Publication! And T-Minus One Week!

The US publication of Stay For A Spell happened, officially, yesterday. I did an AMA all day, which was zomg so much fun. I only got into it with Jared - about bats, bugs and spiders - a little, and the answers to his questions began with “wolf spiders” and ended with “mothman”. And that’s just a taste of the madness that is our homelife.

And the day before that, I had not one but two pinch-me moments:

• Go Fug Yourself ran a giveaway for my book (my book!!!)

  • Go Fug Yourself is basically the last old-school blog out there; I’ve been a devoted reader since approximately 2003 and proudly refer to myself as a Broad (they have a long-running joke about certain actresses who seem like awesome broads to go get a drink with, and their fans began calling themselves Broads, and it turned into a whole thing, including a newsletter, Drinks With Broads.)

• I had an event at the LA location of one of my favourite bookstores in the whole entire world, The Ripped Bodice.

  • TRB is warm, inclusive, and full of passionate readers and fans - exactly the kind of magical space a bookshop should be. If you’re ever in LA or Brooklyn, please check them out!

Kiri Callaghan was a fantastic moderator, so please go buy copies of her book for everyone you know! By incredibly fun coincidence, she works part-time at the Renaissance Faire, and we discovered that we’d just missed each other when we were both there last week.

And, yes, the clock is ticking down on the UK publication! By this time next week, Voyager’s edition will be out in the world. I don’t know if the Goldsboro edition is ever going to be released to the public, the potential upside there being that it might have sold its entire printrun to subscribers. In which case: I am very sorry if you can’t get your hands on a copy, but I might have news that ameliorates the disappointment a bit next week.

A reminder that if you’d like to ensure that your copy of the UK edition of Stay For A Spell is the ***special*** edition with marbled endpapers and foiled boards, please pre-order from your favourite bookshop or with the links below (and remember that Blackwells ships internationally… for free.)

• Amazon

• Blackwells

• Waterstones (still £2 off!)

• The Green Dragon Bookshop (hello, Crewkerne!)

I’ve also heard that the audio edition - which is out in the wild in the US already - is great; yes, a beloved relative said so, but please let me assure you that my beloved relatives are very honest. You can pre-order that too, if you’re in the UK! Lottie Bourne blew me away with her sample when we were deciding on the voice actor, and I am sure you’ll feel the same way once you hear her…

I’ve got one more LA-area event tonight, at the gorgeous Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, and then it’s back to the UK (and editing book 2, and writing book 3.)

The good news is that I’ll be at Cymera in Edinburgh in June, and I have a few more events lining up for the summer. So stay tuned for details!

Wait, there’s just one more thing! At dinner last night, I watched a family of six ravens float around the downtown LA skyscrapers. Ravens are big, glorious birds - and, despite being corvids (famously not beautiful songsters), ravens are considered songbirds because they have such incredible control over their syrinxes (voice boxes) and can imitate other birds and even human speech. Indeed, as my beloved Merlin puts it: “[their] typical call is a loud, gutteral croak, but [they] make an astonishing variety of other strange noises.”

Happy Thursday!

Amy x

Raven photo by Sonny Mauricio on Unsplash