Everything You Need to Know About My Next Novel!
It’s almost six months before my next novel comes out on Aug. 19. Lessons in Magic and Disaster is my first novel for adults in ages, and I’m tremendously proud of it. I poured so much of my heart into this book (but don’t worry, I put down tarps first.)
What’s it about? Jamie is a grad student in English lit, but she’s also a witch. Her mother, Serena, has been hiding from the world in an old one-room schoolhouse for nearly seven years, ever since Serena’s wife died and her life imploded. One day, Jamie decides to bring Serena back to the world the only way she knows how: by teaching her mom how to do magic.
Meanwhile, there’s a series of flashbacks to Serena’s past as a lesbian activist in the 1990s, and how Serena met her wife Mae. We see them trying to juggle family and career and deal with pervasive homophobia while trying to raise young Jamie.
Plus there’s a whole dark academia subplot! Jamie is writing her PhD dissertation about a mysterious novel from 1747 called Emily. Jamie stumbles on evidence of the identity of Emily’s anonymous author, which leads to shocking evidence about a scandal from the 1730s that had startling — and magical — consequences.
These three strands — Jamie teaching her mother, Serena’s past, and the secrets of Emily — come together in an ending where Jamie has to understand just why her mom can’t move forward, and how the lessons from the distant past can help her repair things.
You can pre-order this book from Bookshop, Powell’s, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and elsewhere. And if you want it signed, personalized and doodled, please pre-order from Green Apple and put personalization details in the comments field. (Green Apple ships all over the USA!) I also really appreciate anyone who requests this book from their library.
I’m going to divide the rest of this post into four short (I promise!) sections: hype, praise, real talk, and bribery.
Hype
There are a few passages of Lessons in Magic and Disaster that still make me cry when I re-read them (that honestly never happens!), but also a lot of parts that always make me laugh my ass off. I think this is the warmest book I’ve written since All the Birds in the Sky. It touches on grief and queer generational trauma, but it’s also a fundamentally hopeful book about healing and helping others to heal.
I fell in love with the idea of a young person teaching an older person to do magic — I’ve read many books where an elderly wizard teaches a younger person, but never the other way around. And everybody over a certain age has had to teach their parent(s) how to do something. I started working on Lessons seriously in 2020, and it took on a much deeper meaning in the process of helping me get through a lot of upsetting shit.
Basically, if Never Say You Can’t Survive was the theory, Lessons in Magic and Disaster is the practice.
I also got sucked into researching women writers of the mid-eighteenth century — contrary to what I was taught in college, there were a ton of women writing novels and plays in the 1730s and 1740s, and they were hugely popular and influential. There were so many brazen women who rebelled, in small ways and large, against the rising conservatism of the post-Restoration era. (Expect a lot of newsletters over the next few months about some of the stories I discovered.)
Also, Lessons in Magic and Disaster is the gayest thing I’ve ever written. Pretty much all of the characters are queer, and it traces the fight for LGBTQIA+ liberation from the 1730s to the 1990s to the present. There are protests against gay-bashing and transphobia. We see the trans and queer community coming together to shelter and uplift vulnerable people. It’s joyously, defiantly queer in a way that feels like a bigger deal now than when I wrote it.
At the same time, I’ve had a lot of conversations about how this really feels like the kind of gentle, friendly book that your mom’s book club could absolutely enjoy.
Most of all, Lessons in Magic and Disaster is about healing and letting yourself want things again — and what it means to want, and where “wanting” comes from. This is a book about having a healthy relationship with desire in the wake of trauma and loss.
Praise
Here’s what folks have said so far:
“Lessons in Magic and Disaster has everything I like: an utterly absorbing story, a huge heart, emotional intelligence, the real problems and delights of queer families and communities, a book-within-a-book, a couple of graduate students, and legit queer magick.” — Andrea Lawlor
“The song of resistance and mutual care echoes through this novel just as our trauma and the community we build to survive it echoes through the generations, reminding us: we have always been here; we will always take care of each other. A book for our times — and for all the times before this." — Nicola Griffith
“Lessons in Magic and Disaster will conjure a wickedly brilliant spell.” — Amber Tamblyn
“Charlie Jane Anders has a near witch-like ability to orchestrate unexpected threads and thoughts into moving together as one enchanted whole.” – Torrey Peters
“This novel is a fantasy, a literary mystery, a story of family and romance and community that conjures an all-encompassing world where the best things happen when we lead with trust and the desire to do good.” — Meredith Talusan.
"Charlie Jane Anders writes the kind of stories that break your heart and expand your mind simultaneously. I am a proud fan.” — Janelle Monáe
Real talk
You know how your favorite TV show got canceled after one season? Hell, these days, your favorite TV show probably got canceled after only a few episodes had appeared, before anyone had a chance to find out about it.
That’s kind of how it is with book publishing these days, too.
A book gets a very brief chance to prove itself. It’s not like the old days, when books could slowly find an audience over time. (With a few notable exceptions.) Since the pandemic, indie bookstores seem to be much more ruthless about taking books off the shelves quickly if they’re not breaking out. A lot more sales come from “backlist,” meaning older books that are already popular. Bigger retailers and online booksellers also seem to be stocking fewer books and shrinking their warehouse space.
The only way to get around this situation is to have robust pre-orders. Pre-orders let booksellers know that there’s a lot of interest in an upcoming book, and they also guarantee that there will decent sales on day one. (Since every single pre-order is counted as a sale when the book comes out.) When you pre-order a book, you’re giving a present to your future self and also raising the chances that other people will get to find out about a book.
Lessons in Magic and Disaster is my first adult novel since The City in the Middle of the Night in 2019. That’s my fault: I wrote a young adult trilogy, which involved a ton of worldbuilding, research and careful crafting of space battles. I also worked on some TV shows, wrote some comics, did a book of writing advice, co-taught a TED class about creativity, organized events and volunteered, and did a ton of other things. I also wanted to take my time with Lessons in Magic and Disaster and make sure it was the best version of the book it could possibly be.
The upshot is, I’m feeling a bit like I need to prove myself as an adult author all over again — and I’m a tad scared of getting sent to the Island of Misfit Authors. (It’s not a tropical island, more like an ice floe.)
So yeah, if Lessons in Magic and Disaster sounds like something that could nourish you, please pre-order it now. (Or request it from your local library.) You’ll be making a huge difference and getting a book I’m ridic proud of.
Bribery
If you pre-order Lessons in Magic and Disaster, please upload a screenshot of your receipt at this Google form. (Or if you don’t have a google account, then you can email the receipt to limadcopies@gmail.com, but the form is way better.) And please provide a valid email address.
A few days after Lessons comes out, everyone who pre-ordered the book will get a special treat in their inbox: a PDF of exclusive goodies associated with my 2016 novel All the Birds in the Sky. This PDF will include:
some deleted scenes, which were cut from the book purely for length reasons. They include some super fun moments, as well as the origin stories of some supporting characters.
the alternate ending of All the Birds in the Sky, which is even weirder and more over-the-top than the ending I finally went with. (I pared it back a lot!)
I’ve been working steadily on a sequel to All the Birds, tentatively called All the Seeds in the Ground. You’ll get the first 10,000 words of that book, which form a complete story but also set up the rest of the eventual book.
I’m also trying to figure out if I can do a physical reward for people who pre-order Lessons from select indie bookstores, but that’s a work in progress. But this PDF reward is something I’m definitely going to do — it’s already close to being ready.
Thanks so much to everyone who’s already pre-ordered Lessons in Magic and Disaster or picked up my other books. It means countless worlds to me. I cannot wait to share this new book with all of you.
Music I’m Listening To Right Now
Cymande are a Caribbean-British funk band that released a few albums in 1973 and 1974. I’m mostly familiar with their most famous tunes, like “Bra,” “Fug” and “Brothers on the Slide,” which regularly appeared on compilations of classic breakbeats. (A breakbeat is the part of the song where it breaks down to just drums and percussion.) They were sampled by absolutely everyone back in the day. Here’s a pretty in-depth article about them from the NY Times.
Anyway, Cymande just released their first new music in fifty years, an album called Renascence. Here they are performing on CBS over the weekend:
I’ve been listening to Renascence a lot this past week, and it’s pretty great overall. They definitely lean into the “breakbeats” thing — almost every song is carried by frenetic drumming, with lots of hi-hat and snare and general groove, plus heavy percussion. On most songs, the bass is extremely minimalist, maybe just playing a single note on the one and then stepping away for the rest of the measure, and the guitar riffs are also quite simple. On the high end, there are horns, keyboards, strings and sweet vocals that remind me a bit of Frankie Beverly. I love a bass player who goes all out, Larry Graham-style, but Renascence shows just how much a bass player can accomplish with just a single laid-back strum. (There’s definitely no thumping or plucking going on here.)
The tone of Renascence is, umm… kind of sad? It feels like an album about trying to hold on to hope and community in the face of crushing disappointment. It starts with a song called “Chasing an Empty Dream,” where the lyrics are all about wondering if everything has been in vain. Toward the end, there’s a song called “Darkest Night,” about going through darkness. And yet a lot of the lyrics reach for hope and idealism. I guess Renascence was recorded several years ago, when it had a limited vinyl release, but it feels very much like an album about 2025. It’s very sweet/soothing and full of frenetic drum hooks, but also kind of sad and devastating.