Jake Burnett's Blog

The eARC for The Chaos Court, Anniversary Edition is now available on Netgalley and BookSirens!

Netgalley Arc

BookSirens

So my first novel The Chaos Court was released back in March of 2020. There was, to understate things, a lot going on then. The release was bumped up and rushed out the door. This meant that there were a few things in the book that needed improvement--and a hardcover edition wouldn't be in the offing.

Well now South Window Press is re-releasing this novel and I'm so excited! I got the chance to go back and expand content, edit the kind of minor things no one notices (but that keep writers up all night), and there's going to be a hardcover edition.

All of that will come out December 2 of this year.

I am really looking forward to re-introducing the world to Patience Fell and all the wild and weird members of the Chaos Court.

Oh, and for those of you on NetGalley who want an ARC, it's now available there.

Someday someone will write the last word written. The last word will be written long after we stop reckoning time; long after we liberate ourselves from the pressing and necessary consciousness of the sun, the moon, and the stars. No words will have been written for a long, unmeasured time before the last one. There will have been no need, even if anyone could remember how.

The writer will be anonymous forever—who will read his name, or who would remember such an eccentric? That will not be unusual, though. Nobody then will have a name. We won't need them. Nevertheless, he will be distinct from the rest of us, as much as is possible. He will be an eccentric, an atavism. A curiosity to his friends, who will worry about him. A bore to strangers, who talks incessantly about his hobby. A burden to society, which tolerates him with the amused indulgence of affluence. Only his assistant will truly love him—even in those distant empty days there will be love.

The bulk of our bodies will long since have atrophied due to evolutionary obsolescence. Therefore, when he sets out to resurrect the ancient art of orthography, he will have to think machines into being to duplicate the action of the pentadactyl hand. Nouns he will naturally develop through his studies, but verbs will give him a good deal of trouble—nothing will have happened in so long that even the idea of a verb will be painfully slow in coming. He will only put in adjectives for show—like decorative shutters—but having no real idea of where they belong, he will have to rely on an aesthetic sense that is necessarily imperfect and therefore often insert too many or too few, and always in the wrong place.

Two stars will burn themselves to ash illuminating his progress. Three more will grow too dim to write by. When he comes to the end, he will say—well, what will he say? Nothing, of course. He will simply release the book to drift through the silent spaces, smile once at his patient assistant, and slip away.

And that will be the end of one more beautiful thing.

...Frank Herbert wrote copy for a local TV news station, instead of writing a research article on the Oregon Dunes for the USDA. The result did NOT win a Hugo or a Nebula.

“And now over to Gurney with traffic.”
“Kull wahad, Jim! There’s a Maker jack-knifed out on the Arakeen Turnpike and a 5 ornithopter pile-up down the Muadib exit. Even the Guild spacers couldn’t fold around this mess. Now over to Feyd with sports.”
“I WILL KILL HIM!”
“Thanks, Feyd. Let’s hear what the weather is tomorrow. Alia?”
“Never one drop of rain on Arrakis. But it sure is muggy out there, Jim!”
“Thanks, Alia. That’s all for WDUN nightly news. Good night and stay off the Golden Path.”

Plummeting into the Uncanny Valley...

Thanks to the magic of AI, The Witch & The City is now available as an audiobook. Find it on Audible.

I'm curious to see what people think of the AI voice.

The Witch & The City

There is a thick layer of yellow dust on everything. It's as if some reclusive misshapen villain, shunned by the bright, loud world, found a Hasturite volume bound in human skin and read aloud the contents therein, opening the gates to Carcosa and allowing the savage chill winds off Lake Hali to blow the decay of that dark-sunned nethercity into our own vernal land, drowning all, all, all, all... and on that ice-flecked desiccating mistral rings forth the shoggoths' relentless self-devouring cry 'Al-ler-gi! Al-ler-gi!'

It's been one year since The Witch & The City came out. I am so grateful for all the love this little novel has gotten! It's the most personal, the most me of anything I've written--for good and bad and very, very weird. It's been really wonderful that all the strangeness has met fellow travelers who find in it delight. Thank you all, so much.

Shelf Quest has a wonderfully kind review of The Witch & The City, among many others. I recommend following this delightful site's reviews, especially if you are a Francophile!

(As I am--in fact, I was utterly charmed by a recent bilingual review of my book) and recommend you follow that bookstagramner as well.

Confession: While I started school in French back in the antediluvian age, 15 years of not practicing have rusted my skills more than a little. Perhaps 2024 should be the year I pick it up again...

The delightful BookmarkedOne interviewed me about The Witch & The City. Check it out here and maybe pick up a bookmark or two (because who doesn't need more bookmarks?

This isn't affiliated with me or South Window Press, but the wonderful Wandering Book Nerd is giving away a copy of The Witch & The City over on Instagram.

Whether or not you want a copy of my book, you should follow her, she's a delightful and insightful member of the Bookstagram community who does a lot of excellent reviews and great book cover pictures. Because the only thing better than a pretty book cover is a pretty book cover in an even prettier Instagram picture setting (that's science, trust me).