Queen of Swords Press Newsletter – December, 2021

Wishing all of you a safe and happy holiday season! May 2022 bring good things our way!

News

1. DisCon III – December 15th-19th, Washington, D.C. We’ve applied for (and expect to get) a virtual Dealer’s Room table and Alex Acks and Jennie Goloboy are on programming. Alex is up for a Hugo Award as part of the Skiffy and Fanty Podcast crew, and artist Laya Rose, who created the cover for Foxhunt, is up in the Best Fan Artist category. Best of luck to them both!
2. AZ Gallery/Books and Beer Pop-Up Bookstore – December 18th, 12-5 PM, St. Paul. Catherine Lundoff will be there with some selected titles.
3. Stay tuned for the Smashwords End of Year Sale between Christmas and New Year’s for some great deals on our ebooks!

Good luck, Laya!

• Magers & Quinn Booksellers – December 8th, 7 PM, Minneapolis. Jennie will be on a virtual science fiction panel with authors A.J. Hackwith, John Appel and Amber Bird. Follow the link to register.
• Jennie did a reading from Obviously, Aliens at Strong Women, Strange Worlds, which you can watch back on YouTube. Jennie will also be participating in the Strong Women, Strange Worlds Year-End Holiday Extravaganza on December 12th.
• Obviously, Aliens got a nice review at Hugo Award-nominated blog, Nerds of a Feather, from reviewer Paul Weimer, who is up for two Hugos this year.

“Obviously, Aliens will keep a smile on your face.” – Paul Weimer

Catherine Lundoff:

• Big News! Catherine has accepted an invitation to be the Author Guest of Honor at MarsCon 2022 in Minneapolis! MarsCon will be happening March 11th-13th, 2022 and, plague permitting, will be in person. More bulletins as we have them.
• Minnesota Women’s Art Festival – December 11th, 9:30-4:30, St. Mary’s University, Minneapolis. Catherine Lundoff will be sharing a table with book artist Jana Pullman. Locals can pick up their gift package orders here too!
• Catherine has a new article up at DreamFoundry – “Crafting an Anthology.”

• Rem was interviewed on The WROTE Podcast.
• And Rem appeared at EnQueer, Australia’s first queer lit festival!
• Foxhunt was a Runner Up for Best Transgender Speculative Fiction and Best Transgender Book in the 2021 Rainbow Awards!

• The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper was a Runner Up in the Rainbow Awards under LGBTA Anthology/Collection and Best Lesbian Book! Congrats, AJ!

Queen of Swords Press is supported by Catherine Lundoff’s Patreon (Read a serialized novel in progress! Get entered to win free books!) and our Ko-fi account, if you’d like to send a little more love our way. Many thanks to our awesome patrons!

Our titles are all available in print as well as ebook (except Knife’s Edge and Desire which are ebook only). Check our website for available formats and remember that your library or cool local indie bookstore can order our titles in, if they don’t already have them.

If you have enjoyed any of our titles and haven’t already done so, please post a review on the site where you purchased it, Goodreads, your social media, etc.! They are much needed and appreciated. Many thanks to those of you who’ve reviewed our titles so far!

We have two fun preorders up this month!

• Our tea + a mug + the book of your choice gift package is up! The tea is a terrific and tasty chai blend from our wonderful friends at Minneapolis’ own Bingley’s Teas and we highly recommend it!
• We’re releasing Minnesota author Jennie Goloboy’s hilarious science fiction novel, Obviously, Aliens, on November 1st, but you can preorder your copy now from our website. Amazon, B&N, Kobo and beyond.
• Look for the Queen of Swords Press table at Columbia Heights Pride on October 9th from 11-5 AM and at Twin Cities Book Festival on October 16th! We’ll be tabling with author Michael Merriam at TC Book Fest and Catherine will be appearing on the Local Author Showcase.

News About Our Authors:

Catherine Lundoff:

• Catherine is a recipient of a 2021 Ladies of Horror Fiction Writing Grant for a queer horror project she’s looking forward to working on!
• She has a new article up about writing marketing copy for books at The Dream Foundry.
• The North Country Gaylaxians Book Club will be discussing Catherine’s novel, Blood Moon, with her on October 12th from 7-9 PM CST via Zoom.
• She’ll be appearing on The Wrote Podcast this month.
• Finally, she’ll be teaching Crimson Peaks and Melancholy Mansions: Writing Gothic Horror at the Rambo Academy on October 30th from 9:30-11:30 AM PST.

Rem Wigmore:

• New! Rem was interviewed on the If This Goes On Podcast on 10/17!
• Foxhunt got a great shoutout as an “essential” solarpunk novel on Tor.com in this great article about solarpunk by Justine Norton-Kertson!
• Rem was a guest on the Tales from the Trunk Podcast on October 1st.
• You can also listen to a delightful 5 minute reading from Foxhunt, hosted by Arty Bees Bookstore in Wellington.
  Foxhunt has been getting some terrific reviews! You can find links to some of them here, including this new one from Bookstagrammer @Bankrupt_bookworm!
  Rem will be appearing at the Verb Wellington Readers and Writers Festival in November and has a bunch of other fun stuff coming up!

A.J. Fitzwater:
Lucky folks at the Nelson Arts Festival will get to hear A.J. read from Out Here: An Anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa on October 25th at the Suter Theatre. They’ll also be appearing at WORD Christchurch next month. In the meantime, they’re working on a new novel during their arts residency at The Arts Centre in Christchurch. And Cinrak continues to get great reviews like this one!

Jennie Goloboy:
Jennie will have a a Big Idea post on John Scalzi’s blog on November 4th and will be reading on the Strong Women, Strange Worlds webcast on November 5th. Stay tuned for more local events and readings in the November newsletter!

Emily L. Byrne:
Emily Byrne’s story “Diplomacy” was recently featured on the Nobilis Erotica Podcast.

Lots more coming up soon! Please stay tuned!

It will be coming out 11/1, but you can preorder it in ebook today direct from us or at Amazon. It will be up at other major ebook platforms in the next couple of days and available in print once Terry works her magic. We’ll also get our new tea/mug/book gift package up this week, so lots of fun stuff coming your way!

 FOXHUNT is a science fiction novel with a queer trans woman protagonist and a cast of LGBTQ+ characters. It is set several hundred years in Earth’s future, after a climate apocalypse. The new society is solar-powered, so it’s solarpunk; it deals with climate change and the impacts thereof, so it’s climate fiction; and it’s hopeful about humanity’s future, which is what makes it hopepunk. Welcome to my TED talk about current genre jargon! FOXHUNT has some great early reviews, including a starred review in Publishers Weekly! – FOXHUNT has an amazing cover by Hugo Award-nominated artist Laya Rose and gorgeous print book design by Terry Roy.  FOXHUNT is available direct from Queen of Swords Press and everywhere else in print (note: we have a processing delay in our book order, but will have print copies in a couple of days) and ebook. Check out the video of Rem’s  reading and stay tuned for a book giveaway this weekend and a Twitter interview with Rem Wigmore at @qospress and more fun things on the way!

Foxhunt just got a lovely starred review in Publishers Weekly. It says, in part: It’s an inclusive, optimistic vision of the future, rounded out by beautiful imagery and an effortlessly diverse cast. This enthralling story is a winner.” Read the rest of the review  here. This is our first starred review for any of our titles and we’re very excited about it! Remember that you can preorder your copy directly from us as well as at all major outlets (print and ebook!).

And a mere 24 hours later, The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper by A.J. Fitzwater won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Collection! A.J. also won for Best Novella with their terrific novella from Paper Road Press, No Man’s Land!  In addition, cover artist Laya Rose (Foxhunt) won for Best Artist and our web master, Andi C. Buchanan won for Best Fan Writer! We are very proud of all of them! 😀