Playing for Keeps, Mur Lafferty‘s brilliant debut novel that sets the entire superhero genre on its ear, goes on sale tomorrow on Amazon. Go buy it then. It may cure your maladies, purify your genes, or give you honest-to-goodness superpowers. Or, failing that, it’s an excellent book and an imperatively entertaining and thought-provoking read.
There’s also an amazing amount of free Playing for Keeps related content that Mur has made available, as a run-up to the book’s release:
- Still uncertain if the novel is a worthy purchase? (Oh, it is!) The full book, including all of the comic book-style covers from it’s initial podcast run, as well as an all-new short story, are available as a free pdf download.
- The Playing for Keeps music video that I discussed previously has been released. Sadly, Mur did not recieve enough entrants to spur her to dance for the camera, but plenty of people did send in clips… including me. You just know you want to see me, uh, dance, or something…
- Last and most certainly not least, Mur revived the Stories of the Third Wave fan podcast, which can be found on the Playing for Keeps website and feed, and has been putting out content for the last several weeks. Episodes include imaginings of what different radio shows might sound like during the daily commute in Seventh City, as well as original fiction set in the Playing for Keeps universe from J. C. Hutchins and Matt Wallace, and the Seventh City version of existing podcasts. Mur generously invited me to contribute, and I decided to riff on NPR’s Faith Matters program and explore how the existance of heroes in the world of Playing for Keeps might impact on exisiting religious faith, and perhaps create new belief systems entirely. I’m pleased with the result, and invite you to check out that episode as well as all the amazing content that has been contributed.
Playing for Keeps. Be a Hero of the 25th, and buy it tomorrow. YES.
