A great big bear and a letter from Oberon
Whoa dang, it's a new year (you may have heard) and I have lots of new stuff coming your way. A novel announcement, for example! And stories in like, four different anthologies? I’m only gonna talk about one today though. There’s so much happening.
It is, let’s see…DANG cold up here, but the ice skaters are happy because they get to frolic on the Rideau Canal for 7.8 kilometres and get BeaverTails and hot chocolate from the ice shacks. (Have you heard of the Rideau Canal Skateway? Longest in the world, completely free, naturally frozen because I may have mentioned it’s DANG cold?) I primarily go outside to look for snö buntings, but lots of people just frolic in this weather.
But until I get to announce big stuff, egad, there’s all this smaller but no-less-rad stuff:
1) The Great Big Bear and Other Stories of the Iron Druid Chronicles is now available for preorder! Out on April 7. If you're a paid subscriber to this newsletter, you've already read these throughout 2025, and when the audiobook is ready, you'll get a free download. But for those of you who aren’t caught up with these new adventures and want it in print or ebook, you can snag it at your favorite joint, whether that be online or at an indie store. I'll drop some handy links for you below. My favorite bits involve Atticus realizing the Morrigan came back, Granuaile and the Simurgh, Gladys Who Has Seen Some Shite with the Mothman, and Owen finally learning how his walrus form is useful. Grab your preorder here:
Ebook:
Apple Barnes & Noble Kobo Amazon
Print:
Barnes & Noble Bookshop.org Amazon
Direct from Horned Lark Press, which gets you: a signed copy, a signed bookmark, three stickers (Oberon, Starbuck, and a surprise) and $3 off the cover price
2) If you aren’t one already, it's the perfect time to become a paid member and get a new story delivered to your inbox every month! It’s $6 a month (or $5 a month if you pay for the whole year). This year's stories won't have any Gladys Who Has Seen Some Shite, but I'm planning on Owen's apprentices having some adventures. They'll be a little older than when they were first introduced, a bit more independent, but still far away from becoming full Druids. Here’s the link.
3) I got some watercolours and a vintage 1947 typewriter for the holidays and wound up entertaining myself, but realized y'all might be entertained as well, and you might want something tangible and analog to enjoy in our “interesting” digital world. My art tends to be a bit cartoony and cute, but put some typewritten scraps down on top of it, collage-style, and you wind up with a funny postcard. So if you're an Oberon fan, you can join Oberon's Post Club—available worldwide, happily. You get a letter from Oberon (typed as he dictates it to me), a postcard I painted, and a thematically related sticker. Obviously you can keep them all but I think the postcard would be fun to send to friends and you can have all sorts of fun deciding where to use the stickers. The first month is all about getting outside and meeting new people, but we'll have Bacon is the Way and the Truth and a month dedicated to poodles and so on, because it's Oberon. (I already have orders for the UK and Germany and about twenty-four states. Where else will Oberon go?) I made a wee video about it—see below.
This is why I’m not on TikTok
4) I wrote a story for an anthology a good while ago and it’s gonna be out April 14. It’s a story about and narrated by one of the Sisters of the Three Auroras, the Polish coven from the Iron Druid Chronicles. It’s a revenge story, which is in keeping with the anthology’s theme—it’s called PARANORMAL PAYBACK, edited by Jim Butcher and Kerrie Hughes, and it basically has stories from all your faves in there—Jim, of course, plus many more. What I’m geeking out about right now is that they got a fluent Polish speaker to narrate it in a Polish accent and it’s amazing. I can only assume they are putting forth the same excellent effort for all the other stories, so this is going to be a can’t-miss volume if you’re an audiobook lover.
Whew! THAT WAS A LOT. Some months are just like that, I guess.
Quick detour into non-book stuff: You may have heard that there’s some pretty awful things happening in Minnesota. Should you wish to help, there’s this vetted list of organizations on the ground (though I wouldn’t call the GoFundMe section vetted). I’m donating to the ACLU of Minnesota which has already filed lawsuits against the Feds for rights violations and will continue to do so.
Back to book stuff: Always, always grateful to y’all for reading. And grateful for other authors writing things for me to read! Here’s what I’m reading:
Automatic Noodle
A cozy near-future novella about a crew of leftover robots opening their very own noodle shop, from acclaimed sci-fi author Annalee Newitz.
An instant USA Today and indie bestseller!
Indie Next pick | Library Reads pick | Best of the Year at Elle, Gizmodo, Reactor, Library Journal, and more!
You don’t have to eat food to know the way to a city’s heart is through its stomach. So when a group of deactivated robots come back online in an abandoned ghost kitchen, they decide to make their own way doing what they know: making food—the tastiest hand-pulled noodles around—for the humans of San Francisco, who are recovering from a devastating war.
But when their robot-run business starts causing a stir, a targeted wave of one-star reviews threatens to boil over into a crisis. To keep their doors open, they’ll have to call on their customers, their community, and each other—and find a way to survive and thrive in a world that wasn’t built for them.
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
They were never girls, they were witches . . . .
They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, to give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.
Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, frightened, and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who plans to marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.
Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by the adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid . . . and it’s usually paid in blood.
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