Sign up for my newsletter to receive news and updates!

Posts Tagged ‘rook and rose’

Rook and Rose gets a special edition!

The news finally became public today: The Broken Binding, a UK-based special edition publisher, will be putting out an illustrated hardcover edition of the entire Rook and Rose trilogy! New cover art, colored endpaper art, and black-and-white images throughout, with foil on the hard case, the whole shebang. Alyc and I are incredibly excited, and also we signed our names 4,725 in the last month, on tip-in sheets to be bound with the books.

Now, if you’re not already a Broken Binding subscriber, it’s still possible to get a copy . . . but I have to warn you, it’ll be a little bit complicated. Numbers are capped, and according to what I’ve been told, becoming a Tier 2 subscriber (for non-signed books) has a waiting list months long — well after these will have come out, which will be in the first three months of the upcoming year. As for Tier 1 (signed books), the requirement for that is that you already be a Tier 2 subscriber.

But! First of all, The Broken Binding will be selling overstock at some point in the future, after the subscriptions have been fulfilled. According to their social media, that’s likely to be some time in the second half of 2025. Or if you don’t want to wait/don’t want to risk missing your chance, there are always subscribers who decide to resell their copies at or near cost. The Broken Binding’s Facebook group is the hub for arranging these deals . . . though apparently they had some big problems with scammers a while ago, so you have to be invited to join the group now. If you want to go that route, let me know, and I should be able to put you in touch with someone who can invite you.

So yes, that’s a bit of a hassle. But you can check out their Bluesky post to see a preview of the art — no Labyrinth’s Heart there only because that hasn’t yet been finished! The Broken Binding regularly produces lovely, durable books, so if you want a special copy, this is absolutely the time to do it.

Behold: the Rook and Rose wiki!

This has been in the works for quite some time.

The roots of it go all the way back to when Alyc and I started writing The Mask of Mirrors. We knew there was going to be a lot of worldbuilding information and so forth to keep track of, so my husband very kindly set us up with a privately-hosted wiki we could use for that. And then, well . . . I don’t believe in astrology at all, and also I am such a goddamned Virgo. Which led to me meticulously documenting basically everything.

Having done so, it seemed a pity for all that effort to be locked away where only Alyc could see it.

Behold, the Rook and Rose wiki! We were recently approached by a fan who works at wiki.gg, who helped us export the private mediawiki and set it up over on their site. It has had some art added (check it out in dark mode; the background numinat gets super pretty then), and a fancier front page, and there are all kinds of things we can do now that I didn’t bother with before — like hiding spoilers. (There was no point in hiding those when the only people who could see the wiki were the authors.) Also, thanks to the wiki.gg folks, I now know that the total content of the wiki is a hundred and ninety thousand words, which makes it longer than any novel I’ve written that isn’t part of the Rook and Rose trilogy, and very nearly on par with those.

So if there’s anything you ever wanted to know about the world, our characters, the plot, or anything else, go check it out! It contains mentions of deleted bits, details of the setting that never made it into the story — all kinds of stuff. There’s only one specific tidbit of information we removed before making this public, as it’s a reveal we might want to deploy if we write some future work in this setting. (It is, however, an aspect of the world that a reader could potentially deduce, so have fun guessing what that might be.) Other than that, if you read this, you will know basically everything we know about the world and this story!

Hugo nominations chance ending soon!

The recent news about extreme hinkiness in last year’s Hugo Awards (works ruled ineligible without the authors being notified or any reason given; questionable voting numbers; attendees’ voting rights reportedly being reassigned to the convention committee) is deeply disturbing — me, I’m in favor of a Retro Hugo for 2023 in an upcoming year, since we already have that structure in place — but for this upcoming year, the more people who get involved, the better! If you want to nominate, you have until tomorrow to get at least a supporting membership to the Glasgow Worldcon — you don’t have to be planning to attend in person to get involved.

(There are technical difficulties right now with the nominations form, which they are trying to fix, but you can still register.)

I posted about my 2023 publications back in December, but it’s rather a long list this time. If you pointed a knife at me and demanded I choose my favorites, I’d give it to “At the Heart of Each Pearl Lies a Grain of Sand” (which is unfortunately paywalled, but SMT is great and you should subscribe to it!) and the Rook and Rose trilogy in toto, now that it’s finished up with Labyrinth’s Heart being published last year. I genuinely think it’s one of the best series I’ve (co-)written: Alyc and I had a much more complete plan than usual going into it, which meant we were able to play all kinds of long games across the three books, from seeding tiny worldbuilding details that would be load-bearing later, to pacing the arcs of the characters and their relationships, to braiding many strands of plot together into a complex rope. I think it repays re-reading more than anything else I’ve written, in terms of being able to say ohhhhh, waitasec, I see where that’s going now — — which is not the only way for a series to be good, but it’s certainly one of them!

So yes, register by tomorrow if you want to nominate, whether that’s something of mine or anything else you enjoyed from 2023!

holy #$&!, we did it

The Rook and Rose pattern deck Kickstarter was a complete success. As in, we unlocked every single stretch goal, and raised nearly $3000 beyond the top one — a wonderful margin of safety against things like shipping costs increasing between now and when we deliver the decks.

Not gonna lie: before we launched this project, I was significantly worried that it would fail. I’ve run a successful Kickstarter before, but the goal for that one was a full order of magnitude smaller than this. $31,500 is a lot of money, and while I had no doubts about the loyalty of our fans, I had the very strong feeling we’d need to reach well beyond that circle to pull this off. All throughout July we were searching for ways to build up our pre-launch followers, and then I surrendered the entire month of August to nothing but Kickstarter and book promotion work: I told myself I would expect no fiction writing or revision out of myself in that time, and indeed, it was only by herculean effort that I managed to muster enough brain to spend one afternoon polishing a moderately time-sensitive thing. The rest of my time and energy was spent on answering backer questions, sending out updates, doing interviews and podcasts and AMAs, flitting between social media accounts on different networks, and mustering the chutzpah to ask friends point-blank to promote the campaign.

Thank you so much to everyone who helped with that. It is genuinely the case that we could not have succeeded, let alone this well, without the support of others. Alyc and I have wanted this deck to be a real thing for the past five years; now it will be. And we will never stop being grateful for that fact.

55 hours left in the Kickstarter + a new bonus!

I’ve got two days left at DragonCon and two and a half days left in the pattern deck Kickstarter. Can I survive them both? ๐Ÿ˜›

banner for the Rook and Rose pattern deck Kickstarter

We’re down to 55 hours and counting, and Alyc has decided to throw one more temptation into the mix. We already had a stretch goal to make digital art for a Rook & Rose “card” (currently just over $500 away), and we decided a while ago that if we get to 400 backers we’ll print that in the deck (we’re currently at 373), but they announced this morning that if the Rook and the Black Rose get a card, then dammit, Vargo and Peabody should as well. So if you want to see your favorite crime lord and adorable peacock spider on a card, help us get up and over that goal! All backers will receive the digital art, and every backer gets us closer to putting them in the physical deck as jokers, so even backing at the $1 tier helps us toward both goals.

Kickstarter progress! + other events!

I’ve been so busy promoting the pattern deck Kickstarter up one side of the internet and down the other that I’ve completely forgotten to update about its progress here! We’re at the halfway point of the campaign (it ends on September 5th), and as of me posting this, we’ve made it to 89% of our goal. Which is fabulous, but also I won’t breathe easy until we’re past the 100% line with a bit of cushion to spare. My thanks to everybody who’s been spreading the word about this — and don’t forget, all of our add-ons are available at every tier! So even if the deck itself isn’t of interest, you can back at $1 and still get access to signed books or bookplates, tea samples, personalized readings or horoscopes, art commissions, Tuckerizations, or your very own peacock brocade frock coat!

Meanwhile, we have some other promotional events lined up for the Kickstarter and the release of Labyrinth’s Heart. This upcoming Thursday the 24th, from 4-7 p.m. Central time (5-8 Eastern, 2-6 Pacific, 9-midnight UTC), we’ll be playing Rook & Rose D&D online, courtesy of New Orleans bookstore Tubby & Coo’s! Our special guest player for this event is the wonderful author and editor Fran Wilde, and I have no idea what will happen in the game except guaranteed hijinks.

Alyc and I will also be at DragonCon, though I don’t quite have a finalized schedule yet. If you’re attending and would like anything signed, feel free to catch me after a panel or ping us to arrange a meetup; I know that getting into the dealers’ building can be an incredibly time-consuming process, and we don’t mind signing items in passing to save you hours of waiting in line.

Finally, two pieces of non-Rook & Rose news: first, from now until the 27th, the ebook of A Natural History of Dragons is on sale for only $2.99! And second, looking ahead to October, I’m going to be in conversation with Kate Heartfield to promote our mutual Norse-inspired works, her novel The Valkyrie and my The Waking of Angantyr. That’s organized by Brookline Booksmith, and it’ll be on October 27th at 5 p.m. Pacific (8 Eastern, midnight UTC).

I know there are other things I need to scrape together to post about, but brain am mush, so they will have to wait . . .

LABYRINTH’S HEART is in the world!

Nearly six years after Alyc and I said “hey, let’s write the Rook and Rose trilogy together,” the story is complete!

cover art for LABYRINTH'S HEART by M.A. Carrick, showing a brown-skinned, blue-eyed man in an elaborate violet and gold mask

Labyrinth’s Heart is out in the world today, in paperback, ebook, and audiobook. Alyc and I will be celebrating with some carpal tunnel syndrome later on as we conduct an AMA over at r/Fantasy — I’m posting this before I go to bed and Alyc will be setting up the AMA once they wake up, so I don’t have a direct link yet, but you’ll see it there soon enough. My plan is to offer a one-card draw and its interpretation for every person who asks a question, so if you want to see some pattern-reading in action, here’s your chance!

Speaking of pattern, the Kickstarter is 2/3 of the way to goal! And since Alyc and I found a more efficient way of doing the gilding, we’ve decided to offer a third batch of premium decks; it seemed only fair to have a few available on the day the book comes out. So if you were regretting having missed the previous offerings, hie thee to Kickstarter and get one while they last!

(There are a lot of exclamation marks in this post, aren’t there? Six years, yo. It’s a long road to walk from “hey, let’s do this” to the final book being out.)

I should go to bed. But the book! It’s out in the world, for more than just early reviewers! How can I sleep at a time like this?

Kickstarter Artist Preview #3: H. Emiko Ogasawara

With the Kickstarter launching tomorrow, I bring you the last of our artists!

H. Emiko Ogasawara works in a dizzying variety of media: woodblock prints, pop-up books, ceramics, and more. I’ve known her for a few years — I think we met at the San Jose Worldcon in 2018 — and not only is she a great artist, but she has the kind of mind that digs deep into the context of the art; on the Discord server for our readers, she at one point asked about what type of paper-making is practiced in Vraszan, given that we talk about them having printing presses. Y’all know me; you know I love thinking through my worldbuilding in depth. Emiko managed to catch me flat-footed: I had not given so much as a moment’s thought to that question. But it absolutely delighted me that she asked!

We say in the story that pattern decks can either be hand-painted (for the fancy ones) or woodblock-printed (for those without so much money). Obviously we’re going more of a hand-painted style for the fronts of the cards, but for the backs, I really loved Emiko’s eye for design and attention to technology. In fact, she’s cut actual printing blocks for her backing! We’re not going to actually use them to print all the decks, of course — that would be wildly unfeasible — but she’s gone to work with carving tools and several stages of lino blocks to give the image that authentic look, which is above and beyond the call of duty.

As for her work in general, you can check out her website to see her range! For visual art, I was particularly charmed by this fellow:

Hanafuda Hannya Joker by H. Emiko Ogasawara, showing a grinning, horned wooden demon mask in the Japanese style

And with that, you have met all of our artists! Tomorrow, we kick this Kickstarter into gear!

Kickstarter Artist Preview: A.C. Esguerra

Time for a peek at the second of our artists! As Avery Liell-Kok will be doing the Face and Mask cards in the upcoming pattern deck, the wonderful A.C. Esguerra will be doing the bulk of the deck itself: all the “unaspected” cards in each thread, plus the seven clan cards.

A.C. has a gorgeous style that meshes beautifully with Avery’s watercolors. When they sent in their portfolio, my eye was immediately caught by this image:

The vivid colors, the dreamlike feel without sacrificing crisp detail — it felt absolutely perfect for our deck. You can check out more of A.C.’s work on their website and see the range of styles they practice, but this is absolutely the angle we fell in love with for the project.

One more artist to come!

Kickstarter Artist Preview: Avery Liell-Kok

In the lead-up to the launch our pattern deck Kickstarter, I want to give you all a glimpse of the art style to expect — starting with Avery Liell-Kok’s work!

I’m cheating a bit here because it lets me show off the painting Avery did as a gift for me. She asked for one of my favorite photos out of my own work, with no context; when I got to a certain point and then stalled out on trying to choose, she selected this one:

A waterbird (egret or heron) taking off from leaf-strewn seawater with a stone cliff behind

Her style lately is based on blind contours, drawing multiple times from a reference without looking at the page, and then watercolors over the line drawing. From my photo, she produced this:

A dreamlike painting of a waterbird (egret or heron) taking off from leaf-strewn seawater, with a stone cliff behind

My poor scan does not do justice to the details, believe me. And for a deck based in a setting with dream-related magic, the overlapping shapes and vibrant colors are perfect. Avery will be doing the Face and Mask cards for the deck, the ones representing Vraszenian deities — starting with The Mask of Mirrors, which you will see very soon!

Only brief rest for the wicked

The problem with vacation is how much you have to hustle beforehand to get matters squared away, and then when you come back there’s a new pile of things you have to dig out from under.

But hey, at least the pile of things in this case includes author copies of several things! On Spec #124 is out now (and will be available at NASfic, for those of you who are going), with my Greek mythological story “Your Body, My Prison, My Forge.” ZNB Presents: Year One has been out for a little bit, but now I have my copy; you can find various buy links for that on the story page for “Crafting Chimera.” And the Department of No Really Your Book Is Real sent me my copies of Labyrinth’s Heart! So those at least are some bright spots in a sea of emails to be answered and revisions to be completed.

It’s coming: the pattern deck Kickstarter!

Ever since Alyc and I started working on the Rook and Rose books, we’ve had an ambition: to make the pattern deck which features heavily in the story into a real, illustrated set of cards.

At long last, it is coming.

Or rather — as you’ll see if you click that link — the Kickstarter is coming. Paying for art from real! live! human! beings! costs money, so coming next month, we will be crowdfunding the deck. Right now you can sign up to be notified on launch, which is a very helpful thing to do; not only does it ensure you won’t forget, but having more pre-launch followers increases our visibility on Kickstarter, which in turn increases our chances of reaching our funding goal. So if you like the idea of the deck existing (as something other than the blank deck I marked up with Sharpie for writing purposes), sign up to be notified, and tell your friends!

It’ll be more than just the deck, too. We’ll be providing rules for games to play with the cards, and there will be rewards and add-ons ranging from signed books to tea blend samples to bespoke clothing to me and Alyc running an online one-shot RPG for you and your friends. (Yes, really: that will be on offer.) So even if the deck itself is a relatively small draw, we may have other things you want . . .

New flash, and an upcoming novelette!

I was so busy this past weekend that I failed to post on the day of, but Flash Point SF honored me by choosing my story “The Merchant With No Coin” to run on the 24th, which was National Flash Fiction Day! It’s a little snippet of folklore from the Rook and Rose setting, very quick to read.

I’m also pleased to say I’ve sold another story in that world to Scott Andrews at Beneath Ceaseless Skies! This one is a novelette set some years before the novels, a fun little heist that also ties in with some side details in the main narrative. It will be out in August, in time to whet your appetites for Labyrinth’s Heart on the fifteenth!

I’ll have some more stuff out soon, too, I think — not Rook and Rose-related, but other short fiction (and even my Very First Poem, whee!). It’s busy times around here . . .

SFWA Silent Auction is underway!

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association is running a silent auction, and I’m in it! Prizes on offer are a package deal of a signed copy of The Mask of Mirrors and five Rook and Rose-themed tea samples, and a virtual kaffeeklatsch for which the seats are being auctioned separately: one, two, three, four. Bid on one of those + the first package, and you could potentially sip delicious book-themed tea while we chat! Or if those aren’t your cuppa (sorry not sorry), there are oodles of other great things on offer at the auction site. But you only have a few days, so bid fast!

If you’re wondering what the money will be used for, SFWA does a great deal to assist people in the field, from the Emergency Medical Fund to the Legal Fund to scholarships for marginalized creators to attend events like the Nebulas Conference. Over the course of my career, SFWA has managed to reinvent itself as a much stronger advocate within SF/F publishing — the closest thing we have to a union, and very much needed, as things like #DisneyMustPay continue to show.

Rook and Rose Book 3, Chapter 27 et alia — DONE

Despite Alyc’s encouragement, I don’t think I have it in me to make three progress posts today, one for Chapter 27, and one apiece for the prologue and the epilogue. ๐Ÿ˜› Yes, the prologue to this book was one of the last things we wrote: third from the end, to be precise, followed by the last scene of Chapter 27 and the epilogue. That last being, of course, a thing the previous two books didn’t have, but here it helps a lot to show some longer-term effects that would feel very shoehorned into the final chapter.

Alyc and I each have a traditional quote associated with having finished a book. Mine comes from The Unstrung Harp; or, Mr. Earbrass Writes a Novel by Edward Gorey: “The next day Mr. Earbrass is conscious, but very little more.” Alyc’s comes from a Gilbert & Sullivan musical (Patience, I think): “Finished! At last, finished! The book is finished, and my soul has gone out into it. That was all. It was nothing worth mentioning. It occurs three times a day.”

We may not do this three times a day, but yeah. Soul gone out. Conscious. Very little more. Ima go flop now.

Word count: 198,360 — we undershot in our zeal to not go over, and will be fleshing out things we short-changed during revisions.
Authorial sadism: Alyc is right that a certain departure needed to happen . . . but it still hurts. Us as well as the characters.
Authorial amusement: The introduction Ren gets in the epilogue.
BLR quotient: Love is healing the wounds, and the turbulent waters of rhetoric are calming. It won’t be smooth sailing from here into eternity, but the storm has passed.

Rook and Rose Book 3, Chapter 26

The climactic chapter!

Unlike the previous two books, we did not write this one in a single day. Which was for the best; neither Alyc nor I have the kind of physical or mental energy for that at the moment, not when what we had to comb through for the final scene was so complex. We finally hit the right notes, and with those in hand, we now know what kinds of hints we need to seed earlier to set that up properly.

. . . everything else I want to say about this would be a spoiler, so I’ll stop there.

Word count: ~188,000
Authorial sadism: We were going to give something back. But then we wrote how this actually plays out, and nope, that character just has to live without it.
Authorial amusement: We damn near sprained something trying to avoid echoing The Princess Bride in a very inappropriate way.
BLR quotient: Look, we’ve said many times this series is anti-grimdark. What do you think wins out, here at the end?