Paper Fruit

While many of you much appreciated pre-orderers will have already received your copies of Creatures of Want and Ruin, today is the official release date of the book!

The book has been getting a pleasing number of thumbs-up, from Publishers Weekly, from Booklist, from io9, from Barnes & Noble (who were kind enough to call me “one of the most distinct voices in contemporary SFF”), and lastly from Apple Books, who also named it one of their Best Books of November. And a few little birds have told me some other accolades are forthcoming, too!

Even so, if you’d like to, you can help Creatures of Want and Ruin find its audience. If you like the book, or think it’s worthy of attention, please consider helping it (and me!) out with one of the following direct actions:

• Talk about it. Word of mouth is still the most effective form of advertising. If you think about it, chances are a large percentage of the books you read every year were personally recommended to you, so please let people know if they ask what you’re reading!
• Signal boost online. Social media is also very effective at promoting works of art and literature. Please let your social media contacts know about the book’s release and if you enjoyed it!
• Tell your local library. Even if you already bought a personal copy, please mention the book to your local librarian to get it on the shelf there next time you go in.
• Leave a review. Reviews matter to authors. Amazon in particular relies on review volume to decide which books to promote to their readers. A brief but enthusiastic review on any review site, be it a seller like Amazon or B&N.com, or Goodreads and other places like your own blog, will definitely help!

But really, the book is meant to be read and enjoyed, and if you’re doing that, that’s wonderful. Thank you, and happy page-turning!

I’m delighted to announce that Publishers Weekly has seen fit to award Creatures of Want and Ruin a star! Given how difficult a book this was to write, how much I have feared for its quality, this feels like about fifty pounds of bricks being lifted off my shoulders. Here are my favorite bits, because it’s my blog and I get to brag on myself:

• “Tanzer’s charming, confident follow-up to Creatures of Will and Temper continues the conceit of drawing on famous literary source texts for character and plot material; here, The Great Gatsby crashes into the works of H.P. Lovecraft, with, of course, chaotic results.”
• “Fin and Ellie make an appealing team as they work to figure out what’s wrong and stop it, and the depiction of Long Island is a fine example of nuanced, lovely landscape writing.”
• “Tanzer resists simplistic moral takes.”

This was the boost I needed as I claw my way up the last few thousand words of the third and final “creatures” book, Creatures of Charm and Hunger (Spring 2020). That’s been… well, it was supposed to be less political than this book, which is pretty got-dang political (“The portrayal of groups of normal people falling into mob violence and hatred of the other groups is genuinely unnerving”—Publishers Weekly), but life holds its surprises for us all.

So yeah, it’s good! At least the critics think so. So please pre-order–links on the side-bar! It’s a great read according to people who judge such things for a living. Listen to them!

Hello look at this!

November 13th. Tell your friends. My weird homage to the pulps and F. Scott Fitzgerald, cram-jam full of punching, drinking, nontraditional relationships, family drama, and sketchy hallucinogens, is available for pre-order. Everyone who’s read it so far has seemed to like it. I dunno what else to say!

Sup y’all. I assume if you read this blog you’ve bought Creatures of Will and Temper by now, but if not… if you were, like, a fan of Vermilion or my short fiction and have been waiting to be super sure if you wanted to read my all-fencing all-demon all-fraught-conversations-about-art epic, you can now read it for free on io9.

That’s right! Part One is up today, Wednesday the 30th, Part Two will be up on Wednesday, June 6th, and Part Three will be up Wednesday, June 13th.

Spread the word, tell your friends, buy a copy after being so amazingly intrigued, buy another copy for your friend who’d love it because they’re into girl feelings and fencing and people thinking about their thoughts a lot?

For a while now, “readers” of this “blog” will have noticed a popup at the top claiming I had a newsletter. Well, about a year after setting that up, I finally have scheduled my very first! I hope to use it monthly, which let’s be honest, given the state of this blog, is ambitious, but we’ll see. I like the personal nature of the newsletter, and MailChimp is fun to play around in. So, if you’re curious about stuff I do, please do sign up. I’m trying to make the newsletter a mix of professional news (books, short stories, appearances) and personal hobbies such as my home canning adventures and also my baking and such. I’ll also try to always provide at least one picture of the Toad.

Other than that, it’s been… well, it’s been. I finished the page proofs for the forthcoming Creatures of Want and Ruin (now you can pre-order!) am working on a new short story, and am easing back into the now-announced third book in the series, Creatures of Charm and Hunger.

Yep, there will be a third! The quick pitch is “teen witch murdering Nazis” but of course said witch is a diabolist and there’s more to it than that, but… if that sounds like something you’d like to read, you won’t be disappointed.

Thanks for sticking with this blog, and with me, and see you (hopefully) in newsletter form soon!

For the first time ever, I’m typing up an official Awards Eligibility Post for 2017. I had a few things come out, but I’d really like to use most of this space to promote the stories in Mixed Up: Cocktail Recipes (and Flash Fiction) for the Discerning Drinker (and Reader).

As for me, I had a novel come out:

• Creatures of Will and Temper, through John Joseph Adams Books/Mariner. It’s available for SFWA members in the SFWA forums.

I also had three short stories published for the first time:

“Nine-Tenths of the Law,” available for free on Lightspeed. I don’t usually write SF, so this story is special to me. It’s also about sex, consent, and the lies we tell ourselves when we’re falling in or out of love. Also Denver International Airport conspiracy theories.

“Cognac, Communism, and Cocaine,” which was co-authored with Nick Mamatas, and appeared in Through A Mythos Darkly, ed. Glynn Owen Barrass and Brian M. Sammons.

“The Language of Flowers,” in Dark Discoveries #37 (Supernaturalism). This story links with Creatures of Will and Temper. 

Then there’s Mixed Up. Mixed Up is a hybrid work, part cocktail guide with recipes, part flash fiction anthology. It is out now through Skyhorse in hardcover. I was the cocktail editor; Nick Mamatas handled curating the fiction. I suppose as a whole, that would make the book a Related Work for some awards categories? In reality, it is a gift book, but there are plenty of individual stories worthy of note while you nominate this year. Mixed Up has fiction to please everyone (crime, slice of life, and some scifi, fantasy, and horror) but here are ones with a fantastical or science fictional or supernaturally horrific element for the genre awards circuit:

• “Eat the Wyrm,” by Elizabeth Hand
• “The End of the End of History,” by Nick Mamatas
• “Hot Night at Hinky-Dinks,” by Will Viharo
• “Bloody at Mazie’s Joint,” by Benjamin Percy
• “Gin is Stronger than Witchcraft,” by Dominica Phetteplace
• “But You Can’t Stay Here,” by Tim Pratt
• “There and Back Again,” by Carmen Maria Machado

I think that about wraps it up for my year of publishing. Thanks as always for reading, and happy new year!

Creatures of Will and Temper has been getting some nice notice, so I figured I’d note a few here for form’s sake:

NPR reviewed it, saying:

She has created a Victorian England which is, in all noticeable ways, exactly the Victorian England we know — the mother of our modern world, by turns smoky, smutty, gross and backward, then beautiful, wondrous and louche with the turn of a corner. And yet, embedded in it — woven so closely into the fabric of normalcy that almost no one can see it — Tanzer has given us … demons.

It’s true!

And the Chicago Tribune liked it, too!

The novel’s fast-moving conclusion should satisfy anyone who misses the recent TV series “Penny Dreadful,” but Tanzer’s detailed evocation of Victorian London, of Wilde’s original tone and of the complex relationships, especially of the two troubled sisters, lends the novel its real resonance.

Locus gave it a pretty good review two, calling it “awe-inspiring” at one point in its online review, and saying even nicer things in a roundup in its print version. Fantasy Faction was kind as well, saying “Her cast is complex, layered, and harboring secrets under their public facades.” A few bloggers have also taken note, most recently Books Bones & Buffy (“A delicious tale of manners, trysts, fencing and demons”). Oh, also Wil Wheaton posted it to his Tumbr, so I am officially super stoked.

I’m grateful people seem to be enjoying the book, and look forward to posting new updates as they come!

It’s true. Creatures of Will and Temper is out! It’ll be in your local B&N, or your local bookstore, hopefully, or definitely online at one of the links I’ve put up on the sidebar.

The critical response to the book has been very good so far. It’s gotten kind reviews in Publishers Weekly (starred!), Library Journal, Booklist (link is to the reviewer’s expanded review on her own blog), Fantasy Faction, and a few other place so far. This BookPage review really knocked my socks off.

I’m doing a Reddit AMA on 11/14, when the book drops on r/fantasy. Come and see me, ask me something! Anything!

Also on the 14th, I’m doing a reading at the Denver Tattered Cover, the LoDo location. Details at the link, show starts at 7.

The following Monday, the 20th, you can find me at the downtown Powell’s in Portland, OR. I’ll be reading there at 7:30!

I’ll try to update things here as the book comes to life, but obviously I always go way too long between updates. If you’re super invested in hearing about what’s up with Creatures of Will and Temper I’d suggest following me on Twitter @molly_the_tanz, or on Insta @molly_tanzer. I consider FB friend requests a lot more carefully if they come with a note, but I also keep that account a lot more locked down than my public social media.

Creatures of Will and Temper is available for pre-order on Amazon! So, if you think a feminist retelling of The Picture of Dorian Gray with sword fighting and demons sounds cool, please do pre-order it or mark your calendars to go into a brick-and-mortar to pick it up when it comes in!

Many people agree with me that you should do this… among them, Diana Gabaldon, bestselling author of Outlander, whose blurb graces the cover, and who just causally name-dropped my novel today in The Washington Post. Yes, that Washington Post! 

Here’s a roundup of what people have had to say about this book (out Nov. 14th, mark your calendars, or just have an online store send you a copy the moment it’s available!)

“An artful, witty, Oscar Wilde pastiche with the heart of a paranormal thriller.” — Diana Gabaldon, bestselling author of Outlander

“A delightful, dark, and entertaining romp… Molly Tanzer is at the top of her form in this beautifully constructed novel. Sure to be a favorite of readers and critics alike.” —Jeff VanderMeer, bestselling author of Annihilation and Bourne

“Creatures of Will and Temper is a wild ride from start to finish, beautifully and boldly written, and a most worthy successor to Oscar Wilde’s scandalous novel.” —Amy Stewart, bestselling author of Girl Waits with Gun and The Drunken Botanist

“Decadent Victorians clash with dueling demon-hunters in this sharply-observed, page-turning reinvention of Oscar Wilde’s classic tale. —Charles Stross, award-winning author of The Delirium Brief

“Creatures of Will and Temper is a smart, gorgeously written book about passion, loyalty, and love in many forms.” —Kat Howard, author of Roses and Rot

“A perfectly queer homage to The Picture of Dorian Gray, Creatures of Will and Temper is a story of acceptance, of understanding, of correcting erroneous first impressions, and the bond of a disparate group of individuals in a shared bad situation. It is a timely story, and one that I think we all need right now.” —Sarah Lynn Weintraub, Books Manager, Pandemonium Books and Games