Exciting times. I’m just back from a research trip to Northern California, thinking ahead to what comes next, once San Miguel has hit the stands (or pads, as the case may be) and I return, beaten and weary, to sit here staring at the blank screen once again. I am about ready to begin writing the next novel, but instead will have to settle for a long period of mental rehearsal as I once again haul my travel-worn bags from one airport to another. As you will note from the tour schedule, I begin in Tulsa on September 17, a convenient midway stop on the route to Boston and then New York and everyplace else. The UK tour dates are not listed, but here they are for those of you planning to attend some of these events: 10/7, Cheltenham Festival, 8:30; 10/8, London Waterstones, 8:15; 10/9, Dublin, Dunleavy Townhall, time TK; 10/10, U. of East Anglia, 7:00; 10/11, Warwick U., time TK. Then it’s Houston, Tucson, San Diego and L.A.
    Meanwhile, as I have mentioned on the Message Board, two new stories are now out: “Birnam Wood,” in the September 3 issue of The New Yorker, and “The Way You Look Tonight” in the September Playboy. Both are about youthful relationships gone sour. Curdled relationships, that is. Of course, sour isn’t always bad. Look at yogurt, for instance. In addition, Narrative online is currently running an excerpt from San Miguel, and, of course, by clicking on the book cover below, interested parties can read the first two chapters here. As if this weren’t enough, The New Yorker blog features an interview regarding “Birnam Wood,” with Deborah Treisman posing the questions, and also a reading of the same by the author, recorded right here in Santa Barbara at Sound Design Studios, where I’ve done a number of recordings in the past. And, lest I forget, Jamieson Fry and Kerrie Kvashay Boyle will have the book trailer for San Miguel up and available within the next few days. I don’t know about you, but I am dying to see what they’ve come up with, as the last three they’ve done for me have not only been brilliant but very different each from the other (click on the covers below for The Women, Wild Child and When the Killing’s Done to see them).
    Finally, a word on San Miguel. As I mention in the “Books” section, this is my first long narrative in the realist mode, sans irony, a departure from books like Water Music, The Women, Riven Rock, World’s End, The Road to Wellville and others. The stories I am telling here—of Marantha Waters and her daughter Edith in the 1880s and 90s and Elise Lester in the 1930s and 40s—derive from diaries, memoirs and news accounts, and the novel is told entirely from the perspectives of these three characters.  I first came across this material while doing the research for my last novel, When the Killing’s Done, and then, after a period during which I wrote the first six stories of the fourteen that would eventually comprise the fourth volume of next year’s T.C. Boyle Stories II: The Collected Stories of T. Coraghessan Boyle, Volume II, I sat down to channel Marantha, Edith and Elise. As with non-comic short stories like “Chicxulub” or the aforementioned “Birnam Wood,” the mode of the telling suggested itself. My German translator, Dirk Van Gunsteren, from whom I just heard this morning on his conclusion of the translation, said that at first this novel seemed as if it had been written by another author, but as he fell into the rhythms of the sentences and became absorbed in the characters and their plight on this wind-blown island off the California coast, he began to see how the book aligns with my others and, in fact, feels that it may be my best. (Which, from my point of view, is great news.) Readers will recognize the environmental themes here, though they are not in the forefront as in When the Killing’s Done or A Friend of the Earth, and too, they will see that San Miguel continues my exploration of American utopian longing. Enjoy the ride. And be forewarned: the ending may just reach up in your throat and give a good hard tug.
    On-sale date? September 18.
    See you.