Category: announcements

Readings From the Treehouse

personby Crow, Editor
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Logo for Virtual Events from FOGcon

Treehouse residents Nancy Jane Moore, Madeleine E. Robins, and Gillian Polack are all reading on Sunday, July 25, beginning at 5 pm PDT as part of FOGcon’s Authors Read.

Nancy is a featured reader along with San Francisco author Claire Light, and Madeleine and Gillian are part of the rapid-fire readers participating in FOGcon’s ongoing virtual event program.

The current schedule is three rapid readers, followed by Claire, then a break before three more rapid readers. Nancy will close the readings. There will be time for questions and the event will close with breakout rooms with each of the featured readers.

All of this takes place on Zoom. Register here to get the Zoom link.

Author’s Copies!

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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For the Good of the Realm author's copies

I finally got my author’s copies of For the Good of the Realm. (The post office seems to be particularly slow in sending books these days.)

So wonderful to finally hold the print version in my hands. I’ve had the ebook versions since right before it came out, but while they’re great for reading, you can’t hold them.

If you want one of your own, you can get one directly from Aqueduct Press, from Bookshop, or from the usual places.

Travelling as the Green Children Do

personby Gillian Polack
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I’m mostly typing with my left hand still. One day my right hand will heal, just as, in Disney’s universe, one day a prince will come. In the meantime, something else is on the way. Let me give you a link: https://madnessheart.press/product/the-green-children-help-out/?v=6cc98ba2045f

It’s my new novel.

Some years ago I started work on an alternate universe where the English Jewish population is significantly larger than the one we know, where there are many types of magic and much administration to keep it polite and then I thought, “I want a superhero novel set in that universe.” More than that, I wanted the superheroes to come from our universe. I set up a pocket universe to bridge the two and wondered what it would be like if a twelve year old Australian girl entered by mistake and never left. I wrote a novella to test the idea and then I went to France in 2018, to research it.

I researched many other things at the same time, for I’m still and always an historian and I had many questions I needed answers for. My burning one (not for the novel) was what happens one hundred years after land is destroyed by war. How do people find culture, rebuild, talk about the past? I’ll write about my discoveries one day.

What I wrote into my novel was modern Amiens, and a town in my little pocket universe. The town’s architecture came from what I learned about post-war building and the dances and culture I gave the good people of Tsarfat began there but included more recent French culture, both the good and the bad.

While I wrote the novel I dreamed of a bal musette in a country where people have green skin. I dreamed of what powers people could win by going through a dangerous door, and I listed all the different kinds of magic England could have based upon its history and historical beliefs.

This is the moment before my dreams reach the outside world.

Each novel has its own path in the outside world. I have a deep and vast desire with this one that readers will take my dreams and add their own, that they will walk in my France and my England and my Tsarfat. I took hundreds of pictures as my world came to life in my mind. To make it easier, I plan to share my pictures, some on Patreon in a few days, others on any website or at any online convention that wants to join my magic journey.

Why do I have this deep and vast desire? An imagined journey is the perfect way to explore in this difficult time. I love the thought of safe excitement in the strange time we live in.

For the Good of the Realm Is Out

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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For the Good of the RealmFor the Good of the Realm made its official bow into the world today (June 1). This is my second novel, a tale of swordswomen and witches that owes a debt of gratitude to Alexandre Dumas and The Three Musketeers.

It’s from Aqueduct Press. You can order the trade paperback or ebook editions (both epub and mobi) directly from them. Here’s an excerpt to whet your appetite.

Here’s what some others have had to say about the book:

Publishers Weekly: “This lighthearted, female-led fantasy adventure from Moore (The Weave) follows a pair of Queen’s Guards—staid, circumspect Anna and feisty, impulsive Asamir—as they become em–broiled in the machinations of the rulers of Grande Terre. As the threat of war looms and a sinister undercurrent of forbidden magic becomes harder for Anna to ignore, the two women must out-fight and out-think the enemies of the realm in a series of duels and cloak-and-dagger intrigues…. With a principal cast of mostly women, this is sure to appeal to readers looking for stories of empowered female characters that go beyond simply giving them swords.”

Lesley Wheeler, author of Unbecoming: “For the Good of the Realm is a sparkling tournament of a novel, full of thrills as well as feats of storytelling bravado. Moore has invented a feminist medieval otherworld that is egalitarian in its sword and sorcery, yet political intrigue ultimately rules as Anna, a stalwart member of the Queen’s Guard, collaborates with a range of surprising characters to foil the nefarious plots of a power-hungry Hierofante. Spirited and funny, this is a great read.”

Tansy Rayner Roberts, author of Musketeer Space and The Creature Court Trilogy: “For the Good of the Realm is a splendid, swashbuckling romp that captures the very spirit of the Musketeers. The author weaves palace intrigue, swordplay, romance, and divided loyalties into a deeply satisfying fantasy adventure with women at the center of the narrative, wielding and negotiating power.”

In addition to the publisher’s website, you can order this book through:

My Bookshop page

My neighborhood bookstore, East Bay Booksellers

Indiebound

Powells

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

There Be Dragons, Yes, Dragons in the Stars!

personby Jeffrey A. Carver
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Dragons everywhere! Dragons in the Stars: A Novel of the Star Rigger Universe has just appeared in its first new print edition in… well, I don’t want to think how many years. Never mind that—here it is! If you’re one of those people who likes paper books better than ebooks, look no further, because I think this is a pretty frickin’ nice edition, if I do say so myself. And presentation aside, dragons roaming the interstellar Flux is just not something you see every day. Continue reading “There Be Dragons, Yes, Dragons in the Stars!”…

Even in a Little Thing: On Turning Sixty

personby Gillian Polack
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We were talking in the Treehouse. The things we were talking about were important, and they got me thinking about a bunch of decisions I’ve made incrementally over the last two months and why I made them.

First, let’s start with next Sunday. I turn 60. I have some physical mobility, but not a vast amount, so I had planned to go overseas and celebrate my birthday with 60 events. I wanted to see friends, attend science fiction conventions, eat new food, visit museums, take pictures of interesting places and a whole lot more. Sixty fascinating events, all of the kind that I would treasure forever. Part of it was going to Italy for Eurocon, which would have given me about thirty events, for I’ve never been to Italy and I have a long list of places I want to see and things I want to do there. I was brushing up my Italian for it, for I can read the language but can’t speak it.

Then the pandemic happened. The pandemic is still happening. No big parties. No travel. This led to my decisions.

What were they?

First, I’m still going to have sixty joyous moments. Three of them are planned for this weekend, for my actual birthday. If I’m lucky, I’ll get more.

For the other events, I’m not putting a ‘finish’ date on it. I won’t get them within three months. They may take three years.

I’m about to hunt for the prettiest notebook I possess (I collect notebooks for my fiction and use the right one for the right project, so I have some choices) and when I find it, I will take my calligraphy pens and create a pretty front page. After that, every time I have a wonderful time, I will write it up, and that notebook will be a record of my birthday.

Why am I doing this? Why am I not just saying, “I’ll have a nice weekend, and that’ll do?”

Too many big things have been made small and a bit dark by the pandemic. I’ve won awards, for instance, and been unable to go to the ceremonies and have yet to see the actual trophies. The pandemic has caused so many friends to miss so much, that I see, every day, how people are dealing with the slight tarnishing of the everyday that creates our pandemic year. We have more sorrow (I’ve lost so many people I care about) and more stress and… this is where I introduce you to one of my favourite poems. It begins, “Even in a Little Thing” and you can find it here: https://starrigging.blogspot.com/2015/11/return-to-islands-by-arthur-grimble.html

My events are a reminder to me that this is a difficult decade, but that, since I find much of my joy in small things, I can still be happy. I need the reminder. I need sixty reminders. I need them because I was losing sight of the joy of jumping in autumn leaves or of drinking hot chocolate. Sixty larger occasions representing one big life change will push my mind back to where it has found joy in darkness at other times. I will return to myself.

This is the best gift I can give myself this year.

The best gift I can give you at this moment is to include you in my celebration. If you’re reading this (whether or not you know me) and you send me an email address, I will send you one of my stories and maybe a little cookbook I made for this same purpose when life took a turn in the 1990s. If you’re in Australia, I will send the story (without the cookbook) by snail mail if you send me a street address. In with the story there may be a couple of trinkets. I’m happy to send stories (and cookbooks and trinkets!) to sixty people, so feel free to share this with someone who would smile at this little thing.

You can send me contact details through the form on my website or through DMs on Twitter or Facebook.

Nancy Jane Moore Is Reading This Week

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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I’m doing two readings online this week.

The first is on Wednesday, April 21, at Story Hour, at 7 PM PDT on Zoom or Facebook Live.

I’ll be reading “Thank God for the Road,” which appears in the new anthology edited by Shannon Page Black-Eyed Peas on New Year’s Day: An Anthology of Hope.

I’ll also be reading “The Founding of New Crockett, Texas,” which appeared as part of the Uneven Earth website’s Not Afraid of the Ruins series and will be included in a print anthology of those stories coming out later this year.

On Sunday, April 25, I’ll be part of the FOGcon Authors Read! It runs from 5-7 PM PDT and is headlined by Marie Brennan and Effie Seiberg. I’ll be doing a five-minute selection from For the Good of the Realm, my novel coming out June 1 from Aqueduct Press. To attend, sign up here.

Treehouse Writers Out and About

personby Crow, Editor
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Writers hanging out in the Treehouse have been sighted out and about on the Web this month.

Writers Drinking CoffeeNancy Jane Moore was just interviewed on the podcast Writers Drinking Coffee about everything from her forthcoming novel For the Good of the Realm to the poetry class she took at the 92nd Street Y in New York City (with assistance from Zoom).

Earlier this month, Madeleine Robins talked on the same podcast about Race, Romance, and Regency.

Meanwhile, since March is Women’s History Month, Gillian Polack has been hosting writers discussing that subject on her blog. Nancy Jane wrote there about being in college marching band and the relevance of Joanna Russ’s story “When It Changed” to that experience. Meanwhile, Gillian herself wrote about her experiences in debate and how they tie into current political upheaval in Australia.

And over at Strange Horizons, Judith Tarr has an essay on the importance of care in science fiction, a very topical subject these days.

Cover Reveal: For the Good of the Realm

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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My fantasy novel For the Good of the Realm is coming out from Aqueduct Press on June 1. Here’s the cover, designed by Aqueduct’s Kath Wilham using art by Ruby Rae Jones.

Cover of For the Good of the Realm

I am very happy with the cover along with being very happy to have a book coming out. Continue reading “Cover Reveal: For the Good of the Realm“…

A New Book

personby Crow, Editor
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coverThe humans in the treehouse think they can sneak things past us, but we crows see all. One of the humans, Pati Nagle, has just published a book, Intermezzo: Household Matters by Patrice Greenwood. That’s not the name she uses around here, but humans are funny sometimes.

This is a short book, all about characters in a series of mysteries. Here’s the announcement she tried to sneak by us.

She calls this an ebook, which seems to mean that it exists only in the imagination, but she says there will be a version on real paper soon, with a shiny cover. Those are more fun for us.