I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom

The new book is up for pre-order, here's the situation

I’ve written an all-new standalone novel (not part of any series), a ticking-clock thriller and dark satire, and I mean dark to the point that I think some people will be angry. It’s called I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom:

It’s up for pre-order now, you can get the book for 25% off its outrageous cover price if you order through Barnes and Noble and enter PREORDER25 in the box at checkout (good through Jan 26, or tomorrow at the time of this writing—you do have to register a free BN account). All the other buy links, including audio, are here.

If you want to read the first two chapters to get a sense of what you’re buying, they are right here. You can also find them at the end of the hardcover of Zoey is Too Drunk for This Dystopia and the paperback of If This Book Exists, You’re in the Wrong Universe.

The setup: A Lyft driver pulls up to find a woman sitting on a large, locked black box. She offers him $200,000 to give her an off-the-books ride from SoCal to Washington, DC. But there are rules: He cannot look inside the box, or ask her about the box, or ask her who she is or who she works for. He must leave behind any device that can be tracked, he cannot tell anyone where they’re going, and they must leave now. The woman is nervous, as if she is being pursued.

It’s an offer a sensible person would refuse—whatever is in that box is clearly bad news and the odds of ever getting to actually spend that money seem low. But this particular driver has his own reasons for saying yes, and his own secrets. Does chaos ensue? You’ll have to buy the book to find out! But yes.

It’s out later this year. I now have a little bit of a break as the next novel in my contract isn’t due until the end of next year (the next in the JDatE series), for publication in 2026. That’s good, because I am utterly exhausted and my brain still thinks it’s 2020. Related: I’m about to hit 400,000 followers on TikTok.