Well, hello. I apologize for having taken so long to put up this web page (designed by my son Milo, the genius), but I've been busy finishing the new novel. A Friend of the Earth was completed at the end of May, and my longtime publisher, Viking Penguin, will publish the book in August of next year, a year with a lot of zeroes in it. After completing the book, my brain was dead, so for a month or so I entered on a new career--drunken bum--for which I find I have a great aptitude. But drunkenness has its limits, and writing commands me once and yet again. I am now working on the stories to complete the next collection, which will include many of the thirteen new stories I held back from T.C. Boyle Stories, plus the even newer ones I've just completed and those numinous ones yet to be. The collection will be called After the Plague, and Viking Penguin will very likely bring it out in August of 2001 (T.C. Boyle Stories, in paper, will be out this fall--in November). The title story of the new collection will appear in Playboy later this year, as will another new piece, "The Black-and-White Sisters." The former piece has a lot of fun with apocalyptic notions (it takes place during and after a mysterious illness wipes out 99.9% of us; the latter is a very twisted love story about two sisters, one of whom wears black exclusively, and the other of whom wears white. They live in a black-and-white environment as well). Other stories from the collection, which some of you will know, are the ones that have appeared in The New Yorker recently--"Achates McNeil"; "She Wasn't Soft"; "Killing Babies"; "The Underground Gardens"; and possibly a revised version of "Mexico," which appeared in different form in T.C. Boyle Stories.
    As for the novel: A Friend of the Earth is a very grim comedy dealing with the environmental movement in the 80's and 90's, and ecotage in particular. It is set in the year 2025, in Santa Ynez, California, on the estate of a faded rock star who has his own private menagerie of the creatures no one else would want--warthogs, hyenas, Patagonian foxes and the like. The hero is Tyrone Tierwater, former radical environmentalist, who, at the very young age of seventy-five, manages the menagerie. And the rest of the earth's creatures? Largely extinct. On the book tour for this one, I plan to pass out boxes of Kleenex before we get into the Q&A. But wait: though the world has turned to shit (global warming, etc.), we have a happy ending. Sort of.
    Since this is my first shot at a web page, I felt that I should provide people with a sort of updated diary of what I am doing, where I'll be on various book tours, etc., and to give information and photos for those who are frequently requesting them, as well as providing a forum for people to chat. It's ambitious and I don't have a lot of time to devote because I am so busy with my own work and with the endless touring that supports it. But here's what I hope to see here: 1) Aside from information on current doings, we'll give as much info about the books and stories as possible, including, I hope, brief excerpts from each, as well as readers' guides, where available; 2) I'd like to list prominent reviews of the books and various interviews and profiles that accompanied their publication and link people to other sites that carry interviews and other Boyle info.; 3) Tour information. (As of now: I will be in D.C, December 3, to read stories and accept the PEN/Malamud Prize in short fiction, at the Folger, from the PEN/Faulkner people; I will be in Paris on Valentine's Day for Grasset's launch of the first volume of my collected stories, Histoires D'Amour, and very likely in Rome as well for Einaudi's publication of the Italian edition of Riven Rock; in May I will make my first tour of Australia--a mere 12,000 miles away. In the fall of 2000, I will very likely be at Frankfurt for the Buchmesse and will do an extensive tour of the U.S. for A Friend of the Earth. I will post dates and venues when I have them).
    Milo has chosen an old photo to open the web page (this was on the back cover of my first book, Descent of Man, which came out in 1979; the photographer is my oldest friend, Alan Arkawy, and he took the same shot, now nineteen years later, for the back cover of the collected stories, T.C. Boyle Stories). Milo has also provided photos of the original dust jackets of the first American editions of all twelve books, for the benefit of the curious, the non-blind and the inveterate collectors among you.
    Finally--and that's all for tonight, folks, as they used to say in the old Warner Brother cartoons--I hope to monitor the chat room and jump in from time to time, but I can't promise to respond to everyone because of time limitations (you do want me to spend my time writing, I presume?).

--T.C.