Pre-Order Is Open: Jetson’s Journey, $4.99 Through Launch

Update, September 15: Jetson’s Journey is out. The $4.99 pre-order price has ended; the Kindle edition is $9.99. The button below goes to the live page.

Jetson’s Journey came out on Tuesday, September 15, 2026. Through launch day the Kindle edition was available for pre-order at $4.99; on launch day the price went to $9.99. If you pre-ordered, you kept the lower price, and the book landed on your device the morning it published.

What the book is

Michael Sawyer loses his job in a glass conference room with a panoramic view of San Francisco. Six years at the company, ended in a single sentence. It is the worst possible week for it, for reasons the first chapter makes clear and I won’t spoil here.

What follows is not the story he expected, and not the one he would have chosen. He ends up two thousand miles east, in his mother-in-law’s small Tennessee town, with a black Lab in the back seat, a duffel bag in the trunk, and very little else.

It is a novel about grief, second chances, and the grace of a dog who refuses to give up on a man who has given up on himself. If you want the shorthand: Remarkably Bright Creatures meets The Art of Racing in the Rain.

Why pre-order matters, honestly

What pre-orders actually do is arrive all at once on launch day, which tells Amazon’s ranking system that a book has an audience, which puts it in front of readers who have never heard of me. That’s the whole mechanism. It’s unglamorous but it works.

The other thing pre-ordering does is take the decision off your plate. Launch weeks are noisy. If you already know you want the book, buying it now at half price means you don’t have to remember anything in September.

Print, and a night in Franklin

Paperback and hardcover both published September 15 as well: $18.99 for the paperback, $29.99 for the case-laminate hardcover. The $4.99 pre-order price applied to the Kindle edition only.

Launch night was Tuesday, September 22, at Landmark Booksellers on East Main in Franklin—photos and video here. Landmark occupies the oldest commercial building still standing in Franklin, a structure dating to around 1806 to 1808, listed on the National Register, its Greek Revival façade marked by columns cut from solid poplar trunks. It appears in the novel by name and with the gracious permission of Joel and Carol Tomlin. Reading a scene set in a bookshop while standing in that bookshop is a strange and good thing, and I enjoyed it.

Where the book came from

The Author’s Note says this plainly, so I will too. In 2023 I lost my job, and the house with it. Like Michael, I drove east when the time came, with my black Lab in the back seat and my wife beside me. I lived on the Peninsula for more than forty years. Michael’s family is not my family and his deepest grief is not mine, but the road from there to Franklin is one I have actually driven.

If you’d rather try before you buy

There’s a novella called Riverspook that leads into the novel. It’s the story of the dog before he had a name, and it’s free. You can have it in about thirty seconds, and it will tell you whether you like how I write before you spend a dollar.

BUY JETSON’S JOURNEY

Or start with Riverspook, free.