Maple syrup crimes and stickers
Lately I've been fascinated by the contrast in world news and Canadian news.
World news: [Endless screaming]
Canadian News: THIS GUY IN QUEBEC IS SELLING FAKE MAPLE SYRUP AND MAY BE THE MOST HEINOUS SUPERVILLAIN OF ALL TIME
Okay. I might be exaggerating a tiny bit on both counts. But maple syrup crime is actually kind of comforting and heartwarming because it’s the stakes are so low. Do we know who did it? Yes. There’s no mystery. The guy admitted on camera to a journalist that he is a syrup fraudster. Are we still able to get pure maple syrup instead of this guy’s fake stuff, which he cut with 50% cane sugar? Yes. There is no real syrup crisis. There’s just this one guy’s greed and the delightful outrage of officials in Quebec who are simply frothing that someone would circumvent their rigorous regulations and testing to ensure the purity of maple syrup.
Where it gets spicy is that after this dude got exposed, the fake syrup cans started appearing with stickers on them covering up the original producer! So who put the stickers on there? Is there a massive conspiracy to defraud Canadians with a low-grade product?
Look, I am riveted. I want to know what the consequences will be for these dastardly syrup criminals who have sullied the good name of a national heritage product. He can’t get away with this, right? So if you’d like to enjoy this saga, I have some links for you: Start here for the original unmasking of the villain, follow up with the first sticker scandal and then oh no, another incident of sticker skulduggery!
Spring is arriving and whoa dang, lots of rain so far for us. But I got outside on a sunny day and saw lots of critters, which I’ll mostly be sharing in my paid newsletter at the end of the month, but egad, I saw a great big bear! He was trying to hide from me! DO YOU SEE HIM
By the way: The Great Big Bear and Other Stories of the Iron Druid Chronicles is now out in print, ebook, and audio narrated by Luke Daniels! It’s spiffy and neato and my totally unbiased* opinion is that you should grab it. Thanks to everyone who’s picked it up so far and said nice things. Lots of you are loving the story of Gladys and the Whale, and that tracks—it’s one of my favourite things I’ve written. If you leave a review somewhere or just tell your friends you enjoyed it, that always helps!
*I may in fact be biased on this matter
If you’re a person who likes stickers (odds are: you do), the sticker design for April’s edition of Oberon’s Post Club makes me smile because it features Starbuck! (The photo below is a progress snapshot from the iPad, which is why it has those fine lines all over it.) A highlight of this sticker is that you won’t find it on cans of fake maple syrup.
Speaking of stickers and such: Most of you (I think) are aware that I started Horned Lark Press as a way to republish some older novellas of mine. The rights to The Purloined Poodle and The Squirrel on the Train were being returned to me and I didn’t want them to go out of print, so I needed a way to self-publish them. I really like birds, so blam, Horned Lark Press was born.
But once I got all the infrastructure for it set up—a local book printer, a website, and shipping goodies—I realized I could publish other authors too, and do it entirely without AI, because I’m not down with plagiarized slop machines. I wanted to publish stories that had a specific anti-authoritarian bent as my way of protesting warmongering and loss of rights around the world. My first one was Coyote Run by Lilith Saintcrow, a pulpy sci-fi action tale featuring genetically modified shapeshifters beating the hell out of fascist clones—it’s violent and satisfying.
But I have two more coming out this year, stories that I loved so much that I’m paying to have them published. I think you’ll love them too.
The first is The Final Chronicle of Yeneh by Jo Miles. It’s a portal fantasy wrapped in a sci-fi tortilla—think of it as Narnia in space. Couldn’t believe how good it was: I read it in a single sitting and offered on it immediately. And don’t be fooled into thinking the word “final” means this is the last book of a series—this is a standalone, and a perfect one. We found an outstanding artist in California named Kim Herbst to do the cover for us and we love it.
So would you do Jo and me (and Kim and Kat and Richard and Chelle, who all worked on the book) a solid and preorder it in either print or ebook? It comes out July 7. Call your favourite indie store or go to bookshop.org to snag it, or you can order directly from Horned Lark Press for bonus goodies.
Since we ship from Canada, if you’re in the US the shipping cost can be steep, but we are offering a few things: $3 off the cover price, a sticker (!!!) that says I’m a Friend of the Yeheneh (which you will be after reading) and a thank-you postcard from Jo, plus a Horned Lark sticker and bookmark.
You’ll be supporting the author but also a wee press making good art in trying times. And I will add: This is one of those books that teens will love too. This is exactly the kind of thing that I loved when I was in high school.
The Final Chronicle of Yeneh
Step into a portal fantasy wrapped in a wondrous science fiction adventure!
Lady Ada Quintrall, heir to her grandfather the Duke of Corbridge, wants nothing more than to see her family's new planet successfully terraformed, restoring their fortune and ensuring them a stable future. That means shutting away her whimsical side (including the beloved Chronicles of Yeneh, a children's portal fantasy written by her own ancestor)—and refusing the requests of Dr. Zamora, the xenobiologist who is begging to study the planet's native life before it's driven extinct.
Ada's own encounters with the native life are vicious and unsettling. But when Zamora trespasses into an Infested Zone, Ada goes after him and discovers the astonishing truth: Not only does this planet have native sentient life, but those beings share a connection to her family that's older, deeper, and closer to her heart than she could have imagined.
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