Out Now: Rook Chant

Few things make a writer happier than a gorgeous book cover and this one's a beaut, thanks to the ever talented Queen of Everything, S. L. Johnson. You may recognise the image from a photo I took: how rare for a writer to have a hand in the book cover! Rook Chant brings together a wide variety of publications that have appeared in various places.  I've had people asking me to send them pieces that are no longer available or available only in academic journals or otherwise hard to obtain. Everything from Anglo-Saxon witches to Alan Moore, Finnish magic and charms.

Blurb: Collected Writings on Paganism & Witchcraft by award winning author, K. A. Laity. This collection represents a wide range of pieces touching on the breadth of her interests in paganism and witchcraft. It includes everything from short pieces for pagan/spirituality journals like The Seeker Journal, The Beltane Papers, Circle and New Witch, papers delivered at academic conferences or published in academic journals as well as a few reviews and translations of old magical texts.

"Laity is a very remarkable sorceress indeed."
          ~ Elizabeth Hand, author of Waking the Moon

"ROOK CHANT is a delicious in-gathering, a magpie's nest of shiny new things about subjects old, gnarled and powerful. Sit with it, relish it and be bound likewise into a breathing tradition that puts Potter et al to shame. It is a charm well-sung and a talisman."
          ~ H. Byron Ballard, Asheville's Village Witch and author of Staubs and Ditchwater: a Friendly and Useful Introduction to Hillfolks' Hoodoo

Buy it on Amazon -- and of course any help you can give on getting the word out, clicking "like" on Amazon or agreeing with the tags, would be most appreciated. The biggest hurdle writers face these days is to be heard in the cacophony. Thanks! Click the picture for Amazon US:





Or get it at Amazon UK, Amazon De, Amazon Fr, or Amazon It (anyone I missed?).

Contract Signed: Owl Stretching

I'm happy to announce that I signed the contract for my next novel, Owl Stretching, with Immanion Press. I'm pleased that Storm wants to publish it and I hope that I have a cover as lovely as Ruby's art for Pelzmantel. It will be out in 2012 -- hurrah!

So what can I say to whet your appetite?

The first line: "It was in the fourteenth year of the war that Simon woke up." Main character quotes a lot and gets every single quote wrong. There's a road trip! I pull off the impossible task of making Worcester glamorous and exciting. There's a dead cat whose ashes need to be taken to Mount Auburn Cemetery, aliens and a 300 year old magpie.

I started writing it when Kurt Vonnegut died and I was thinking how dispiriting it was to realise there would be no new sad but funny novels from him. How I've been describing the book: it's an alternative history/science fiction/urban fantasy/shamanistic retelling of the Descent of Inanna/great American road trip that takes in Albany, the Berkshires, Kripalu and Boston. What could be better? Um, yeah.

It's not really as mad as it sounds -- and it works!

Don't take my word for it! As my pal Liz Hand says, "Laity is a remarkable sorceress." Trust her. She's a terrific writer.



Oh, and happy birthday, Mr. Borges!

Cover Me

With stunning speed, here's the cover already for my as-yet-unedited novel The Mangrove Legacy, forthcoming from Tease Publishing in November or December:

Thanks to the fabulous Stella Price, who is not only the art director for Tease, but was also the person who encouraged me to try submitting something to them. I love the background photo of the Gothic folly and the woman on the sofa kind of picks up on the theme of dreams. I loved writing all the surreal dream sequences. It's hard to capture all the aspects of this odd little tome, so I'm glad the cover included the tag line as well in order to convey the humour [or humor, Todd]. Now to update the web page, although that might have to wait as I have a large pile of neglected work in my office on campus that I really must get to...

Pelzmantel: Cover with Lettering

Very happy! Doesn't it just look wonderful? Even the lettering seems to capture the magical feeling of the story -- I love the way it swirls.

Pelzmantel: Cover Art

Oh my!

Is this gorgeous or what?! I am so pleased with the cover art for my book -- squee! When Storm told me they were going to be putting out this new edition of Pelzmantel, she asked if I had any preference for the cover artist. I immediately said Ruby, please!

Ruby does the covers for most of Storm's own books and has a real love for fairytales. I knew she would be perfect.

Am I right?

First, I love the colors. Somehow the orange tones of the fox match so well with the midnight purple sky. The image captures the sense of magic and I love how she's worked the spinning tokens in, the spindle and bobbin. It captures the sense of mystery as well -- the hidden princess who must mask her identity and of course, the clever fox, too.

Wow -- just wow!! (wait, isn't that what you said, Mildred?). Thank you, Ruby -- thank you so very much!

Pelzmantel: A Medieval Tale coming from Immanion Press this June. It looks like we will have posters of Ruby's illustration and maybe some other items, too, at the Immanion Press store.