Musician Amanda Palmer knows ‘Art of Asking’ well

Rock musician Amanda Palmer, who has performed with a broad assortment of collaborators, will be onstage in Atlanta on Thursday with a brand-new partner, hidden inside her body.

“I’ve never taken a fetus on tour,” said the four-months pregnant Palmer, expecting her first child with husband (and best-selling fiction author) Neil Gaiman.

It's perhaps another way for Palmer to try out the edges of the new. Like letting a roomful of fans ink her naked flesh with Magic Markers, or helping to establish Patreon, a crowdfunding service that acts as a sort of rock 'n' roll subscription.

Another new thing: this book. Palmer is well-known in the digital realm for her uncensored blogging. Her writing has attracted followers and vitriolic attacks. (One of her postings, a poem imagining empathy for the Boston Marathon bomber, brought death threats and an evaluation from Gawker as “the worst poem of all time.”)

She describes the storm that followed that verse in the new book, “The Art of Asking: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help.” (Palmer will sign copies after her performance at the Variety Playhouse.)

The book grew out of Palmer's 2013 TED talk of the same name, a talk that's been viewed 8 million times. And the title refers to Palmer's most famous ask: her Kickstarter campaign that scared up more than $1.2 million for a new album, "Theatre Is Evil," and tour in 2012.

(Following her Kickstarter triumph, Palmer further annoyed her critics by inviting local horn and string players to join her band in each city she visited, but to play for free. She subsequently decided to pay the volunteers.)

A native of Lexington, Mass., Palmer, 38, developed a cult following with her first band, the punk cabaret duo called the Dresden Dolls.

She recently talked about music, books and Boston drivers by telephone, as she piloted a Honda Fit north on the Massachusetts Turnpike.

Q: Did writing the book change your understanding of what your husband does for a living?

A: I found myself really understanding Neil's fundamental need to vanish, physically and mentally.

Q: About the art of asking, don’t we already have too many people too willing to ask for things in this country?

A: It's actually pretty self-policing. … What I have found through crowdfunding is that no money is growing on any trees that were imaginary to begin with.

Q: Have you delivered all the promised premiums to your Kickstarter supporters?

A: I delivered the absolute last Kickstarter (party) a month and a half ago, in Johannesburg, South Africa, the final of 35 house parties. … So my Kickstarter is officially a wrap.

Q: What can you tell us about your Atlanta show?

A: There's nothing but me and a piano and a ukulele, and my guest Blake English. (English, 20, is an Athens native and member of the boy band After Romeo.) He's the unlikeliest guest I could have. I befriended him on Twitter. He has a beautiful tenor singing voice. … He's bringing his whole family.

Q: Can you describe Patreon? (Patreon is a crowdfunding company through which she has attracted several thousand subscribers who are billed a discrete amount for each “thing” she produces, be it a song, video, poem or drawing.)

A: It's like NPR. You give $50 to NPR each year and it keeps existing. NPR doesn't go out. You're not giving NPR money so you can get the mug, the tea cozy and the T-shirt. You want the news, you want smart journalism. … Patreon makes it possible for me to record music and release music and stay off the grid of the music industry as we know it.