The Starbuck sticker plus bacon
The Olympics are a hoot. Have you been watching? Right now Canada is playing France in men’s hockey and dang, y’all. Watching this team is amazing. McDavid, MacKinnon, and Celebrini on the same line? You’d never see them playing together like this in the NHL because no team could afford them all. Truly a gift to be able to see this. And nice to see people from around the world appreciating each other.
I’ve found a place in Canada that makes really good stickers so I’ve been enjoying myself—because doing some doggie art is quite relaxing and takes my mind off the world for a while, reduces stress and stuff like that. One thing I did was this sticker of Starbuck saying “No Squirrels!” It makes me laugh.
This is one of THREE stickers you’ll get when you preorder The Great Big Bear from Horned Lark Press. You’ll get a signed copy, a signed bookmark, $3 off, and three stickers: Starbuck, an Oberon one (gravy!), and a surprise third one.
But guess what? It’s also available for preorder in ebook and audio—yeah! Narrated by Luke Daniels. You can find it on Audible now. But let me encourage you to use that link above to get to a page just full of links. It’s the Horned Lark page, but at the bottom of it you’ll see additional links to print, ebook, and audio. Very excited that you can get ebooks now from Bookshop.org, which means you can direct a portion of your purchase to a local indie bookstore of your choice! HOW COOL IS THAT? They offer a discount, plus you get to support a local small business instead of a giant multinational corporation? HECK YES.
And if you were a paid subscriber last year, you’ll get a free download of the audiobook next month—instructions will be here in the newsletter! Thanks to y’all for supporting Luke and me.
But speaking of doggie art and stickers, I’m doing more of that for Oberon’s Post Club, too. This month’s letter from Oberon will have him explaining why, in Poochism (his religion for dogs), Bacon is the Way and the Truth. If you read The Dead Flea Scrolls at the end of Trapped then you saw him speak about the Time Before Bacon, and now he will expand on that. So the postcard art you get this month is Oberon telling Starbuck how it is, and the sticker is of course related and makes me happy too.
Would you like to get a letter, postcard, and sticker from Oberon every month? Sign up for Oberon’s Post Club!
In novel news: I signed a contract and hope we'll get to announce things soon! New full-length book coming from me next year!
If y’all are looking for an absolutely wonderful new read from someone you haven’t read before, can I recommend STRANGE ANIMALS by Jarod K. Anderson? I got to read it early and I blurbed it. Here’s what I wrote: “I cannot express how much this book scratched an itch I didn’t know I had. The deep wonder and curiosity about nature coupled with the terror of our own insignificance strummed a familiar chord within me, and reading about these singular creatures and Green’s journey confronting them inspired a childlike glee of discovery. I envy everyone who gets to read Strange Animals for the first time. I’ll be reading it again and again to revisit that happiness and winkle out every morsel of wisdom breathed by the sage characters within.” So yeah. This gets my highest recommendation. It’s out now. Happy reading, y’all!
Strange Animals
An ordinary man discovers a hidden world of supernatural creatures—and an unexpected home—in this enchanting contemporary fantasy debut.
Green trips on the curb, falls flat into the street, and sees the city bus speeding toward him. And then . . . blink. He’s back on the curb, miraculously still alive. A five-foot-tall crow watches him from atop a nearby sign, somehow unseen by the rushing crowd of morning commuters.
Desperate for answers and beset by more visions of impossible creatures, Green finds his way to a remote campsite in the Appalachian Mountains, where he meets a centuries-old teacher and begins an apprenticeship unlike anything he could imagine.
Under his new mentor’s grouchy tutelage, Green studies the time-bending rag moth, the glass fawn, and the menacing horned wolf. He begins to see past hidden nature’s terrors and glimpse its beauty, all while befriending fellow misfits—and finding connection and community.
Along the way come clues about the forces that set him on this path—and, most incredibly, a sense of purpose and fulfillment like nothing he’s felt before.
But Green’s new happiness promises to be short-lived, because alongside these marvels lurks a deadly threat to this place he’s already come to love.
Creepy, cozy, and beautiful, Strange Animals is a fantasy about home, belonging, and the fearfully wonderous nature all around us.
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