The return of Our Lady of the Islands–and an all-new sequel!
Because everything always takes longer than you expect it will…sometimes WAY longer…at long last, I am delighted to announce the re-release of the celebrated novel Our Lady of the Islands (which I wrote collaboratively with the late Jay Lake), and its as-yet-unnamed sequel!
Outland Entertainment, my publisher for the Nightcraft Quartet, will be publishing these books too.
Please enjoy this lovely, evocative line drawing of the new cover…color and type and links to order it coming soon!
I am so excited about this news…it’s been in the works for a long while, and has finally come to fruition. Our Lady has been out of print for several years now, since its original publisher closed its doors not long after the book was published.
I wrote the initial drafts of Our Lady with Jay Lake in the early 2010s. From the start, its path to publication was not a smooth one. First of all, we ourselves abandoned the project when our relationship changed. Then a publisher expressed interest, but by this time, Jay was already struggling with metastatic colon cancer. He was very happy to have me work on the revisions and getting the book out there, even though he was too ill to participate directly.
The revisions were a LOT of work (and I had a LOT of help from my husband Mark), but they made the book so much better…they made the book, period. And when it did finally get out into the world, it was very well received: starred reviews from Publishers Weeklyand Library Journal, highlighted by i09, and then Publishers Weekly went on to name it one of their Best Books of 2014–a rare honor! It was a finalist for the Endeavour Award, and it sold very well for a micro-published book from a press with a very small footprint.
Jay and I had always intended a sequel. Mark and I planned, outlined, and even started writing one, though when our publisher closed, the entire project was orphaned.
Time passed. I worked on other things; Mark worked on other things. The rights to this project were tangled up, as so often happens when an author dies before a work is completed. Several other publishers expressed interest, though nothing was ever able to get all the way to a signed contract.
But I never stopped wanting to finish this story. And it continued to sadden me that this complex, fun, well-received book had not reached a wider audience–and could reach an even tinier audience while it was out of print.
(There is a lovely audiobook of Our Lady, narrated by Allyson Johnson; and well-heeled readers can spend hundreds of dollars on a paperback if they like–though honestly, if you’re going to do that, let me know, I’ll sell you a copy. I’ve got, ahem, a few.)
So that’s where we’re at. The new, improved, shiny Our Lady of the Islands will be out later this year–I’ll let you know when and how you can order it–and Mark and I will be working on the sequel once more. We have a very detailed outline, and I actually wrote 50,000 words of the book during a NaNoWriMo a few years ago, though I have no confidence that any of those words are the right ones. They’ll be a good starting point, anyway. I’m so looking forward to getting back to Alizar, and all the fascinating characters we left behind there.
In other news…a short personal update: I’m having hernia surgery next Monday, March 1. This hernia made itself known to me just before the New Year (though it had probably been in the works for years); it gave me quite a bit of discomfort for a few days, though it hasn’t really bothered me much since then…except for not being able to do deep twists or backbends in my yoga practice, and always being aware that I’ve got a little something wrong in there, just above my belly button.
The surgery should be simple, and I am hoping for an easy recovery; I’ll have to be very gentle with myself for six weeks, and not lift anything over ten pounds (and probably lay off the yoga altogether for the duration). Mark is already planning many comforting meals (served in bed, haha) and is totally on board for all the housework (more haha!)–he started already, in fact, doing several loads of laundry the other day.
We both got our first doses of the Moderna vaccine last week, so I even feel less nervous about going to the mainland and spending time in a hospital. But I’ll be happy to have this whole episode behind me.
And that’s it for now! More news when I have it. Thanks for reading! And, stay safe. 🙂