The New Wei

The Release of Bad Americans: Part II is going very well! We hit number 1 on the New Release list on Literary Short Stories and Literary Satire Fiction! Also, Bad Americans: Part I and Good Americans, its predecessors in The Human Tragedy series, are free all week, so take advantage! They’ve hit number 1 in several free categories including Literary Short Stories, Literary Satire Fiction and…

Thanks to everyone who came out to the release event for Bad Americans: Part II last night! It was an amazing talk with great Q&A with William J. McGee, awesome questions from the audience, and plenty of books sold! We could have gone on for hours! Thanks to Steven at Word Bookstore in Greenpoint, he gave an inspired intro and btw, they have a stock now of The Human Tragedy so head over and buy…

If you couldn’t make it, you can watch below:

https://youtu.be/2BISuy_T2B4?si=yFJalsAlFpZLpehT

#newrelease #mustread #bookevent #mustreadbooks #mustreadseries

Bad Americans: Part II was released today, 4/15/26. It marks the culmination of a year-long publishing campaign of a groundbreaking literary opus–a novel and short story collection in one–that involved the publication of 18 books as Parts of Bad Americans: 14 eBooks, 2 trade paperbacks and 2 hardcovers; about 5 1/2 years since serious work started on the massive literary project; and almost 25…

Bad Americans: Part II was released today, 4/15/26. It marks the culmination of a year-long publishing campaign of a groundbreaking literary opus--a novel and short story collection in one--that involved the publication of 18 books as Parts of Bad Americans: 14 eBooks, 2 trade paperbacks and 2 hardcovers; about 5 1/2 years since serious work started on the massive literary project; and almost 25 years since I first got the idea to create a "Decameron for our Time" while studying abroad at the University of Oxford in the shadow of 9/11.

I want to thank my tireless team: my publicist Dar Dowling, and the marketing team at Atlas Elite, especially Michael Beas; my publicist Joshua Dean; my cover designer Fena Lee, who somehow produced 18 covers over the course of a year while on breaks slaving away as a doctor at a busy hospital in Singapore; Barbara Bowen, who did a marvelous job copyediting and proofreading 14 versions of an extremely complicated book; and Christine Keleny, who designed an absolutely magnificent interior for the hardcover and paperback versions of both Part I and Part II, and who is a delight to work with (check out her own books, btw). I'm blessed to work with such talented and dedicated professionals who allow my work to shine.

Also, the many, many beta readers and subject specialists who assisted in the revising process by giving me feedback on believability and aesthetic consistency, some named in the Acknowledgments, others anonymous, but all vital to the revision of this great tome.

Part I has won 12 literary honors so far: I would like to thank the award committees and many, many people who spent time reading all the works submitted to these contests. We know it's a lot of work that isn't always acknowledged, and I'm very grateful you found Bad Americans: Part I worthy of these honors. I hope Part II has the same success!

Thanks to my great friends: Kacper, Matthew Allison, Vegas K Jarrow, Ishy Christine MudiArt Gallery. To my New Wei brothers and sisters in arms: W. Lance Hunt, Lancelot Schaubert, Lorraine Schein, William J. McGee, Annette Olivia Brown, Chris Styles and many others. And of course to my parents, my sister, my extended family.

I would also like to honor the over one million Americans, and many more people all over the world, who passed away during the Covid-19 Pandemic. We have not forgotten you, and Bad Americans commemorates you.

Remember that there's an event tonight at 7pm: William J. McGee will be interviewing me at WORD Bookstore, 126 Franklin Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Hope to see you there:

"Desai’s decision to begin Part II with fallout instead of closure is intentional. 'It immediately sets up drama,' he explains, pointing to a broader thematic focus on storytelling itself, how people listen, interpret, and often misinterpret what they hear. This approach reframes the narrative as something of a social trial, where perception and reality are constantly in tension."

The all-day affair consisted of 6 hour-long presentations on essential topics, including an Antiracist Family Day overview (ESRT President/Asst Coordinator of Older Adult Services Simone Wellington and ESRT Member-at-Large/CLM of Seaside Jay Dela Cruz in pic), Know Your Rights: Libraries Disrupting the School to Prison Pipeline, co-presented by Jill Anderson, QPL's Asst Director of Prison, Jail and Reentry Services, who recently published a book on the topic with co-presenter Carrie Banks (BPL, Coordinator of Inclusive Services), and Heritage Ambassadors (in pic, Simone Wellington introducing, and on panel, from BPL: Janel Peterson, Immigrant Services Coordinator at BPL, Stephanie Larriere, Heritage Ambassador Program, Heyrling Oropeza, Adult Librarian at Library for Arts & Culture, and Eva Raison, Senior Director of Outreach Services). The Conference was punctuated by a stirring Spoken Word performance by Cristina Marie Genao, Older Adult Librarian at QPL's Queens Village.

Pic on BPL steps with ESRT banner features: CLM-Cambria Heights Kacper Jarecki, NAP Administrative Assistant Madellen Garcia, ESRT Immediate Past President/ACLM-Cambria Heights Tejas Desai, NYPL Stapleton Branch Manager Kelly Yim, Jay Dela Cruz, Simone Wellington. Simone W Wellington, 'Jay Dela Cruz

First and foremost, it won BEST OVERALL FICTION BOOK, a category I didn't even enter! It also won 1st Place in Literary Fiction, Anthology and Short Stories!

Bad Americans: Part I has just won its first award!

It won 1st Place in the BestSellers World Book Award Contest in the Short Story/Anthology Category!

One of the reviewers called it "a timeless masterpiece" and "immersive literary roller coaster that tells the human tragedy of the pandemic era like never before"!

Tejas Desai

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0G4MYFGGN

Publishers Weekly/BookLife Review of Bad Americans: Part II (pub date 4/15/26) is out! “A wide-ranging, consistently surprising novel-in-stories…A layered, one-of-a-kind experience, highlighting not just human nature but the fault lines that appear when people from different walks of life converge.” — BookLife Reviews, Publishers…

Publishers Weekly/BookLife Review of Bad Americans: Part II (pub date 4/15/26) is out!

“A wide-ranging, consistently surprising novel-in-stories…A layered, one-of-a-kind experience, highlighting not just human nature but the fault lines that appear when people from different walks of life converge.” -- BookLife Reviews, Publishers Weekly

I'm speaking today with Michael Freeman of Paramount about publishing, writing, the state of the literary world and plenty of other juicy topics at Great Neck Public Library at 7pm tonight Wednesday 11/19!

#novelette #storytelling #story #shortstory #shortstorycollection #shortstories #novel #novels #hybrid #literature

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FY6RXK2N

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FVBMXXSH