Seasons of Glass and Iron Release Day!

Dear Friends,

It's here! Today's the day! Seasons of Glass and Iron is available wherever you get your books!

In the normal order of things I should be where my book is – in a shop signing stock, or on tour meeting readers, or in my home, posing with it. But instead I'm quite literally at sea, writing this from Loreto while on the JoCo Cruise where I'm thrilled and honoured to be a guest. I'm having an absolutely lovely time so far: in addition to doing a reading and playing D&D on stage with performers who utterly dazzle me, I've watched humpback whales breaching, seen a Magnificent Frigatebird in flight, met many wonderful people and stayed up til 2AM talking with them.

Here, though, is an unboxing video from when I first got my author copies!

Should you wish to support Seasons of Glass and Iron as it blooms into the world, you can do any of the following:

• Buy the book wherever you get your books, in whatever format (hardcover, audio, ebook!) suits your fancy! I will always suggest supporting your local indie where possible, since they're force multipliers for community organizing and resource-pooling in addition to frequently being wonderful third spaces. Also if you're in the UK, Waterstones has a special signed edition!
• Request it into your local library!
• If you’re enjoying the book, or even if you're just looking forward to reading it eventually – talk about it! To your friends, in person and on social medial, review it on your favourite book review website – or just let me know! We authors thrive on the knowledge that we’ve given you something, joy or tears or that incandescent mix of the two. Probably the single nicest non-monied thing you can do for an author is share the enthusiasm you genuinely feel for their work.

You can also find me on tour!

US Tour Stops

Immediately post cruise I'll be in the following places:

• March 28, Salt Lake City, UT: In Conversation with Cass Biehn, hosted by Legendarium and Under the Umbrella at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts
• March 29, Portland, OR: In Conversation with Kelly Sue DeConnick, hosted by Powell's City of Books
• March 30, Spokane, WA: In Conversation with Stephanie Oakes, hosted by Auntie's at the Spokane Central Library

UK Tour Stops

Then I'll be home for about 48 hours before heading out to the UK for a few more events!

• April 7, Glasgow: Waterstones Argyle Street, in conversation with Terri Windling!
• April 8, Edinburgh: Toppings Edinburgh, chaired by one of the Toppings booksellers!
• April 9, Manchester: Blackwells, in conversation with Eliza Chan!

Canada Tour Stops

After that I'll be home... Sort of?? For a bit? There are prospective book events in Montreal and Toronto that are still being nailed down, but I'm really looking forward to my hometown launch:

April 20, Ottawa: Hosted by Perfect Books, where I used to work, and The Other Hill, at Allsaints!

All of these events are ticketed or require reserving a spot in some way, so bear that in mind if making plans!

I'm feeling so tenderly towards the release of this book. It keeps provoking unexpected emotion. When it was first coming together, I found myself wavering a little about the project itself: if I wasn't writing new material for it, what was it? A body of work, certainly – but was there enough there over a fifteen year span to justify collection? Would anyone want to read my older stories? (A peculiar paradox: our oldest work is also our youngest, and our most recent work is our most mature.)

Instead what I'm finding is that these stories are new to most people; that readers who came to my work post This Is How You Lose the Time War and The River Has Roots don't necessarily know anything about the world of Livejournal and pre-pandemic magazines and SFF conventions that formed the contexts and catalysts for conversations that sparked stories, and to those readers – especially the ones who are the age now that I was when I started writing – this is just new work from an author they like.

There's something so marvellous to me about that – about the notion that something I wrote 15 years ago can meet someone where they live now, that it can feel urgent or interesting or insightful. In so many ways this is just the grace of writing and art generally – that we speak without knowing to whom, that we read across decades or centuries work that tells us something about ourselves in defiance of space and time.

Anyway, I'm so grateful that these stories are out in the world together, holding hands, and I hope you enjoy them if they find their way into yours.

Love,

Amal

Postscripts of News

• The paperback of The River Has Roots is also out today!
• Did I mention that I've been secretly working on an Actual Play D&D podcast with some exceptionally cool people? No? Probably because it's been secret. But if you're curious you should sign up to be notified about launch and news and stuff! It's called The Library At World's End and in my quite biased but extremely correct opinion it's going to be amazing.
• I was deeply honoured to be invited to contribute to Green Women, a gorgeous anthology edited by Terri Windling that pairs Brian Froud's beautiful Green Women portraits with women writers' responses to them. The list of contributors is staggering, and it comes out October 6.