Thank you, as ever, Gabino, for Friday's ongoing literary loci! I've been away a bit -- though in my defense, was finishing up another book in that stretch (!) I'm delighted -- and still surprised -- to announce @waterdragonpub.bsky.social will be reissuing my time-travelin' "Danger Boy" series!

Thanks as ever, Gabino! Tho' I've been away from #Fridayreads a bit due to deadlines (semi-valid writer excuse?) for those looking to take advantage of billionaire largesse, mega-mart continues to have my "Max Random & The Zombie 500" middle opus available at half-off! www.amazon.com/Random-Zombi...

Thanks to @4csla.bsky.social (needed now more than ever!) for having me aboard for zombie apocalypses, at month's end (& for these swell shareable graphics!) Perhaps the workshop, though, shoulda been "How to distinguish the zombie apocalypse from the one you're actually going through now?" Hmm...

A lot happens at an awards show that doesn't make it into a column, of course,. One of those, for my own coverage, was when Jimmy Kimmel won at the Creative Arts Emmtys for hosting "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" It was mostly the kind of of easy-going banter you might expect of him. /1

With ABC's cowardly cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel, there can no longer be any doubt if CBS been part of its current Trump-tilted industrial combine n the 50s, they would have put Edward R. Murrow on "hiatus" for saying, about McCarthyism, that the "fault was not in our stars, but in ourselves."

It was terrific! Me n' Matt and an audience of smart enthusiastic tween/teen readers, sussing out how'd *they* survive a zombie apocalypse. Here Matt leads a field trip - a peek into the kitchen behind our panel room, so audience could think in terms of food supplies, and improv'd weaponry

Thanks redux, @gabino.bsky.social Are any #FridayReads folks here at #Comic-Con, btw? Give a shout!

Thanks as ever, @gabino.bsky.social ! Here I am with @tachyonpub.bsky.social's Jacob Weisman, holding up our books @baycon.org -- mine the MG Max Random & The Zombie 500, Jacob's the musical journeying "Egyptian Motherlode" (co-written w/ David Sandner). Maybe we'll do it again @seattlein2025.org !

It was a prgm idea suggested by yrz truly, because how do we Old Ones, from the Before Time - who, collectively, have handed these MG/YA readers the apocalypses they'll be living through - write meaningful stories about it 4 them? (& find me @ the @gravesidepress.bsky.social table, otherwise!)

Will be back by the Bay this weekend for baycon.org in San Jose! I'll be "in conversation" (isn't that how you describe a panel o' 2?) w/ publisher @stevenradecki.bsky.social for "Apocalypse Now: Writing For Young Readers Who Are Living It," perhaps fittingly scheduled for the night of July 4th.

Thanks for the weekly kindness to the community, Gabino! A #Fridayreads mention to the Bay Area Book Fest! I'll be at the @gravesidepress.bsky.social / @paperangelpress.bsky.social booth Sunday, 6/1, zombies in hand! If you're a Fri(or any)day reader/writer come say "howdy!") www.baybookfest.org

Thanks as ever, Gabino! Somehow, there are still Festivals and books (for now!), and if anyone'll be at the LA Times book bash this weekend, I'll be at the @gravesidepress.bsky.social booth, signing middle grade apocalypses! Come say howdy! #Fridayreads graveside-press.com/join-us-at-t...

And a Happy Long Good Friday to all!

While planning anything a week ahead seems profoundly optimistic at the moment, I'll reading /signing copies of "Max Random & The Zombie 500" from @gravesidepress.bsky.social at The Open Book in Woodland Hills, on Sunday, 4/6. Of course, it *is* an apocalypse, for young readers. So there's that.

*Todah*, Gabino! In time for #FridayReads, an Ingram mixup with author @mariadongwrites.bsky.social has been sorted (she got my books, and I got hers!) We now have our stock, and I'll be signing my @gravesidepress.bsky.social release "Max Random & The Zombie 500" at bookstores & SoCal events soon

#Oscars 2/2: & I also get to meet "Frodo" on the Red Carpet-- in this case, the plucky terrier who's survived the onslaught in Ukraine with his human parents, the subjects of the nominated, shot-in-the-trenches doc "Porcelain War."

@mariadongwrites.bsky.social I've been so busy with journalism deadlines here, I realized later there was one box for my signings I hadn't opened yet and... voila! I guess we need to send these boxes to each other? (Though I think Ingram should pay for it!)

By the time the digital-stained Fifth Estaters file past the #Oscars decorations, and the red carpet's java stand queue grows for the limo-bound, that signifies a wrap for the year. Now to make some rearview mirror sense of it all, as the world keeps busily unraveling outside the H'wood cloister.

And award season culminates, here in the Upside Down

Found online (and spotted in London)

Some cover art to go with my blurb-based post above!

And hey, I even have a few ARCs for you reviewers, bookstore and library folk, et al ! Ping me in the DMs! (which almost sounds like a line from "The Thin Man." But I digress...)

See the abandoned studio backlots and not-so-abandoned creepy hospitals! See feral cats & go-karts in action! See the titular Max explaining to passenger/narrator Aurora how the "grown-ups" (so-called) were always going to blow it anyway! --

@graveyardgames.bsky.social 's final book cover version for Max Random & The Zombie 500 is here! Book is out in a week! Graveside Press also sent these swell "Signed by the author" stickers, so should you wind up with a copy in the zombie-ridden wilds, I'd be happy to send one along!

Gonna be at LosCon this weekend, at the Paper Angel Press booth, and on a few panels, and talking up the about-to-be-released Max Random & the Zombie 500 (from PA imprint Graveside Press), so if yer there, come by and say howdy! Or give a zombie gurgle, if the tryptohan is still kicked in!

2020's climate collapse

"If you see this.... "

"All right then. No more masks." That Stephen King line from "The Shining," has stuck with me through the decades since I read it (so allow if I may have mispunctuated anywhere). It's from a scene where more horrific mayhem is about to be visited upon young Danny by the Overlook Hotel 1/