Hey, hi. I mentioned it in my last poorly-written update, but I’m editing a new book called Eat the Rich. It’s an anthology of speculative fiction about, well, eating the rich. Literally, that’s it: monsters munching on CEOs and tech bros and billionaires. I suppose you could call it a book of revenge fantasies, where the wronged party is the entire world and the revenge is a more equal distribution of wealth and the destruction of a shadowy ruling class via cannibalism and Godzillas.
Anyway, there’s only five days left in the crowdfunding campaign and it’s still a ways from its goal. A lot of people are into the book, a lot of people want to write for it, we’ve got a ton of great people working on it, but so far that hasn’t resulted in enough backers for us to actually, y’know, make the damn thing.
If this sounds like something you’d be into, please consider throwing a few bucks our way. We’ve got some amazing rewards lined up if you do. Mostly, it’s books, but if you go big, I’ll mail you coffee and cookies. If you’ve been hedging or waiting or whatever, please know that we’re running out of time. This whole thing ends stupid early next Thursday, basically Wednesday night. If we don’t hit our goal by then, poof, the book isn’t happening. The money we’ve raised so far is gone* and the entire idea of Eat the Rich goes up in smoke, almost certainly not to return.**
Please back Eat the Rich today.
*For those unfamiliar with Kickstarter, the money doesn’t really disappear, it’s just not collected. The platform’s whole deal is that you “pledge” a certain amount to get a certain reward, but nothing actually happens until the campaign ends. If Atomic Carnival Books meets our goal, only then are the backers charged. We get the money, and you get the books. Hooray! If we don’t meet our goal, though, no one gets charged anything and we get nothing and you get nothing and the book doesn’t get made.
**It is potentially conceivable that Eat the Rich could return in some other form, but it would be highly unlikely to be from Atomic Carnival Books. I have no actual leads or anything, but maybe another publisher would want to foot the bill and let me edit it, like Netflix reviving a show. I’m vaguely aware of that being a thing. Or I guess I could try to do it anyway, but without any money to pay anyone it would be a vastly different experience and not one I’m particularly keen on attempting. Pre-orders alone are unlikely to fund this thing; we really do need a larger platform like Kickstarter to expand our reach, unfortunately.
Why Do I Want to Eat the Rich?
I have been laid off from just about every job I’ve ever had. (I had to flee Blockbuster in disgrace due to Shenanigans, but that’s a whole other story.) I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve settled in, found a place I liked, starting thinking long-term, only for some higher-up I’ve never met to decide he wants a new boat, and, as a result, upend countless lives and futures in service of an entirely fictional and always-moving bottom line.
When I worked for a small education publisher, they were bought out by a large educational publisher and dissolved. When I worked tech support for Ernst & Young, they outsourced the entire department to Bengaluru. Even fucking Cracked dropped me because the new boss wanted to pay his writers significantly less and all of us old guard had to go.
And that’s to say nothing of literally everything else. The “disability tax” I have to pay — having to drive instead of fly, staying in shitty, door-out motels along the way, so I don’t get COVID; getting groceries delivered so I don’t get COVID; all the masks and filters so I don’t get COVID; paying $3,000 for certain meds, after insurance, even though I’m on the highest deductible plan already, so I don’t die — because the entire world would prefer to be in violation of the ADA and common decency than make a few small changes.
The cost of groceries are going up for no reason beyond corporate greed. Retail giants are lying about shoplifting so they can charge more for basic necessities. Publishing is a disaster. The gig economy is a disaster. Freelancing is an ever-shrinking disaster. Shitty “A.I.” is threatening fucking everyone’s jobs because it’s marginally cheaper than paying for humans.
I could go on, but I don’t think I need to. You get where I’m going. You get it, because you’re seeing it, too. Because you’re feeling it, this crushing pressure, getting worse and worse, while the ones causing it — the worst and worst — just keep making more money, keep destroying more and more of what you love, and never pay a fucking price. Because the world, this world, is hand-crafted for them. Because they bribed and bought that world, built that world on our fucking backs, run it on our fucking blood.
Anyway, that’s what this book is. That feeling, that rage, in the form of twenty or so short stories.
For so long we’ve been told that capitalism — that this warped and distended version of capitalism — is the only way. That the system can’t change, that the small guys never win. That we need to know our place and make peace with it, even as it’s shattered to pieces. But you know who’s telling us that, right? The owners of the ten-thousand dollar boots on our necks?
Don’t let the billionaires win. Back Eat the Rich today. Before it’s too late.