Wicked Problems, Out Tuesday!

"What do you mean, 'Flash Gordon approaching'?"

The world of the Craft Sequence is changing. Young Craftswoman Dawn is on the run, with a power she is just growing to understand. Her former teacher Tara Abernathy is on the hunt—reuniting with old allies and confronting old foes, as she races to prepare for a confrontation with her student, and an ancient, sinister force from beyond the stars…

Wicked Problems comes out Tuesday! Which: yikes!

Permit me to overshare for a moment: back in February, we moved, the culmination of months of work. Then I got sick, not with COVID, just with some garden-variety knock-me-on-my-ass flu. Unpacking happened. Then I had not-exactly-capital-E-emergency-but-sooner-is-better-than-later dental work. Then our entire household got sick, this time with COVID. (We’re fine, recovering. This was our first time around—so much for our gold stars. But: hey, now we know we’re not secretly immune, that our relative resistance has been a question of masking & vaccines & decent protocols & luck, which is heartening, actually.)

And now it is now! And my next book is out Tuesday! I usually do a bunch of running around and screaming and waving my arms in the lead-up to a book launch, in part because pre-orders are extremely helpful for a book’s trajectory and an author’s career, and in part because the running, armwaving, screaming etc. distracts from the the wild free-fall of an approaching launch date. But I’ve emerged from the last two months like Robin Williams from the Jumanji game, beardy and weird, and here I am, staring at the oncoming headlights of a big public career event. But hey: we’re all in this together!

For those of you who’ve been waiting for the Craft Wars books in audio, I have more good news to share—we have launch dates! Dead Country goes live on June 25 of this year, and Wicked Problems drops the following month, on July 30. Janina Edwards will be the narrator for both. I’ve heard a sample and I’m excited to listen to the whole performance.

Last year I started reading Tad Williams’ wonderful Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn books—complex, expansively paced, very 80s, consciously or unconsciously Lymond-infiltrated as is all the best fantasy of the period (or maybe “as is all the best fantasy, period”)—and, since I couldn’t quite bring myself to binge multiple thousand-page paperbacks, when I return to each volume I very much appreciate the full “story so far” segments at the front of each book. I wish I’d thought to do something of the sort for the Craft Wars. (I’ve also been reading some late-period Gene Wolfe, who uses dramatis personae sections in The Wizard Knight and Book of the Long Sun for a similar effect—though also, as often with Wolfe, on a slant.) Fortunately, Hannah at the Hidden Schools fan website is putting together just such an overview—recap posts covering each of the books leading up to Wicked Problems, highlighting their connections and continuing plots. It’s a great project and I can see it being very useful for folks who want to make sure they pick up everything—or almost everything—on the first read. One joy of this phase of work in the Craft world has been weaving together long-dangling threads, and it’s a great feeling to see others picking up on that work, which can feel like a private joke. So, if you’re counting down the days, these essays might help.

If you’re in the Boston area—or if you can drop by Youtube on an Eastern time evening schedule—I’ll be reading from and signing Wicked Problems at Brookline Booksmith on April 23. If other events manifest, I’ll post about them here and around.

As I was finishing this up, I got a bit distracted because an offhand comment of mine on BlueSky started going around—and it’s relevant to all this, so here you go:

The story you write for a "wide audience" will be trammeled by your own (incorrect) belief in the existence of normal people.

The story you write for the weird little goblin who lives inside your brain will grow wings because the world is full of weird little goblins

I’m here, writing this now, because over the last twelve years so many folks have connected with my stories about wizard law and divine markets, about young (or not-so-young-any-more) people trying to find their way in the world, about Eagle Knights and Deathless Kings, about space travelers and time spies. I’m so grateful; it’s been a surprise and a joy to watch the weird little goblins fly about.

Happy reading, folks. See you around.