Hello, friends. My new novel Mercutio comes out in Canada in four days, but I have heard pre-orders have arrived already, and I even spotted the book in a store here in Ottawa this week, so … it’s here! I have some events coming up to welcome Mercutio to bookshelves here in Canada; some are still being confirmed, but I’m putting the details for a few of them at the bottom of this newsletter.

It is my favourite of my books, an origin story from the medieval roots of Romeo & Juliet, influenced by all the many stage Mercutios since, with their wit and tragedy and queerness and painful affections. One thing that has brought me joy, as the book makes its way into readers’ homes, is how often people quote my favourite lines from it: “Mercutio has never been in love. Not unless you count a boy whose face he can barely remember. Not unless you count the world.” Please do spread the word by writing a review, telling a friend or requesting it from your local library if you can. And thank you.

We lost John Crowley last week, and I’ve been feeling gently bereft, not quite sure how to process it. I never met him. I only started reading his work a little less than a decade ago, around the time Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruins of Ymr came out — and around the time I started publishing novels myself. Little, Big was not formative for me as it was for many of my peers. I never encountered Little, Big in the Winnipeg Public Library, the source of most of my reading in the first two decades of my life, so I only read it a year or two ago. Bad luck of the draw.

Or maybe not such bad luck; I don’t mind the fact that I was already well into maturity and a publishing career when I started to read Crowley. He was a difficult author for marketers to classify (as explored in this great 2000 essay by James Hynes; thanks to Liz Hand for linking to it on Bluesky after Crowley’s death.) I often feel that I could have made my career easier on myself by writing books that fit more squarely into literary or commercial fiction, or into historical fiction or fantasy. When I read Crowley, I’m reminded of why I wanted to do this in the first place, and it’s not to sell lots of books. Selling lots of books would enable me to write more of them within the years given to me, but it’s the means, not the end.

My favourite of Crowley’s books (at least if you ask me to name one right this second) is probably the one published as Ægypt, also titled The Solitudes (it’s the first of a series of four). That’s where the subject line of this email comes from. It’s a novel full of texts and metatexts and layers and connections across time (impulses that show up in my work too). I love how patient that novel is, how it unpicks the characters’ psyches without any rush at all, and then begins to reweave them into longer histories.

The 16th century magician John Dee and his scryer Edward Kelley are key characters in Ægypt, and they’re also pivotal characters in the book I have coming out in 2028, which is called The Realm Invisible. I’ve been describing that novel as John Crowley meets John Le Carré; the novel is syncretic in a Crowleyesque way, drawing on folklore and occultism and poking at philosophy (especially scholasticism). “There is more than one history of the world” could be the motto for everything I’ve tried to do. Obviously, I am no John Crowley, but I’m grateful to have him as one of my guiding stars, and I can’t quite believe there will never be another Crowley novel. My sincere condolences to his friends and family.

My wonderful publicist at HarperCollins Canada, Lauren Morocco, has been putting together a tour in Ontario to celebrate the publication of Mercutio in Canada. There are some events still being confirmed or have yet to be announced (and I don’t want to scoop the organizers). I’ll have a complete list in my next newsletter, but in the meantime, I wanted to give a heads-up now about some events that are confirmed. All the below are ticketed in advance, so do book ahead if you’d like to come.

Sunday, Sept. 20: Smiths Falls Literary Festival

Thursday, Sept. 24: Stratford Festival

Thursday, Oct. 1: Kingston Writers Festival

And on Monday, Sept. 28, I’m the host for R.F. Kuang’s event at the Ottawa International Writers festival.

Stay tuned! I’ll have a few more things in southern and eastern Ontario and in Toronto to announce soon.