I have a NEW BOOK coming out.

Get ready for Zed Moonstein Makes a Friend in August 2025.

Hello, everyone. Good Thursday to you.

It is with much excitement that I officially tell you I HAVE A NEW BOOK COMING OUT! 

This is my solo Middle Grade debut, and I’ve been writing it since 2019, and I really love it. Here’s the announcement in Publishers Weekly:

Yes, that’s right. I channeled all of my thoughts on the way we engage with tech and the way tech-capitalism has invaded our lives into a hilarious, entertaining book for kids ages 8-12!

Zed Moonstein Makes a Friend has been a long journey. A large chunk of the first draft was written during pandemic lockdown. No wonder my agent Mollie thought it wasn’t funny enough when she read it in early 2021. Hearing her feedback at the time, I felt like, “It’s just not funny in the way you think it is! It’s a quieter kind of funny!”

But, in retrospect, I can confidently say she was right. And it only took two and a half years of rewriting (alternated with stretches of ignoring it entirely because I thought I could never get it where it needed to be) to turn it into something that is indeed funnier and that I am incredibly proud of. THE ULTIMATE SLOW DOPAMINE HIT, FOLKS! The bigger the struggle, the bigger the reward.

The book takes place in MonoTown, a town which is essentially owned and run by MonoLyth, the world’s largest tech company. 6th-grader Zed Moonstein loves living there, in no small part because the residents get to try out beta versions of apps before anybody else. When Zed feels his best friend Rishti drifting away from him now that they’ve started middle school, he is all-too-ready to try out a brand-new app called MonoFriend. Hilarity and horror ensue.

When I started writing about an AI best friend in 2019, most of it was hypothetical. But then AI exploded onto the scene in early 2023 and I realized, “Oh god, I need to finish rewrites on this book asap before it becomes historical fiction instead of speculative.”

So I did, and it sold to the wonderful Jordan Brown at Clarion, and it will be coming out in August 2025. I will be talking about Zed A LOT on here in the coming months, especially once it’s available for pre-order, with the hope that you will eventually say, “All right already! I’ll buy the damn book and I’ll tell all my friends to buy it for themselves and their kids! Okay?? Okay, Lance?? Is that what you wanted??”

And I’ll say, “It is. Thank you.”

So my deep gratitude in advance for all your support. Get psyched for a cover reveal sometime this fall. 

T-Recs!

Katie and I saw Lana Wilson’s new documentary Look Into My Eyes at Film Forum last weekend, and it was incredible. Absolutely incredible. Moving. Funny. Profound. Really one of my favorite movie-going experiences of recent years. It’s about psychics in NYC and the people who seek them out, but it’s also about connection and loss and how vulnerable it is to be a person. It’s so consistently engaging and artfully constructed and brilliantly paced that its 106 minute run-time felt more like 30 minutes. It’s expanding to theaters nationwide tomorrow. You should go. Here’s the trailer.

Hope you’re all having a lovely week, that you enjoyed that stellar debate, and that you’re choosing at least ONE WAY to get involved during this election cycle. There’s a lot at stake, you’ll feel better knowing you’re DOING SOMETHING.

Thanks as always to everyone reading these posts. And thank you to those who have reached out to tell me they’ve been enjoying it! I don’t always know how these pieces land with people, so it’s very meaningful.

Enjoy your day! Take it slow.