tkingfisher

The Hollow Places is out today!

2020-10-06T18:21:21Z

It's a book! I wrote it! Ebook, audiobook, print, wherever you want to pick it up. It's horror, much more TWISTED ONES than SWORDHEART. I don't think it's as scary as TWISTED, I think it's just interesting. But also I may be biased. Horror is so individual. I have friends who went "That was fun!" over TWISTED and friends who said "I will never sleep again and I blame you."

That's really the only excitement going on. I'm plugging away on the next paladin book, Istvhan's story, which I'm hoping will be out in January but will probably be closer to February, given...y'know...the world. More fluffy romance and severed heads! Istvhan must find out where the clay men are coming from! Working title is PALADIN'S STRENGTH but like everything, it is subject to change without notice.

My agent is in the middle of negotiating another horror novel deal, so you haven't read the last of me actually trying to scare people. And also my editor over at Dial is asking about kid books, and I owe another publisher a third book even though the first one isn't out yet, so I somehow went from "I have no books due except Istvhan's and the Dervish's" to "I have five potential novels in the works." Good thing I got that ADHD thing sorted out earlier this year...

Hope you're all doing well in this time of plague and weirdness.

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New Book Out Tomorrow!

2020-07-20T23:36:14Z

It's called A Wizard's Guide To Defensive Baking! You can pre-order! Or if you read this any time after today, just plain order!

This is the Bread Wizard book of long ago, published at last! There's a sourdough starter familiar named Bob!

Amazon

Direct from the publisher

Or ebooks available from all the usual suspects! Or my Patreon! Enjoy!

(Also I'm not dead.)

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Pandemic Update!

2020-03-17T17:31:37Z

Hi, everybody! Just wanted to drop by and tell you all that I'm fine, Kevin and the teenager and I are sheltering in place and not going out for anything but absolute essentials. Our buddy Shepherd is here too, which is nice because she can do a lot of scratch cooking. (Me, I'm working in the garden a lot.)

Everything's pretty messed up out there, but we're all healthy so far and trying to our part to flatten the curve. Schools are closed and the governor just ordered all bars and restaurants to shut down for anything but takeout. I'm worried for all my local business friends, but it's gotta be done. I'm doing daily check-in Twitter threads for people, so if you're out that way and don't follow me yet, I'm ursulav over there.

World got a lot stranger this year. Take care of yourselves.

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Paladin's Grace

2020-02-10T17:26:30Z

It goes live tomorrow! It's a book! Angsty paladin romance set in the world of the Temple of the White Rat. Severed heads! Pining! Legal wrangling!

(oh god oh god I swear I fixed the duplication of the last line days ago but what if it didn't go through what if Amazon sends out a horribly mangled document that destroys my life forever oh god oh god I'M FINE IT'S ALL FINE THIS IS WHY SELF-PUBLISHED AUTHORS ARE NERVOUS SOULS)

Amazon, Patreon, and wherever fine ebooks are sold, except Google because they're weird.

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Seeds

2020-02-09T02:54:10Z

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It’s a gardener thing.

2020-02-04T03:23:50Z

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Tater Tot

2020-02-01T23:26:18Z

Kevin’s new chicken Tater Tot has decided she loves him.

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Two journal pages, largely at random

2020-01-30T01:55:05Z

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Another Day, Another...50 lbs of clover seed?

2020-01-20T21:28:25Z

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tkingfisher @ 2020-01-14T21:37:00

2020-01-15T02:39:34Z

Apparently Procreate can handle text now, so fiddling around with it! otherwise, the usual, overworked, flailing, etc.

Chickens, though.

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Horrible Pokemon

2020-01-14T02:45:40Z

Testing to see if Dreamwidth can pull an image from Twitter! Also I really don’t like Diglett. It’s hiding something.

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New Horror Novel Out!

2019-10-04T17:23:20Z

The Twisted Ones is available now! Critics seem to like it! You can get it via Amazon or any of the other places books are sold, including bookstores and all that good stuff! (I'm next to Stephen King. Hadn't planned that when I picked the pen name...)

If you are in the UK, you gotta wait a bit longer--Titan UK bought the rights and will be releasing it on their own schedule. I'm sorry for the delay, it's sadly beyond my control. The next one is supposed to be simultaneous, though.

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New story!

2019-07-27T19:16:58Z

A little bird tells me there’s a new novella dropping Tuesday, and you can preorder now!

“Minor Mage” is the story of a boy and his armadillo, trying to bring rain back to his farming village. It is not tragic or heavy, it is just an amusement to while away an evening, and it has a sassy armadillo.

Amazon (print volume preorder coming very soon)

Also available on Apple and Kobo now, Nook soon, Google Play if they ever sort their stuff out with Draft2Digital. And free to patrons!

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tkingfisher @ 2018-11-19T14:15:00

2018-11-19T19:19:20Z

New novel, coming November 27th! Woohoo! It's called SWORDHEART. It's an epic fantasy romancey thing with an enchanted sword. Yes, as one of the love interests. No, he manifests physically sometimes. Let's not get carried away.

You can pre-order SWORDHEART for Kindle! Or…

Hardcover

iBooks

Kobo

Nook

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tkingfisher @ 2018-09-05T09:46:00

2018-09-05T13:49:27Z

The problem with not posting constantly is that then I feel the urge to start every post with an apology for not posting, which makes me not post because guilt is only a motivator up to a point. So let's not do that. If you follow me on Twitter (ursulav) or listen to one of the three podcasts, you know I'm not dead! And if you don't, uh...Hi! I'm not dead!

Nothing much is going on here--I wish I had a new book to drop on you or something, but while there's a lot in the works, nothing ready right this minute. Also it's hot and obscenely muggy and the garden looks like Jurassic Park, only with chickens instead of velociraptors, but I'm told that velociraptors were only the size of turkeys anyway. The dew point is one degree below the ambient temperature and we are 99% humidity, so the windows are perpetually covered in condensation. In theory, fall is coming, but so is the heat death of the universe, and I will believe it when I see it.

Wherever you're hailing from, I hope you're doing well! I just felt like saying hi.

Also, in case you missed it, one of Kevin's baby chicks has grown up to be a rooster, because sexing chicks is hard. Dottie is now Dotson, and he is a large, imperious, very handsome bird who still runs in terror from Strong Independent Chicken despite being significantly larger than she is.

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The Wonder Engine

2018-03-01T23:46:21Z

It's out! It's available! You can buy it! At last, the secret of what paladins wear beneath their armor!

That's an Amazon link but there are also many other places it's available, although if you get the iBooks or Kobo version, for another day or two, you will get The Notorious Stoat version, where, owing to stuff NOT UPDATING, the uncopyedited work that was a placeholder didn't get pushed out in time, and there is a really spectacular typo right at the climax where Slate is suddenly a large group of weasels. (Also some other typos, but the Stoat one is the most impressive.)

And there was even fan-art, and people, I just cannot even. Go check out Heymurada's work!

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Super Heavy Stuff

2018-02-09T02:31:15Z

Okay, boys and girls and other, we're gonna talk about some heavy stuff for a minute. Death of aging parent and cancer. If you need to sit this one out, that is okay!

Also, read with the understanding that I am basically a funny writer, so if you laugh at any point in this post, it does not make you a bad person.

So my stepfather has been diagnosed with all the cancer. I beg of you, do not cross your fingers or wish him recovery--we are waaaay past that bit. Way past. Twenty individual brain tumors past. (Twenty! At some point you stop even being horrified and just go "Whoa. Dude. WHOA.")

Also it's everywhere else--heart, lymph nodes, ping-pong ball sized tumors in the lungs. I guess technically this is Stage Four but shit, I sorta feel like when you have that many tumors, you get your own stage.

Now, obviously this is fatal. Nobody recovers from this. You wish for a peaceful passage in this stage, that's pretty much it. The nice thing is that I am assured that with the brain stuff, you generally die before the painkillers stop working, which I mean, sounds like an awful thing but in practice is a REALLY DAMN GOOD THING. Nobody wants the alternative. I have seen the alternative play out and it is ugly.

Now, I'm fine. I'm not blindsided--he's eighty and smoked Camel Straights since he was twelve. Everybody wants the big Hallmark moment where you say the important things, but I said all those years ago. (Things left unsaid?! Have you people met me? I never leave ANYTHING unsaid!) Now we talk a couple times a year and swear at each other and I threaten to buy him a chicken and then he goes fly-fishing. This is the optimal relationship for two people who view "family togetherness" with less enthusiasm than a plague of locusts.

But here's the thing they don't warn you about. There is not a clear timeline of "Drop everything and go be with the dying."

I would love a timeline! I am pretty close to shaking an oncologist until one falls out! It could be a month! It could be eight months! Nobody knows!

And my mom and stepdad live 2000+ miles away, in Oregon. I got the word and I was literally all set to get on a plane next week and go wait it out in an extended stay hotel, except now apparently I could be in one for months, and...well, it's not tenable. I got books to deliver.

Having planned to go out, I am suddenly left with an extraordinary amount of misplaced energy that really wants to be anxiety. I kept throwing stuff on hold because I didn't expect to be here. I didn't start seeds, I didn't clean up the garden, I didn't do a bunch of stuff and now...well, who knows. You arrange to put your life on hold and you don't begrudge it but now you don't even know what kind of hold to put it on, and...yeah.

This is a very weird limbo to be in. I am like super-great in a crisis, but I am not good with the slow-motion waiting-for-the-crisis to start bit. And it feels really messed up to be planning book tour dates when you have IMPENDING MORTALITY kinda hanging in the background because how dare I schedule anything but how the hell is me not making plans going to make him live longer but maybe if I was a GOOD DAUGHTER but even I know that's bullshit.

The only thing he wants to do before he dies is go to the Oregon coast. Can't blame him. I sent them the cost of my initial plane ticket out so he can go eat raw oysters before things get too far gone, and I'll go...whenever Mom needs me.

So, that's where things stand. He's not quite badly enough off to get a hospice nurse coming in weekly yet, but that's the next stage. And all my plans are being made with the sort of caveat that I may have to suddenly drop everything. I'm waiting for my mom (and eventual nurse) to tell me WHEN to go get that hotel room. And we had to have the tactless conversation (and fortunately tact was never my strong suit anyway) which goes "If he dies and I'm not there, will you be okay until I get there?" and Mom says she will be, so if things suddenly happen before I'm out there...well, we'll manage.

Anyhow, that's where I'm at. It's really weird and uncomfortable, but as y'all know, I talk about just about everything and I'm hardly going to stop now. We don't talk enough about dying in our culture anyway, and then everybody gets blindsided with how weird it is.

(Also, ADULTHOOD: X-TREME EDITION! I got this news on book tour and then had to go talk to 3rd graders about fairy tales. AND THEY SAID ALL THAT REPRESSION WAS BAD FOR ME!)

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General Updates! Free Fiction!

2018-02-09T02:05:11Z

I have updated the Short Stories page! There's a bunch of new stuff you can read on-line for free!

Also, in case you missed it, the text of my Hugo Acceptance Speech--yes, the one about dead whales--went up over on Barnes & Noble's SF website!

An Unexpected Honor

(Go just for the illustration, if nothing else! That artist kicked butt!)

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Wonder Engine Pre-Order open!

2018-02-05T23:26:24Z

Psssst. Wanna buy a book? *opens coat*

Pre-Order The Wonder Engine now!

Other formats are also becoming available but take longer to percolate--check your Kobo/Nook/iBooks as needed.

(Remember! If you are a Patreon sponsor, you get the ebook free! No purchase required!)

There will be a print version at some point, but not quite simultaneously on this one.

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Awards Eligibility Thingy 2018

2018-01-04T19:45:55Z

Okay! As is the custom of my people, it is now time for the Stuff I Did In 2017 That You Can Nominate For Stuff if you're part of the ecosystem that nominates stuff for stuff. (Mostly writing stuff.)

Novels:

Clockwork Boys (as T. Kingfisher.) - self-published in association with Argyll Publications

Novelettes:

The Dark Birds - Apex Magazine

Short Stories:

Packing (as T. Kingfisher) - Uncanny Magazine
Sun, Moon, Dust - Uncanny Magazine
Origin Story - Apex Magazine (will be available online later this month, but was originally published in the Jackalope Wives anthology last year.)

Podcasts:

The Hidden Almanac

Also, while I have no idea what awards are out there for this, Truffke/Luvelex who did the art for the illustrated Summer in Orcus that came out this year (yes, you will be able to buy print copies once the Kickstarter rewards are all mailed out) did an unbelievable job and I just want the universe to acknowledge the heck outta that.

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Happy Thank God That's Over With!

2018-01-01T21:54:18Z

People.

People, I am here to tell you one very important fact.

Whatever happens, whatever 2018 holds...we never have to live through 2017 again.

If that's not a cause for optimism and rejoicing, I don't know what is.

Anyway, it's cold here on this new year, and I was at a party last night that involved a dragon-suiter lounging on the couch and telling me to draw him like one of my French dragons, and then on the way out the door, the hostess was all "TAKE THIS ENTIRE HAM."

At some point in my life, I made a series of choices that led me to this point. I sometimes wish I could pinpoint which choices those were. It's not that I wouldn't make them again, I'm just curious which they were.

But y'know, ham.

Also, the chickens have weeded the front garden. I am bemused. I mean, I knew they were supposed to do that, but I didn't expect the annual tide of chickweed and henbit to have completely vanished. (I wonder what they think of mulberry weed...) Now to see how the perennials do with constant little beaks poking at them...

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Year! In! Review!

2017-12-27T20:24:32Z

I had said on Twitter the other day that my year in review was basically "I'm still here, aren't I?" I can barely remember September and January seemed so far distant as to be somewhere around the rise of the Age of Mammals.

But I know in my twisty little heart of hearts that reviewing my accomplishments for the year is good for me. It lets me see that I actually did SOMETHING.

So! In 2017...

...I illustrated one and a half hamster books and wrote another one.
...I wrote three short stories and put out an anthology, Jackalope Wives.
...I published the complete Summer in Orcus, AND Sofawolf did a gorgeous Kickstarter version with illustrations by one of my favorite illustrators.
...Arisia put out The Halcyon Fairy Book, which is a collection of my fairy-tale snarkings and also Toad Words.
...I finished and published Clockwork Boys, which had been percolating for a decade and change, and finished the first draft of the sequel, The Wonder Engine, currently at the editor.
...I sold my first adult horror novel to Saga Press, which I am finishing up as we speak.
...I traveled to Iceland and Finland, both new to me, and it was awesome! And I flew over Greenland and looked down at it and went "Whoa. That's icy."
...kept up with two podcasts, and made frequent guest appearances on Kevin's new one, Productivity Alchemy.
...Won another Hugo. Gave a speech about whalefall, later reprinted by Barnes & Noble on their website. (woo!)
...read a great many books with objectified men in kilts.
...read some books about seeds.
...decided to learn to hunt deer and actually followed through on it.
...did large-scale grow-bag plantings and worked out the chinampas-tub system. It worked surprisingly well, but that's probably its own post.
...bought Dogskull Patch! And they sold it to me! Still astonished by that! Still doesn't feel like mine. I'm hoping to do more work to improve it next year, since I don't have many major travel plans for 2018.
...got some life birds in Texas.
...started keeping chickens, or at least failed to stop Kevin from keeping chickens, which amounts to the same thing.
...generally tried to be upbeat and kind--or if not kind, at least funny--on Twitter, which a couple people have told me was really helpful for them in the grim hellscape of 2017.
...helped my mom out, see above re: grim hellscape of 2017.
...moved some stone.
...was briefly involved in an emu caper.
...played some video games.
...refinanced mortgage, which I hadn't realized would be an accomplishment except that it turns out this is some high-level black magic adulthood crap.
...worked on various other books and kicked small amounts of words over them.
...recovered from severe ankle damage. It's weird to call this an accomplishment, but by god, my ankle was messed up and now it mostly isn't and I feel like that is worth celebrating.
...made some nifty jewelry.

You know, when I look at all that, it was a solidly productive year. There was a lot of stuff I DIDN'T do--I think I painted all of ONE painting that I liked, which is, um, kind of extraordinary, given that I used to average over a hundred paintings a year, easy. (Wait, two! The cover of Summer in Orcus was this year, I think?) On the other hand, we're looking at two hundred hamster drawings for the year, so that's got to be worth something.

When I was younger, I used to be able to do those illos and also keep up with painting. I don't seem able to do that any more. I have accepted that if I am illustrating the books, I am not painting. That's just how it's gonna be. I can do neat little necklace glyphs, but that's about it.

And I won't lie, my wordcount suffered badly this year. I used to average a thousand words a day--now if I knock out 500, I call it good. There were weeks when each word felt like yanking out an individual nose hair. I had to push back deadlines that I could have made easily, once upon a time.

But still, I got some books written and worked on some other ones. And I made some new friends online and hopefully didn't alienate too many of the old ones.

2018, I'm hoping not to travel much. My hope is that it'll be a rebuilding year, for my bank account, for Dogskull Patch, for the country, for the books. And maybe it will be, and maybe it won't be, but that's the dream.

I'm still here. Still glad y'all are with me.

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IT'S ALIVE

2017-11-29T00:36:21Z

Did I not mention that Clockwork Boys is alive? It's totally alive.

We got ebook! We got hardcover!

Amazon
Nook
iBooks
Kobo

Sequel, THE WONDER ENGINE, is hopefully out in February and I just handed it in to my long-suffering editor this afternoon!

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Hunting Update: CLICK THROUGH WITH CAUTION

2017-11-19T19:12:57Z

So I have successfully hunted a deer, which means that I am going to stop here so that anyone who wants out can bail. Some of the descriptions that follow may be too grisly for some readers, and that is OKAY. You don't have to stick around for this one if you don't want to. There will be no photos.

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( Cut Tag For Your Protection )

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Clockwork Boys pre-order!

2017-11-18T23:44:23Z

Clockwork Boys is available for pre-order!

We got ebook AND hardcover!

Amazon
Nook
iBooks
Kobo

For those following along at home, this is the Thing With The Paladin And The Ninja Accountant. And it is Book One! It is not a standalone! Book Two will be out, hopefully February-ish! (It is, however, a duology, not a trilogy or whatever.)

Hardcover is currently on Amazon, but will hopefully be available elsewhere for those avoiding the River.

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