Announcing...THE UNBROKEN (2021)
AKA Touraine's Arms: A Novel
Howdy, everyone!
So I’ve been sitting on this crazy exciting news since December last year and in case you missed it, The Unbroken, book one of The Magic of the Lost trilogy comes out March 23, 2021! You can pre-order it from the bookstore of your choosing. You can also add it on Goodreads.
You can check out the excerpt of the first chapter and see the gorgeous cover designed by Lauren Panepinto with art from Tommy Arnold (of Gideon the Ninth cover fame) at io9!
I hope you and yours are doing as well as you can be. I’m gearing up to fly back to the US to spend time with family, which is a little anxiety-inducing, as I’m sure you can imagine. I’m reading, working on #CrankyMagicPrincess (aka Book 2), running laps in the little local park. It’s also my birthday soon! As a gift, I got myself a beautiful leather portfolio notebook holder from Galen Leather, a new notebook to go inside it, and a fountain pen. Here’s to writing good things in it. <3
Other News:
It’s August! That means it’s my birthday month (August 10, to be precise)! I will be celebrating with German Chocolate Cake and encourage you to do the same. If you want to celebrate this glorious occasion, the best gift to an author is always to pre-order and talk to other people about the work if you’re excited about it.
If you want to hear me chat about audio fiction, I was on two panels this week! One, the ConZealand panel, “The Expanding World of Audiobooks,” which you can catch in the rewatch area of the Virtual WorldCon. I was also part of the truly amazing ConZealand Fringe panel, “Genre Podcasts: Beyond the Basics.”
Nothing is signed yet, but I recently had another story accepted from a magazine I adore. It’s another sword lesbian story, this time about relationships and the weight of expectation we put on them. It was complicated to pull off because it has some time jumps in it, which I modeled off of the short story “Suddenwall” by Sara Saab, which was in turn inspired by Seth Dickinson’s “Morrigan in the Sunglare.” I love the idea of an art piece’s legacies and the stories it spawns; this is pretty prevalent in poetry, but not as much in recent genre fiction. (I’m not talking about responses against the racist/colonial old guard.) Both stories are excellent and pretty queer, and you can hear some of my commentary on the PodCastle reprint of “Suddenwall.”
What I’m Reading/Just Finished:
Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust: Cool re-examination of Persian lore and right up my research-alley of violent women—when and how women are allowed to hurt people in fiction.
You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat: Contemporary fic about a queer Palestinian American woman navigating her sexuality and her relationship with her mother.
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones: horror, but so well written I couldn’t stay away. Currently reading only in daytime.
Empire of Gold by S. A. Chakraborty: another vivid installment, currently tearing through it. I love love love this series.
That’s all for now, and thanks for reading. This space is very much in progress, so if you have anything you’d like to see or if you have any questions for me, feel free to ask. You can also find me on Twitter @C_L_Clark and Insta @clclarkwrites.
All my love and make good choices,
Cherae