The Society of Shame(less self-promotion)

A new book, a beautiful cover, and a favor to ask. (Forgive me!)

Hello, friends, family, and far-flung others! I hope this finds you healthy, happy, and not melting in the heat.

I’ve got two pieces of news, and I hope you don’t mind my sharing. (This may be week-old news to you if you already follow me on Facebook / Instagram / Twitter…apologies!)

As you may or may not know, my new novel, The Society of Shame will be published in April 2023 by Vintage / Anchor Books.

Here’s how the publisher describes it:

In this timely and witty combination of So You've Been Publicly Shamed and Where'd You Go, Bernadette? a viral photo of a politician's wife's “feminine hygiene malfunction” catapults her to unwanted fame in a story that's both a satire of social media stardom and internet activism, and a tender mother-daughter tale.

I know next April seems like a long way off (will we all be using self-driving cars and wearing futuristic metallic jumpsuits by then? Will monkeypox have overtaken the globe? Who knows!) but the wheels of pre-promotion are in motion, and I’m proud to reveal that my book has a COVER!!

I love it, and am so grateful to the folks at Anchor, and especially designer Vi-An Nguyen, who created it. It’s nothing like what I had imagined, and yet it’s perfect.

Why the swan? Why the sunglasses on said swan? You’ll have to read the book to find out.

Which brings me to news item #2: The Society of Shame is now available for pre-order! You can learn more about it and order at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Bookshop.org (my fave, because you can use it buy at local bookstores, and because it’s not run by people who spend millions of dollars to go up in rocket ships for no reason).

I would be SO grateful if you put in your order now. Why? Because pre-orders are huge help for authors. They send the message to publishers, reviewers, consumers and others that there is demand for the book, and they should probably see what all the fuss is about—by promoting it / buying it and/or turning it into a sure-to-be-Emmy-winning streaming TV series. Also, it’s fun to have something show up in the mail that you forgot you ordered months before, right?

Finally, finally: To those of you receiving this email who are not already subscribers, I’d be delighted if you stuck around. I send this newsletter once or twice a month, usually with an essay-ish thing musing on such diverse topics as the oppressive nature of excess tupperware, dreading the empty nest, my ridiculous old photos, and a lot of hilarious stuff about mortality. I’ll post occasional book news / events, too.

But if you’d rather not receive these missives, it’s totally fine, I get it — just hit that unsubscribe link at the bottom. I won’t even know, so you don’t have to worry about hurting my feelings. :-)

Again, thank you so much for reading this. I promise not to go overboard on the self-promo. I’m just very excited about this book—my first to be published in 10 years!—and I truly hope you will read it.

xoxo

Jane

P.S. Here’s the story of how The Society of Shame got written—and why it’s so different from anything I’ve written before.

It’s a long story….

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