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New book and cool 2024 lineup announcement!

A Death at the Dionysus Club (Lynes & Mathey 2) by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold is out today! Terrific sequel to Death by Silver!

And in 2024, we’re going to be publishing more fun titles, including:

  • Terror at Tierra de Cobre by Michael Merriam (Weird West novella – a re-imaging of the Magnificent 7 with an all women cast and a demon!)
  • New editions of the Astreiant Series by Melissa Scott and Lisa Barnett (2 volumes), plus a new novella! Look for these in June!
    • Point of Hopes (Scott and Barnett – novel)
    • Point of Knives (Scott – novella)
    • Point of Dreams (Scott and Barnett – novel)
    • Fairs’ Point (Scott – novel)
    • Point of Sighs (Scott – novel)
    • Point of Hearts (Scott)

 

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Award Eligibility and Holiday Sales

First up, Little Nothing by Dee Holloway is eligible for all  2023 awards that include novella length work! BSFA, World Fantasy, Nebulas, Hugos, anything we may have forgotten. It is already nominated for a Lambda Literary Award.

SALES!

Great deals this weekend on most of our titles at DriveThruFiction for the annual Black Friday- Cyber Monday sale.

We’ve also got a sale on Amazon for the IHeartSapphFic Megasale – titles include Silver Moon and Blood Moon by Catherine Lundoff, Last Car to Annwn Station by Michael Merriam, The Language of Roses by Heather Rose Jones and Little Nothing by Dee Holloway.

The audiobook edition of Catherine Lundoff’s SIlver Moon is on sale at Audiobooks.com for the next couple of weeks.

And Bookshop.org has free shipping today!

Next month, the Smashwords sale kicks off on 12/16, so stay tuned for that too!

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September events and cover reveal!

September:

And, of course, Inkspiral Design’s terrific new cover for A Death at the Dionysus Club (Lynes & Mathey #2) by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold, which will be out on 12/7/23! Stay tuned for preorders:

 

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March Events

First – a cover reveal! Artist Matthew Bright has done an outstanding job with the cover for our new edition of the Lambda Award-winning novel Death by Silver by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold! We’ll be releasing it in 4/13/23 and preorders will start going up next week. Lynes and Mathey #2, A Death at the Dionysus Club, will be out in December. What are they about? They’re fantastical mysteries set in Edwardian England and feature two gay heroes who use magic to solve murders. As you would expect from these two authors, the world-building is reach and detailed, the characters are complicated and interesting and the books are terrific reads.We can hardly wait to share them with you!

  

March Events

  1. March 8th, 6:30-7:45 PM: Michael Merriam will be reading at DreamHaven Books in Minneapolis, as part of their Speculations Reading Series.
  2. Marscon 2023 – March 11th-13th, Minneapolis, MN. Queen of Swords Press will have a hall table featuring Catherine Lundoff and Michael Merriam, and they’ll both be on programming as well.
  3. Rosemount Writers Festival – March 18th, 9-4:30. Jennie Goloboy and Catherine Lundoff are teaching “Marketability: How Professionals Look at Your Manuscript” from 12:30-1:30, and Queen of Swords Press will have some titles for sale.
  4. Paganicon – March 17-18th. Michael Merriam will be doing a book signing of Last Car and his other books on 3/18 at 9AM.
  5. March 19th, 9:30-11:30 AM PST – Rambo Academy (online class): Catherine is teaching No More Lone Wolves: Writing Characters in Community.
  6. The Story Hour – March 22nd, 7-8PM PST. Online reading series. Catherine will be reading from some of her recent work, along with another as yet unnamed author.

March Sales

  1. March 5th through the 11th is Read an Ebook Week at Smashwords. Most of our titles are on sale so if there are any you haven’t picked up yet, now’s the time!
  2. It’s Catherine’s birthday sale! The Wolves of Wolf’s Point books will be on sale through IHeartSapphFic the last weekend in March.
 
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February News

 

February Events
We have two great events coming up this month, one online and one in person:

  1. In Flagrante Delicto: Writing Effective Sex Scenes – Rambo Academy, online. Sunday, February 12th, 1:00-3:00 p.m. Catherine Lundoff will be teaching this class just in time for Valentine’s Day!
  2. Writing OUT: LGBTQ+ Writers and Publishers on the Importance of Representation and Presence in Media – Saturday, February 25th, 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library, Eau Claire, WI. Catherine will be a panelist alongside J.M. Lee and Kat Weaver, with moderator Charles Payseur.

Other Queen of Swords Press News

  1. Acclaimed author Judith Tarr gave a lovely shoutout to Catherine Lundoff’s Wolves of Wolf’s Point series at Tor.com.
  2. We’re expanding! Weightless Books, the ebook distribution platform associated with Small Beer Press, is going to be selling our books soon.
  3. Heather Rose Jone’s terrific novella, The Language of Roses, is on the Longlist for the British Science Fiction Association Awards (short fiction category – members of BSFA can vote for it) and is a World Fantasy Awards nominee. Congratulations, Heather!
  4. We have news about audiobooks coming next month, so stay tuned!
  5. We are hoping to have preorders for Death by Silver by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold available next month.
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January News (2023)

Queen of Swords Press Newsletter – January 2023
Welcome to the new year! May it be a good one for all of you!

New book! We’ve had to overcome a few obstacles and delays along the way, but Rem Wigmore’s Wolfpack is up for preorder direct from Queen of Swords Press (ebook and print) and all major ebook platforms. Preorder for print elsewhere will starting appearing this weekend and the actual book release will be happening on 1/12/23. There’ll be author reading videos and a sale on Foxhunt starting on 1/12 on our website to celebrate! There’s also more stuff in the works, so please stay tuned.

  

News
Something we’re very excited about is happening this month: it’s our 6th birthday! We’ve very excited and we want to thank everyone who’s helped us make this far on our publishing journey! We’ve also got even more great books and events coming this year so we hope you’ll stick with us for those too!

And what are birthdays without friends to help us celebrate? The awesome Jamey Morris of the Fistful of DOOM metal show will be doing a drawing of Alex Acks’s steampunk books, Murder on the Titania and Wireless on the show’s Instagram(comment on the post to enter on Monday 1/9/23) Jamie has been a great supporter of the Press for a couple of years – boosting and reviewing our titles, interviewing Catherine for the Ripple Music Blog (her only heavy metal-related appearance to date!) and plugging us to his friends and fans. Thanks to him, we’ve met some great bands and musicians online and made to feel pretty welcome in a corner of that scene. So check out Jamey’s show and tell him we sent you!

 

January’s fun stuff:

  1. Write On! Radio KFAI  – Did you miss last month’s Write On! Radio interview and reading by Michael Merriam? No worries! It’s online in the archive now! Listen to a great interview and short readings from Mike’s Minneapolis-based urban fantasy, Last Car to Annwn Station!
  2. The German edition of Catherine Lundoff’s werewolf novel, Silver Moon, published by Ylva Publishing, will be going on sale 1/13-1/15 so get a deal on your copy if you read fiction in German!
  3. Big congratulatory shout out to Jennie Goloboy (Obviously, Aliens), whose screenplay, “Thorfinn’s Axe,” is a finalist for the Portland Comedy Film Festival (and go check it out if you’ll be in Portland, Oregon on 2/12!
  4. And big congratulatory shout out to Catherine Lundoff for having one of the top circulating Indie Author Books on Biblioboard. Out of This World: Queer Speculative Fiction Stories was our first published title, way back in 2017, so it’s really cool to see that 5 years later, it’s still finding its people. It’s also in libraries from Minneapolis to Qatar so it’s seeing a lot of the world!
  5. We’re starting work on our upcoming titles this month, Death by Silver by Melissa Scott and Amy Grisworld and Little Nothing by Dee Holloway, Catherine will be appearing at the Eau Claire Library in Wisconsin in February for the launch of a cool new LGBTQ+ nonprofit (more news soon!), and we’re all working on our schedules for readings, conventions, festivals and classes so more on that soon, too!

 

 

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December News

News
More of a request, really. The Language of Roses by Heather Rose Jones is eligible for the Nebula and Hugo Awards in the Novella category, so if you’re a SFWA or Worldcon voting member, please consider nominating it. It’s a terrific retelling/reinterpretation of Beauty and the Beast and we’d love to see it get more buzz!

Coming up in December:

  1. Word Salad: Winter – December 3rd, 3 -4:30PM, Eat My Words Bookstore, Minneapolis. Join Michael Merriam and other storytellers for a tribute to our local climate.
  2. Write On! Radio KFAI FM – December 6th, 7-8 PM. Michael Merriam will be interivewed about Last Car to Annwn Station (you can listen online and there ill be an archived version available, too).
  3. Minnesota Women’s Art Festival – December 10th, 9:30 AM – 4:30 PM. St. Mary’s University, Minneapolis. We’ll have a booth with Catherine’s books, our tea and artwork by artist Jana Pullman.
  4. 4th AZ Gallery Pop-Up Bookstore – December 10th, 2-6 PM.  AZ Gallery, St. Paul, MN. Michael Merriam will have a table at where he’ll be selling some of his Weird West tales, Last Car and some of our other titles.
  5. Smashwords End of Year Sale – 12/15/22-1/1/23! Get some great deals on our titles to wrap up 2022!
  6. End of Year IHeartSapphFic Sale – and look for Emily L. Byrne’s book on sale at Amazon for the last sale of the year 12/26-12/30!
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Award Eligibility Post for 2022 – books and authors

Our award-eligible book for this year is The Language of Roses by Heather Rose Jones (Last Car is a new edition resissue). Roses is eligible at the novella level for the Nebulas, the Hugos, World Fantasy and any other fantasy awards that have a category for Novellas. It is 40 K words long and we published it in April. It is a queer retelling of Beauty and the Beast, is currently under consideration for the American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Awards and there is a reading copy of it available in the SFWA forums (it is also on the Reading List). If you loved this novella, shoutouts are much appreciated! It’s very hard for small press books to get big award traction so boosts, reviews, recommendations and so forth help a LOT!

Otherwise, Catherine Lundoff’s queer weird west tale “Grimwood” is eligible for short story. It appeared in Queer Weird West Tales, edited by Julie Bozza (LIBRATiger 2022). Alex Acks has a short story in the gaming tie-in collection Starcraft Warchest: Nature of the Beast. We’ll add more as we hear about them – lotta re-issues this year (Rem and Michael) and other stuff going on!

 

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November News!

 

News
Some catchup events from October!
The Language of Roses by Heather Rose Jones is a Barbara Gittings Literature Award nominee for the American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Awards! And big thank you to the librarian(s) who nominated it!
Silver Moon by Catherine Lundoff is out in a new German edition from Ylva Publishing this month and getting some nice reviews!
Catherine was also interviewed by Canvas Rebel Magazine for their series on diverse entrepreneurs.
And you can listen to Jennie Goloboy’s terrific reading and interview from Space Cowboy Books on their Youtube channel here.
And finally, Rem Wigmore has a great new essay up at the Climate Fiction Writers League.

Coming in November:

  1. Strong Women Strange Worlds – November 4th, 12 Noon EDT. Jennie Goloboy is one of the featured reader’s at this month’s virtual reading. 
  2. Twin Cities Con – November 11th-13th, Minneapolis Convention Center, Minneapolis. Queen of Swords Press will have a table and our local authors plan on stopping by to sign books. 
  3. Publishing Basics for Genre Fiction – November 15th, Springboard for the Arts. Online, 6-7:30 PM CST. Catherine will be teaching this free online workshop that provides an overview of genre fiction for new writers. 
  4. Speculations Reading Series – November 16th, 6.30 – 7:45 PM. DreamHaven Books, Minneapolis. Catherine will be reading from some of her recent fiction.
  5. I Heart SapphFic Mega Sale – November 25th-29th. Our lesbian titles with romantic plots or subplots will be on sale on Amazon for Thanksgiving weekend!

Finally, some upcoming cool news!

Want to talk to Catherine about your book idea? She’ll be taking pitches at our Discord channel on 11/20 from 2-4PM CST. We’re going to try this out and see how it goes so please stay tuned.

And more cool news! We just signed the contracts for the gay Victorian supernatural duology Death by Silver and Death at the Dionysis Club by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold! Silver will be a 2023 title and Dionysis a 2024 one.

We have also signed a new novella from author Dee Holloway. Little Nothing is an alternate history with fantastical elements set in Florida during the Civil War. It features a young interracial lesbian couple who have to find a way to stop the Confederacy from using magical creatures from the swamps against the Union forces. Good Stuff! More news coming soon!

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September Events

I just realized that I forgot to post August’s – there was a lot! See our Event’s page for info on that.

Meanwhile, here’s this month’s adventures!

September:

  • Chicon 8/Worldcon – September 1-5th. Catherine Lundoff , Alex Acks, Heather Rose Jones and Jennie Goloboy will be on programming.
  • Pagan Pride Fall Festival – September 10th. Minnehaha Falls, Minneapolis. Look for our book table in the park.
  • Queer Neurodiverse Found Families in Speculative Fiction – Thursday, September 15th, 7-9PM. Virtual panel at the Argo Bookshop, Montreal, Quebec featuring Rem Wigmore, Andi C. Buchanan, R.B. Lemberg and more.
  • St. Cloud Pride in the Park – Saturday, September 17th, 11-3PM. St. Cloud, MN. Queen of Swords Press will be back!
  • Crypticon on September 16th- 18th in Plymouth, MN. Look for Michael Merriam in the Dealer’s Room with copies of Last Car.
  • Sunday Market at Dancing Bear Chocolate – September 25th, 9-2PM. Minneapolis. Catherine Lundoff will be there with our books and lovely handmade journals and boxes made by book artist Jana Pullman.