I feel the urge to comment here today, the release-date of Pop Apocalypse, but I don’t have anything particularly original to say about the release of the novel.
Obviously enough, I’m super-excited that the book is getting out there into the world, but I also feel pretty powerless to do anything to shape its reception. People will read the book or they won’t read the book, and they’ll like it or not, they’ll laugh or they won’t even know they’re supposed to. I’ve done my part. Time to let the little-bird-analog fly away from the nest-analog under its own wing-power-analog, whatever any of those analogs might be in this case.
I went rooting around the Palo Alto Borders this morning to see if I could find a copy of the book. No luck. I am informed by my editor that Barnes and Noble is going to be displaying Pop Apocalypse on its New Releases shelf, which is super-cool. After I’m done working for the day, I’ll drive to Redwood City and see if I can find it somewhere.
What I am coming to realize is that the book world operates at slightly slower than a snail’s pace. The day when I received the initial offer on the book, way back in September 2007, was in some ways much more meaningful and more of a drug-like head-rush than today. Whatever comes of Pop Apocalypse will come in a kind of dribble and sputter of non-events, a review here, a review there, a spike in my Amazon ranking followed by a long lull. If I’m lucky, word of mouth will lead to a strong first showing, which will pave the way for Hamsterstan (which is still in progress and going well).
All of this is not quite anticlimactic–there’s still lots of exciting stuff to come, reviews, readings, other book-related events–but today’s turning into a quiet kind of introspective day.