coming to the Texas Book Festival!

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Hi there! Such fun stuff happening this fall! First of all, New York ComicCon was an absolute blast. Also, did you know SCORPICA will be available in paperback in just a couple short weeks? Yay!

Last but not least for today, I’ll be appearing at the Texas Book Festival this weekend and I absolutely cannot wait! It’ll be my first book festival in quite a while. I’ve got a panel on Saturday, November 5, in conversation with Rebecca Roanhorse: it’s called “Big Fantasy” and it’s going to be awesome.

Hop on over to the festival site for details!

have you seen the cover of ARCA?

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The paperback of SCORPICA is coming out shortly, but of course in publishing we’re always living in both the present and the future — so don’t forget that ARCA, second book in the Five Queendoms series, comes out this spring! Right now the release date is March 7 (but you know how release dates are.)

If you haven’t seen the absolutely breathtaking cover of ARCA, rush to check it out now! The official reveal was part of this Saga Press roundup post at Tor.com. Soooo pretty.

(And did I mention you can pre-order? You can pre-order anywhere you get your books, including my longtime fave One More Page.)

come see me at NYCC!

OK, dream-come-true time — I get to appear at my first-ever con! (Historical fiction has conferences, yes, but fantasy has cons, and that’s a whole different ball of wax. I’ll be at New York Comic Con on Thursday, October 6. Lots of info, so I’m just going to paste in the listing from my Events page, so you’ve got it all right here:

Thursday, October 6 — New York Comic Con! Back to Javits, baby.

  • 3:00 PM - 3:30 PM                    In-booth SCORPICA signing at the Saga Press booth

  • 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM Kickass Women in Fantasy Panel Signing, Location: Table 4

  • 6:45 PM - 7:45 PM                    PANEL: Kickass Women in Fantasy: Sit down with some of your favorite authors writing in the fantasy space as they discuss the fantasy heroines they love, crafting their own badass characters, and how they smash the patriarchy with every word they write. Featuring M. J. Kuhn (Among Thieves, Saga Press), G. R. Macallister (Scorpica, Saga Press), Katee Roberts (Electric Idol, Sourcebooks), and Scarlett St. Clair (A Game of Retribution, Sourcebooks), Moderated by Phoebe Cramer, Publishers Weekly; Location: Lit Room 1B-02

Do I even need to say how excited I am? SO EXCITED. Watch for lots of updates on Instagram at @theladygreer!

sharing surprises!

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Hello! I know it’s been quiet around here, but surprise! I’m back. Hoping to get back in the saddle, updating this blog regularly. For one thing, the second book in the Five Queendoms series is now available for preorder, and it has a GORGEOUS cover, and I’ll be talking plenty about that in the months to come!

But for now, just a quick update! My latest Writer Unboxed post is about the power of surprise (hence the title of this post) — surprise for your characters, surprise for your readers, and surprise for the writer, too.

Read about the power of surprise.

(And stay tuned for more soon!)

online events this week!

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Suddenly, a flurry of events! I’m appearing online twice this week, and really excited about both.

First, I’m returning to Reddit for another AMA! I’ll be at r/Fantasy at 1pm on Monday, June 6, to talk about all things SCORPICA. Matriarchy! Fantasy! Queens dueling to the death! Why my female sorcerers are never called sorceresses! That kind of thing.

Then, on Tuesday, June 7, I’m on a panel with a bunch of fabulous ladies for the Edmonton Public Library, talking about women-centered stories (particularly historical fiction, but I’ll answer questions about fantasy too if you ask them.) You can register for that one here.

So catch me online if you can! And next week, I’ll actually be in person… see the Events page for details.

Fictional matriarchies, LitHub, and yours truly!

“Why don’t we see more science fiction and fantasy novels set in worlds run by women?” It’s a question I’ve been asking myself ever since I got the idea for my epic fantasy series The Five Queendoms, and today, it’s a question I’m asking on LitHub.

In the process of talking about some potential theories behind the scarcity of matriarchy in speculative fiction, I get to call out some of my favorite recent novels that do incorporate matriarchal societies, like Rebecca Roanhorse’s Black Sun and Samantha Shannon’s Priory of the Orange Tree. Plus I get to cover the whole sub-sub-genre trend where women can only be in charge if most or all of the men get killed off — what’s up with that?

And here’s the kicker:

Some reasons for avoiding matriarchal settings are solid; some are sketchy. But here’s what I hope: I hope no writer out there is avoiding setting their story in a matriarchal society because they think it’s already been done.

Read more here!

my review of Sea of Tranquility in CHIRB!

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Just a quick little link — I reviewed Emily St. John Mandel’s new novel, Sea of Tranquility, for the Chicago Review of Books. I liked a lot of it, and it bears some resemblance to her amazing Station Eleven, but it’s also:

far more focused. Station Eleven dipped into multiple characters’ points of view, following both the pandemic’s outbreak and the recovering world several decades on, and Mandel’s writing fully inhabited every character, immersing us in their particular angle on the stricken world. Sea of Tranquility keeps the multifaceted narration style, passing with ease between voices, but narrows the focus to a simpler question: What happened?

Read the full review here.