At the End of Everything by Marieke Nijkamp
All That’s Left in the World by Erik J. Brown
Spellhacker by M.K. England
Sweet & Bitter Magic by Adrienne Tooley
The Names We Take by Trace Kerr
Bonus: Coming up in November, The Ones We Burn by Rebecca Mix
The Spy with the Red Balloon by Katherine Locke (Historical)
The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros (Historical)
From Dust, a Flame by Rebecca Podos (Contemporary)
This Rebel Heart by Katherine Locke (Historical)
When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb (Historical)
Bonus: For queer adult Jewish fantasy, check out Shira Glassman’s Mangoverse series and The Light of the Midnight Stars by Rena Rossner.
Today on the site, we’re revealing the cover for the second book in the Heretic’s Guide to Homecoming series, namely The Heretic’s Guide to Homecoming, Book Two: Practice by Sienna Tristen, which releases on October 22nd from the Shale Project! The book features an asexual genderqueer narrator, a queerplatonic partnership, and diverse case, and you can get more info on the first book here. Now read on to see where the story continues!
“All good theory stands up to the test of practice.”
Freshly risen from the underworld of his insecurities, Ronoah Genoveffa Elizzi-denna Pilanovani is halfway through his journey to the fabled Pilgrim State. But the world this side of the Iphigene Sea is not an easy one: violence and subterfuge litter the way forward, and something meaner stalks the edges of Ronoah’s certainty, something that threatens to turn the very reason for his pilgrimage to dust.
To survive, he will have to be clever and kind in equal measure. To ask for help from the acrobats and queens-to-be and foreigners’ gods that cross his path. To confront that beguiling, bewildering companion he travels with, the one whose secrets are so vast and unforgivable. He will have to draw on every story he knows in order to make it to the Pilgrim State with his soft heart intact—and then make it home again.
Mythic and multilayered, the final installment of the Heretic’s Guide to Homecoming duology is a love letter to losing and regaining faith in the world and the way you move through it.
And there’s the gorgeous cover, designed and illustrated by Haley Rose!
Preorder: Books2Read
Sienna Tristen is an author, poet, and literary organizer living in Treaty 3 territory who explores queer platonic partnership, the nonhuman world, and mythmaking in their work. The first installment of their award-winning fantasy duology The Heretic’s Guide to Homecoming came out from indie arts collective The Shale Project in 2018; you can find their poetry in Augur Magazine and Plenitude, and their chapbook hortus animarum: a new herbal for the queer heart is forthcoming from Frog Hollow Press. When the sun is up, they work with The Word On The Street Toronto to showcase the coolest Canadian & Indigenous literature.
Today on the site, we’re revealing the cover to Aaron S Bentzel’s LifeBringer, officially closing out the fantasy western Prime Wranglers Saga with its release on April 12th! Here’s the story:
Cazo Briggs used to be somebody. He had a handsome boyfriend in Zee, and a legendary Prime who wanted to be his partner. And then it all fell apart at Echo Rock.
Now, defeated, Cazo and his allies seek refuge in the desert fortress of the Acanti people. But that is not all that they seek there.
The Acanti have a Prime that controls water, the scarcest and most vital element in the desert. They call it the LifeBringer, and now the Republic has their eyes on it.
The same Republic that drove Cazo out. The same Republic that forced his Redhand allies onto reservations and killed their sacred Primes. The same Republic that seduced his beloved Zee away from him.
Having fought the Republic before, Cazo and friends know what a relentless foe they can be. The only way to win a lasting peace in an independent West is to set the LifeBringer free. But can they convince the Acanti prince?
And without Zee, does Cazo still have the will to fight? Or will he yield to the doubts that hound him and lose the West for them all?
LIFEBRINGER is the stunning conclusion of the Prime Wranglers saga, a fantasy western set in a reimagined West. Here, powerful creatures known as Primes roam the frontier, and daring wranglers risk their lives to capture them.
And here’s the cover, designed by Ebook Launch (www.ebooklaunch.com)!
Buy it: Amazon
From Atlanta, GA by way of Albany, NY, Aaron has been writing books for the past 10 years. An omnivore when it comes to story, he takes inspiration from such diverse works as Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere, Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece, daytime soap operas, and the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
When not curled up on his rattan chair with a 5-subject notebook on his lap, he can usually be found boiling water for tea, walking up and down the banks of the Chattahoochee River in his orange-billed baseball cap, or singing show tunes to himself in the bathroom mirror.
Today on the site I’m delighted to reveal the cover for yet another Neon Hemlock novella, Uncommon Charm by Emily Bergslien and Kat Weaver, which releases on May 17, 2022! Crowdfunding will begin on March 14th on Indiegogo as part of the 2022 Novella series crowdfunding campaign, so in anticipation of that, let’s get to the story:
In the 1920s gothic comedy Uncommon Charm, bright young socialite Julia and shy Jewish magician Simon decide they aren’t beholden to their families’ unhappy history. Together they confront such horrors as murdered ghosts, alive children, magic philosophy, a milieu that slides far too easily into surrealist metaphor, and, worst of all, serious adult conversation.
But wait, there’s more! Read on for an excerpt of Uncommon Charm by Emily Bergslien and Kat Weaver!
Chapter One
Three days after I was expelled from the Marable School for Girls, our poor Simon arrived. My mother told me to expect him, so when the bell rang, I opened the door onto a gloomy November sky, a gloomy November street, and a gloomy November of a boy. (And boy he was, only twenty years old to my sixteen.) He was short and nicely strong, wiry, with tanned cheeks and big dark eyes. Not at all like his father—but on second glance, there did lurk a spectre of Uncle Vee in his prettyish face, down which a raindrop gently rolled. He’d already doffed his hat; those slick curls of his would be ruined.“You’re Mr. Wolf,” I said. “Or is it Mr. Koldunov now?”
The car behind him hadn’t left yet. I saluted the Koldunovs’ driver, Tom, to let him know everything was well, he’d safely delivered the goods, he needn’t subject himself to the weather. Simon and I could surely handle his single, very sad suitcase. Tom returned my wave and drove away.
“Er,” said our guest. “Mr. Wolf will do. You’re Miss Selwyn-Stirling?”
“When I care to answer to it, but don’t call me miss around the Koldunovs. They’ll tease you, and not in the nice you’re-one-of-us-now way.”
“Thanks for the advice,” he said, and he continued to stand on our doorstep, looking about and letting himself be drizzled upon. I wondered why until I realised, oh no, he was waiting for me to invite him inside, at which point I decided I would walk to the moon and back for my new friend.
Grandly, I bowed him into the front hall. As he was taking off his wet things—he clutched his coat and hat until I nodded at the rack, strange boy, it was right there—Muv appeared on the first floor landing, at the top of the stairs.
You’d have thought Simon was a bird that’d biffed itself against a window instead of a student meeting his new mentor, though he wasn’t wrong to find Muv intimidating. From his point of view, I’d have seen not only a small, brisk woman whose bobbed auburn hair absolutely guillotined her jaw, whose freckles foxed her face like that rust on old books, whose black suit cut her body into clean ink lines, but the most ruthless magician England had ever borne. And she was a pretty ruthless mother, too.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Wolf,” she said. “You may address me as Lady Aloysia, my lady, or ma’am.” It was her way of trying to set him at ease, laying out the protocol, only she was always so dreadfully blunt about answering questions you hadn’t asked. More embarrassing still, Simon’s nod became a strange half-bow.
“Oh, don’t,” I groaned.
“Julia will show you around the house.” Muv fixed an eye on me. “His room first, please. You will not make him haul his luggage everywhere. Is there more?”
Simon’s hands tightened around the handle. “No, ma’am. Just the one.”
“Very well. We will meet for dinner three hours from now. Do tell me whether I’ve correctly understood your dietary needs.”
“Muv, honestly, you needn’t be the lepidopterist pinning butterflies. You can ask him these things like you’re both human people.”
She gestured for me to take the suitcase. I hefted it before Simon could object.
“I—thanks, Miss Sel—er, Lady Aloysia, ma’am, no, it’s—” Simon grasped uselessly at the air. “Thanks, but you don’t have to do all that.”
Muv tapped her elbow. “I see. Julia, after you help Mr. Wolf get settled, please inform Beth the week’s menu may remain as it is. I asked,” she continued, both addressing him and chiding me, “because I would not put it past Madam Koldunova to serve you roast pork every day.”
“It was every other day,” said Simon.
Muv blinked down at him. He blinked up at her. Silence could be loud indeed. An entire three-second opera played out as I started to drag the suitcase upstairs.
Simon’s footsteps came in a flurry after me, and, generous girl that I was, I let him take charge of his own belongings. When we reached the second floor, he turned back with a perplexed look, but Muv had disappeared into her laboratory. He couldn’t have expected hugs and smiles, not from the Lady Aloysia Stirling, not with her reputation, though I knew for a fact he’d received colder welcomes: I had the whole of it from Marie and Adele Koldunova. After three weeks with the Koldunovs, Muv ought to seem downright tropical.
“Er,” Simon murmured, “did you see—?” Though I tilted my head, yes, do go on, he shuttered himself. “Never mind.”
“These games are unnecessary, you know. You don’t have to keep secrets, and you don’t have to doubt your eyes. I can help! I did grow up here. Muv never fails to keep a thread in her needle, not that I pay her magic any mind. It is so tedious when your mother always knows where you are and what you’re thinking, but you’ll find out soon enough. I didn’t see anything. What did you see?”
“A woman,” Simon said, startled into answering. “Not your mother, but tall and blonde. A bit, er, bony. And bleeding.”
“Oh, well. I should have expected you’d be a medium. Come along!” I bounded up the stairs. “The ghosts will wait.”
***
About the authors: Emily Bergslien and Kat Weaver live in Saint Paul, Minnesota with their two small birds. Emily is a Twin Cities bookseller whose reviews have been published in The Riveter magazine. Find her on Twitter @eudaemaniacal. Kat’s short fiction has appeared in Apex Magazine, Lackington’s, Timeworn Literary Journal, and elsewhere. She is a senior fiction editor at Strange Horizons. Her art can be found at kathrynmweaver.com and on Twitter @anoteinpink.Today on the site, we’re revealing the cover for the Greek mythology-inspired PI noir fantasy (yes, all of those things!) No Gods for Drowning by Hailey Piper, releasing September 20th from Polis Books! Here’s the story:
IN THE BEGINNING, MAN WAS PREY.
WITHOUT THE GODS, THEY’LL BE PREY AGAIN.
The gods have fled. Monsters threaten to invade the city of Logos, hunting mankind as they did in the olden days. In the midst of it all, a serial killer has begun ritually sacrificing victims—to lure the gods back and stop the imminent destruction, or for a more sinister purpose?
Lilac Antonis wants to stop the impending destruction of her city by summoning her mother, a blood god—even if she has to slit a few throats to do it. But evading her lover Arcadia and her friends means sneaking, lying, and even spilling the blood of people she loves.
Alex and Cecil of Ace Investigations have been tasked with hunting down the killer, but as they close in—not knowing it is their close friend they’re hunting—the detectives realize the gods may not have left willingly, and must uncover the truth before Lilac summons the wrong god, who may have come back just to destroy them all.
Set in an alternate reality which updates mythology to near-modern day, NO GODS FOR DROWNING is part hunt for a serial killer, part noir detective story, and unlike anything you’ve ever read before.
Here’s the luminous cover, designed by Mimi Bark!
Preorder: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N | IndieBound
And finally, here are some words on the cover from author Hailey Piper!
This might sound a little cliché, but my breath caught in my throat when I first saw the cover to No Gods for Drowning from my editor at Polis Books and Agora. We were only playing with ideas and possibilities before, batting around images for inspiration. And then came the cover, and it grabbed onto me the moment I opened that email, rich with mood and elegance.
And honestly, I cried a little. This novel has been growing inside me for the longest time. Its first seeds came when I was only a teenager, and they hadn’t connected into much of anything yet. Really, I hadn’t connected to myself yet. I had a lot of growing up to do, with struggles through depression that often suffocated the creativity out of me. Only after many years and really allowing myself to just be myself could I start writing my truths, and these seeds at last sprouted. They weren’t a garden, but pieces of one big tree that sort of developed into a genre stew of mystery, noir, horror, and dark fantasy.
No Gods for Drowning follows multiple lives across a noir-punk dark fantasy world of killers and detectives, sea monsters and blood-drinking gods. Those gods used to protect and feed off mankind, but they’ve been gone for ten years when the novel picks up, and one woman decides the only way to bring them back is to remind them what they’ve been missing—mortal sacrifice. Doing this means dodging the suspicions of the woman she loves and their friends, a pair of detectives on the hunt for whoever’s behind these ritual killings. But what seems like a simple give and take of blood and gods grows more complicated as the clues point to a grander plot involving which gods could even return, why they left, and who might really be pulling the strings behind all this bloodshed.
That’s a lot to consider when it comes to cover art! But the ultimate result arrives not in a roar of waves about to drown the city where No Gods for Drowning takes place, but instead in the beautiful texture of this deep blue sea, and the clamshell patterns to remind of its life, and the moon above that guides the cycles of a merciless tide. Central to it all is the nine-pointed star of Logoi the Many-Headed, goddess of reason, seen beneath the title. You’ll find this same star painted in blood within the book, same as our private detectives find it glaring at them from every crime scene. It’s also important to several characters personally, be it their shame, their loved ones, their sense of abandonment, their unresolved trauma, or their hope for a brighter future against the bloodshed and doom surrounding them all.
The combination of sea and star form a perfect distillation of the book’s sense of mystery, its visceral horrors, and its fantastical elements too. I’m so pleased to see it all come together this way, and I can’t wait for readers to discover the drowning city and all the people trying to save it, in the best and worst of ways, when No Gods for Drowning releases this September from Polis Books!
***
Two-time Stoker nominee Hailey Piper is the author of The Worm and His Kings, Queen of Teeth, Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy, and Benny Rose the Cannibal King. She is an active member of Horror Writers Association, with over sixty short stories appearing in publications such as Year’s Best Hardcore Horror, Flash Fiction Online, Dark Matter Magazine, and elsewhere. Hailing from the haunted woods of New York, she now lives with her wife in Maryland, where their paranormal investigations are top secret. Find Hailey at www.haileypiper.com or on Twitter via @HaileyPiperSays.
Today on the site, I’m delighted to reveal the cover for Errant, Vol. 1, the very first in a new novella series by L.K. Fleet, the pen name for the formidable joined forces of K. R. Collins, Felicia Davin, and Valentine Wheeler! This f/f (bi/lesbian) fantasy releases on February 15th, and here’s the story:
Aspen Silverglade used to be a force for good, but now she’s just a sword for hire. On the run from the people she once trusted most, she needs to keep her head down and keep moving.
But old habits are hard to quit. One night in a tavern, Aspen tries to save a woman from some unwanted attention. The woman, Charm Linville, is in the middle of a subtle and delicate act of thievery, and she does not appreciate Aspen blundering in.
The disastrous and public rescue-gone-wrong makes the townspeople think Aspen and Charm are a couple. This mistake sets Aspen’s bloodthirsty betrayers on Charm’s trail, tying the two of them together.
Even if Aspen can’t run from her past any longer, Charm shouldn’t have to suffer. Despite Aspen’s determination to work alone, Charm insists on helping—and she has a past of her own. The two of them don’t care for each other’s methods, but as they journey through the villages and wildernesses of Falland, solving problems and meeting magical friends and foes, Aspen and Charm grudgingly come to care for each other. Can these two guarded, stubborn women admit their feelings, or will Aspen’s enemies kill them first?
And here’s the absolutely epic cover from the epic Laya Rose!
Buy it: Amazon
L. K. Fleet is the pen name for the trio of authors K. R. Collins, Felicia Davin, and Valentine Wheeler. They are longtime friends who share a love of fantasy settings and romance tropes. Errant, a series of sapphic fantasy novellas, is the first thing they have written together.
Today on the site, I’m thrilled to welcome author Leslie Vedder, whose debut YA fantasy, The Bone Spindle, releases today from Razorbill/Penguin! Leslie’s here to talk about writing the characters of your heart, but first, a little more about the book, billed as Sleeping Beauty Meets Indiana Jones…
Fi is a bookish treasure hunter with a knack for ruins and riddles, who definitely doesn’t believe in true love.
Shane is a tough-as-dirt girl warrior from the north who likes cracking skulls, pretty girls, and doing things her own way.
Briar Rose is a prince under a sleeping curse, who’s been waiting a hundred years for the kiss that will wake him.
Cursed princes are nothing but ancient history to Fi–until she pricks her finger on a bone spindle while exploring a long-lost ruin. Now she’s stuck with the spirit of Briar Rose until she and Shane can break the century-old curse on his kingdom.
Dark magic, Witch Hunters, and bad exes all stand in her way–not to mention a mysterious witch who might wind up stealing Shane’s heart, along with whatever else she’s after. But nothing scares Fi more than the possibility of falling in love with Briar Rose.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | IndieBound
And now, here’s the post by Leslie Vedder!
When I was a kid, one of my absolute favorite TV shows was Xena: Warrior Princess. It’s very dated now, and not without its flaws, but it still holds a special place in my heart. Xena was the first woman character I ever saw who felt like a larger-than-life hero to me. She was a badass. She was respected. She had a dark past. Nobody messed with her, and when she swaggered into a shady tavern, bad guys shook in their boots.
But she could also be funny, and loving, and flawed in all the best ways. It was a show full of camp that knew how to be silly and not take itself too seriously.
Xena was almost everything I wanted in a female character. But when it came to her sexuality…it was kind of a letdown.
Xena had an absolute glut of male love interests, and only tongue-in-cheek references to women. The show was absolutely swimming with subtext between Xena and her longtime sidekick Gabriel. But alas, it was an old show, so it could never just go there.
Xena was full of the possibility of queerness—but that’s all it could ever be. A possibility. A character who had been so bold and loud and downright brash about everything else was suddenly reduced to a wink and a nod.
I wanted an openly queer Xena. I don’t think I ever stopped wanting that. And that desire to see a character who got to be just as brash and tough and funny as Xena, but totally queer this time, was a big part of the inspiration for Shane, one of the two main characters of my debut YA fantasy, The Bone Spindle.
The Bone Spindle stars two girl treasure hunting partners, each with their own love story. Fi is a bookish historian who is in an m/f love story, and Shane is the ax-wielding lesbian mercenary of my dreams in an f/f relationship. (Also, she’s my wife’s absolute favorite character!)
Shane grew into so much more than her inception. The moment she exploded onto the page, she had her own voice and humor and desires. She’s got a secret past she’s left behind. A rivalry with a vicious cult of Witch Hunters. A love of gambling (though she’s not that good at it). She’s also loud and brash, and definitely the type to swagger into a tavern and leave bad guys shaking in their boots!
Maybe my favorite thing about Shane is that she’s unapologetically herself at every moment, whether that’s flirting with girls or breaking noses, and definitely when she starts falling head over heels for Red, a mysterious and dangerous Witch. If Shane was born in part from my desire for a queer Xena, then Red must be inspired at least a little by the idea of a queer Catwoman-esque femme fatale. Their love story is probably one I’ve been dreaming of writing for a long time (and I can’t wait to dig into them even more, in the later books of the trilogy!).
Working toward bringing out a first book is a major roller coaster, but one of the high points has definitely been hearing some early readers say they fell in love with Shane. She’s truly the character of my heart.
Queer representation has come a long way since Xena was on the air. There are so many amazing fantasy books and shows coming out these days with queer characters that would have set my teenage heart on fire! And they still mean the world to me right now. If I had a time machine, I would empty my current bookshelf through to my younger self. But in the absence of that, I’m so proud to get to share a character like Shane with today’s readers—and I hope she’ll be exactly what somebody’s looking for.
But I still wouldn’t say no to a totally queer Xena reboot!
***
Leslie Vedder (she/her) is a queer ace author who loves fairytale retellings with girl adventurers and heroes! She grew up on fantasy books, anime, fanfiction and the Lord of the Rings movies, and met her true love in high school choir. She graduated from San Francisco State University with a B.A. in creative writing and currently lives in Colorado with her wife and two spoiled house cats.
When she’s not reading or writing, you can find her watching anime and sci-fi shows, walking in the woods and pretending they’re enchanted forests, or playing old video games. She always collects all the Skulltulas in Zelda and all the Dalmation puppies in Kingdom Hearts.
Do you love your lesbian YA fantasy bloody and brutal? Of course you do. So if you missed Beyond the Ruby Veil by Mara Fitzgerald the first time around, now’s the perfect time to pick it up, since sequel Into the Midnight Void releases at the end of the month! Get your glorious dose of gleeful gasps!
Emanuela Ragno always gets what she wants. With her daring mind and socialite schemes, she refuses to be the demure young lady everyone wants her to be. In her most ambitious move yet, she’s about to marry Alessandro Morandi, her childhood best friend and the heir to the wealthiest house in Occhia. Emanuela doesn’t care that she and her groom are both gay, because she doesn’t want a love match. She wants power, and through Ale, she’ll have it all.
But Emanuela has a secret that could shatter her plans. In the city of Occhia, the only source of water is the watercrea, a mysterious being who uses magic to make water from blood. When their first bruise-like omen appears on their skin, all Occhians must surrender themselves to the watercrea to be drained of life. Everyone throughout history has given themselves up for the greater good. Everyone except Emanuela. She’s kept the tiny omen on her hip out of sight for years.
When the watercrea exposes Emanuela during her wedding ceremony and takes her to to be sacrificed, Emanuela fights back…and kills her. Now Occhia has no one to make their water and no idea how to get more. In a race against time, Emanuela and Ale must travel through the mysterious, blood-red veil that surrounds their city to uncover the secrets of the watercrea’s magic and find a way to save their people.
No matter what it takes.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N | IndieBound
Today on the site, I’m thrilled to help celebrate the release of Briar Girls by Rebecca Kim Wells, a Sapphic YA reimagining of The Sleeping Beauty yours truly called “a tantalizingly dark and majestic fairy tale filled with love, betrayal, and the ways the two inevitably intersect.” The book releases today, and Rebecca’s here to talk about it with another of our favorite queer YA author Rebeccas, Rebecca Podos (From Dust, a Flame), who also happens to be her agent! But before we get to that, here’s a little more about Briar Girls:
Lena has a secret: the touch of her skin can kill. Cursed by a witch before she was born, Lena has always lived in fear and isolation. But after a devastating mistake, she and her father are forced to flee to a village near the Silence, a mysterious forest with a reputation for luring people into the trees, never to be seen again…
Until the night an enigmatic girl stumbles out of the Silence and into Lena’s sheltered world. Miranda comes from the Gather, a city in the forest brimming with magic. She is on a quest to wake a sleeping princess believed to hold the key to liberating the Gather from its tyrannical ruler—and she offers Lena a bargain. If Lena assists her on her journey, Miranda will help her break the curse.
Mesmerized by Miranda and her promise of a new life, Lena jumps at the chance. But the deeper into the Silence she goes, the more she suspects she’s been lied to—about her family’s history, her curse, and her future. As the shadows close in, Lena must choose who to trust and decide whether it’s more important to have freedom…or power.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N | IndieBound
And now, I’m thrilled to welcome Rebecca Kim Wells and Rebecca Podos!
RKW: We’ve been working together for several years—since 2015! Back then the publishing landscape was very different, especially around diverse and queer stories. What was your agenting outlook at the time? And what drew you to pick Briar Girls out of your inbox?
RP: It was definitely a different landscape! On the one hand, the decade before 2015 was game-changing for queer representation in kidlit. We saw debut books published by authors who went on to change the conversation about was possible for queer YA, a genre that had previously been considered pretty niche. This industry can be truly frustrating in that it often demands “successful” (aka profitable) books within a certain subgenre or representing a certain group before justifying the purchase of future books which might have been the breakout successes. Still, publishing was slow to expand queer kidlit beyond L and G stories, and beyond white and able main characters. We’re still working on that! And as often happens when we talk about representation, the very first books on the shelf were stories of queer pain and trauma, usually as a direct consequence of a character discovering their own identity or coming out. Which does not mean that authors shouldn’t explore trauma and identity in their fiction, or that every queer story should be fluffy and joyful; we need books at both ends of the spectrum. We need to build a bigger bookshelf, rather than dictating which handful of books are allowed at any given moment.
Anyway, this is where the genre was in 2015: slowly moving beyond contemporary stories within a limited spectrum of queer identities. I had been signing authors of my own since 2012, looking for queer stories from the start. Some, I was able to sell! (And some of the authors I signed in the early days have gone on to write many fantastic queer stories after a non-queer themed debut novel). When I started reading your submission—the story that would become Briar Girls —on my subway ride to work, it was this smart, dark, lush, meta fairytale with a bisexual MC that made me miss my stop. I very distinctly remember having to get off at North Station and circle back. I was late to the office, and I still blame you. But that was how I knew I was about to fall in love with the book, and so I did.
It turns out that 2015 wasn’t quite ready for the story. As I told you much later, after your next amazing queer fantasy had sold, we did get pushback, including rejections along the lines of “we’re not sure the market exists for a fantasy with queer themes,” never mind that the brilliant Malinda Lo had been publishing for years. But I have rarely been more thrilled with my job than the moment we found out that Briar Girls was finally going to make its way onto shelves.
So, that’s my agent-y perspective. What had your experience been with queer books in 2015 as a writer and a reader, and what compelled you to tell your own?
RKW: As a teen reader, most of my experience with queer books had been with contemporary stories focused on coming out, like Geography Club or Rainbow Boys. Back then it wasn’t as easy even to search for queer books as it is now, so a lot of my reading came just from browsing at my local library or bookstore. I did manage to find a few queer fantasies—I still have vivid memories of Kissing the Witch (I just looked up a review from 1999 that said the lesbian endings “promise controversy,” yikes!) and reading Ash for the first time—but they certainly weren’t being published or promoted nearly as much as they are today.
I started writing Briar Girls in 2013. I’ve always been into fairy tale reimaginings, and I loved writing a big mashup of my own. That was the first kernel of the book. Then—this feels so weird to think about now—but in the first iteration, the main characters were actually straight. And at some point along the way, I just had the thought that well, it’s obvious that they should be queer. I don’t know why (certainly the market wasn’t particularly encouraging, especially in 2013), but I made the change and never second-guessed that decision. It was so clear to me that was what the book should be, and I didn’t even think about whether that would make it more difficult to publish. And that belief turned out to be so validated by your enthusiasm for the book. It buoyed me through the submission process, even though Briar Girls didn’t sell at the time.
I’m very glad that you didn’t tell me about those rejections in 2015, because I might have gotten nervous about writing queer characters (which would have been terrible!). Instead I got to lick my wounds and move on to the next project, which turned into Shatter the Sky. We sent that on submission in December 2017 and I think we got the offer from Simon & Schuster around the end of January 2018? It was a very different submission experience, both because it sold (yay!) and because it sold so quickly. Obviously part of the reason it sold is that I had grown as a writer, but I also think that the market around queer books for teens had really started to change in those few years.
While this wasn’t my experience, you mentioned that a few of your other authors wrote non-queer debuts and then went on to write queer books. This is also true of your work as an author—a non-queer debut followed by some incredible queer books. What was your experience like as an author making that transition? How did you decide to write your first queer book?
RP: Ah, the days before sites like LGBTQ Reads and Lambda Literary and the Rainbow Book List made finding queer books one million times easier. And yes, the path to publication for Shatter the Sky was so much smoother! I do think the market had evolved, even in the year or two between projects.
In part, my choice to write my first queer book was inspired by you, and my clients writing extraordinary queer stories at that time. As LGBTQ+ YA became more prominent on shelves, and seemed more possible to publish, I was seeing more of it in my query inbox, and reading more of it myself. Eventually I just decided, why not? So I began Like Water in 2015. And some of the choices I made in drafting that book, I made for my younger self. Like the fact that my main character’s discovery and acceptance of her own bisexuality was pretty painless. Her realization expanded her understanding of herself, and the world around her. She doesn’t spend a lot of time in the story coming out to the people around her; I just wasn’t that interested in her coming out as a huge plot point, despite the fact that the question of how and when to come out preoccupied a lot of my youth. Because, again, why not?
By the way, I had no idea that Briar Girls ever existed in a non-queer form! One of the many things I love about your stories is how queerness is baked into the fabric of your fantasy worlds. What do you love about writing and reading queer genre fiction, and how do you approach building these worlds that, while full of conflict and statements on class and colonization and gender roles, still feel so thoroughly inclusive?
RKW: Yes! The first person to stumble mysteriously out of the Gather was a boy named Colin. Then around July 2014 (per Scrivener metadata) it became obvious to me that the mysterious stranger was meant to be Miranda, and the rest is history!
Oh wow, I love everything about writing and reading queer genre fiction! But in the context of this question, I think what I love most about it is the sense of possibility—that the only constraint on what you can do as an author is the bound of your own imagination. If you don’t like a dynamic from the real world, change it! Interrogate it! Throw it out entirely! In the real world, I find homophobia cruel and horrifying—and also very boring. To me it’s the least interesting societal problem because it has the easiest, most obvious solution—just don’t be a homophobe! Mind your own business! Love your fellow humans! Let people live! So I don’t replicate it in my work. I’m proud of the queerness in my books, and I hope to continue writing queerness in all its complexity into my imagined worlds for many books to come.
I totally relate to the way you describe writing Like Water (and am so honored to be a tangential source of inspiration!)—though I certainly thought about coming out as a teen, it’s not something that I’m very interested in exploring in my own fiction at this time. In many ways, I’m writing toward a more inclusive world that I hope to see, rather than the one I grew up with and that exists today.
In addition to introducing queerness into your work, you’ve also genre-hopped from contemporary toward fantasy and now into historical fiction. But your prose is always so precise—sometimes delicate, sometimes cutting, always perfect—and your characters are always preoccupied by the weight of family—family histories, family bonds, family lore. To me, those are a few marks of a Rebecca Podos book. What do you feel are the common threads between your different books? What themes do you keep returning to as an author?
RP: This is such a lovely appraisal, you’ve made my night! And you pretty much nailed it with family being a common thread. In general, I think all of my books explore themes of inheritance—the things passed down to you or put on your shoulders, for good or for ill, and how you navigate that while trying to figure out who you are, and who you want to become. In Mystery of Hollow Places, it was a girl reckoning with the history of mental illness in her family, and how that shaped her as a person, as well as her relationships. In Like Water, it was a genetic illness the main character is scared to inherit from her father, while she struggles to be grateful for all of the wonderful things he’s instilled in her. In Wise and the Wicked, it’s an actual curse, passed down through generations, but it’s also about what we lose when we don’t speak the same language as our ancestors, when their stories slip away from us. And in From Dust, A Flame, which is up next, a girl discovers and engages with her Jewish identity for the first time, and what that means to her… plus golems and shedim and iburrim, and all of these aspects of Jewish myth and magic that I just really wanted to play with. Also, you know, everybody’s pretty gay.
When I think of a Rebecca Kim Wells book, I think of lush and precise worldbuilding, fascinating magical systems, smartly subverted tropes—like the chosen one trope of Shatter the Sky and Storm the Earth or the cursed princess trope of Briar Girls, but reexamined and completely flipped on their heads—and as you say, queerness without cost. What sort of stories do you feel most drawn to telling, and what experience do you hope readers will come away with from Briar Girls?
RKW: First, From Dust, A Flame sounds So! Good! I can’t wait to read it. And I’m sitting here feeling like I have been swaddled in a warm blanket of your compliments, thank you! You too have hit the nail on the head about so much of what I try to accomplish in my work.
I still remember how enthralled I was by the fantasy books I read as a child and teen. A lot of what I do as an author absolutely involves trying to recapture the feel of that classic fantasy while simultaneously interrogating, updating, flipping, and subverting common threads and tropes. I love complications and shades of gray! I want readers to feel both a happy familiarity and an unexpected, exciting destabilization every time they pick up one of my books. I delight in making the familiar strange.
And then the yearning—not always the romantic kind! My characters tend to be profoundly affected by family legacy (another thing we have in common!), they’ve all got wounds, and they all yearn, deeply. I love yearning. I want my books to make your chest hurt as you read them.
As far as Briar Girls goes…I hope readers finish this book feeling like they have been stabbed in the heart—but that they loved it. Lena’s journey still stabs me in the heart, and I’ve been living with it for eight years! Now I’m thrilled to share it with all of you.
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Hannah’s whole life has been spent in motion. Her mother has kept her and her brother, Gabe, on the road for as long as she can remember, leaving a trail of rental homes and faded relationships behind them. No roots, no family but one another, and no explanations.
All of that changes on Hannah’s seventeenth birthday when she wakes up transformed, a pair of golden eyes with knife-slit pupils blinking back at her from the mirror—the first of many such impossible mutations. Promising that she knows someone who can help, her mother leaves Hannah and Gabe behind to find a cure. But as the days turn to weeks and their mother doesn’t return, they realize it’s up to them to find the truth.
What they discover is a family they never knew, and a history more tragic and fantastical than Hannah could have dreamed—one that stretches back to her grandmother’s childhood in Prague under the Nazi occupation, and beyond, into the realm of Jewish mysticism and legend. As the past comes crashing into the present, Hannah must hurry to unearth their family’s secrets—and confront her own hidden legacy in order to break the curse and save the people she loves most, as well as herself.
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Rebecca Kim Wells writes books full of magic and fury (and often dragons). Her debut novel Shatter the Sky was a New England Book Award Finalist, an ALA Rainbow Book List selection, an Indies Introduce selection, and a Kids’ Indie Next Pick. She is also the author of Storm the Earth and Briar Girls.
Rebecca Podos’ debut novel, The Mystery of Hollow Places, was a Junior Library Guild Selection and a B&N Best YA Book of 2016. Her second book, Like Water, won the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Children’s and Young Adult. The Wise and the Wicked, her third novel, was recently released. Her forthcoming books include Fools in Love (Running Press Kids, 2021) a co-edited YA anthology with author Ashley Herring Blake, and From Dust, a Flame (Balzer + Bray, 2022). A graduate of the Writing, Literature and Publishing Program at Emerson College, she’s an agent at the Rees Literary Agency in Boston by day.
