on spindles and mirrors
my second novella—A Mirror Mended, the equally unpronounceable sequel to A Spindle Splintered, and the end of the duology—came out yesterday. it has a gorgeous cover and incredible illustrations and everyone is being so unspeakably nice.
but like—
it feels like a funny time to have a book come out, if i’m being honest, especially a peppy fairy tale novella. i mean, in general, we’re all skating on a thin layer of normalcy (laundry, taxes, arguing with the five year old about the lyrics to the Wild Kratts theme song, etc) just above the abyss (climate change, domestic terror, assaults on basic bodily autonomy, the return of original flavor homophobia), but there’s nothing quite like tweeting a link to buy your book—party emoji, heart emoji, exclamation point!—and then switching tabs to finish reading that awful article about a sandy hook denier.
not to bring down the mood! i am already feeling this celebratory publication announcement sliding off the rails! how hard is it to just post the cute tour graphic and some indie links and go to sleep! but honestly, the mood has been bleak lately; the abyss has been gazing also into me (seasonal abyssal disorder).
and i think it’s seeped into the way i talk about these books. oh, they’re just like, little fairy tales, i say, not meeting your eyes. i say they’re silly, sugary, quick, breezy, light, corny, fun, but what i mean is don’t worry! they don’t matter, and i know it.
and in the grand scheme of things, like, i’m right. this is not a but-then-i-realized-the-power-of-fiction-to-change-the-world post! i am not making a literal difference, metaphorically! if we all spent three hours calling our representatives about gun legislation that would obviously be several orders of magnitude more important than catching up with my little bi disaster girl and her hijinks through space and time.
and yet. these books—these little fairy tales, these silly, sappy, light, corny, casually queer stories, where my childhood lore is softened and heated in my hands, like putty, and made into whatever shape i want—may not matter in the grand scheme of things, but god, they matter to me. writing them felt suspiciously easy, strangely urgent, vital to me in ways i’m not going to publicly speculate about. (if i could just say things flat-out, head-on, unadorned—well, maybe i wouldn’t have needed to rewrite a disney princess about it).
there’s this over-shared eb white quote: “all that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.” and like, is it cheeseball as hell? yes. is it true to me? yes.
in this bad and sick world, these novellas are like a child’s christmas list of things i still love. i still love fairy tales and princesses and queens. i love memes that are old enough to betray my age. i love foul-mouthed girls and hot older women with mean streaks. i love big-swing bananas genre storytelling wrapped around the gooey-est, most heartfelt caramely center.
i love these books, actually, and i hope you do to. anyway, here’s a cute tour graphic!!
Tuesday, June 14th: Richmond VA, Fountain Bookstore, 6:00pm EST: https://www.fountainbookstore.com/harrowmacallister061422
Thursday, June 16th: Davidson NC, Main Street Books, 7:00 pm EST: https://mainstreetbooksdavidson.com/events/17714
Saturday, June 18th: Charlottesville VA, New Dominion Bookshop, 4:00pm EST: https://ndbookshop.com/events/alix-e-harrow-a-mirror-mended/
Friday, June 24th: DC, Politics and Prose: 7pm EST: https://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/alix-e-harrow-mirror-mended-conn-ave
in other news
a spindle splintered is shortlisted for the Hugo and Locus awards, and my short story, Mr. Death, is up for the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus awards. i…it’s late and i don’t have anything to say about all of that. the feelings are too big and unwieldy and gooey. i feel like a westworld robot being shown a cell phone (“that doesn’t look like anything to me”).
i’m reading r.f. kuang’s Babel and i’m in agonies. nothing since jonathan strange & mr. norrell has lit up my chicago style brain quite like this.
everything, everywhere, all at once is genuinely as good as everyone on twitter said it would be. that’s only happened on two previous occasions in all of recorded time (fury road and spider-verse).