“But now I shall never get out,” said Floralinda, in tears, “there is no solution to my problem that isn’t a prince, and I’m all out of princes, and I don’t want to jump out of the window and die. This is the worst conundrum I ever heard of.”
(rolls down a dusty hill through open window) Boy! Not much has happened since I last posted on Tumblr (laugh track) but every so often I amble on to tell you, three followers and my boyhood friend Christopher who still hasn’t read any of my God damned books and yet makes fun of me ceaselessly, about all the wild things occurring:
- Gideon the Ninth is now available in paperback. This provides warm nesting material for winter, and also contains a new appendix of material, including an in-universe essay about how thinking the cavalier-necromancer relationship is ‘horny’ is an evil idea that nobody should ever commit to in fiction, which is how you know that in-universe fiction commits to it constantly; it also has a dossier compiled by Cpt. Judith Deuteros about how Coronabeth Tridentarius is NOT a babe. Talk about a challenger for Tolkien’s appendices
- Harrow the Ninth arrives in less than a month. I received my hardback copies of it (author’s privilege) and flipped through it. It landed open at a scene where Harrow gets told the whole plot of a romance novel. I write only the hardest action scenes
- My novella, “Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower”, has been announced for November 2020! That’s this year, if we live! It’s a VERY long novella. My first reader, whose name rhymes with “A.K. Farkwood”, described it as “Enid Blyton meets Slay the Spire”. If you were forced at gunpoint as a child to read “Pip the Elf” and wished dreamily that Pip would fall off a cliff already, this is for you! It’s about an awful princess who meets an awful fairy, and their adventures in being forced into the same small space together eating the same damn meal over and over (NOTE: I wrote it BEFORE lockdown).
Subterranean Press specialises in very beautiful hardback editions and the end physical product will be very specific and lovely, but for those of us with limited shelf space it WILL also be out in ebook (that’s just not available to pre-order).
I’ve received lovely messages and questions and one day I’ll get to them. Until Alecto is done, however, forgive me for that day not being today; soon. Thank you so much for all the support.
Today is the 14th of April and you can go and read the whole first act of Harrow the Ninth!
I finished Harrow long before Gideon ever went to publication and it is extremely weird having it now be in the pipeline to be read. I’ll have also finished Alecto before Harrow is out, which will be weird in the same way. Alecto is a very different book to Harrow and Harrow is a very different book to Gideon. Gideon was about two girls crammed into a bloodstained get-along shirt; Harrow is about, as stolen from A.K. Larkwood, two girls who are not enjoying this Duke of Ed residential very much; Alecto will be about girls being annoyed that it is legal for their exes to talk to each other. The tomb is open. The get-along shirt is empty.
Naturally I had a hell of a lot of fun writing Harrow and it is very personal to me. It is about a girl staggering over the finish line with all her limbs ground down to stumps only to discover that that was the start of the marathon. It is about another girl who owns thirty thousand stupid outfits, and wears them. It is the hideousness of being a grown-up and discovering the protagonist of your sequel is some emo kid with Disney hair who hangs around Goofy and Donald. It is about meals.
Really it is a book that, at its heart, is the bit in the Homestar Runner music video for TMBG’s Experimental Film where Strong Sad falls hard out of the sky and the spectator stand announces that it is a lion.
I hope you enjoy. Take care out there.
Thank you everyone who’s left interesting, lovely notes in my inbox, and I really hope I can respond to them all; I am currently only allowed short bursts of goofing off in a day and I am ashamed to say that I mainly spend them losing my life to the sea ice challenge in Rimworld. Here’s a wonderful question from @sensenoi about the book that I will put under a read-more due to spoilers –
SEABOUND! A LOCKED TOMB UNIVERSE SURVIVAL ADVENTURE AND HOUSE IDENTIFICATION TOOL
You and a couple of your friends, if you have any, are on a boat in the ocean. Why are you here? Is this even relevant in the universe? Who cares. This ocean’s purpose is to help you pick… your true House identity.
Luckily, on this magical survival journey you have the opportunity to pick items to help you. You may salvage five items of the fifteen I am about to list under the cut. These items will be the key to who you are, secretly, on the inside. You’re probably going to die, but at least you will know who you are, which has to be some kind of comfort, right
These items will score you points with one or more Houses. Once you have made your selection, read the guide, tally your points, and discover… Yourself!!!!
Please help, I just keep thinking about Gideon the Ninth by @tazmuir and sighing dreamily
worked out how to delete broken links on the writing tool today, so despite deserving no quarter, reblogging this for my own delight
Dear all,
Here we are back again. Those long nineteen days ago when Gideon the Ninth was unleashed onto the world, I could hardly contemplate linking you again to anything. But the truth is that Gideon the Ninth is one book of three, and the second book will be here sooner than you think (JUNE 2, 2020).
That’s a long time away?? Naw. I myself will provide you with bullshit nonsense content until time speeds past like a bus out of control, and by that point June 2 will feel like a sweet reprieve because maybe I’ll stop talking about it. Psyche!! At that point I’ll simply start talking about Alecto the Ninth, a title my publishers misread because it’s actually my romance novel “Alec to Theninth”, a spiritual sequel to “From Justin to Kelly” about a guy who has a speech difficulty and meets plural clones of a Russian revolutionary politician and (Tighten this one up - Ed.)
Taking a twist for the contemporary, HARROW THE NINTH is the story of one girl’s sexual awakening at Bible camp, surrounded by wasps, unwanted nudes, and elderly swingers. It is also a story about how absolutely nothing happened the way you thought it did. Here are some of the traditional contemporary tropes I went with:
* PROTAG GETS A LIFE-CHANGING MAKEOVER
* PROTAG TROUBLED BY FLAWLESS MARKS IN HIGH SCHOOL NOT TRANSLATING OVER INTO UNIVERSITY
* DINNER PARTY RUINED BY FAUX PAS
* DESPITE MULTIPLE GIRLS BEING INTERESTED PROTAG PINES OVER THE ONE GIRL WHO ISN’T, WHICH IS JUST COMPLETELY FUCKING TYPICAL
* HORRIBLE LEMONGRAB WOMAN STEEPLES FINGERS, A LOT
* DROVE MY CHEVY TO THE LEVEE BUT THE LEVEE WAS GHOSTS
* SO LIKE, WHAT IF THE PAST, LIKE… WASN’T ACTUALLY… THE PAST, YOU KNOW WHAT I’M SAYING? (TAKES HUGE NECROBONG HIT)
I have also put in some new characters, but not TOO many! You may want to get familiar with them now. Tag yourself!
* GOD
* THREE ASSHOLES
* IANTHE
June is just a tomorrow away.
For my birthday in 2018, my two first readers just sent me an email with the subject heading, “We have very good taste.”
This FST is quite possibly the most serious, transformative and thoughtful transformative work ever presented to any canon, ever.
This picture has sat on my fridge for like two years, held up by magnets of the greatest characters in the world to guard them (Jade and Sterling from Chris Dane Owen’s SHINE ON ME video), so forgive its fold marks and low quality, which do not at all do justice to the art.
From top to bottom, although it is fairly obvious if you’ve read the book: Camilla, Palamedes, Dulcinea, Harrow, Gideon.
This was my first piece of fan art. It kept me going on bad days. Camilla’s side-eye in particular encouraged me to eat a lot of yoghurt. If you go and pre-order a copy of THE UNSPOKEN NAME, written by its artist, I’ll draw an erotic stick figure of her main characters writhing in a pile of snakes. I can’t draw snakes or even frankly stick figures, so it’ll be a wild ride
As threatened, before I let myself go nuts wallowing in cosplay and art, I muft acknowledge the gifts I was given when Gideon the Ninth did not even have a publication date. My three first readers gave me an FST, and the first FST I got was from paraTactician, to whom sharp-eyed readers following along from fandom may have noticed the book was dedicated to.
Obviously getting FSTs is the main reason why anyone actually writes a novel, let’s be honest with each other
The last few weeks have been among some of the weirdest of my life. As I’ve got a day job and we’re under significant deadline stress, it was a good excuse to sit down, put blinkers on, and avoid every single note that has ever been sent to me; but I didn’t want to ignore what seems to be an enormous outpouring of kindness and goodwill to everyone who has read my five-act selection of weiner jokes.
Thanks to everyone who read it; thanks to everyone who read it and liked it; thanks to everyone who recommended it to a friend; thanks to everyone who wrote a shitpost about it, I’ve got to find the goths axis sheet because my editor sent it to me and I laughed for pure joy; thanks to everyone who reviewed, and who sent me a lovely letter saying they enjoyed reading it, and to anyone who read it and felt a feeling. Just because I am overwhelmed by it does not mean that it did not mean the world.
What I am also going to attempt to do over the next couple days, before I let myself indulge in looking at people cosplaying, because my editor sent me photos that I haven’t looked at yet, is highlight some of the first works that got me through the damn book. I’ve got two beloved playlists, and a piece of art that’s lived on my fridge since 2018, and a godawful house quiz. I was about to say, “if you do not want to live through these, block this tag,” but if you do not want to live through these I’m not sure what you’re here for unless you’re here for my Wizardess Heart play-throughs, which I’m sorry I stopped because I’ve dated like all those gruesome dudes by now and pretty much every single one of them is absolute nonsense.
Anyway, this week I will pay my respects to the ghouls who’ve loved me. The other thing I will do this week is the more important one, which is to tell you to buy The Monster of Elendhaven, but I’ll do that separately, in another post where I tell you that should you have resources to purchase The Monster of Elendhaven you should purchase The Monster of Elendhaven.