“Nibbled to death by ducks” is a piece of shared marital property I got from my wife. We use the phrase to describe that curious sensation of being worn down and overcome by no single daunting task but by an endless succession of seemingly harmless events or minor responsibilities. One duck nipping you with their beak is still kinda cute, ten ducks snapping at you is alarming, and seeing a hundred of them softly quacking for blood just outside your office leads to an ominous sense of resignation. Ducks are here. Can’t fight that many ducks. Ducks are gonna get me.

I am presently facing duck murder for all the best possible reasons. “First-world problems,” as they say. But goddamn, my arms are covered in beak-shaped defensive wounds. I have a novel to tend to, and novellas to tend to, and Gentlemen Bastards-related developments that I can’t talk about yet and did not necessarily expect at this point. At the same time, I’m trying to be more rigorous in my social media and marketing, learning processes and conducting experiments I should have tended to a long time ago.

But I suppose (as I keep telling myself) they were never going to be tended to a long time ago; as long as my generalized anxiety was uncontrolled I was not particularly capable of locating all my ducks, let alone getting them in a row. But now they’re more organized… and they’re biting.

I have added content to my Facebook author page for the first time in twelve (!) years. I am setting my expectations low and trying to practice a firm, clear regimen of not getting hypnotized by useless statistics, as well as a clear regimen of never using certain features… “track your visitors!” Are you fucking kidding, Meta? I can use stats on how readers interact with my stuff, sure, but I don’t need to follow any of you out into the wider internet. That’s your own business. The thought of doing that is just so profoundly unethical and vile to me… so whatever else I might subject you to, don’t fret about a regimen of digital spying.

Why Facebook, then? I have been fascinated and bemused and croggled, in more or less equal measure, these past few months by the sheer number of people who keep saying things to the effect of “I did not know you were still writing” or “oh my god, I thought you were dead” or “you’ve been gone so long”— people who subscribe to one or more of my social media feeds, or post on the Gentlemen Bastards subreddit, and ostensibly have a vastly-above-normal interest in my work and career. And yet, because of happenstance or algorithmic throttling, they might not have heard about a great many things.

Lack of awareness is the great monster most of us in publishing wrestle with. Somewhere out there in the world is a willing audience for just about everything, no matter how niche— the trick is making them aware of the existence of things they might like, and of the ongoing activities of people making those things. It sounds simple because it is simple, but it is also a profoundly challenging, career-destroying, industry-stultifying challenge. I’m probably one of the ten or so best-known living male fantasy writers on the planet and even so I see the constant refrain: Oh, I didn’t know you were still writing. Oh, I didn’t know that had come out. Oh, I didn’t realize you were still a living male fantasy writer. In the writing community, we bitch and moan about all of this constantly. It’s one of our favorite hobbies. It’s a precious bonding exercise forged from shared anxiety.

Still, I’m trying to nurture a “light a candle” mentality even if cursing the darkness is more fun when drinking at convention bars. That’s why the lights are on at my little Facebook page again. Plain old awareness-generation. A couple experiments with ads. We’ll see where it all goes. Stop nibbling me, duck. You got your breadcrumb, now shoo. Lots of other ducks are still lined up out there waiting for their bite.

If you use Facebook (I do get some use out of the wretched thing still, keeping tabs on assorted cousins and high school friends), you could do a lot worse than to check it out at: https://www.facebook.com/scottlynch78

THE WIZARD WHO KEPT HIMSELF SUSPICIOUS

My new short story, "The Wizard Who Kept Himself Suspicious," drops on July 28! It's part of the MAGIC & MYSTERY collection, edited by John Joseph Adams, also with stories by Travis Baldree, Sarah Beth Durst, Robert Jackson Bennett, Heather Fawcett, Tananarive Due, & J. M. Miro! This is an Amazon Originals project; that means each story (and its audio version) can be purchased alone or as part of the group, so you can either enjoy a whole anthology or pretend it’s just me, as you prefer.

“The Wizard Who Kept Himself Suspicious” is a fair-play murder mystery about a bunch of Jack Vancian wizards, i.e. messy bitches who love drama. They have a problem at one of their every-thirteen-years beach parties and only Shiverick, a rationalist eccentric who might not even be a wizard, stands any chance of figuring it out.

Pre-orders are love, so check it out here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H3TTX6QM

“Suspicious” has been hovering around #7-10 on the Amazon 90-Minute Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Reads Top 100 chart; a niche to be sure, but extra-amusing to me because “Locke Lamora and the Bottled Serpent” is still there, too, currently at #22. Staying alive on a little chart like this isn’t quite conquering the world, but it is some of that awareness-building I was talking about. The longer my projects chart like this, the more browsers see them and get curious, and the more people attach my name to the vital category of “fiction writers who are not actually dead.” So if you’re interested, don’t be shy— Amazon will be the sole outlet for this story for the foreseeable future.

THE LOCUS BEST SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY OF THE YEAR

Another superb editor and friend of my work, Jonathan Strahan, has been tasked with putting together an anthology intended to refresh the grand tradition of “Year’s Best” collections for sf/f short fiction, and hopefully spearhead a new line of Locus-branded collections.

Jonathan has kindly requested my novelette “Kaiju Agonistes” (cough, My Hugo Award-nominated novelette “Kaiju Agonistes!”) to be part of this collection as a stretch goal. If you’d like to help out, and secure a copy of a swanky pile of excellent and ambitious fiction, you can pledge for the Kickstarter here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2040521099/locus-anthology-2025

SPEAKING OF “KAIJU AGONISTES…”

I can be a wordy bastard, and from time to time, I have grappled with space constraints. Sometimes, the fight yields a relatively tight and disciplined package that hits a perfect length. Sometimes, I have to cut more than I would have liked. With my short fiction, I occasionally have the opportunity to mend these deficiencies and create what I hope is a better, deeper, more memorable version of the story.

Now, I’m darned proud of “Kaiju Agonistes” and I think it stands as is just fine… but there are still parts I wish I hadn’t needed to truncate, parts I wish I could expand on, a few points I wish I could sharpen. The folks at Uncanny gave me as much leeway as possible, but in the end they still produce a physical/PDF edition of their magazine, and they can only print so much.

Thus, my digital release of “Kaiju Agonistes” will be an enhanced edition, featuring not just a longer and deeper version of the story, but a companion essay on the eight years it took to complete the tale, and my inspiration from/argument with Clifford Simak’s utterly brilliant utterly imperfect novel They Walked Like Men- a story which asks the question “What if shapeshifting aliens tried to conquer the earth by literally buying everything out from under us using our own money and our own laws?” and then barely answers the question.

My Author’s Enhanced Edition of “Kaiju Agonistes” is also available for pre-order and dropping on July 28 (the trade dress above is accurate but the actual image itself is a placeholder I cooked up fiddling with Photoshop, so it will likely look a fair bit more professional in the end). Once again, pre-orders are love, there’s a lot of new material, and I have to admit that I’m deeply amused by the thought that a third story of mine might chart in that top 100. If you’d like to nurture that hope, check it out at:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H86ZDJ91

LATER, IN INDIANAPOLIS…

Elizabeth Bear and I will be attending the GenCon Writers Symposium from July 30 to August 2; if you’re at GenCon, I will not only be doing panels and hanging around, but I will have a joint autographing session with Mary Robinette Kowal on Saturday morning at 11 AM. More information is contained in the event listing at that link. Don’t be shy!

Cheers for now. There are more ducks closing on my position.

Well, hey! A bit of good news to spice up the weekend. After Conversation Tree Press’ lovely limited edition of “Locke Lamora and the Bottled Serpent” was blasted out of existence by ravenous readers and collectors, we struck a quick deal to also release the text as a much more reasonably-priced e-book for a broader readership. It’s out!

This is the full text of the story that was originally released in two parts in Grimdark Magazine, cleaned up and slightly expanded, with a few notes of introduction and closure from me. I am delighted to say that on the Kindle store, it’s #1…

…in, uh, the 90-minute science fiction & fantasy short reads category…? That’s a thing? Okay, it’s a thing.

Honestly, it’s always nice to rank in any category that the all-mighty algorithms will allow. Even if it is “self-help manuals for left-handed entertainment professionals aged 45-59.”

At the risk of sounding a bit mercenary (which would be wrong, because I am actually severely mercenary), if you’re at all interested in this little return visit to Camorr and haven’t yet checked it out, now would be a great time to do so. Opening-days numbers tend to grab attention; sales tend to rapidly lead to more sales, and thus more attention, and thus more sales. The longer this e-book stays visible, the better Conversation Tree will feel about the experiment. Also, more people will discover that it exists, and thus that the Gentlemen Bastards and their author are very much alive… while the links at Barnes & Noble and Apple are not yet live, you can currently get this at:

•Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GZYBK64S

•Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0GZYBK64S

•Amazon CA: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0GZYBK64S

And Kobo:

https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/locke-lamora-and-the-bottled-serpent

That’s that! With your help, I’ll soon dominate Skokie, IL households of two or fewer on Tuesday night BEFORE 6 PM! And then, my friends, we’ll be unstoppable.

In Skokie.

Are you a reader of this newsletter who lives outside North America? Take a look at the giveaway I’m currently running at the Gentleman Bastards subreddit— two (although now that so many people have entered I’m thinking of upping it to three) copies of the very nice, very expensive, and very sold-out Subterranean Press reprinting of their Lies of Locke Lamora special edition. All you have to do is leave a note with a Reddit handle; at noon my time on Tuesday May 12th I’ll fire up a random number generation app and use it to pick random winners. All postage paid by me, no tricks or entry fees or other weirdness. All the details are here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/gentlemanbastards/comments/1t7i8ri/right_lets_do_it_tloll_special_edition_giveaway/

Remember, you’ve got until noon EST May 12th!

Short newsletter this week! Lengthier yammering next time. Stay safe out there.

For as long as we’ve had mail, we’ve had scams. Once upon a time the effort required was still a sort of barrier, demanding pluck and enterprise that could be, from a certain tilted perspective, admirable (books about con artists pay my mortgage, after all). A messenger arrives bearing a tablet from the famed copper merchant Ea-nāṣir, promising ingots of surpassing quality at a reasonable price. A letter appears in your mail, soliciting you for an exclusive opportunity to purchase Florida real estate. At some point you, poor sucker, would still have to visit an office, shake a hand, trade real money for shoddy goods or worthless paper.

The telephone was a new frontier for flim-flam. For a while, as recently as twenty-ish years ago, personal scam calling in the United States kept its bespoke touch and also employed an entry-level tier of the desperate and greedy. The films Glengarry Glen Ross and Boiler Room are both a solid education in the use of cold-calling to sell bullshit. Still, that was a generation ago. Caller ID and a vast cultural unwillingness to answer random phone calls (inculcated in part by phone scammers) have changed the pattern; these days the frontlines of phone scams are inhabited by robots (“Hello, this is your bank calling…”). The careless, brainless, inaccurate mass-spamming of e-mail and social media has also been put into the hands of ‘bots, and by God, it has never been a bigger morass of suck.

Scams come in waves of innovation; after you notice a new one you start seeing it by the dozens, by the hundreds, and soon it’s haunting the inboxes and spam filters of everyone you know. Years ago it was untargeted, tawdry, sensationalistic— dick pills, dick pills, porn, and more dick pills. The spread of LLMs led to more precisely-aimed malfeasance; no need to waste your own neurons on even rudimentary creativity when you can just order a chatbot to write you a plausible cover letter for any category of target. The communities surrounding publishing are anxious and economically insecure, so there are a variety of approaches, from “Hello, would-be writer! I am a famous author, selling access to my secrets…” to “Hello, established author! I run a dedicated circle of 3,000 avid fantasy readers who all take my orders for some reason, and we’d love to feature your book in something that sounds semi-plausible.”

Early versions of these scams (like the first generation of rubber-skinned killer robots described by Kyle Reese in The Terminator) were easy to spot, but they keep adding fresh wrinkles. They co-opt the names of genuine conventions, conferences, and organizations. They steal the names and portraits of real people. They spoof legitimate-looking e-mail addresses. The net result is that I find myself spending dozens of additional minutes every day peering closely at my e-mail (my primary means of communication and a critical tool for every aspect of my career), researching the names and places referenced in them. It was vaguely humorous the first few times I received an e-mail like this, from someone’s chatbot soliciting the wrong Scott Lynch for a scam related to a completely made-up award:

… but this shit ain’t funny any more. I can’t take invitations or solicitations for granted these days, yet neither can I apply my old calculus to dismiss and delete them with relative efficiency. Most of them no longer cite the wrong books or otherwise give themselves away in the opening sentence. Furthermore, the widespread use of LLMs to compose even brief business communications now means that some people I legitimately want to be in contact with are (sigh) sounding exactly like the scam-bots.

A few weeks ago I put out an open call for artists interested in a commission for an ebook cover. Most of the responses were unobjectionable but a few had the depersonalized verbosity of a chatbot, and a few even linked to portfolios that were… well, fake. Obviously any advance paid to those “artists” would simply vanish. Commissioning art has always been a pleasure for me, and I’m goddamn angry that even it has been contaminated.

Con artists in fiction have to be charming and entertainingly clever; what real scammers do is flood the world with gigantic automated toilet flushes. I really detest these low-rent parasites, these fucking attention vampires, destroyers of trust, dissolvers of the concept of reality itself. They are an integral part of what marketing guru Rory Sutherland calls “silent irritants,” the unnecessary little points of friction in an enshittified modern world that add a stealthy haze of brain-deadening frustration to the chores of living.

I wish I could trust anyone remotely near power to do anything sensible about the problem; none of us deserve any of this.

Yes, yes. Light a candle, etcetera. Alas that cursing the darkness is so cathartic. Okay. Deep breath. Candle!

I’m happy to announce that one of my long-desired side projects, the Free Fiction Archive for my website, will be a go live in just a couple of days (ideally Monday). I need to have a chat with my host/tech genius about optimum practices, but the files are made.

What’s the big idea, you ask? Well, although I sell some of my short stories as ebooks on my website, and at places like Amazon and Smashwords, most of those pieces have also been available at various other places on the internet for years, some obvious and some obscure. I have long thought I might as well gather high-quality reading options in a central location; after a lot of pondering I have decided to offer the stories as epubs and as text files, rather than as HTML. These will be free at my website for as long as I maintain it; I’ll start with my two oldest published stories (“In the Stacks” and “The Effigy Engine”) and gradually work from there. There might be delays for various reasons (certainly no published story can be simultaneously offered for free the moment it goes live, nor for at least a year afterward, minimum) and stories that are part of the Gentleman Bastard sequence will be subject to more stringent control than everything else. However, eventually, all or nearly all of it will be there, gratis.

Now, why give away stories for free when I’m still selling them as ebooks? A good question. Spotted that, didn’t you, you clever little bugger. The answer is two-fold. First, I don’t pay my mortgage by hiding my short work behind a gate and squeezing anyone I can find a paltry sum to let them through. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I value my craft, and I know that I’m worth a lot of money when I’m doing it, but arrangements with my business partners are not the same thing as trying to flog every last penny out of people who don’t necessarily have many.

I have noted the number of people I’ve encountered (on various forums and on Reddit, which I’ve been trying to pay more attention to recently) who say things like “I’ve never read any of Scott’s shorter stuff because I hate reading on the web” or “I just don’t have spare money for these things.” Thus, the Free Fiction Archive. People willing to buy my ebooks as a show of support and counter-generosity will always be free to do so; anyone who can’t afford it (or thinks I’m an asshole but can’t wait to secretly read my stuff) can still have the stories. One nice free thing in an enshittified world; one silly little candle flickering in the darkness.

Further plans on the ebook front— I’d really like to have a version of my Hugo-nominated novelette (yes, I’m gonna be dropping regular hints for a while yet, please forgive me) “Kaiju Agonistes” out this month with some additions and a short afterword about the story’s history and influences. I also need to get my ebook of “The Smoke of Gold is Glory,” currently available at my website, up at other places, too. And I’m strongly considering withdrawing my ebooks from Smashwords/Draft2Digital and simply offering them direct at Barnes & Noble, Apple, etc.— but that’s a backstage chore for me and my helpers and nothing you folks need to worry much about.

I’d also like to start exploring possibilities for having some of my short ebooks translated and released in other language markets; bear in mind that this is a notion in its infancy and I have a lot of market and legal research to do even before I start pondering fair compensation plans for translators. This process will not be fast. I have a couple major projects I really need to be devoting my attention to…

APPEARANCE UPDATE: My amazing wife Elizabeth Bear will be a featured author at the Pittsburgh Book Festival at the end of May; I’ll be tagging along as spousal and artistic support. So if you can spot her there, I’ll be somewhere nearby. Cheers!

In 2017 I read scraps of a work in progress to a small crowd at a bar in Manhattan; the piece was about a giant monster emerging from the Pacific Ocean on a mission to teach us the necessity of not setting off so many goddamn atomic bombs. It seemed to go over well, but it wasn’t even half-finished. I had vague themes I wanted to express, in those halcyon pre-pandemic pre-Trump II days when I thought I knew how satire worked. When I still thought I had nailed down, to be honest, how the world worked.

Years passed. The piece acquired a title, “Kaiju Agonistes,” but not a functional posterior to complement its beginning. I noodled around with some of the intended themes and scenarios in another piece that did get finished, “Maybe Just Go Up There and Talk To It,” for Jonathan Strahan’s Book of Dragons anthology. I don’t usually borrow parts out of an unfinished work to stitch into a new one; it feels uncannily like nipping off with an organ or two from someone unconscious in the hospital. Maybe that’s me being precious, I dunno. But just this once I got over my aversion and pulled a Burke and Hare on one of my own creations.

More years passed. Isolation, disaster, elections, disaster. My wife, a wise and persistent woman, gave me gentle reminders now and then that I really ought to finish “Kaiju Agonistes” for the aesthetically compelling reason that she wanted to read it, damn it. Eventually (aided by the wonders of medication for my anxiety disorder) I found some replacement organs for the ones I’d sliced out and “Kaiju Agonistes” stumbled back to life. The good folks at Uncanny Magazine published it in January of last year, and you can still read it for free online. I was proud of it, but I tried not to be a jackass about that pride. Mostly I just wanted people to read and remember it; stories published in the first month of the year will be followed by literally hundreds more. From that long torrent of pages and paragraphs people must pluck their recommendations for various awards. The harsh truth of the writing life is that we ourselves lose track of the years in which our stories come out; the fact that anyone else takes note of them is a miracle and a blessing.

Anyway.

A couple weeks ago, my brilliant wife received an e-mail at the crack of dawn, letting her know that she had been nominated for a Hugo Award in the Best Series category. I was ecstatic for her; I was in the audience when she and her podcast crew shared Hugos for Best Fancast in 2012 and 2013. I love seeing my wife carry off a trophy; I was always confident the fiction awards would come knocking for her again, and so they did. But I had no such e-mail. I sighed— c’est la vie! Only on an idle whim did I check my spam filter, which is notoriously virulent. And…

This is my first-ever nomination for a Hugo, and I’m so touched and honored I can’t even. I can’t odd, either. I can neither odd nor even. It’s just damn nice, is all. I have nothing to complain about in my literary life. The generosity of my readers has kept my books in print for nearly twenty years now, and pays my mortgage, but from time to time one still hopes to be seen, to feel re-connected to the writer and fan communities, to be part of the big conversation. So hey, read it— and if you have a Worldcon membership (even supporting memberships have voting rights, for this year’s finalists and next year’s nominees), maybe give it a nod if you enjoyed it. The Hugo ballot uses ranked choice voting, which means you can spread the love to multiple candidates in any category, and I know we’re all absolutely beset for time and attention right now… but remembering the stories, shows, and creators you’ve appreciated in awards like this really does them some good.

Bear and I are looking forward to being in Anaheim for the convention and the ceremony; we will not be the first married couple to receive nominations in different categories in the same year (we believe Kate Wilhelm and Damon Knight did that in the late 70s, because of course they did) but it hasn’t happened in almost fifty years. We’ll try to dress sharp— she’ll have it in the bag, of course. I might need help.

I am so sorry that the shambolic, unpredictable lawlessness of this fucking administration makes travel to the United States a dicey proposition right now, meaning many of our international friends and colleagues will not be able to visit for the con. Their dignity and safety cannot be assured, which is damning. We’re not ignorant of this travesty and we’re not going to Worldcon to pretend it isn’t happening— we’re going because we refuse to shut our lives down and close off our community and our fellowship. Not for these bastards. Not for that fucking guy.

Speaking of travel, community, and optimism— I had a great time at DragonCon last year, and can finally reveal that I will be the literary guest of honor at JordanCon in Atlanta next year, from April 16-18:

Long before that, of course, Bear and I will be at Rising Phoenix Game Convention this weekend, and on Monday I’ll be in Boston to help show off a bright new talent in the fantasy genre, a little-known British indie darling named Joe. Joe something. Joe Applecrumble, or whatever his name is. He shows promise, this kid. The event is sold out, so keep your fingers crossed that we both remember to wear pants.

Cheers!

A cold April has settled over Western Massachusetts. Today the sky was a pristine blue and the sun was silver-gold and dry white flakes of snow fluttered down on green lawns. The nights are freezing, tree branches still empty, and I love it very much. I know summer has to come, I know the sun will assert itself, but these brief troughs between tundra and swamp are when I find this place the most beautiful.

News? News! Yes, have some.

My fellow Gollancz author and swordy stabby gritty sweary guy Joe Abercrombie will be coming to Boston on Monday, April 27th as part of his US paperback tour for The Devils. Joe and I will be doing an “in conversation” event at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, MA that night at 6 PM! All of this is being arranged by the fine folks at Brookline Booksmith, and tickets can be had here. Don’t pass up the chance to see two of fantasy literature’s wittiest and most respected stars in a rare double-appearance… but if you do pass up that chance, come see me and Joe instead!

Immediately prior to that event, Elizabeth Bear and I will be weekend guests of honor at Rising Phoenix Game Con in Milford, Massachusetts from April 24-26. We’ll be doing panels, interviews, and a signing. I will also do a live reading, and give a full-length version of my MURDER MURDER DEATH DEATH lecture! This seminar is a brisk, all-encompassing rundown of facts and misconceptions when it comes to unconsciousness, injury, death, emergency response, and body disposal, involving some lived experiences from my 11 years as a firefighter and medical responder. Many things a writer or game designer might want to know about the fragile human condition, including a lot of stuff I wish I’d known before I started writing my first novel!

Plus… I’ll be running playtests of two original games designed by yours truly.

Once upon a time writing prose was my break from writing gaming material, and since 2004 the situation has been reversed. I’ve been trying to claw back a little more room in my life for experiments in game design, and for the last few years I’ve been heavily focused on cooperative board games.

The first of these games is WE ARE RICH IN OPPORTUNITY. A new age dawns for humanity as a handful of bright, eager pioneers take up residence in the first colony on Mars! This tiny installation will eventually become the heart of a magnificent and ever-growing human presence on the red planet. Success will build on success! The names of these colonists will be immortal legends.

Or so everyone thought, until they landed. You see, they work for Sheldon Frim.

Sheldon Frim. The richest man in the world. Multi-multi-billionaire industrialist.

Also, a complete fucking idiot.

As it turns out, his Mars base is a semi-functional mess. His resupply rockets don’t always land safely. His much-touted FrimBots are barely capable of all the urgent exterior labor they were designed for. Worst of all, Frim is a feckless, petulant narcissist with the attention span of a middle-school dropout. Frim’s ongoing involvement in running the colony from earth is not merely an inconvenience— it could get everyone killed.

With few alternatives, the colonists have decided to fight back…

We Are Rich in Opportunity was first playtested at GenCon in 2023 and has gone through a few iterations since then. It’s meant to be irreverent and fast-paced, with an ideal session taking about 45 minutes if everyone knows the basic rules.

(We Are Rich in Opportunity splash art above is by the one and only Darren Calvert)

Additionally, I will also be running my first playtest of HAPPY HIVES. Happy Hives is an action-oriented reverse of Settlers of Catan in which players are basically xenomorphs trying to eat the human colonists that are attempting to terraform their home planetoid. You might also describe it as an attempt to make a faster, less complicated Spirit Island. Each player controls a hive of creatures with a unique starting power or resource; the hives must race to gain biomass and evolve new abilities while working together to contain a human incursion that progresses unpredictably every game. If the hives can’t hold back the space marines, next come the tennis courts and shopping malls…

Yesterday, Conversation Tree Press revealed the existence of its all-new limited collector’s edition of “Locke Lamora and the Bottled Serpent.” Only five hundred of these have been made; they’re spendy but also rather exquisite. This is a slightly expanded version of my two-part story from Grimdark Magazine, with a new foreword and afterword, as well as three original foldout illustrations by Even Amundsen, bringing Camorr to life in beautifully grotesque stylized glory.

Purchasers of certain previous volumes from Conversation Tree have first dibs on the print run, but all remaining copies go on sale for the public on April 9th. Copious amounts of information about the edition, as well as a number of pictures, can be found here. Each copy is signed by myself and the artist.

I have had to sit quietly on our plans for this edition for the last few months, but I’m glad the cat is out of the bag at last. Conversation Tree Press has been a delight to work with.

There’s other stuff I have to keep sitting quietly on for a while yet, but this is a month in which some proverbial beans are going to be metaphorically spilled. That’s all for now— hold fast and stay safe out there.