Jetstreams Anniversary!
In honor of
Milo Jetstream / Ramses Jetstream / Captain Luscious Johnny Smoove / Captain Desiree Quicho / Fiona Carel / Ele the Theologian / Yvonne DeCarlo Paul / Neon Temples / Bubba Foom / Maseef Or-Ghazeem / Raffic the Mad Buddha / and Agents of Change everywhere…
I’m pleased to announce in all caps that IT’S THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BROTHERS JETSTREAM: LEVIATHAN BEING IN THE WORLD.
July 10, 2015. I released a book with the tagline “Saving the world one last damn time.” It was a “hold my beer” to the publishing industry and became my calling card. It’s never won a single award or made a morning show gush but it slowly, ninja-ly, made it to peoples’ eyes. It was “deez nuts” before Deez Nuts was presidential material. I could do anything I wanted with it.
Reader, I did.
In my head this is the only book thrice blessed by a pope and banned by all Bigfeet.
I don’t think I’ve ever had as much fun naming characters or flipping tropes. A chase novel that winds back and forth from Atlantis to New York to Detroit to the back of an immortal whale to whispers of multiverse before multiverse was cool. A chase novel that starts out with the heroes bedraggled af and ends with the heroes bedraggled af, because that’s what heroing does. “Ever catch anybody actually calling himself a hero,” Ramses Jetstream tells an artist at one point, “there’s a fool.”
I might’ve been a fool writing this book. It got great reviews from respected outlets and folks in the sci fi biz, it got soft-optioned as an animated series for a hot second, it was instrumental in me pulling myself out of the morass of the industry’s ass. But it never got me a 2-person tub, and there’s pretty much no other reason to write. Well, except to play.
Me and readers played the hell out of this book. And by the time we got home we were happy.
No anniversary Leviganda or Jetapalooza, just planning a few mentions here and there. Would I like to see an increase in sales? Fook yes. Did you not see the 2-person tub thing? If you can buy it before the False Prophet Buford and Nonrich Corp turn it into a buddy movie for The Rock and Kevin Hart, so much the better (I link to Bookshop but you can order it anywhere).
Ten years on and people are still finding this book. It’s even influenced a few younger scribes out there bold enough to invite surprise into their works. Hell yeah to that. Would I write anything differently now? Of course. I’m 10 years older, there’d be a lot more em dashes and parentheticals, baby! But am I still able to open this book to a random page and find something that tickles me? Hell yeah. The False Prophet Buford’s edict is “If it was special we made damn sure it didn’t stay that way,” but that ain’t mine. 5 more years’ll see the 10th of Jets’ sister book, Afro Puffs Are the Antennae of the Universe, the 15th of Jets, and might even get the fabled 3rd book of Jetstreams in the mix if, after dealing with all this (wild hand flinging) I haven’t put writing aside in favor of tending koi. I like koi. Koi don’t podcast, koi don’t scream.
Yet.
Thank you for reading.