The Calamities (Book One of The Fiends) is now out, rampaging through the populace, gamboling about, claws at the ready, teeth sharp, and its countless eyes fixed upon you. So, I do hope you’ll check it out!
Here’s how, and where:
Order Now: Doylestown Bookshop | Bookshop.org | B&N | Amz | Kobo | Libro.fm | Apple Books | BAM | Powells
Now, if you are enticed, you can stop reading!
But, hey, if you’re still a little on the fence, well, let’s see if we can push you off it onto the dark side of the meadow.
Here is the book jacket description:
Mourning Mayne knows he’ll one day bear the duty of managing his family’s vast empire of wealth and power. But the feckless Mourning has always struggled to accept this legacy of cruelty, domination, and exploitation . . . and something even darker.
Because the Maynes are no ordinary family: Hidden in our world are the fiends—half-human, half-demon, and possessed of a dark magic born from buying human souls—and the Maynes are one of the oldest and most influential fiendish families.
But when Mourning’s estranged father, the formidable and terrifying Hadrian Mayne, demands that Mourning return to the fold, he has to decide whether to accept his legacy and embrace his role in the family or to forge his own destiny, and with it, change the course of the world.
Because along the way home, he will meet Key, a black-market seller of human souls, and Quinn, an artist who may hold the dark truth behind the fate of the fiends. Alone, they have all struggled with the darkness of their natures . . . but together, they might find a path out of the shadows.
Here’s some nice things people have said about it:
“Vivid, unsettling, and darkly compelling, The Calamities is Chuck Wendig at his best.” — #1 New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth
“The Calamities is a twisting, winding river of darkness—part ink-black Gothic tale, part brutal family saga, and housed in a demonic nesting doll of a dark fantasy novel. Taken as a whole, it reminds me yet again of Wendig’s wildly lethal range and versatility when it comes to horror. The guy is, simply put, unstoppable.” — Keith Rosson, author of Coffin Moon
“The most terrifying thing about these demons is how human they are. The Calamities is a delightfully brutal and inventive take on demonology from the blast furnace of Wendig’s imagination. A gore-stained epic.” — Chris Panatier, author of Daytide and Worry Box
“A massively ambitious, classic horror free-for-all that’s macabre, smart, and FUN.” — Sarah Langan, author of Good Neighbors and Trad Wife
“My favorite thing about reading Chuck Wendig is never knowing which Wendig we’re going to get. If you’ve followed Chuck’s work for a while, you know what I mean. There’s terrifying-tech Wendig and urban fantasy Wendig, there’s fantasy Wendig, folk horror Wendig, epic horror Wendig… but with all of that, I still didn’t see The Calamities coming. Chuck calls it horror/fantasy, and it’s that, for sure. He lists a lot of writer influences in the acknowledgements at the end of the book, but I want to talk about only one: Clive Barker.” — Christopher Golden, author of Carry Me To My Grave
(And look at this very lovely review in Bloody Disgusting!)
Here’s my very short capsule pitch for the book:
Bisexual half-demon fuck-ups go on a world-ending nightmare adventure!
A longer pitch:
“Some say we run the world. To them I say: No, we do not run the world. We don’t have to! We simply own the souls of the people who do.” —Aurelius Mayne
The true currency of the world is this: the human soul. The fiends — those who claim the blood of ancient, demonic beings — know this all too well, as the ones who bargain for those very souls, and use the distillate of those souls for a variety of mundane-to-grotesquely-nefarious purpose. The fiends in their blooded broods see nothing wrong with this: this is their way. It always has been. They’re not stealing the souls. The humans have their choice to bargain them away if they so choose — and many do, in fact, choose exactly that. They sell their souls for money, love, revenge, property, power.
You know, the classics.
Problem is, those so driven to forfeit their souls are increasingly bereft of the things that makes a soul enticing: character, conscience, a code of ethics. And those who forfeit their souls often do so to be put in places or positions of power. Which sort of explains the state of the world a little bit, doesn’t it?
When the world is run by soulless people, and those people are in turn controlled by ancient demon families, it leaves the world vulnerable. Like termites have chewed through the spiritual fundament — the global soul, torn to tatters. And when such holes are chewed through the world, well…
Sometimes, things can crawl through.
A tower has risen. A strange fluctuating structure — sometimes a ziggurat, a lighthouse, a ratio antenna, a tenement. It has begun its dread broadcast. It wants something and offers something in return.
And it is our characters who are first to answer.
Mourning Mayne: fuckboy of the Mayne family, exiled heir to the big chair of Agares House. Doesn’t want to be involved! Wants to return to his blissed-out hedonistic lifestyle — but has been drawn into conspiracy and, dare I say it, calamity. He is heartstruck and woefully unprepared.
Key Simone: sober-living snapper-upper of human souls, haunted by the mistakes of her past, keeping her head down and an eye toward the exit — only problem is, her keepers in The Dantalion want her in the game.
Quinn: an out-of-work artist in Philadelphia and an unawakened fiend, they seem to be the one receiving the strongest broadcast from the tower they call the Configuration, which makes them very valuable, indeed — they possess untold, unrealized power and are unknowingly at the center of everything.
Silas Borne: oh, don’t worry about him, it’s probably fine, sure, sure, he used to be called The Cleaver, and was a serial killer, but don’t worry, he’s since been supernaturally gelded and now he’s sweet as pie and won’t hurt a fly and he’s just been sent here by his keepers to find out what’s really going on, he craves an adventure and seriously, it’s fine, it’s FINE
*coughs into hand*
Needless to say, things go very, very wrong.
Why read the book?
Five quick reasons —
First, it’s very pretty. I mean, seriously, look at it.
Second, demons are fucking cool and weird.
Third, you love me, and wish to PLEASE ME okay this probably isn’t a very good or realistic reason but, I dunno, just in case you’re a member of whatever cult I’m currently secretly running shhhh.
Fourth, you like horror but you also like fantasy and you were like, what if horror and fantasy had weird sex and made a demon baby??? Oh also the book totally has a horrible demon baby in it, too. His name is Orcobas! He’s terrible!
Fifth, it’s a big-ass book — this is no mere appetizer, this is a seven-course demon-dinner, baby. Ye shall be feasting upon these souls for a long while.
Why did I write the book?
I cover that somewhat in the acknowledgments of the book, but I’ll say here: I am really very proud of The Staircase in the Woods, but that book was me getting out a knife and cutting into parts of myself (metaphorically! relax!) and then scraping that stuff across the page with the blade. It was a raw, rough bit of emotional surgery at times, and I craved something that was — well, I don’t want to say lighter, because I’d argue this book is at times quite a good bit darker. But I wanted to write something more fun. Fun to write and ultimately fun to read. Just fucked-up nightmare characters — the best of the worst people — going on adventures across a playground of horror.
Does it connect to your other books?
It does! Not in a way that requires you read those. But for those who have been following the books closely — you’ll definitely recognize some faces in here (one of them belonging to a certain orange cat), and you’ll also find that I’ve definitely been building to something. So hopefully that’s fun, too.
Is this a standalone?
It is not! I mean, unless you want it to be. Any book is a standalone if you choose to only read that book. But! It is currently the first of a duology — the second book being Chaos Reigns, which should come out in… uhh, I dunno! We don’t have a date. I’m writing it now. Halfway through. It’s fun! And horrific! In hopefully the very best worst ways.
There’s audio, right?
Yesssss there sure is. With multiple narrators!
!!
Are there trigger warnings?
You know, I don’t have any, but I find that Storygraph is a great place where people crowdsource content warnings. If you don’t want to do that, just safely assume that this is a horror-fantasy featuring considerable bouts of depravity! Assume triggers, ahoy.
Where is the best place to buy it from, and in what format?
The best place and format is the one you prefer. Full stop.
Now — that said?
Indie bookstores are just such a great choice. No, not every indie bookstore is a magical fairyland of good people, but honestly, a lot are. They’re full of bonafide book wizards, those places, and are further run by locals in your community.
So, that would be my choice. And you can also buy it from indie audio or e-book merchants, too, like Libro.fm or Bookshop.org.
What if I can’t buy it?
That’s okay! Libraries exist, and are awesome. If your library does not carry it, you can always ask them to buy a copy. They are likely to listen because libraries are cool like that.
What can I do to support the book?
Coming to see me on tour is a good way to start!
Otherwise, it’s — you know, read the book, tell people about it, leave a review somewhere, buy ten copies and leave them in various stumps and cubbyholes, form a cult around it, summon a demon and trap it in an incantation bowl whereupon you force it to make the book a bestseller. The usual.
(Also: tour shirts!!)
Did you use AI to write this book?
HahahahahahahahahahahahahahAaAAAAAAHHHHH no I jolly well did not. Didn’t use it to write it, to edit it, to research it, to get ideas for it. I did not use AI in any part of the ideation or creation of this book and nor did (to my knowledge) my publisher. I fucking hate gen-AI. It sucks. It stole my shit and is fucking up the world and making everything somehow even less trustworthy than it was before. Yes, I use emdashes. No, that’s not a sign of AI use. Because AI stole those emdashes from us, goddamnit. I’d summon a literal demon before I used AI.
Wait does that mean you used demons to write this book??
I plead the fifth
*slams door*
Any final thoughts?
I don’t know why I turned this into an “interview / FAQ” thing, but here we are. The mind wanders! The fingers type!
So, this book is, I thiiiiiink, my 34th novel?
And it doesn’t get easier. I don’t mean that as a negative, necessarily — I actually like that each book is its own mad animal that must be tamed in its own special way. I think if this thing got easier it might be less satisfying to write a book, and more worrisome, it might diminish the quality of the books. It feels valuable to have it be difficult and tricky and ever-shifting, because then you don’t get complacent as a writer. You don’t get too comfortable. Creatively speaking, at least.
That said, I still don’t love release days. They feel alien and isolating — sure, some books get like, midnight releases and shit, but for the most part, the machine just does what the machine does. The book has gone through its many mutations and mutilations — I wrote it, we edited it, the publisher designed it, and now printed it — and now it’s on bookstore and library shelves. It appears, as if by magic, but it’s a magic I don’t control and I don’t even necessarily see. (Which is why it’s nice when people post things about the book on a launch day, btw. And why we authors really appreciate that.) So much is put on a book’s launch week, but really, a book’s sales are frequently and even ideally in the long tail — a build-up where people talk about it and buy it over time. But backlist has its own tricky issues, of course, which is really not for this post.
Still! There is cool energy in a release day, I’m just not always privy to it. Which is one of the nice things about doing events (again: ahem ahem COME SEE ME ON TOUR) is I get to meet readers and fans and friends and probably a couple of secret demons. That’s an energy I can feel, and it’s always nice, so thanks to everybody who plans on coming out and seeing me and the various cool writery people I’m chatting with along the way.
Point is —
The book is out and I’m very happy with it and I hope you’ll check it out.
Buy my book or I flounder in the deepest abyss.
HUGS AND KISSES
HAIL SATAN
