Updates upon updates:
The Outcast Hours, edited by Mahvesh Murad and myself, is not shipping. Far from it - it ain't out until February. THAT SAID. Advance Reading Copies are in the wild. As with all ARCs, they aren't the finished finished copies, but they're darn close, and it is fun/terrifying seeing how the early readers are responding. If you're a Netgalley reviewer, you can grab one yourself. Or if you're a non-Netgalley reviewer (or bookshop person, or blogger, or vlogger, or whatever), you can simply email the publicist.
Those at the 'Night London Council' event at the Museum of London last Friday got a sneak preview, with short readings by Karen "Tilt" Onojaife and Will "It Was a Different Time" Hill. DJ Zakia Sewell has an AMAZING voice, and it was fantastic hearing her read the Outcast 'blurb'. 'Hearing a DJ read the spiel over the radio' is way up on the list. Highlights from the evening will be rebroadcast on Resonance FM next weekend.
There's not a ton that Mahvesh and I can do at this point - which is, as you can imagine, makes me a little twitchy. We're posting copies, squashing a few typos, but mostly just trying not to look at early responses. Even when they're, you know, good. Or very good. Or great. We're trying to scheme up a few more events like the above, but it may be closer to the launch before we see it all come together. Exciting/tense/etc.
...and The Djinn Falls in Love keeps ticking along. There were copies at ComicCon last weekend - which felt very cool - courtesy of Forbidden Planet - now signed by Claire North (and defaced by me). Mahvesh keeps getting photos of Djinn sightings all over the world: the latest, I think was Italy. I'm delighted that it keeps finding readers (and vice versa).
Literary Landscapes, edited by John Sutherland, is now shipping! A lovely gift book, with very interesting essays from very interesting people. I'm in there with strongly worded opinions about Lyme Regis (The French Lieutenant's Woman) and the Mississippi River (Huckleberry Finn). Here's the book at Waterstones, Amazon, and Blackwell's.
The Best of British Fantasy is at 175ish submissions, which excludes my own non-submitted reading. More about the progress of this particular tome - and what I'm learning from it - in this week's newsletter.
Speaking of which - recent newsletters have been about world-building and side-hustles.
Next event is the Self-Publishing Exchange on Saturday. After that, a couple of lectures, and... maybe that's it? Famous last words. Or not last words.