SCORPICA on Kate Quinn's list of recommendations at BookBub!

If you’ve read the blurbs on the cover of Scorpica you know superstar author Kate Quinn was kind enough to put her stamp of approval on the book, for which I will always be grateful. (The woman gives amaaaazing blurbs.) And this week, her list of recent recommendations appeared at BookBub, with Scorpica high on the list!

Click to read the full list of 11 Beautifully Written Books Recommended By Kate Quinn. Scorpica’s in fabulous company.

name a character and give to a good cause!

Here’s a fun thing I’ve never done before — I’ve put the right to name a character in one of my books up for grabs! It’s part of the Book Aid For Ukraine auction, so you can win something fun and also know your money is going to help somewhere it’s needed. You can bid here.

a little SCORPICA-related roundup!

Remember when I was having trouble blogging because there was just So Much? Three weeks out from SCORPICA’s publication, there’s nearly as much happening, but it’s a different kind of much! I’ve been neglecting the blog, my apologies.

Here’s a little bit of the latest muchness:

• I recommended a Fierce Woman Character To Celebrate (who also happens to be a real woman from history) as part of this roundup at The Young Folks

• I wrote about the particular challenges of writing birth scenes for Writer Unboxed

• I really enjoyed my event at One More Page last night, and you can catch the replay of me reading from SCORPICA, fielding questions, and gesturing a lot in huge sleeves on YouTube

More to come soon, including an opportunity to name a character in my next book!

let's talk about the Eowyn Problem!

I’ve been having a great time writing essays about Scorpica and the wider world of epic fantasy it fits into, and here’s one that’s near and dear to my heart. Have female characters always been part of epic fantasy? Yes, but not always in great numbers, and not always in great ways. For SFBook, I wrote about what happens when a great big epic includes only a handful of women. “Representation isn’t a box to be checked; it’s a conversation, a range of expression, an opportunity to broaden perspective and help an individual work of epic fantasy live up to the genre’s name.”

Read all about it here.

The Big Idea behind SCORPICA!

Ever wondered what inspired me to take a break from historical fiction to kick off the massive endeavor of writing an epic fantasy series set in a matriarchal world called The Five Queendoms? I wrote it all up for you! And you can read it on John Scalzi’s fabulous Whatever blog.

Because a female-default culture wouldn’t be just the opposite of male-default culture, just as matriarchy isn’t just a flipped version of patriarchy. I wanted to read about a society where women’s concerns were primary, leading to not just different models of female power but different family structures, different models of child-rearing, different prejudices and judgments. What would marriage in a culture like that look like? Who might rule them? What gods would form their pantheon?

And as with so many authors, because I couldn’t find the exact book I wanted to read, I ended up writing it.

Read the whole story here.

celebrating some of my favorite fictional queens!

March 1 kicks off Women’s History Month, yay! And SCORPICA has also been out exactly a week. Many thanks for all the support so far — it’s been a real blast to see this book out in the world at last.

Lots of fun things to share still happening, and here’s today’s: I list my Top 10 Fictional Queens for Culturefly.

In fiction, some of the best queens are the worst. What makes a fictional ruler memorable isn’t always what we like to see from real-world monarchs—in fact, the opposite is often true. But it takes more than just an appetite for evil to keep any particular queen from fiction on our minds.

Read about Queen Lucy, Galadriel, Julia Wicker and more here.

Events coming up for SCORPICA!

Hi there! If you’re in the greater DC area, you have two chances to hear me talk about SCORPICA in the coming weeks! These are on my Events page also, but here’s the key info for the locals:

March 2 at 6:30pm — the Eldersburg Branch of CCPL, presented by A Likely Story. Register here.

March 9 at 7pm — One More Page Bookstore, Arlington, VA. Register here.

Hope to see you soon!

this interview has a lot of character!

So I’ve been an interviewer (many times) and I’ve been interviewed (many times), but this one is a first for me: I was asked to interview one of my characters! At first I wasn’t sure how that would work, but when I mentally flipped through a list of the characters in my most recent book (it’s a long list), I realized there was one who would lend herself perfectly to an interview.

Fasiq is many things: an actual giant, the leader of a bandit gang, a charismatic and confident speaker, a legend in her own mind. And when readers talk about their favorite characters from Scorpica, she often tops the list. So I realized she’d be the perfect subject for such an interview, and for a person who’s pretty secretive, she had a lot to say.

Read my interview with Fasiq here.

Kate Quinn interviews me about SCORPICA for CHIRB!

This was such a fun interview! As you probably know, for the past few years, Kate Quinn and I have both been writing historical fiction featuring extraordinary women. But did you know that before that, Kate wrote a fabulous series set in Ancient Rome? So I knew she’d be a great person to ask for a Scorpica blurb, and she was kind enough to give an absolutely smashing one.

Like the sword fight between Inigo and the Man in Black in The Princess Bride, our conversation ranged all over: from the similarities between historical fiction and epic fantasy (“it’s more like dog/wolf than dog/cat”), to the role of men in matriarchy, how we feel about fact-checking emails, and some of my latest reading recommendations.

Read it all here.

GIRL IN DISGUISE makes an appearance at CrimeReads!

Just a little palate-cleanser here in case you’re tired of hearing about SCORPICA! This is the great thing about having multiple books out in the world — you never know which one’s going to pop up when or where.

Deanna Raybourn, who writes the fabulous Veronica Speedwell mystery series, recently put together a great list of her “favorite books featuring a question of identity,” and was kind enough to include GIRL IN DISGUISE. I’ve already told her I want the first part of this sentence on my tombstone.

Greer Macallister is always a great bet, but in Girl in Disguise she outdoes herself, fictionalizing the career of Kate Warne, the first female Pinkerton detective.

Read: Who Do You Think You Are? A List of Identity-Switching Mysteries over at CrimeReads.