on second books
news
my second novel, The Once and Future Witches, is out today in the US (and Thursday in the UK)! buy it wherever books are sold, but maybe especially from your local indie! it’s an indienext pick and an amazon book of the month and an apple book of the month and a huffpost pick of the month, and it has three starred reviews from bookpage, booklist, and library journal, and i was interviewed on shondaland, and some very extremely cool people blurbed it.
of second books
all my writer friends assured me that second books were hard, and i did not beleive them. i thought writing books was like doing cartwheels—once you get over that first nervy plunge, the next one is easy. (i have never actually done a cartwheel). but it turns out it’s more like driving to a new city with no map and one headlight. the first time, when you’re young and stupid, it’s sort of fun. you get lost, but it doesn’t really matter, because there’s no hurry and no one’s waiting up for you, and aren’t you sort of brave and admirable just for making the attempt? the second time you have a deadline and a crowd waiting at the finish line and a desperate desire not to let anyone down, none of which actually help you drive the car at all.
stepping away from this strained metaphor: i also had a newborn and a two year old and a medium-sized mental health crisis and a bunch of family drama and a big complicated book that needed lots of research and in conclusion everyone was right: it was hard.
but now….i’m here. it’s over. i can drive off into the sunset, headed for a new horizon, and leave this book—this messy, thorny, big, angry sprawl of a book—to you.
further reading
p. djeli clark’s Ring Shout is also on sale today! as is rebecca roanhorse’s Black Sun, c.l. polk’s The Midnight Bargain, and trung le nguyen’s The Magic Fish, a gorgeous graphic novel about fairy tales and finding yourself. truly, we are living in a golden age of SFF.
my friend sam interviewed me for berea college, where i got my undergrad! and it’s actually one of my favorite interviews, bc he’s the best.
not to get preachy, but if you haven’t double and triple-checked your voter registration, NOW’S THE TIME Y’ALL. alice paul did not spend seven months in prison so yall could sit this one out.