Swan Tower

Well over a decade ago, I first had the idea of reprinting my short fiction in little collections themed around subgenres. When I sat down to sort through my existing stories, I found they fell fairly neatly into six buckets, each at or approaching roughly the cumulative size of a novella: secondary-world fantasy, historical fantasy, contemporary fantasy, stories based on folktales and myths, stories based on folksongs, and stories set in the Nine Lands.

Five of those six collections have been published so far: Maps to Nowhere, Ars Historica, Down a Street That Wasn't There, A Breviary of Fire, and The Nine Lands. The sixth is coming out in September, but it's not surprising, given the balance of what I write, that secondary-world fantasy has lapped the rest of the pack -- more than once, actually, since The Nine Lands is also of that type (just all in a single world), and also my Driftwood stories hived off to become their own book.

So yes: as the title and the cover design suggest, The Atlas of Anywhere is a follow-on to Maps to Nowhere! Being short fiction collections, they need not be read in publication order; although a few settings repeat (both of them have a Lady Trent story inside, for example), none of the stories are direct sequels that require you to have read what came before. At the moment it's only out in ebook; that is for the completely shameless reason that replacing the cover for the print edition later on would cost me money, and I have my fingers crossed that in about two months it will say "Hugo Award-winning poem" rather than just "Hugo Award-nominated." ("A War of Words" is reprinted in here: my first instance of putting poetry into one of these collections!) But you can get it from the publisher, Book View Cafe; from Apple Books; from Barnes & Noble; from Google Play; from Kobo; from Indigo; or, if you must, from Amazon in the UK or in the US (that last is an affiliate link, but I value sending readers to other retailers more than I do the tiny commission I get).

Now, to write more stories, so I can put out another collection later!

Today I conclude my absolutely absurd run of four novels out in twelve months, with the release of The Market of 100 Fortunes! Well, at least if you're going for the ebook, the audiobook, or the U.S. print edition. For some reason the U.K. print edition won't be out until April 25th -- I have no clue why, nor (alas) any control over it.

This also concludes that trilogy. There comes a time in every author's life when she has to decide she's put her characters through enough; they have earned a nice, quiet HEA. So if you have not yet picked up the adventures of Sekken and Ryōtora, but you think supernatural enigmas in a Japanese-inspired setting with a side of queer romance sounds like your cup of sencha, you can now pick up the whole series. Yes, they're game tie-ins, but they're deliberately written to operate independently of any game material and appeal to a wider audience. I have had a blast writing these, working in a world I know so well, and indulging my love of folklore to boot.

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/IrPPQD)

Vaki þu, Angantýr,       vekr þik Hervör,
eingadóttir       ykkr Sváfu;
selðu ór haugi       hvassan mæki,
þann er Sigrlama       slógu dvergar.

My god, I was so busy yesterday that I didn't even manage to post here about The Waking of Angantyr coming out in the UK. In my defense, I was not busy by choice; instead I got called in to jury duty for the first time in my adult life -- all my previous summons have resulted in the website telling me the day before that I don't have to report in. Well, I suppose it's fitting that publication day for my bloody Viking revenge epic began with me waking up early enough to induce homicidal feelings . . .

But even if I'm a day late in posting this, the good news is that book is still out! Yes, in this day and age where we place an unhealthy emphasis on how everything performs in the first twenty-four hours, I think it is just dandy for people to buy a book on day two! Or even day two hundred, for that matter. And Titan Books have given it such a lovely cover, how could you resist:



If the answer to that is "because I want a print copy and dear god international shipping now costs both arms and a leg," don't worry, a US edition is in the works. (As is an audio edition, if that's your preferred narrative delivery method.) But look at that cover! You know you want it, and all the bloody grimdark vengeance within.

(Even if it's a day late.)

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/PvIfUc)

It’s out!

PLEASE NOTE: this is a novella. Which is shorter than a novel. I already anticipate there will be reviews to the effect of “I thought I was getting a whole book but I wasn’t” — novellas are making a comeback, but they’re not yet so widespread that the occasional reader won’t be blindsided by the shorter length.

But if you want a whole novel’s worth of stuff, I got you covered there, too!

That’s right — at long last, A Star Shall Fall is out in the UK! Unlike the previous two Onyx Court books, this one has never been published in that country before. Only one more to go, and you can collect a full matched set . . .

(And if you think this is a big day, wait until April 25th of next year, when you’ll get Within the Sanctuary of Wings [Memoirs of Lady Trent #5] and Lightning in the Blood [Varekai #2] on the same day!)

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

If I hadn't been struck down yesterday by the Respiratory Bug of Suck, I would totally have gone to a bookstore today to buy Jim Hines' new novel The Stepsister Scheme. Curse you, cold!

No, really. I enjoyed Jim's goblin books, but this time he's gotten away from those icky little blue guys and gone on to princesses! NINJA PRINCESSES! Which are, as everyone knows, the best kind.

Okay, so, yeah, this time he's written a book so far up my alley it would be in my house if only I had the energy to go buy it. But if ninja princesses aren't a big enough selling point on their own (what's wrong with you people?), then I can also vouch for the author's sense of humour and ability to play interestingly within the rules of the story-paradigm he's exploring. Last time that was D&D-style fantasy; this time, it's fairy tales, with Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella going all Charlie's Angels on their problems. I do not know yet if there are any villains as awesome as Maleficent, but if not -- hey! jimhines! Get on that!

I'm tempted to just let Amazon deliver it to my door, thus saving me a trip to the bookstore, but that would be going against my own advice, so I'll have to wait a bit longer before I can read this one. But those of you who aren't ill? You have no excuse.