On Friday, Pixies frontman Black Francis will help launch the new novel he’s co-authored — “The Good Inn,” which is billed as “blurring the lines between fact and fiction, film and prose, reality and surreality” — at an event in Brooklyn. And we’ve got three tickets to the event to award to lucky Slicing Up Eyeballs readers.

The Pixies are busy this spring with a steady diet of touring — not to mention the upcoming release of their first album in eons — but frontman Black Francis has found time to engage in a more literary endeavor, this week publishing his first novel, “The Good Inn,” co-authored with Josh Frank.

American Laundromat Records next spring will release a double-CD tribute to quirky director Wes Anderson titled I Saved Latin!, a collection that will feature indie artists such as Black Francis, Kristin Hersh, Juliana Hatfield, Mike Watt and more covering songs featured in films.

The Pixies have been rehearsing for their upcoming tour with new bassist Kim Shattuck of The Muffs in Los Angeles this past week, so perhaps it’s no surprise the band headed out last night for a last-minute, surprise warm-up show at the Echo — where the band debuted six of their new songs.

With their fall tour set to open next week with a club run in Los Angeles, the Pixies today released the first in a series of new EPs — a four-song set cleverly titled EP-1 that’s available as a digital download or on limited-edition 10-inch vinyl — and premiered the music video for one of those songs, “Indie Cindy.”

Anyone who’s listened to the Pixies’ “Debaser” knows Black Francis sounds fairly deranged on that classic opener to 1989’s Doolittle. But give the isolated vocal track a listen, and, well, as Fluxblog’s Matthew Perpetua notes, the Pixies’ frontman “just sounds like a maniac screaming on the street.”

Over the past few weeks, the members of the Pixies — Black Francis, Joey Santiago, David Lovering and new bassist Kim Shattuck — have been treating fans to photos and video through a collection of new Twitter, Vine and Instagram accounts named “The Actual Pixies.”

The Pixies will debut their new Kim Deal-less lineup with four Los Angeles concerts prior to their appearance at Riot Fest Chicago this September, to be followed by four more small club shows in New York City before the band embarks on a previously announced European tour.

The Pixies today followed up last week’s free release of a surprise new track with more revelations, namely that the band is about to embark on a “massive global tour” to debut material off its follow-up to 1991’s Trompe le Monde with The Muffs frontwoman Kim Shattuck replacing the departed Kim Deal.

Two weeks after announcing the departure of bassist Kim Deal, the Pixies this morning surprised fans with the release of “Bagboy,” the band’s first new song since 2004 and one that sounds like may feature the backing vocals of the group’s now-former bassist. But it doesn’t.

The Pixies this morning announced that bassist Kim Deal — who has spent much of this year touring with the reunited Last Splash-era lineup of The Breeders — has left the band , and, in a statement attributed to Black Francis, Joey Santiago and David Lovering, say “we will always consider her a member of the Pixies.”

Fans of Black Francis who plan to see the Pixies frontman’s solo-acoustic show in New York City next week who are older than 30 — and let’s face it, that’s a lot of us — might want to consider something they haven’t done in a couple decades: investing in a fake ID. Tickets are $15 cheaper for fans 30 and under.

Last night at New York City’s Terminal 5, the reunited Dinosaur Jr celebrated the 25th anniversary of You’re Living All Over Me by playing the 1987 album in its entirety and then enlisting members of The Smiths, Pixies, Sonic Youth, The Replacements and The Melvins to help blast through a second, career-spanning set.