Here in the early going, the summer of 2018 is looking pretty good.

Just a week ago, I had a chance to sit down and talk with literary phenomenon Celeste Ng in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and, man, did we have fun. Celeste’s first two novels, Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere, are delicately wrought masterpieces of social observation, empathy, and (yes!) suspense. How lucky was a dude like me to get to share the stage with her? Do yourself a favor and check her work out if you haven’t all ready. I’d tell you they’re perfect summer reads, but to be honest, any season is the right season for a Celeste Ng novel.
Only a few days later I was in Boston for an evening of pop culture trash talk with C. Robert Cargill, the visionary behind Sinister andDoctor Strange, and author of the mercilessly exciting Sea of Rust. His latest is We Are Where The Nightmares Go, a collection of sick, southern fried horror tales (the title story imagines a little girl so cold-blooded, even the monsters under her bed learn to fear her). Cargill is a pal o’ mine — we wrote an episode of Locke & Key together for the never released Hulu show — and it’s always a pleasure to get him wound up. Thanks to everyone who came out to the Harvard Coop to hang with us on a gorgeous June night. As you can see, I can’t wait to do it again sometime!
My own most recent collection, Strange Weather, a gathering of four novellas, drops in paperback on June 26th. If you haven’t already picked yourself up a copy, I hope you’ll give it a shot.

Really the only thing that could make this book any better would be my name lovingly hand-written in the front. If that sounds like something you need, you can meet me at the newest independent bookstore in Manchester, New Hampshire, The Bookery. I’ll be there on June 29th, at 6PM, to do my usual schtick and sign your books. Let’s get together.

Some very kind words from my Locke & Key collaborator Gabriel Rodriguez about The Cape: Fallen, forthcoming from Jason Ciaramella and Zach Howard. Fallen continues to expand upon the story that began six or seven years ago in the Eisner-award nominated Cape one-shot. Fans of the psychotic Cape universe have something to look forward to here: Jason has whipped up a manic blend of geekery and savagery, and Zach has delivered some of the best, most visceral pages being done by any artist in comics today. Get ready to fly. The first issue out on June 27th, along with an el-cheapo reprint of the one-shot, to get newcomers up to speed.

Tangentially related: Goodreads is celebrating the news thatLocke & Key is headed to Netflix with a Welcome to Lovecraftgivewaway. They’ve got three copies to distribute, so if you want to get in on the ground floor of Keyhouse, you know what to do.
Do you believe I got on Twitter over ten years ago?? Do you believe there even was a Twitter ten years ago? I had some good times there, especially in the early days, before anyone even really figured out what the hell the place was about.

But after almost 50,000 tweets, I decided it was time to wrap it up and be done. The @joe_hill account has been placed in the loving hands of my publishers in the U.S. and the U.K., who will continue to use it to supply you with vital, desperately needed information about my forthcoming fiction and future appearances. For me, Escape Hatch is good enough.

As for why I got off Shitter — er, Twitter — nothing I could say about the place would be as interesting as what Jaron Lanier has to say about it in his fine, one-sitting read, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Now (advice, as you can see, I’m only half-taking — if I had the true courage of convictions I’d cancel the account outright, y’know?).

Does anyone else read Brian K. Vaughan’s SAGA? So in his latest letter column, he got blabbing about the iOS trivia game, HQ, and then OUTRAGEOUSLY encouraged his readers to use his personal player code to sign up, just so he could mine them for extra lives. I’m stunned. I mean, yes, it’s true, I think you should use my code–

joe_hill

— to sign up for HQ, but I plead with you: don’t do it for me. Do it for you. Don’t even think about all the extra lives I’ll be getting; that doesn’t matter. YOUR trivia satisfaction is the important thing here. Because #icare.
Does anyone else think this show is the most awesome thing?
All right, bookbunnies. That’s enough me for a while. Here’s wishing you the happiest of summer days, and we’ll catch up again soon, huh?