Novel announcement and more
I’ve hinted at it for a while now, saying that I’d talk about it when I could, and now I finally can because the announcement has been officially made: I have a new novel coming out next year! It’s a completely new thing that I hope you’ll enjoy. Behold:
This is going to work a lot like HOUNDED: It’s a novel that could stand by itself, but it has "series potential." And that potential is entirely in your hands: If y’all and your friends buy it and like it, they’ll let me write more! Since many of you are audio listeners, let me say right now that we hope to have Luke Daniels for this, but it’s not a sure thing yet. The hiring of a narrator is still a ways off—we don’t have cover art either. Announcing a book is the first step of many, many steps before it’s available to y’all, but there you go, now you know what I’ve been working on in addition to the stories I’ve been writing for this newsletter and various anthologies! I’m editing it now.
I’ve been writing more than that, even! This is your reminder that Oberon’s Post Club is a good time. You get a letter, postcard, and sticker from Oberon every month. Last month’s featured Starbuck and what is probably my favorite sticker thus far. I’m working on setting things up so that you can get letters from past months, but right now you’d be signing up to get May’s and so on.
As if that were not enough to keep me busy, I’m also publishing 2-3 novellas a year from other authors through Horned Lark Press. I spoke unto thee last month about our sci-fi story, THE FINAL CHRONICLE OF YENEH by Jo Miles, which is out July 7 and available to preorder now, but I want to tell you also about A DUBIOUS CLAMOR by Marissa Lingen, out on September 15. It’s a fantasy unlike any other I’ve read, and I’m probably going to keep listing great things about it like the guys in Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition skit. "Nnnnooobody expects A Dubious Clamorrrr! Its chief delight is a sword, a magic sword and harpies—TWO delights! Its two delights are a magic sword and harpies and a musical magic system—ah! Its THREE DELIGHTS are…” You get the idea. I kept getting surprised by how much worldbuilding was packed into this novella, and how carried away I was by the story. I had never seen harpies developed as characters before, you know? It was fascinating. Usually they’re just portrayed as these foul monsters, but wow, they are also a metaphor for society’s outcasts who support and value each other and know their own worth. I love them so much. So, as with YENEH, you can preorder from your favorite bookstore/retailer, but we are offering some bonus goodies if you preorder directly from us: $5 off, a sword sticker that says A Dubious Sword Cuts Through Certainties, another sticker and bookmark from Horned Lark, and entrance into a raffle for a Harpy Eagle plush from the World Wildlife Fund. (We will get a new plush for every hundred orders so your odds of winning are never less than one in a hundred.)
So yeah, if you like my reading recommendations in general, imagine how much you will like the stories that I liked so much I was willing to pay to publish them!
Here’s what I’m reading right now—this first one is “general fiction” but folks are saying it’s the new Great American Novel, so I’m curious, and it DOES have a significant speculative element to it:
Yesteryear
My name was Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive.
Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the heir to a political dynasty? What Natalie’s followers—all 8 million of them—don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal—and just so happens to be building an empire from it.
Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her home, her husband, her children—they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she’s expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a ruthless reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible.
A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood.
And then, of course, there’s a new Murderbot book, so I am required to read it because I love me some Murderbot.
Platform Decay
Everyone's favorite lethal SecUnit is back in the next installment of Martha Wells' bestselling and award-winning Murderbot Diaries series.
Having someone else support your bad decision feels kind of good.
After volunteering to run a rescue mission, Murderbot realizes that it will have to spend significant time with a bunch of humans it doesn't know.
Including human children. Ugh.
This may well call for... eye contact!
(Emotion check: Oh, for f—)
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