grateful to everyone who’s shown support for MOD over the past few years, and we wanted to make sure we made exactly the book you’d want to read.

But how do you top being #1 on Amazon? Only one answer:

We want to make this book a New York Times bestseller.

We want to make every single one of the contributors to this book into a New York Times bestselling author. To have any shot at it, we need to rack up as many orders as possible between now and July 20, which is the end of our first week of release.

The book is available for pre-order now — you can get it from Amazon, or your favorite retailer. We think we have the best shot at the print-format list, but if you’d prefer an ebook, it’s available from all the regular ebook vendors too.

Or, if you’ll be at the San Diego Comic-Con, you can pick it up from us in person — Ryan and I will be at TopatoCo booth #1229 (and we’ll be doing a formal signing on Friday morning, 11:00 AM. Also, every other time).

We’ve set up a page with the video, the book links, and even a FREE PREVIEW of EIGHT FULL STORIES from the book, in case you need to try a little taste first. All that info is at:

ThisIsHowYouDie.com

That’s the link to pass around to share the video, the ordering info, and the preview chapters. If you have other ideas about how we can spread the word, please leave a comment on this post! I’m keen to hear your thoughts!

JULY 20. We have EIGHT DAYS. You are going to hear about this from me a LOT.

Here’s the table of contents in case you’re curious! (click for bigger)

Thanks so much for your support! I wouldn’t be this loud if I didn’t really, truly believe that this book is worth your while. Five hundred pages of stories for about twelve bucks!!