Thomas Wictor

Today I sent out forty review copies of Chasing the Last Whale and Hallucinabulia: the Dream Diary of an Unintended Solitarian. It’s a new beginning! I’m also going to give away ten free Kindle versions of each book. I’ll tell you how you can win it in a second. If you like either or both books, please leave a review at Amazon. These things matter, and each review is a “Fuck you” to Mike Albee and Lura Dold of the fake agency Sandpiper Publicity.

The review copies I sent out were in the form of paperbacks, so I sent twenty packages. I used the self-service machines that I sincerely hope will soon replace the humanoids “working” in the post office. As always happens when I engage with these machines, a postal employee comes over and tells me I’m doing it wrong and have used the incorrect envelopes. If I simply insert multiple extra steps into the process and buy envelopes online, everything will go more smoothly.

In telling me this, the postal employees make me lose my place, and then I start screwing up and taking more time. If you’ve never interacted with these machines, they’re a three-dimensional representation of a phone menu. Instead of a recorded voice giving you a million options, the screen does. When a creepy postal worker is looming over you and pressing the screen options without asking you, and when you have Meniere’s disease and PTSD, and when you’re having to do all this because Mike Albee and Lura Dold killed your career, things get tense.

I’m not good with math. Zip codes and prices are math. So I got confused and started sweating profusely, which made the postal worker flee.She recognized the warning sign of someone about blow his stack.

After I’d bought the stamps and tracking labels for fifteen packages, the machine told me I could no longer use that credit card. I used another credit card to do the last five.

When I came home, I called my primary credit-card company to see what was wrong. A young man named Harold spoke to me. I couldn’t tell if he said “Gerald” or “Herod,” so I asked him to repeat his name, and we had a long conversation about how everyone calls him Hal or Harry, both of which he hates. Then he told me that my card was fine. It was some kind of security feature that the postal service had implemented.

The US Postal Service—being comprised entirely of thieves—is up to snuff on the many ways people can rip off or be ripped off. By the way, our mail came at 9:30 tonight. I’m betting the mail carrier fell asleep in his truck parked on a side street, woke up in a panic, and made the deliveries hoping that nobody would notice. Or maybe night delivery is the new policy. Makes as much sense as having 148 percent of your revenues go to salaries, pensions, and benefits.

After the room stopped spinning, I wrote a post on the new Talkbass.com, asking people to please leave reviews at Amazon for Ghosts and Ballyhoo and In Cold Sweat. That goes for everybody, not just Talkbass readers. Anyone who read the books and liked them but didn’t leave a review, could you please do so? I contacted several Amazon reviewers but got no response. More reviews will help me overcome the annus horribilis of 2013. It was indeed a horrible butthole of a year.

And now, your free Kindle copies of Chasing the Last Whale and Hallucinabulia.

How to win free e-books

Answer a simple question.

What was my mother’s favorite song?

You can find the answer by searching the “News” page. Just put in “mother’s favorite song” and you’ll get the post that reveals it.

After you have the answer, send it to me via the contact form or by PRIVATE MESSAGE on Facebook. Include the title of the song and your e-mail address. With your e-mail address I can send you a Kindle version of either book. Specify which title you prefer.

Chasing the Last Whale is a fictionalized black comedy about love and suicide in contemporary wartime American, and Hallucinabulia is a record of my state of mind during the loss of the Cardinal Ghost, the loss of my career in music journalism, and the loss of my father. Mom was still alive when I finished it. They’re both actually very funny and entirely lacking in self-pity.

In the next few days, I’ll look for a publicist, but mostly I’ll be writing my next novel, a story about a monstrous suspicion and the quest to prove whether or not it’s true. In the meantime, here’s the new moon.

Rising across the street.

Peeking through the trees.

So: You want Kindle books, I’m giving away ten copies each of Chasing the Last Whale and Hallucinabulia. All I ask is that you review the book at Amazon if you like it.

I don’t pray for the sunrise. The night suits me. And we can all love whomever we want.