The recent news about extreme hinkiness in last year’s Hugo Awards (works ruled ineligible without the authors being notified or any reason given; questionable voting numbers; attendees’ voting rights reportedly being reassigned to the convention committee) is deeply disturbing — me, I’m in favor of a Retro Hugo for 2023 in an upcoming year, since we already have that structure in place — but for this upcoming year, the more people who get involved, the better! If you want to nominate, you have until tomorrow to get at least a supporting membership to the Glasgow Worldcon — you don’t have to be planning to attend in person to get involved.

(There are technical difficulties right now with the nominations form, which they are trying to fix, but you can still register.)

I posted about my 2023 publications back in December, but it’s rather a long list this time. If you pointed a knife at me and demanded I choose my favorites, I’d give it to “At the Heart of Each Pearl Lies a Grain of Sand” (which is unfortunately paywalled, but SMT is great and you should subscribe to it!) and the Rook and Rose trilogy in toto, now that it’s finished up with Labyrinth’s Heart being published last year. I genuinely think it’s one of the best series I’ve (co-)written: Alyc and I had a much more complete plan than usual going into it, which meant we were able to play all kinds of long games across the three books, from seeding tiny worldbuilding details that would be load-bearing later, to pacing the arcs of the characters and their relationships, to braiding many strands of plot together into a complex rope. I think it repays re-reading more than anything else I’ve written, in terms of being able to say ohhhhh, waitasec, I see where that’s going now — — which is not the only way for a series to be good, but it’s certainly one of them!

So yes, register by tomorrow if you want to nominate, whether that’s something of mine or anything else you enjoyed from 2023!

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The Rook and Rose pattern deck Kickstarter was a complete success. As in, we unlocked every single stretch goal, and raised nearly $3000 beyond the top one — a wonderful margin of safety against things like shipping costs increasing between now and when we deliver the decks.

Not gonna lie: before we launched this project, I was significantly worried that it would fail. I’ve run a successful Kickstarter before, but the goal for that one was a full order of magnitude smaller than this. $31,500 is a lot of money, and while I had no doubts about the loyalty of our fans, I had the very strong feeling we’d need to reach well beyond that circle to pull this off. All throughout July we were searching for ways to build up our pre-launch followers, and then I surrendered the entire month of August to nothing but Kickstarter and book promotion work: I told myself I would expect no fiction writing or revision out of myself in that time, and indeed, it was only by herculean effort that I managed to muster enough brain to spend one afternoon polishing a moderately time-sensitive thing. The rest of my time and energy was spent on answering backer questions, sending out updates, doing interviews and podcasts and AMAs, flitting between social media accounts on different networks, and mustering the chutzpah to ask friends point-blank to promote the campaign.

Thank you so much to everyone who helped with that. It is genuinely the case that we could not have succeeded, let alone this well, without the support of others. Alyc and I have wanted this deck to be a real thing for the past five years; now it will be. And we will never stop being grateful for that fact.

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I’ve got two days left at DragonCon and two and a half days left in the pattern deck Kickstarter. Can I survive them both?

We’re down to 55 hours and counting, and Alyc has decided to throw one more temptation into the mix. We already had a stretch goal to make digital art for a Rook & Rose “card” (currently just over $500 away), and we decided a while ago that if we get to 400 backers we’ll print that in the deck (we’re currently at 373), but they announced this morning that if the Rook and the Black Rose get a card, then dammit, Vargo and Peabody should as well. So if you want to see your favorite crime lord and adorable peacock spider on a card, help us get up and over that goal! All backers will receive the digital art, and every backer gets us closer to putting them in the physical deck as jokers, so even backing at the $1 tier helps us toward both goals.

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You have added
to the funding
that is in
our Kickstarter

and which
I wasn’t really
expecting
quite so soon

Thank you
we’re almost to goal
$295 away
and so close

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I’ve been so busy promoting the pattern deck Kickstarter up one side of the internet and down the other that I’ve completely forgotten to update about its progress here! We’re at the halfway point of the campaign (it ends on September 5th), and as of me posting this, we’ve made it to 89% of our goal. Which is fabulous, but also I won’t breathe easy until we’re past the 100% line with a bit of cushion to spare. My thanks to everybody who’s been spreading the word about this — and don’t forget, all of our add-ons are available at every tier! So even if the deck itself isn’t of interest, you can back at $1 and still get access to signed books or bookplates, tea samples, personalized readings or horoscopes, art commissions, Tuckerizations, or your very own peacock brocade frock coat!

Meanwhile, we have some other promotional events lined up for the Kickstarter and the release of Labyrinth’s Heart. This upcoming Thursday the 24th, from 4-7 p.m. Central time (5-8 Eastern, 2-6 Pacific, 9-midnight UTC), we’ll be playing Rook & Rose D&D online, courtesy of New Orleans bookstore Tubby & Coo’s! Our special guest player for this event is the wonderful author and editor Fran Wilde, and I have no idea what will happen in the game except guaranteed hijinks.

Alyc and I will also be at DragonCon, though I don’t quite have a finalized schedule yet. If you’re attending and would like anything signed, feel free to catch me after a panel or ping us to arrange a meetup; I know that getting into the dealers’ building can be an incredibly time-consuming process, and we don’t mind signing items in passing to save you hours of waiting in line.

Finally, two pieces of non-Rook & Rose news: first, from now until the 27th, the ebook of A Natural History of Dragons is on sale for only $2.99! And second, looking ahead to October, I’m going to be in conversation with Kate Heartfield to promote our mutual Norse-inspired works, her novel The Valkyrie and my The Waking of Angantyr. That’s organized by Brookline Booksmith, and it’ll be on October 27th at 5 p.m. Pacific (8 Eastern, midnight UTC).

I know there are other things I need to scrape together to post about, but brain am mush, so they will have to wait . . .

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Nearly six years after Alyc and I said “hey, let’s write the Rook and Rose trilogy together,” the story is complete!

Labyrinth’s Heart is out in the world today, in paperback, ebook, and audiobook. Alyc and I will be celebrating with some carpal tunnel syndrome later on as we conduct an AMA over at r/Fantasy — I’m posting this before I go to bed and Alyc will be setting up the AMA once they wake up, so I don’t have a direct link yet, but you’ll see it there soon enough. My plan is to offer a one-card draw and its interpretation for every person who asks a question, so if you want to see some pattern-reading in action, here’s your chance!

Speaking of pattern, the Kickstarter is 2/3 of the way to goal! And since Alyc and I found a more efficient way of doing the gilding, we’ve decided to offer a third batch of premium decks; it seemed only fair to have a few available on the day the book comes out. So if you were regretting having missed the previous offerings, hie thee to Kickstarter and get one while they last!

(There are a lot of exclamation marks in this post, aren’t there? Six years, yo. It’s a long road to walk from “hey, let’s do this” to the final book being out.)

I should go to bed. But the book! It’s out in the world, for more than just early reviewers! How can I sleep at a time like this?

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