Just a quick note that my Dominion of the Fallen story “Court of Birth, Court of Strength” is now up at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

In the ruins of a Gothic Paris, a city devastated in the wake of a magical war, a young and sheltered Fallen angel goes to an older one for help in finding a missing child.

The leader of House Hawthorn’s Court of Birth lived in a part of the House that Samariel had never been to: a wing of dusty, disused corridors where the wainscoting had rotted away and the wallpaper’s elegant asphodels were obscured by elongated smudges of grey fungus. The door was small and crooked. Samariel would have thought it the entrance to a garret, but it opened into a wide, airy space with barely a trace of mould or spells gone awry. A makeshift antechamber held two Louis XV armchairs with plump, curved mahogany legs, and behind it was the shape of a four-poster bed that had seen better days, its silk canopy patched so many times the patterns on it had all but disappeared under the seams of repairs.

 

Read online!

(for anyone who’s read the books: this happens before The House of Shattered Wings, and it’s the Asmodeus/Samariel courtship story!)

Once upon a time, I wrote a book.

I was exhausted, dealing with health issues and a bunch of kids-related anxiety–and writing had just stopped being fun. I could tell I was flirting with burnout, because I’d had it before in other settings. I could tell I was going to crash and that it wasn’t going to be pretty when it did happen. But also, stopping writing would have been about as easy as stopping to breathe.

So I decided to write something just for me. A book that I’d feel like sinking into for pleasure: a queer retelling of Beauty and the Beast, except in a setting inspired by Vietnamese folklore–drawing from all those stories my mother and grandmother told me, the ones with scholar-magicians and dragons and kỳ lân and rooster spirits, where words had the weight of magic. Something fun and frothy and feelgood.

Obviously I don’t do fun and frothy very well, because I seem to have ended up with a postcolonial, postapocalyptic Beauty and the Beast, where both are women and the Beast is a dragon (because dragons, and because f/f relationships in SFF need more happy endings!), and where spirits and humans alike are struggling to survive in a world ruined by their former masters. And it wasn’t always feelgood to write: in fact, it was downright uncomfortable, because it ended up being such a weighty and personal story, because I drew on so much that meant so much to me. But it was important. It mattered to me. And that helped me claw my way out of the hole. It helped me find joy and meaning in writing again.

It also ended up being a decidedly awkward length (novel-length but too short for fantasy novel publishers). So I had to make a decision: I could stick it in a drawer for the time being, or I could try self-publishing it. I’d self-published books before but never an original, so the idea of doing self-publishing with this seemed like a super scary experience. A bit like putting out a raw bleeding piece of my heart out there without the backing of traditional publishing.

I went the scary way.

Without further ado I’m very happy to reveal the cover and to open preorders for In the Vanishers’ Palace, which is coming out October 16th from all major retailers. Scroll down for more info!

 

Cover art by Kelsey Liggett, cover design by Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein and Melanie Ujimori.

Publication date: October 16th from JABberwocky ebooks.

(NB: there will be a print edition, it will drop later in October: basically amazon doesn’t let us list a print book for preorder, so we’ll have to manually publish it around mid-October, and then wait about a week for it to go live. Links will be posted when available)

From the award-winning author of the Dominion of the Fallen series comes a dark retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

In a ruined, devastated world, where the earth is poisoned and beings of nightmares roam the land…

A woman, betrayed, terrified, sold into indenture to pay her village’s debts and struggling to survive in a spirit world.

A dragon, among the last of her kind, cold and aloof but desperately trying to make a difference.

When failed scholar Yên is sold to Vu Côn, one of the last dragons walking the earth, she expects to be tortured or killed for Vu Côn’s amusement.

But Vu Côn, it turns out, has a use for Yên: she needs a scholar to tutor her two unruly children. She takes Yên back to her home, a vast, vertiginous palace-prison where every door can lead to death. Vu Côn seems stern and unbending, but as the days pass Yên comes to see her kinder and caring side. She finds herself dangerously attracted to the dragon who is her master and jailer. In the end, Yên will have to decide where her own happiness lies—and whether it will survive the revelation of Vu Côn’s dark, unspeakable secrets…

Advance praise:

“Another stellar offering by Bodard. Her signature intensity is on display in this tale of people (and dragons) struggling to survive in the ruins of an alien conquest. Emotionally complex relationships interweave with richly drawn and deftly nuanced world-building.”

Kate Elliott, Author of the Court of Fives series

“A transformative experience. With dragons.”

Fran Wilde, Hugo and Nebula nominated author of The Bone Universe and The Gemworld series

“Gorgeously atmospheric queer fantasy (…) like Jane Eyre if Rochester was a woman plus a dragon.”

Zen Cho, author of Sorcerer to the Crown and The True Queen

 

I would love if you preordered this: as I said, this is new and a bit scary for me, and self-publishing obviously means I’m bearing the costs I incurred for making a book (cover art, copyediting, etc.). Thank you so much!

Buy now
Add the book on Goodreads

(I will now go and hide under the bed)

So once upon a time I needed a fun break, and I wrote a story about how Asmodeus and Samariel first met and flirted with each other (if you’re asking how, the answer is “smouldering mode on”). Because apparently I cannot do fun even if I try, this is a story of what happens when Samariel, a low-ranked bodyguard in House Hawthorn, hires Asmodeus when the child he considers his own gets kidnapped, and how the two of them handle a Gothic, devastated Paris rife with intrigue to get said child back (“how does it go?” you ask. If you already know Asmodeus, the answer is “about as well as you can imagine”).

Anyway, I’m pleased to announce I’ve sold the story to Scott Andrews at Beneath Ceaseless Skies for their ten-year-anniversary issue, and that it’ll appear in late September online.

(although set in the existing universe of Dominion of the Fallen, it should be completely standalone–as evidenced by the fact that Scott, who’d read neither of the novels, liked it enough to buy :))

I ran inside insideI ran inside x3

Very quick announcement as I’m hard at work on a novel (book 3 of Dominion of the Fallen, about which I hope to have cool news soon!). Here’s a re-release of an old, hard-to-find story I wrote with Gareth L Powell when I was still a baby writer (feels so far away lol!). I still remember googling all the Paris locations because I needed clear visuals, and I may have visited them all but my visual memory isn’t that strong! Anyway, this is a story about two of my loves: Paris, and artificial intelligences and the future. You can get it at Amazon (for the moment it’s not available at other vendors. We’ll keep you updated if that changes).

Aliette de Bodard, winner of the Nebula, Locus and BSFA Awards, teams up with BSFA Award-winner Gareth L. Powell to present an uplifting short story of machines and humans, of intense emotions and cutting-age technology culled from tomorrow’s headlines.

Installing a network for the Church of Accelerated Redemption is just another crappy job in a series of crappy jobs for Lisa, an American engineer stuck doing menial work in Paris. That the Church uses artificial intelligences to power its never-ending prayer machines doesn’t interest her at all: they’re paying, and she needs enough money to survive in an increasingly crumbling world. Until a demonstration outside the Church’s headquarters, and the appearance of Stéphane, an enigmatic man Lisa finds herself powerfully drawn to. What lies beneath his headscarf, why is he so interested in the Church–and how far will she be willing to go in order to earn his trust?

“Full of character and wit” – Zone SF
“Wonderful and full of promise.” – SF Revu

Buy Now

So last week I couldn’t sleep—I was exhausted after 2.5 days of solo childcare (I assure you the 0.5 matters immensely), but apparently my body decided to be a jerk and I woke up at 4am. While waiting for tea to brew I idly checked my email, and found a thing marked “Confidential” in my mailbox.
I opened it and stared at it. The kettle switched itself off after boiling the water but I kept staring at the screen because it was 4am and surely it was a trick of super tired brain.

Spoilers: it was not.

Writers often get to sit on awesome things for a long long time, and this waiting was actually relatively short! It gives me great joy to say that “Children of Thorns, Children of Water”, the novelette I wrote as a preorder reward for The House of Binding Thorns, is up for a Hugo Award for Best Novelette (in a, er, very competitive category–will you look at that ballot  and everyone who’s on it °_°)

To everyone who read and considered my story of Bake Off in Gothic devastated Paris: thank you so much! This is by no means the detailed speech (still have to write that hahaha) but also thanks to everyone who weighed in on Facebook when I was brainstorming what kind of competition a magical faction would run for recruiting people, to Kate Elliott, Stephanie Burgis and Fran Wilde for believing in it (and especially to Steph and Fran for support with cover art and publicizing it); to Megan Crewe for super lovely super fast cover art; to Michelle Sagara for formatting the ebooks for me; to Gillian Redfearn, Genn McMenemy, Stevie Finegan and everyone at Gollancz for running the original giveaway; to Uncanny Magazine for its second life as a reprint, and to everyone who read and signal boosted it.

I’m over the moon.

And congrats and best of luck to my fellow nominees, and a special mention to Likhain whose art is awesome and to Fran Wilde whose short story is heartbreaking.

(also spoilers: it was super hard to go back to sleep in a timely fashion after the email hahaha!)

PPS: click here to read the story! And click here if you want to read more about the book in the same universe.

Thrilled to reveal the cover of the ebook edition of the Tea Master and the Detective outside North America. Isn’t it gorgeous? Also yesss I got an áo dài on a cover!!! (the áo dài is a traditional Vietnamese female dress). Art and design is by Dirk Berger , with many many thanks to John Berlyne for his help, as well as Likhain, Kate Elliott, Vida Cruz, Sebb, Stephanie Burgis and Patrick Samphire.

The book will be out April 2nd from JABberwocky, but you can preorder it right now on Amazon, Kobo, and iBooks!

If you’re in North America, Subterranean is now shipping both the book and the ebook: it will become available at major retailers March 31st, 2018.

Here’s the summary:

Once, the mindship known as The Shadow’s Child was a military transport. Once, she leapt effortlessly between stars and planets, carrying troops and crew for a war that tore the Empire apart. Until an ambush killed her crew and left her wounded and broken.

Now the war is over, and The Shadow’s Child, surviving against all odds, has run away. Discharged and struggling to make a living, she has no plans to go back into space. Until the abrasive and arrogant scholar Long Chau comes to see her. Long Chau wants to retrieve a corpse for her scientific studies: a simple enough, well-paid assignment.

But when the corpse they find turns out to have been murdered, the simple assignment becomes a vast and tangled investigation, inexorably leading back to the past–and, once again, to that unbearable void where The Shadow’s Child almost lost both sanity and life…

Buy Now

And here are a few reviews if you’re still undecided:

What people are saying:

The Tea Master and the Detective is the Sherlock Holmes retelling I always wanted and now I have it. And I want so much more of it.

Ana Grilo, Kirkus

A terrific piece of writing, taking the sentient community of ships from Ian Bank’s Culture series, the glittering belt of space habitats from Alastair Reynolds’ Prefect novels, and adding in a compelling pair as the title characters.

Ernest Lilley, SFRevu

“This slim volume packs a visceral punch. Absorbing prose takes the reader in the dark, frigid space between the stars, where ships can fail, physically and emotionally, as well as people. (…) an imaginative read.

Library Journal (starred review)

De Bodard constructs a convincingly gritty setting and a pair of unique characters with provocative histories and compelling motivations. The story works as well as both science fiction and murder mystery, exploring a future where pride, guilt, and mercy are not solely the province of humans.

Publishers’ Weekly

Ingenious… As a classical blend of far-future SF and traditional murder mystery, The Tea Master and the Detective should satisfy readers unfamiliar with the Xuya universe, but at the same time it’s an intriguing introduction to that universe, much of which seems to lie just outside the borders of this entertaining tale.

Gary K Wolfe, Locus

This book shows sharp, intelligent dialogue with wildly peculiar worlds and spaces. The elegant weaving of narrative is what we’ve come to expect from de Bodard’s unique style. This is the opposite of a closed-room mystery, an open-space mystery which pushes the boundaries of A.I-as-person and genius-as-misanthropic-detective. Deeply affecting and always entertaining, The Tea Master and the Detective should be your next read.

Tade Thompson

Buy Now

Just a quick note to let you know that the UK paperback of The House of Binding Thorns is now out! As a result, the ebook has also dropped in price.

Dragons, revolutions, betrayals in a Gothic devastated Paris where the Seine runs black with rubble, and where Houses fight a cold war of attrition amidst the ruins…

The official summary:

The multi-award winning author of The House of Shattered Wings continues her Dominion of the Fallen saga as Paris endures the aftermath of a devastating arcane war…

As the city rebuilds from the onslaught of sorcery that nearly destroyed it, the Great Houses of Paris, ruled by fallen angels, still contest one another for control over the capital.

House Silverspires was once the most powerful, but just as it sought to rise again, an ancient evil brought it low. Philippe, an immortal who escaped the carnage, has a singular goal—to resurrect someone he lost. But the cost of such magic may be more than he can bear.

In House Hawthorn, Madeleine the alchemist has had her addiction to angel essence savagely broken. Struggling to live on, she is forced on a perilous diplomatic mission to the underwater Dragon Kingdom—and finds herself in the midst of intrigues that have already caused one previous emissary to mysteriously disappear…

As the Houses seek a peace more devastating than war, those caught between new fears and old hatreds must find strength—or fall prey to a magic that seeks to bind all to its will.

It’s on the following best-of-2017 lists:

• Locus Recommended Reading List
• Amazon
• Tor.com Reviewers’ Choice
• Barnes and Noble Sci Fi & Fantasy blog
• The Guardian (Adam Roberts)
• The Verge (Andrew Liptak, Recommended Book)
• Fantasy-Faction
• SciFiNow: 35 Books you should have read in 2017 (Jonathan Hatfull)
• Fantasy Cafe

Buy now
Read Chapter One Online!

(this is book 2 in a series, but it’s standalone and can be read without book 1. Though you’ll see more familiar things and Easter Eggs if you read book 1 first, naturally)

 

Just a quick note that although the official release date for The Tea Master and the Detective (my “Sherlock Holmes if Holmes were an eccentric scholar and Watson a grumpy discharged war mindship” book) is March 31st, they’re in the Subterranean warehouse: if you order it from them directly they will ship them! (I have an author copy and it’s a gorgeous gorgeous book)

The North American ebook edition is also up at their website (a quick reminder that for ebooks outside of North America, we’re looking at options–stay tuned. You can subscribe to the newsletter if you want to be notified).

Meanwhile, reviews have been coming in and they’re… something °_°

What people are saying:

The Tea Master and the Detective is the Sherlock Holmes retelling I always wanted and now I have it. And I want so much more of it.

Ana Grilo, Kirkus

A terrific piece of writing, taking the sentient community of ships from Ian Bank’s Culture series, the glittering belt of space habitats from Alastair Reynolds’ Prefect novels, and adding in a compelling pair as the title characters.

Ernest Lilley, SFRevu

De Bodard constructs a convincingly gritty setting and a pair of unique characters with provocative histories and compelling motivations. The story works as well as both science fiction and murder mystery, exploring a future where pride, guilt, and mercy are not solely the province of humans.

Publishers’ Weekly

Ingenious… As a classical blend of far-future SF and traditional murder mystery, The Tea Master and the Detective should satisfy readers unfamiliar with the Xuya universe, but at the same time it’s an intriguing introduction to that universe, much of which seems to lie just outside the borders of this entertaining tale.

Gary K Wolfe, Locus

It becomes clear early on that The Tea Master and the Detective is strongly influenced by, if not directly based upon, the Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s measured, almost stately, up until the conclusion, where the tension explodes into high gear. It preserves the empathy and the intensity of the original Sherlockian stories, while being told in de Bodard’s cut-glass prose and inimitable modern style. This is a really satisfying story, deeply invested in choosing to do the right thing – and in the importance of kindness. I strongly recommend it.

Liz Bourke, Locus

More info on the book.

It’s burrito month! In the latest episode of Cooking the Books, co-host Fran Wilde and I interview John Scalzi — and talk with him about writing during tough times, the importance of lawn care equipment, and burritos, bacon, and pie.

And we also have a giveaway of a SFWA cookbook and a copy of Robots vs Fairy, in which he has an story: enter below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

It’s all for Cooking the Books this month, both here and at the extension kitchen over at The Booksmugglers! (check out John’s Booksmugglers Bonus answers!).

This month’s Cooking the Books Podcast, #035: Schadenfreude Burrito – Cooking the Books with John Scalzi contains:

• Bacon
• A lot of bacon. Bacon is always there for you.
• A shout out to this excellent essay by Kayla Whaley (@punkinonwheels on twitter): “The Difference a Meal Makes: On Losing the Ability to Eat Solid Food”
• The true meaning of Schadenfreude Pie
• The many foodways of the JoCo Cruise
• That time Scalzi’s phone started playing “Rock You Like a Hurricane” all on its own.
• HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE OPINIONS ABOUT POTATOES
• And much more.

Ready? Subscribe to the Podcast here! Or on iTunes! Or click play below:
(and consider supporting us on Patreon!)

Visit additional Cooking the Books content over on the The Booksmugglers!

(thanks as always to our friend Paul Weimer, who helps out with the kitchen cleaning–this time it was lots of sugar sticking to everything!)

Podcast #035: Schadenfreude Burrito – Cooking the Books with John Scalzi

---

John has obligingly shared with us his recipe for Schadenfreude Pie, discussed during the podcast!

“Let’s face it, schadenfreude is a dark emotion. It deserves a dark pie. Here are your ingredients.”

1 cup dark brown sugar
1 cup dark corn syrup
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips or chunks
3 large eggs (I used brown eggs in keeping with the spirit of things, but white eggs are fine)
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 splash Kahlua or other coffee liqueur
1 graham cracker pie crust (9 or 10 inches). Choose regular or chocolate graham cracker crust according to taste.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees (Fahrenheit). Melt butter in largish mixing bowl; add in corn syrup, molasses, brown sugar and cinnamon. Mix well. Melt chocolate; fold into existing mixture. Add eggs and Kahlua; mix vigorously until mix has an even consistency. Pour into pie crust (depending on size of crust you may have a little filling mix left over).
Shove into oven, center of middle rack, and bake for about 45 minutes. At 45 minutes, poke pie with butter knife. If butter knife comes out clean, your pie is done; otherwise give it about another five minutes.
Once you take the pie out of the oven, let it set at least 20 minutes before you dig in. It’s really good when still warm, however.
Serving recommendations: small slices (this is an awesomely rich pie) and an ice cold glass of milk to go with it.

---

John Scalzi writes books, which, considering where you’re reading this, makes perfect sense. He’s best known for writing science fiction, including the New York Times bestseller “Redshirts,” which won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. He also writes non-fiction, on subjects ranging from personal finance to astronomy to film, was the Creative Consultant for the Stargate: Universe television series. He enjoys pie, as should all right thinking people. You can get to his blog by typing the word “Whatever” into Google. No, seriously, try it. You can find him on twitter @scalzi, and elsewhere.

---

Cooking the Books is a mostly-monthly podcast hosted by Fran Wilde and Aliette de Bodard.

Check out our archives.

Pleased as punch that both The House of Binding Thorns and “Children of Thorns, Children of Water” are on the Locus Recommended Reading List, alongside a bunch of really stellar stuff.

And a reminder you can read “Children of Thorns, Children of Water” for free at Uncanny Magazine!

Meanwhile, I’ll go back to the grind of working on this book °_°