We are very excited to be finalists for the 2024 Independent Book Publishers Association Innovative Voices Program! We’re in really great company so this is a quite the honor! Do please keep your fingers crossed for us – we’ll need the well wishes on this one. 🙂
Happy Pride Month!
We have SO much going on this month!
Check out the Pride StoryBundle, curated by Melissa Scott and Catherine Lundoff, for 13 terrific queer specfic titles, including LITTLE NOTHING by Dee Holloway and A DEATH AT THE DIONYSUS CLUB by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold! Get it at the $25 level and help support Rainbow Railroad’s essential work with LGBTQ refugees. Runs through 7/1/24.
Log on to The Story Hour on 6/5 at 7PM PST to hear Dee Holloway read from her latest!
Look for Catherine Lundoff on programming at 4th Street Fantasy 6/14-6/16.
join us at the Midwest Book Awards on 6/22 to see if DEATH BY SILVER wins in the SF & F category! Then join the Temporal Textual Virtual Book Club on 6/23 to talk about the book!
On 6/27, we’ll be releasing POINT OF HOPES (Astreiant #1) by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett!
Finally, look for us at Twin Cities Pride on 6/28-6/29! We’ll be in the Pink Zone in the Queer Writes section, next to the bridge to the Sculpture Garden from Loring Park in Minneapolis.
Happy Pride!
Preorder and award news!
Big shoutout to Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold! Death by Silver is a 2024 Midwest Book Award Finalist!
And, speaking of Melissa Scott, Point of Hopes: A Novel of Astreiant (Book 1) is up for preorder here and elsewhere! Look for Book 2, Point of Knives, in July and the other books every month after that, on through to a brand new novella in the series in December!
March Events and a new title!
It’s here! Check out Terror at Tierra de Cobre by Michael Merriam!
And if you’re in Minnesota this weekend, come see Michael and Catherine at MarsCon Minneapolis. If you’re closer to Ohio, go see Melissa Scott at Cleveland Concoction.
- MarsCon – March 8-10, Minneapolis, MN. Author Michael Merriam is a Guest of Honor as no we’ll both be on programming  and we’ll be there with a book table and his latest books and more!
- Cleveland Concoction – March 8-10, Ohio. Author Melissa Scott is a Guest of Honor!
- Minicon – March 29-31, Minneapolis, MN. Catherine Lundoff and Michael Merriam will be there and on programming.
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)
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!
September events and cover reveal!
September:
- Pagan Pride Fall Festival – September 9th. Minnehaha Falls, Minneapolis. Queen of Swords Press will have a table.
- St. Cloud Pride in the Park – September 16th, 10-4PM. St. Cloud, MN. Queen of Swords Press will have a table.
- Rosemount Country Faire – September 16th, 10-4PM, Rosemount, MN. Author Michael Merriam will have a table with his books, including Last Car to Annwn Station.
- “In Conversation: Caitlin and Cadieux and Dee Holloway” at the East Greenbush Library – September 21st, 6:30-7:30PM. East Greenbush, NY.
- Columbia Heights Pride – September 23rd, 11- 4PM. Columbia Heights, MN. Queen of Swords Press will have a table.
- Braveheart Books Birthday Bash – September 23, 12-4 PM. Stephentown Center, NY Dee Holloway and Caitlin are joining the party!
- Rainbow Space Magic – September 30th- October 1st. Online LGBTQ+ speculative fiction con.
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:
March Events
 Â
March Events
- March 8th, 6:30-7:45 PM: Michael Merriam will be reading at DreamHaven Books in Minneapolis, as part of their Speculations Reading Series.
- 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.
- 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.
- Paganicon – March 17-18th. Michael Merriam will be doing a book signing of Last Car and his other books on 3/18 at 9AM.
- March 19th, 9:30-11:30 AM PSTÂ –Â Rambo Academy (online class):Â Catherine is teaching No More Lone Wolves: Writing Characters in Community.
- 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
- 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!
- It’s Catherine’s birthday sale! The Wolves of Wolf’s Point books will be on sale through IHeartSapphFic the last weekend in March.
February News
Â
February Events
We have two great events coming up this month, one online and one in person:
- 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!
- 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
- Acclaimed author Judith Tarr gave a lovely shoutout to Catherine Lundoff’s Wolves of Wolf’s Point series at Tor.com.
- We’re expanding! Weightless Books, the ebook distribution platform associated with Small Beer Press, is going to be selling our books soon.
- 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!
- We have news about audiobooks coming next month, so stay tuned!
- We are hoping to have preorders for Death by Silver by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold available next month.
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:
- 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!
- 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!
- 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!
- 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!
- 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!