Writer's Grove

Golly gee whillikers, where to begin? (Did I spell whillikers correctly? What is a whilliker anyway?)

Let’s start with the happy news that INK & SIGIL is now available in paperback, and therefore also at a reduced ebook price. And, if you’re in the UK (or large swaths of Europe), the ebook price is mega-reduced down to the minimum, 99p, for a limited time! Jump on that, y’all! Tell your friends, start a book club, do all the happy things!

Had some folks ask if INK & SIGIL will ever be in mass market paperback, and the answer is nay, alas, it shan’t. Mass market is slowly going the way of the dodo. In fact, the Iron Druid Chronicles will be reissued soonish in trade paperback with all-new covers, because (Gadzooks!) come May it will be ten years since HOUNDED hit the shelves, and ten-year anniversaries are commonly used as excuses for new art and so on. So this means that you will get new art (YAY!) and you will also be able to grab a matched set with INK & SIGIL (DOUBLE YAY!!).

Many thanks, by the way, to everyone who’s jumped on INK & SIGIL already and reviewed it and spread the word. I’m having a blast with Al, Buck, and Nadia, and would love to keep writing more. The only way I get to do that is if y’all buy the books, so it means the world. Reviews help tremendously.

In other news (so many updates)…

My first foray into science fiction is now sort of released! I’m super excited about that and stoked at the kind reviews it’s getting, but probably need to explain the “sort of.”

A QUESTION OF NAVIGATION was supposed to release on Jan. 31. But due to unfortunate snafu at the printer—pandemic delays and whatnot—it’s not going to be ready for another few days, or possibly weeks. They are working to get it done as soon as possible. So all your preorders will be fulfilled, whether it’s print or ebook—thank you to everyone who has already done so!—and if you preorder now, you won’t have long to wait. But! If you’re an audiobook listener, you don’t have to wait at all. Because that’s a separate deal—an independent deal, in fact, in which royalties are split evenly betwixt myself and the narrator, Luke Daniels. So A QUESTION OF NAVIGATION is ready to go now in audio, and Luke does his typical brilliant job. It’s a very rare case in which audio is available before print. So it’s sort of available now.

Reminder that the print edition is a bit more expensive because it’s signed, numbered, and limited—once they’re gone, they’re gone forever and therefore valuable. You can preorder the print directly from Subterranean Press, which packages your stuff SO carefully, as they know these are precious items, and of course you can preorder the ebook wherever you buy ebooks!

What am I working on now? Well, currently I’m doing the page proofs for PAPER & BLOOD, the sequel to INK & SIGIL. It will be out on August 10, and you can preorder now (including audio!) wherever you like to buy books. If you click right here you’ll land on a page full of convenient links to vendors—your preorder is so helpful and appreciated! Plus you’ll see the amazing cover art. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do signed copies or any events yet, but am fairly certain we can do signed bookplates as I did for INK & SIGIL.

I’m also working on A CURSE OF KRAKENS, the final book of the Seven Kennings trilogy. I’ve recently gotten some very kind emails regarding A BLIGHT OF BLACKWINGS and I’m so glad to hear that folks are connecting with it.

I’m baking a lot and also experimenting with ceviche and other fish dishes, reading some good books and watching Ted Lasso over and over again. My newsletter keeps you up on all of my random pursuits in addition to book stuff in case you’d like to subscribe.

And that’s all, friends! Happy reading, and I hope you and yours are well and will remain so.

Delicious, Thy Name is Moo Shu Pork Tacos

If your tongue is longing for something you can make at home that feels fancy but isn’t that tough to make—I got you covered. These goodies are good.

Deity of Choice, Take the Wheel

Shortly after I tried moo shu pork tacos for the first time, my facehole periodically sang a song of yearning, urging me to make them again. I was introduced to them through Hello Fresh, a meal delivery service where they give you the stuff and you cook it up. They let you buy it again every few months but that is not enough, because of the aforementioned song of yearning. So I needed to learn how to make them on my own. This recipe will easily feed 3-4, and if you have just two peeps you’re definitely gonna have leftovers. Let’s do this.

PREP THESE THINGS

• Shred half (or maybe just a quarter?) of a smol red cabbage
• Slice some fresh mushrooms, white or cremini, you pick. OR CHEAT and buy a package of washed and sliced mushrooms. I won’t tell.
• Chop up some green onions, like two or three of ’em
• Thinly slice a few radishes
• Mix 1 tablespoon ground ginger and garlic powder in a wee bowl, like a ramekin or something. You’re gonna deploy that soon, but set aside for the moment. Feel free, however, to pay your spice mix tiny compliments while you work on the rest of this. Just lavish it with affirmations. “Aww, yeahhh, you’re so damn tasty,” is really fun to say out loud without warning, because if anyone else is in the house, they’re gonna ask you about it. “You’re finger-lickin’ good, I can tell. You complete me.”
• Mix 1/3 cup of hoisin sauce, 1 tablespoon white vinegar, and 1 tablespoon of soy sauce in another wee bowl, but maybe bigger than a ramekin

HAVE THESE THINGS HANDY

• a pound of ground pork, or else some pork tenderloin cut into strips
• a tablespoon of sesame oil
• flour tortillas you like—white or whole wheat, you do you. Taco size rather than burrito size, unless you want to make a burrito out of this, and then a taco-sized tortilla would be inadequate
• Sriracha!
• Mayonnaise—whatever kind you like. Vegan. Organic. Half fat. Decaf.

GIT COOKIN’, HOSS

So grab a bigass skillet and do the “medium heat” thing on your stove, which is, I don’t know, 4-6 on the dial? (I think it’s weird how no one really knows what medium heat is.) As it’s warming up, drop a tablespoon of sesame oil in there, then your mushrooms and HALF of the chopped green onions. It’s gonna look massive but don’t worry, it’ll cook down nicely. Roll that all around, get it coated in the sesame oil, let it cook a bit.

Now get a smallish bowl and dollop four spoonfuls of mayo in there. Then squirt some sriracha on it. This is a taste thing. You like it hot? Squirt more. Squirt squirt squirt. Stir!

The redder it is, the spicier it is. We go for a salmon color, I guess, because it’s flavorful without being too spicy. Let that rest.

Check on your shrooms, stir and nudge and coo softly to them. They should have cooked down and look a bit like this before you do the next thing.

The next thing is you add the ground pork or pork strips. I shove the shrooms to one side to start with. Then I sprinkle that moo shu spice mixture (ginger and garlic powder) over the whole shebang. Get that pork cooked so there’s no pink, break it up, mix with the mushrooms, let those spices mingle.

Once that pork is all cooked through, you’re going to add the hoisin/soy/vinegar mixture to the skillet. What shall we call that mixture—Steve? Add Steve to the skillet. Steve is delicious.

Add the red cabbage in there too (and stir it all around to get Steve coating all the goodies. (I didn’t use all the cabbage—I just kinda eyeballed it.) The cabbage will reduce a wee bit and congratulations, folks, you have a skillet full of moo shu taco filling.

Now the fun bit: Nuke a tortilla for 30-35 seconds to get it warm. Slap some moo shu pork on there. Sprinkle green onions (because you saved some!) and deploy radish slices for some cronchy cronch. Dollop with the sriracha mayo, and wow. Enjoy. Shove it in your facehole and then you, too, will be singing songs of yearning later.

Reading of how many meatpacking workers are getting ill (and indeed, dying) because of Covid-19, I have even more reason (besides the health benefits) to avoid meat. Like…I don’t want my demand for steak or chicken to endanger someone, y’know? But I LIKE TACOS. So what can I do? Deploy the shrooms, good sir. DEPLOY THE SHROOMS.

Wordsmith Chuck Wendig has a spiffy recipe for mushroom tacos over on his blog here that’s dang good.

This recipe is a slightly tweaked version of the one created by the outstanding Isabel, who’s working with full-blown grilled portobellos and a bit more cabbage than I could personally handle, and I added cheese because of course I did, but do check out her original here. Do it up right and you should have enough for four peeps.

Your shopping list:

• fresh cremini (or baby bella) mushrooms. Three small packages of them, I guess? 20-30 ounces, whatever the equivalent is. If you can find some all sliced, you’ll save some time, but as ye can see above I bought mine whole and sliced ’em up. We are turbo lucky; there’s a local shroom producer about 10 km away from us so we get amazing mushrooms in our stores.
• buncha cilantro
• small red cabbage
• coupla limes
• four garlic cloves
• 2 bell peppers, whatever color you dig
• optional: Shredded cheese—I like the three-cheese blend that gets marketed as Mexican blend. But leave it if you want this to be vegan.
• tortillas that make you happy. White, wheat, corn, whatever size. You want burrito size instead of taco size? Go for it!

Your pantry item list that you may/may not need to replenish:

• olive oil
• ground chili powder
• salt
• ground cumin
• dried oregano
• mayo or light mayo or fat free this, vegan that, whatever your jam is

OK. First we’re going to make a marinade for the mushrooms. Get a big ol’ mixing bowl and put these goodies in the bottom and whisk together:

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup fresh lime juice (from those coupla limes)
• 1/4 cup minced cilantro, but I just eyeballed it
• four cloves of that garlic, all minced
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon salt. Get fancy if you want. If you use artisanal salt here I think you get to call the whole taco artisanal. Those are the rules.
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano

Now wash and slice your shrooms, or, if you’ve scored sliced cremini shrooms, I guess just dump it in the mixing bowl with the marinade. Get your super clean hands in there and toss them shrooms around and try not to pass out from the heavenly smell. This marinade is just bonkers and your mushrooms are going to soak all those flavors up. Like, it’s right here you know this is going to rock. You can’t screw this up now. So get ’em all coated in the marinade, and then maybe tease your family a bit. SMELL THIS, you say, shoving it under their nose as they’re trying to decorate their home in Animal Crossing. WE’RE GONNA EAT THEM SOON EXCEPT THEY’LL BE HOT. YOU ARE ALLOWED TO PRAISE ME NOW.

Find a bigass nonstick skillet. I have a 12″ one but an 11″ or 10″ will work in a pinch. Medium heat, is, uh…5? Anyway. Not high. Not low. Somewhere in the middle. Get it het up a bit and throw your marinated mushrooms in there. They’ll fill it up pretty good, but don’t worry, they’ll cook down. Give it about ten minutes, stirring occasionally. They’ll look like this when you start out but shrink significantly as they heat up:

While the shrooms are getting hot n’ delicious, chop up those bell peppers and set aside. I used a yeller one and an orange one, but again, you use whatever color you want.

That cabbage? Halve it and halve it again. You just need a quarter cabbage. I can report from experience that if you shout “I CLEAVE MY CABBAGE IN TWAIN!” as you do it you’ll really enjoy yourself and maybe startle your family. Then, since you gotta do it once more, you say “I CLEAVE MY CABBAGE IN TWAIN AGAIN!” and at this point you should get some satisfactory WTFs from your family if the first one didn’t work. Now shred it, or slice thinly, or julienne? See, this is why I don’t write cookbooks. Throw shredded cabbage in a bigass mixing bowl. Chop some cilantro, a quarter cup or so, and then throw in a spoonful of mayo or your favorite equivalent. You just want enough to coat. Toss it around, admire the colors, and then say as pompously as possible, “I HEREBY DUB THEE…SLAW!”

The mushrooms are probably done. Dump ’em in a bowl for a wee while and rinse out the skillet. You’ll notice a buncha delicious juice. Don’t worry about that. In fact, rejoice!

Now throw in a dollop of olive oil in that same but newly-rinsed skillet, get it het up, and toss in your bell peppers and let them cook and soften for about ten minutes. Some of ’em will get a pleasant scorch mark or three and that’s good. Also good is shouting, “I SCORCH THEE! I BLISTER THY SKIN! CHAR, MY VEGGIES, CHAR! AHAHAHAHA!” I dunno, y’all. I just like cultivating the mad scientist vibe when I’m cooking some amazing shit.

When the peppers are ready, throw the mushrooms & juice in with ’em and stir it up, letting everything mix and heat together. You’re basically ready to go. IT’S TACO TIME.

Here’s where you bust out your tortillas of choice and add cheese or not as your heart desires. I sprinkle some cheese on, nuke it 20-30 seconds, then spoon on some mushroom glory and top with slaw. These are SO NOM NOM, and I hope you enjoy them and remain safe and healthy. So say we all.

I’m adapting this post from a Twitter thread so folks can find and follow it a bit easier. If you’re not coming from Twitter, welcome anyway—this is a white chocolate and orange bread recipe my kid made up that will make you glad to be alive. But don’t take my word for it. Behold what Sarah said, the first person besides us to try the recipe:

The smell is absolutely divine and most likely not something you’ve smelled before. The first time Levi made it, Kimberly and I quizzed them intensely:
US: Where did you get this recipe? It smells so good!
LEVI: I just made it up.
US: You did?
LEVI: Yeah. I thought it might work.
US: It works for us, kid! Holy shit! OM NOM NOM
LEVI: Jeez, stop! Just stop. You guys are so weird!

Levi had been taking a cooking class in high school and they covered breadmaking for a week or something like that, but Levi really enjoyed the process and started experimenting with different ingredients. This particular result was an unqualified winner and we’ve been enjoying it for a few years now. You can, of course, try throwing other ingredients into the basic bread. You can try adapting it to be gluten-free. Let me know if your experiments go well! In the interest of science and happiness, though, you owe it to yourself to duplicate these results in your own kitchen. There might be similar recipes out there on the Internets, and yay if you want to google them. But Levi took a swing at this bread improv and hit a home run, so we call it Levi Bread. Step-by-step recipe below!

Ingredients:

• 3 cups of all-purpose flour
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 3/4 cup of water
• 1/4 cup of the milk you like; we use whole milk
• 1/4 cup of buttah
• 1 egg
• 1 pinch of salt, or four shakes, or four grinds of the salt mill
• 1 package of instant or otherwise freakin’ fast-acting yeast
• 1 orange
• 4 ounces of white chocolate chips

Let’s get onnit

Put the milk in a saucepan and warm it up on the stove. Don’t boil it! While that’s going, nuke that muthafuggin buttah or melt it slowly over a fondue bowl, whatevs, and then zest the heck out of that orange so that all those lovely orange peels are taking a bath in melted buttah and feeling luxurious and pampered.

Combine the flour, sugar, yeast, and salt in a mixing bowl and get them acquainted with each other, making sure everyone meets everybody else like those awkward icebreaker exercises the principal makes you do on inservice days. Ask me how many of those I had to endure as a public school teacher. NO DON’T DO THAT I DON’T WANNA REMEMBER

Once the dry ingredients are mixed up, throw in everything else except the white chocolate chips. Water! Milk! Egg! Orange zest bathed in buttah!

Now get yourself a mixer and let it do its thing, getting all the dry ingredients wet until you have a zesty moist blob like your Uncle Jethro or your Aunt Gladys. Everybody has an aunt or an uncle that’s a moist blob so you know what I’m talking about here

OKAY MAYBE THAT’S JUST MY FAMILY

Slap your blob on a sanitary flour-covered surface and start kneading. Add little handfuls of flour as needed until you get the dough to the point where it’s nice and stretchy and still moist like Uncle Jethro, BUT it’s not so moist that it’s sticking to your fingers.

So when it’s all kneaded as much as needed you should have a smol round dough boi of delicious potential. Put him in your mixing bowl and let him rise like a sequel for an hour or so (because sequels are so often rising, have you noticed? As in SEQUEL TO A THING: RISE OF THE THINGS, and I don’t know, I thought it was funny until I explained it). You can cover up the mixing bowl with a kitchen towel or cellophane just so the cat won’t yark a hairball onto it and maybe play it some encouraging music. We wanted our smol dough boi to be excited about getting baked soon so we played it some stoner rock. It should look something like this before you cover it:

Come back after an hour and coo lovingly at your smol dough boi, which is now a much bigger dough boi:

Now comes the super exciting part where you ADD THE WHITE CHOCOLATE CHIPS and to do this properly you have to say NOW I ADD THE WHITE CHOCOLATE CHIPS really loud as you pour them on because I swear it will make you feel so happy. So yeah, the recipe says four ounces because that’s about half a bag of chips. But hey: you do you. If you want fewer chips or more chips, go for it! I won’t tell anybody.

An important side note: White chocolate isn’t really chocolate at all. I mean, it’s a different thing. It doesn’t behave, bake, or taste like chocolate because it isn’t chocolate. So if you want to substitute semi-sweet chocolate chips for white chocolate chips you can certainly do that, but understand up front that the end result won’t look or taste the same as what we’re doing here. It will probably still be good—maybe even great! Just not the same.

Okay, time to smoosh your big dough boi back down to a smol dough boi with white chocolate chips. Knead them in there! You can do it right in the bowl, no need to add more flour or anything.

Now grease up a bread pan with buttah. You can use a cheap aluminum job, or even a muffin tin if you want as Sarah did in the picture up top, but we have an actual bread pan because Levi likes making bread and we like eating it. Lay your smol white chocolate orange dough boi in the pan and let him return to bigness like he’s the end of a trilogy (as in LORD OF THE THINGS: RETURN OF THE THING). This second proofing—or rising, or whatever you want to call it—only needs about 45 minutes. Cover up your pan because if you don’t the cat will fuck it up. And I don’t care if you don’t have a cat, it’ll happen anyway. It is a universal truth that cats will always fuck up uncovered dough bois wherever they may be. You’ve been warned: Cover your dough boi.

Now answer some emails! Scroll through social media! Go online or call your local indie bookstore and preorder my next book so I can buy Levi a taco! But near the end of the second proofing, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Then remove the cover from your dough boi and smile at how winsome and pumped-up he is. Here’s Levi with the loaf right before it goes in the oven (and if you’re wondering, those are Assorted Sharky Bois on one arm and an Octopus Boi on the other):

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes or up to an hour depending on your oven. You want to see a golden brown top crust and those white chocolate chips have toasted brown too. The smell at this point is going to drive you wild and you will understand why this was all worth it. You will simply not get this smell out of any loaf you buy at the store. But check it first! Insert a knife or your favorite switchblade or icepick or something into the center, and if it comes out clean, you should be good to go.

Remove the Levi Bread from the pan, put it on a rack or something to cool for a bit and just get high on the smell. Take pictures of it, share on social media and direct people to this recipe so they can know this bliss too. Spread the love, y’all. It’s seriously the best bread I’ve ever had and my favorite smell in the world. Here’s Sarah’s review after she tried her first slice:

Levi thanks you all in advance for giving their recipe a try and hopes you enjoy it. And if you wind up buying any of my books, Levi also thanks you for indirectly buying them a taco. Peace & happy dough bois, friends.

Super turbo happy to share with you the fun paperback cover for No Country for Old Gnomes, book two in the Tales of Pell! The hardcovers have more of a fairy-tale storybook art style to them, but for the paperbacks we keep the key art silhouettes, then make the background really bright and use a font that emphasizes this read is gonna be honkin’ fun.

Which is a true thing. These books are honkin’ fun. Delilah and I had a blast writing them, and in the July issue of Locus magazine, reviewer Katharine Coldiron said of Gnomes that “…the book is a complete delight, as fluffy and fun as The Lego Movie and as heartfelt as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” I was especially pleased to see that she noted some of the serious stuff we have going on under the surface—like why do so few fantasy heroes ever have to deal with PTSD after the horrors they face?

However, thinking of the Pell series merely as a sendup does it a disservice….The story offers many opportunities for personal growth and reflection, and a realistic take on how the violence and struggle of a quest wears down the questers—a rare quality indeed in fantasy literature.

So here’s the cover for the paperback, which will be out on January 7! Still time for you to get a hardcover copy, and if you want one signed by both of us that benefits charity, snag yours at Worldbuilders Market. Or you can pick up an unsigned copy any old place and have us sign it later, or enjoy the audiobook!

But wait! there’s more

In case you didn’t hear, we have a third book in the Tales of Pell coming out October 8! It’s called The Princess Beard, and you don’t have to read the others first to enjoy it—these are all written in the shared world of Pell but can stand alone and be read in any order. Behold:

How about a little info about it? From the cover copy:

Once upon a time, a princess slept in a magical tower cloaked in thorns and roses.

When she woke, she found no Prince Charming, only a surfeit of hair and grotesquely long fingernails—which was, honestly, better than some creep who acted without consent. She cut off her long braids and used them to escape. But she kept the beard because it made a great disguise.
This is not a story about finding true love’s kiss—it’s a story about finding yourself. On a pirate ship. Where you belong.

But these are no ordinary pirates aboard The Puffy Peach, serving under Filthy Lucre, the one-eyed parrot pirate captain. First there’s Vic, a swole and misogynistic centaur on a mission to expunge himself of the magic that causes him to conjure tea and dainty cupcakes in response to stress. Then there’s Tempest, who’s determined to become the first dryad lawyer—preferably before she takes her ultimate form as a man-eating tree. They’re joined by Alobartalus, an awkward and unelfly elf who longs to meet his hero, the Sn’archivist who is said to take dictation directly from the gods of Pell. Throw in some mystery meat and a dastardly capitalist plot, and you’ve got one Pell of an adventure on the high seas!

Delighted to report that The Princess Beard has already earned a starred review in Booklist! Delilah and I will be doing a few stops for this one along the eastern part of the US, and we hope to see you if you can mark the date on your calendar. We always sign any and all of our books so bring all the things and all your friends. I have dates and locations:

October 7: Doylestown Bookshop in Doylestown, PA, with Chuck Wendig!
October 8: Fountain Books in Richmond, VA!
October 9: Park Road Books in Charlotte, NC!
October 10: Barnes & Noble in Orlando, FL!

Details on times and stuff a bit later. If you preorder from an indie bookstore or anywhere, really, it’s tremendously helpful for a ton of reasons and deeply appreciated. Please enjoy! Order your copy here:
Indiebound Amazon B&N Kobo iBooks Hudson BAM! Chapters/Indigo

Eeeee I’m so excited! It’s Abhi! And a turbo spiffy blackwing on the badge doohickey graphic! IS IT WRONG THAT I WANT AN ENAMEL PIN OF THAT BLACKWING?

Huge thanks to artist Gene Mollica and designer David Stevenson and Metal Editor Tricia Narwani for their work on this!

A bit about the thinking behind it: We wanted to feature Abhinava Khose on this cover because he’s the cool kid who discovered the Sixth Kenning, and while we wanted to echo the design and layout of A Plague of Giants—featuring a single character up close and in partial shadow—we thought it vital to differentiate Abhi from Gorin Mogen. So Abhi is on the other side of the cover, looking in the opposite direction, and he has a hot color filter overlay instead of a cold one. Plus he has the expression of having seen some shit, and while he doesn’t want to start any shit he’ll certainly finish it. I cannot wait for y’all to read this. It’s out in early February! 

Huge, huge thank-yous to everyone who read A Plague of Giants and spread the word, and thanks also to those of you who shot me an email or commented somewhere that you loved it. It makes me happy. I hope this next volume will make you happy!

This picks up right where A Plague of Giants left off, starting with Day 20 of the bard’s tales. You’ll see the return of Abhi and Tallynd du Böll and Gondel Vedd, but also hear tales from other characters who appeared in the first volume, like Hanima Bhandury and Mai Bet Ken and Olet Kanek. And you’ll find out at long last what the Seventh Kenning is!

Pre-orders are so enormously important for reasons that would comprise a much longer blog post, so let me just say this: If you plan on reading it, will you please consider pre-ordering for gigantic buttloads of good karma points? 

You can pre-order A Blight of Blackwings from your independent bookstore through Indiebound, or from Amazon  B&N   Chapters/Indigo  Kobo

Thank y’all so much! I hope you dig it!

I’m riding my bike through the trees a lot and saying hello to doggies and reading good books and playing video games…and that’s probably similar to what you’re doing too, eh? Though I’m also in a D&D campaign set in the Ghosts of Saltmarsh world and it’s great. I heard about this place called Heroforge that will 3D-print custom figurines for you, and I ordered two: One is a ranger for the current campaign, and the other is a dwarf for a future campaign named Keggi Gruntled. Can’t wait for them to arrive and then I’ll get to paint them! *geekout*

Writing-wise, I’m working on a new series called Ink & Sigil that’s set in the Iron Druid universe and the first book should be out next summer. It’s a new and different magic system and set of issues, and while the Druids are mentioned and there are easter eggs that Iron Druid readers will appreciate, no one has to have read Iron Druid to start this one off and enjoy it.

If you’re hankering for more Iron Druid and missed the announcements somehow, I released two titles earlier this year that provide a nice coda (and happy ending) to the series: First, Death & Honey picks up with Atticus, Oberon, and Starbuck five months after Scourged and there is joy. You can snag it in ebook or audio narrated by Luke Daniels:

Ebook: Amazon B&N

Audio: Audible iTunes

Secondly, First Dangle and Other Stories collects several Iron Druid stories that were included in various anthologies but also includes the all-new First Dangle, an Owen and Slomo adventure that takes them to Spain, London, and Austin, Texas. You can snag it below. The audio edition also includes some liner notes from me and a bonus story, “The Chapel Perilous,” which has finally been narrated by Luke Daniels.

Ebook: Amazon B&N
Audio: Audible iTunes

Also happening this summer: Copy edits for A Blight of Blackwings, the sequel to A Plague of Giants that will be out in February! Hopefully I’ll be able to share some cover art with you soon.

And a bit later: I’ll be doing a brief east coast tour with Delilah S. Dawson in October for The Princess Beard, the third book in the Tales of Pell. Many thanks to everyone who’s read Kill the Farm Boy and No Country for Old Gnomes. The latter just got reviewed in the July issue of Locus Magazine, in fact, which said “The pleasures of No Country for Old Gnomes are many, and the humor ranges everywhere, including pop and internet culture (gnomes are a “smöl” race), absurd ideas with connections to traditional fantasy (the Toot Towers, shaped like flutes, are the quest’s destination), and excessive punnery and language play.” They said lots more than that, but I quoted a bit to let you know you’d have fun reading it. Y’all can get signed copies of the Tales of Pell from Worldbuilders Market, and indeed all my stuff is available there, plus spiffy merchandise, and your purchase directly benefits charity!

If you’re a Canadian peep or Canada-adjacent, why not consider attending Can-Con in October? Stellar author Charlie Jane Anders will be there, plus superagent DongWon Song, my entire D&D group, me and my beard, and many other spiffy peeps.

The Short Version:

October 8: The Princess Beard
February 4: A Blight of Blackwings
Next Summer: Ink & Sigil

I hope you’re having a great summer! Peace & tacos, friends.

Out now in ebook and audio: An all-new Owen and Slomo adventure!

Archdruid Owen Kennedy and his happy murder sloth, Slomo, are planning on having a pleasant day exploring the world together when Coriander, Herald Extraordinary to the First Among the Fae, comes to them for help. There’s been a supernatural murder in Spain and he needs a Druid to solve it.

The trail leads from Spain to the Royal Gardens at Kew in London, thence to Tír na nÓg and an Austin, Texas honky tonk. Owen and Slomo always feel a bit out of place wherever they are, but enjoy being together that way.

The collection also includes several other Iron Druid stories that appeared elsewhere in anthologies and magazines, collected here for the first time.

The audio edition includes a long-requested recording of Luke Daniels narrating an old story of mine, “The Chapel Perilous,” which includes a performance of Apple Jack, the paranoid horse, that is not to be missed! It also includes some “liner notes” from me, geeky stuff about the research and thinking behind the stories. Fun if you like mythology, but easily skipped if you just want the stories. The audio sample below is from “First Dangle.”

You can order now in ebook and audio, and that would make my mom happy and help me buy tacos:

Ebook: Amazon  B&N
Audio: Audible

Hope you enjoy! Thanks so much for reading!

It’s out now! No Country for Old Gnomes is the second book in the Tales of Pell but you don’t have to read the first one to enjoy it. Folks, this tale has some goodies I think you’ll enjoy:

• A goth gnome with purple bats on his cardigan
• Halflings involved in organized crime—the seedy truth no one would tell you before!
• A gryphon obsessed with omelets and umlauts
• Dryads and drynads (you’ve always wondered what male dryads were called, and now you know)
• An ovitaur (half human, half sheep) with a touch of kleptomania and also a really clunky automaton
• A dwarf who seeks inner peace but runs into a cabbage cult and that really ruins his day
• Trouble at the Toot Towers
• Hotly contested muesli
• Boning tea
• A kobold bard
• A troll gets it
• So many puns

So give it a read, why dontcha? Guaranteed to be more fun than watching the news! Booklist said, “Fans and new readers will giggle and guffaw and be pleased to discover a third book is forthcoming for this thoroughly entertaining series.”

That’s true—The Princess Beard will be out in October! So if we don’t visit a place near you for this tour, hopefully we’ll see you then. But below is a list of where Delilah and I will be this week. If you can make it we would love to see you, and of course we will also sign anything else we’ve written in the past—Iron Druid stuff, A Plague of Giants, whatever!

• April 15, 7 pm: Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville, IL, with special guest Luke Daniels!
• April 16, 7 pm: Barnes & Noble at HarMar Mall, Roseville, MN
• April 17, 7 pm: Powell’s Books in Beaverton, OR
• April 18, 7:30 pm: Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego, CA, with special guest Stephen Blackmoore!
• April 19, 7 pm: The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, AZ
• April 20, 6:30 pm: Murder by the Book in Houston, TX, with special guest Rachel Caine!

Any of the above stores will ship or hold a signed copy for you, by the way, if you can’t make it to a signing. Just give them a call! And also you can get signed copies through Worldbuilders, all proceeds to charity. (Worldbuilders actually has all my stuff if you’re looking for signed copies and other goodies.)

Hope you enjoy, my gnomies!

To be clear before you get too excited: We are not giving away actual gnomes. But if you preorder No Country for Old Gnomes in print, ebook, or audio from any retailer in the US before April 16, Delilah and I will send you a signed poster (below) by way of thanks. The poster is illustrated by Kiji Art and features three of the many new characters you’re going to meet in the book: Offi, Kirsi, and Gerd the gryphon. To get the poster, preorder No Country for Old Gnomes wherever you wish, then submit a picture of your receipt or a screencap of your confirmation on the page at this link, and it will be sent to you after April 16. It’s that easy! Here’s what the (unsigned) poster looks like:

We will also be signing and giving away this poster on our tour, so if you attend any of these events and buy a copy of No Country for Old Gnomes, you’ll score one:

April 15: Naperville, IL. Anderson’s Bookshop, 7 pm. With special guest: audiobook narrator Luke Daniels!
April 16: Roseville, MN. Barnes & Noble, 7 pm.
April 17: Beaverton, OR. Powell’s Books, 7 pm.
April 18: San Diego, CA. Mysterious Galaxy, 7:30 pm. With special guest: author Stephen Blackmoore!
April 19: Scottsdale, AZ. The Poisoned Pen, 7 pm.
April 20: Houston, TX. Murder By The Book, 6:30 pm. With special guest: author Rachel Caine!

Delilah and I will of course sign any of our other books too, so please come see us!

Want to learn more about No Country for Old Gnomes? OK, I gotcha. Here’s a summary:

Go big or go gnome. War is coming, and it’s gonna be Pell.
On one side stand the gnomes: smol, cheerful, possessing tidy cardigans and no taste for cruelty.

On the other side sit the halflings, proudly astride their war alpacas, carrying bags of grenades and hungry for a fight. And pretty much anything else.

It only takes one halfling bomb, and Offi Numminen’s world is turned upside down—or downside up, really, since he lives in a hole in the ground. His goth cardigans and aggressive melancholy set him apart from the other gnomes, as does his decision to fight back against their halfling oppressors. Suddenly Offi is the leader of a band of lovable misfits and outcasts—from a gryphon who would literally kill for omelettes to a young dwarf herbalist who is better with bees than his cudgel to an assertive and cheerful teen witch with a beard as long as her book of curses—all on a journey to the Toot Towers to confront the dastardly villain intent on tearing Pell asunder.

These adventurers never fit in anywhere else, but as they become friends, fight mermaids, and get really angry at this one raccoon, they learn that there’s nothing more heroic than being yourself.

Besides Offi and Kirsi and Gerd, you’ll get to meet Båggi Biins, the dwarvelish herbalist and friend to bees; Faucon Pooternoob, the halfling hunter and occasional attorney; Agape Fallopia the ovitaur*, and more!

Please feel free to tell all your friends and relatives and alien overlords about this. Delilah and I would love to sign posters until we get carpal tunnel.** The thing is, this isn’t a contest—it’s a thank-you gift. If you’re in the US, you preorder by April 15 and you fill out the form, then you will get a signed poster, by dinkum!***

Thank you in advance. We are so excited for you to read and we hope to see you on our tour! Right now we are finishing up edits on book 3, The Princess Beard, which will be out later this year, so if we don’t see you in April, maybe we’ll be near you in October! And hey, wanna see some more Pellish art? We have more right here and would love to see yours too if you’re feeling inspired —send it our way! Happy reading!

*Ovitaurs are half human, half sheep
**Maybe we would not enjoy actual carpal tunnel but a delightful soreness after working hard would be pleasant, methinks
***This is a thing that gnomes tend to say, having never heard of golly