Sleep Number

A question I’m asked about my upcoming novel Mantids is “So what’s it about?” Here’s what: a young grunge rocker in Astoria, Oregon, wakes into a world being rapidly conquered by women mutating into male-devouring praying mantids. He’s oblivious to the bug blitzkrieg; instead, he tries to quiet a domestic squabble by overdosing on Viagra, spending the rest of the night seeking relief from his stiffened resolve. He finally solves his medical riddle right after all humanity is doomed. Mantids is an homage to—and spoof of—the zombie zeitgeist of every invading pod-people flick I saw as a kid on my Saturday-morning sugar-charged movie-tron. I would critique Mantids as a work about oblivious thinking—a morally sloppy narrator who ignores immediate world peril because of his own comic malaise. OK, so maybe everyone’s starving in Darfur and inane crypto-zealots are gonna nuke a few American cities with homegrown radium—but what about my sleep number? Doesn’t my comfort count?