Welcome

Let's give this a shot

This is Early Days, a newsletter about art and technology.

Probably most of you reading this know me, but for those who don't: I'm a writer who used to work in tech, most notably as Instagram's first employee. I left Silicon Valley to write my first novel, PLEASE REPORT YOUR BUG HERE, which comes out January 17, 2023. It's loosely based on my own experiences at startups in the early 2010s. But in the novel there's portals to other worlds, and I never encountered portals at any of the companies I worked at. (But how can you trust me, really? Those places all made me sign super-strict NDAs.)

This is me at Yaddo in early 2022 pretending to write for the photographer Aaron Rosenblum. Yaddo is a retreat for artists in Saratoga Springs, NY. It’s one of my favorite places. I do not write this newsletter by hand.

This newsletter is an experiment, something I'll publish probably no more than two or three times every month. I'm drawn to the Livejournal-meets-Google-Reader feel of Substack. And the absence of an algorithm that prioritizes what I see makes me feel a little more sane.

I hope you'll join me here. It's all free for now. Soon, I'll share:

• An exclusive excerpt from my audiobook, narrated by the brilliant Torian Brackett.

• A roundup of a few January book releases (that aren’t mine) that I'm excited for, with a giveaway for subscribers. So, subscribe!