Alexandra Rowland's Blog

I'm delighted to be announcing the newest addition to the Chantiverse books, a standalone novel featuring a brand new cast of characters for you to fall in love with! It's a queer comedy-adventure about pirates, pitched as Our Flag Means Death meets Six of Crows, in the style of Terry Pratchett's Going Postal.

Avra Helvaçi, former field agent of the Araşti Ministry of Intelligence, has accidentally stolen the single most expensive secret in the world—and the only place to flee with a secret t...

It’s here! The cover for Some by Virtue Fall, the first book of The Seven Gods, my new series of adult fantasy novellas! It’s got everything you like best in a book: Fantasy-Elizabethan acting troupes, found-families, wlw/mlm solidarity, arson, passionate rivalries, a chaos-gremlin main character, some extremely dapper hats...

Think Shakespeare in Love meets West Side Story—except they’re all lesbians.

Some by Virtue Fall is launching on January 25th, 2022, only about a month away. Preorder links below!

I’ve been tinkering with this story for years and I am so excited to be releasing it! I’ve always thought of it as kind of the fraternal twin of A Taste of Gold and Iron in many ways: I started writing them in the same year (within two months of each other, in fact, if I recall correctly), they had a similar process of needing to be rewritten and refined through several drafts more than my usual process requires, they’re both deeply queer... And, of course, it’s all the same world-setting, which will already be familiar to fans of A Conspiracy of Truths!

I’m thrilled with the beautiful cover art by illustrator Miles Äijälä. I have loved Miles’ art for years, especially their splendid eye for dramatic light and color. As soon as I started picturing Some by Virtue Fall as a finished product, I knew immediately what the scene on the cover had to be, and that no one could do it justice like Miles could. :) They did a fabulous job bringing my vision to life.

Okay, that’s all the professional-sounding stuff out of the way, so let's get to the fun bit:

The gif that best sums up Saba as a person is, “Anytime I had a problem and I threw a Molotov cocktail, boom! Right away, I had a different problem.” The AO3 tags for Some by Virtue Fall include:

queer found families rivals to arch-enemies to allies forbidden flirtation with a member of the opposition dapper fancy hats main character is a chaos gremlin and THE most useless lesbian maybe the real enemy was the patriarchy we smashed along the way everyone is queer (except one man named Leony Token who is straight and is only mentioned once)

So! Preorder links!

Some by Virtue Fall is available to preorder right now in ebook and paperback wherever you get your books! If possible, I'd encourage you to support your local bookstores or buy from Bookshop.org (and be sure to recommend the book to your local library as well!) If you'd like an autographed copy, you can also preorder directly from me by filling out this form. This is limited to the first 100 people, though, so sign up early.

Preorder Now:

Amazon Kindle (paperback and Kindle)

Barnes and Noble (paperback and Nook)

Bookshop.org (paperback)

All other distributors (Ebook)

Finally, one more announcement: There is now an official Discord server for my books! If you’d like to ask me questions or hang out with other fans, please come join us!

Let's not bury the lede: In addition to my traditionally-published books, I've decided to branch out into indie publishing as well!!

As of today, right now, you can buy my essay, "In Our Own Image: Radical Empathy, Trickster Gods, and the Importance of Being Irritating" from all major ebook distributors: ,Click here for Kindle, ,here for Nook, and ,here for everything else.

In the Beginning, humans created the heavens and the gods.In cultures and religions throughout the world, trickster gods occupy a specific and unique place in their pantheon. This article, originally published in the May 2021 issue of The Stellar Beacon, explores the gifts of the trickster archetype: Not just fire stolen from the gods, but an empathetic cultural understanding of the reality of human imperfection... and, of course, the absolute necessity of those who flout the established social order in pursuit of making society better.

If you're not a subscriber to The Stellar Beacon, you will have missed this essay! Go check it out!

This isn't the only thing I have in the pipeline for you -- I'm going to be releasing several more pieces from my backlog in the next few weeks, so keep your eyes peeled! I'll be making announcements of all new releases both here on the blog, through ,my newsletter, and on ,Patreon.

I'm really excited about the prospect of branching out to a hybrid model (ie: both traditional and indie publishing), and I've been mulling over this decision for some time. I love so many things about traditional publishing -- getting to work with a team, the kind of magic a really great editor can bring to a book, the thrill of finally getting to see the finished cover, the feeling of knowing my agent is confident in and supportive of my work... I could go on! I've had some wonderful experiences with tradpub, and I definitely plan to continue with it for as long as they'll have me. :)

But I write fast. I write really fast, and I have the capabilities to write faster. Traditional publishing, alas, only has the capacity for so many works per author per year (unless you start branching out into other genres or use pen-names, neither of which I really want to do at this point), and I can produce way more than that.

Thus: Indie publishing!

The other big benefit, of course, is being able to write whatever I want without worrying about whether it's something that traditional publishing would consider marketable... For example, the sequel to A Choir of Lies, so that we can all find out what happens next to Ylfing!

But that isn't even written yet, so don't get too excited about it yet -- let it be a gentle candle of hope and anticipation in your heart for now. The next couple things you'll see from me in the next week or two will likely be a pair of short stories, "Wander Mazily Over All the Earth" and "The King is Dead, Long Live The King", but there is a... shall we say, bigger project that is nearing completion, as in: The manuscript is written, the cover has been commissioned, and the beta-reading is currently in-process. That will probably come next month, and I'll have a proper announcement for it when I reveal the cover and open it up for pre-orders. Hm, what's that you say? You want a little hint? Well alright, if you insist: "Dapper theater lesbians." ;)

I was groomed and abused by Scott Lynch and Elizabeth Bear for several years.

For a long time, I never wanted to talk about this in public. I didn’t want anybody to know about this. I only began rethinking yesterday and I was still considering what to do about it, but…

...Apparently I don’t have that luxury anymore. Additionally, I’ve recently heard some new information about their abusive behavior towards other people--young women, usually baby writers who do not have established careers, girls they had mentorship relationships with--and frankly SOMEBODY has to be brave enough to speak up first, or these young women will continue to be hurt and intimidated into silence, just as I was.

This is terrifying to write. I’m afraid of career repercussions, for one. I’m also alarmed at the potential threat to my physical safety: Lynch and Bear live 15mins away & know how to get to my house. I spoke to my roommate about comfort levels with me speaking out, and we have prepared for the possibility that they could confront me in person.

*

So. I was 25, and completely unpublished. Lynch was 37, Bear was 43 -- both respected writers with long-established careers. I had a close friendship with Lynch, and I considered both of them mentors.

And then Lynch started flirting with me.

I had a bit of a hero crush -- who wouldn’t? -- and I was flattered by the attention. I felt special. (Looking back on it now, I am horrified about it. I was significantly younger, and there was a HUGE power differential.) He asked me to go out with him, and he lied about having an open relationship with Bear. I said yes, conditional on Bear being okay with it and me having an opportunity to talk to her first. When she found out, she was--understandably--furious.

I was horrified. I didn’t want to be the reason for them breaking up, so I did everything I could to keep it from happening. I felt responsible for it, and they did nothing to reassure me that I was not responsible. If anything, I was dragged further and further into things, with no regard paid to my personal boundaries. Even at that point in time, I realized that my career and reputation could be ruined if either of them--more powerful, more secure in their careers, more experienced--decided that I was expendable. It was ugly, and it was hard, and I was scared, even then, of what would happen if I mishandled things, so I let myself be used and pressured and exploited and made to feel small. All the while, Lynch was grooming me--persuading me to stick around, to get even closer to them, to divulge private information (such as my sexual history) to *both* of them, and convincing me that he was optimistic that Bear would one day be okay with us seeing each other, if only we could be patient and caring with her, if only we could convince her that we loved her and wanted the best for her, eventually she would come around and see that it was safe.

Lo and behold: Bear at some point decided that maybe an open relationship was something she could do after all--I only wanted to appease her at that point, and I desperately didn’t want to upset her, so I hesitantly moved forward with it. I thought it was a good thing. I thought it was progress. I thought that it meant that our collective relationship--and their relationship with each other--was healing. Lynch and I “dated” for one month, and it ended mutually when it became clear that their relationship was not healing, and that the situation was taking a huge toll on Bear’s wellbeing. At every point, all I wanted was for these two people I cared about to be okay.

My caring continued to be exploited at every step, and my boundaries continued to be disregarded even by myself. That’s what grooming and abuse does to you--it fucks up your ability to even NOTICE when you have a need that’s being ignored or when a boundary is being violated. From house-sitting for them for four months to working 30+ hours over the course of a weekend to make their backyard DIY wedding happen, I moved heaven and earth to try to make them happy. That was my 2016.

After they moved into their house and got married, Lynch was still visiting me at my house--even though these visits were very uncomfortable and awkward for me (and, presumably, for Bear as well). In February of 2017, I got my first book deal. The day after I got the offer, he was over to see me for our monthly lunch and, being very excited and still considering Lynch a confidante and a mentor, I told him about it. I said, “You can’t tell anyone yet, it’s SUPER SECRET, we haven’t announced it yet, don’t tell anyone.” He went home and told Bear immediately--a violation of both my professional privacy and my personal trust.

The *next morning*, I had a vicious email from Bear in my inbox, abruptly ending all association with me and saying that she was going to ask Lynch to limit his association with me, and…

I was GENUINELY afraid of her and the power she had. I was terrified she’d spread rumors about me being a homewrecker -- I was young and pretty and redheaded, after all. Surely anyone would have looked at me and thought, “Hm, homewrecker? That’s actually plausible.” I always knew she and Lynch had the power to ruin my writing career.

I talked about these concerns with DongWon Song, who was my agent at the time, as well as Lynch’s (and still is). I told him briefly about what Bear had said and expressed my worries--I didn’t tell him about the sexual aspect of my relationship with Lynch, as I didn’t feel comfortable divulging that to someone with whom I had a professional relationship. DongWon basically just shrugged and said that there wasn’t really anything to do, and that it wasn't worth causing drama over. He gave me no professional advice, did not ask any questions. I felt completely dismissed--I recognize that he had a professional responsibility to think about the well-being of both me and Lynch as his clients, but he had no such obligations to Bear, who he did not represent. He didn't even disinvite her from his supposedly 'clients-only' slack chat. (Why is Bear in his clients-only Slack chat when he doesn’t represent her? I still don’t know, and I didn’t bother asking, because I seemed to be the only person uncomfortable with her being there. Former agent-siblings, if you’re reading this: If you ever wondered why I wasn’t more sociable in the Slack? This is why. It was an incredibly hostile environment for me and I was re-traumatizing myself every time I attempted to interact in there.)

I eventually, finally, managed to hit my limit. I cut off all communication with them. I walked away, I got out.

That should have been the end of it. It was not.

*

When I was working on a project last summer (TWO YEARS after I blocked them), one of the other contributors was approached by a close friend of Bear’s who wanted to provide a warning about the sort of person I am:

This is not the only time this has happened. I know of at least three other friends/acquaintances who abruptly ended their association with me. Two of them explicitly told me it was because they trusted Bear’s word over mine. They also seemed to shrug off Lynch’s treatment of me, and saw nothing creepy about an older male author manipulating, lying to, and entering into an unethical sexual relationship with a young fan.

I feel sick as I’m writing this. My hands are shaking--I’ve been crying and feverish all day. I was fully prepared to never talk about this in public. Even now I’m desperately afraid that no one will believe me, that this will hurt me more than it helps anyone else.

Except that I can’t keep quiet about it, because there ARE other people who have needed help.

Over the last five years, I have heard about four other women--all young, baby writers who were delighted to have professional and creative mentorship--who have been mistreated by Lynch and Bear.

If I know about four of them, I can only assume there are others I don’t know about. When I thought I was a one-off incident, I was willing to shut up and keep quiet--don’t cause drama, it’s not worth it, it’ll blow over and they’ll leave you alone. But they haven’t left me alone, and it’s not a one-off. It is a pattern of reprehensible behavior that has been going on for YEARS.

Earlier today, Bear posted an open letter to her male colleagues who are being accused of abuse and harassment. This is one thousand percent what’s known as “projection” (and also “hypocrisy”):

Women abusers can be especially difficult to pin down, because they work very hard at wrenching the narrative around to to “Actually, *I’M* the victim here, and the person accusing me is the REAL abuser.” Bear did this very thing to me when we were still in the thick of the situation: There were times I hesitantly tried to speak up and set a boundary, and she told me that I had no right to “play the victim card”, that I wasn’t owning my agency or taking responsibility for my own actions or the ways that I had hurt her. She’s doing the exact same thing now, as evidenced by the first screenshot in this post--I do not know who she has lied to, or who she has manipulated, or who I can trust. But she is clearly, obviously, gathering her supporters in preparation to spin the narrative into something that puts me at fault.

I was 25, and when the worst of this went down, I had no power at all. I trusted them, I admired them, and I looked up to them. I considered them dear friends and mentors. I deserved better than this.

So here we are. Now you know. I don’t know what doing this will cost me, but I will update this post as necessary.

In very exciting news, I have a new book coming out in October!! Preorders are available now, click here!FINDING FAERIES is a "nonfiction" field guide to seeking out supernatural beings in the modern world, particularly in urban environments. It's also illustrated (eee!) by the fantastic Miles Äijälä, whose work I have admired for years.*** Discover where faeries and other mythical creatures are hiding in our modern, urban environment with this beautifully illustrated guide to uncovering magical beings. From the musty corners of libraries to the darkest depths of urban sewers, faeries, boggarts, redcaps, and other fantastical species can be found all around us—but only if we know where to look. And like every other being in the modern world, these wonderous creatures have been forced to adapt to the climate, industrial, and cultural changes of the modern era. Many formerly common creatures from akeki to cave trolls have been driven out by the urban sprawl, technological advancements, and climate change while others, including ether sprites and brownies, have been able to thrive in abundance, creating homes within electrical hotbeds and massive landfills. Featuring descriptions of magical creatures from around the globe, this encyclopedic collection details the history and adaptability of more than fifty different species of fae. Describing little-known and fascinating creatures such as the Luck Pigeon of Baltimore, the Ghost Cat of India, and the Brain Sucker of South Africa, this book will expose readers to fantastical species from a variety of cultures and communities. Combining scholarship with modern lore and environmentalism, and featuring stunning hand-drawn illustrations, Finding Faeries is a captivating look at the fantastical beings that inhabit our world today.

I'm so thrilled to be going to Worldcon in a couple weeks!! There is so much that I'm excited for, and my scheduled panels are one of them! Please note that I am always happy to say hello or to sign books if you see me at the con! I am very good at self-regulating my social intake, so if for example I'm sitting around in a public space and mucking about on my phone then it's pretty safe to assume I'm ok with being interrupted to chat. I am not sure whether there will be copies of A CONSPIRACY OF TRUTHS in the dealer's room, but I WILL be carrying around some postcards (for both Conspiracy and Choir!) if you want a bit of swag :D I will also have very shiny badge ribbons for Be the Serpent! Come find me! NOTE: Be sure to check the official program, as there is still the possibility that room or time assignments may have been tweaked. Introduction to Hopepunk15 Aug 2019, Thursday 20:00 - 20:50, Wicklow Hall 2B (CCD)Alexandra Rowland coined the term ‘hopepunk’ in a Tumblr post in 2017, saying that: ‘…the opposite of Grimdark is Hopepunk’. Our panel will discuss what the term means and how hopepunk intersects with other speculative sub-genres such as grimdark, noblebright, and solarpunk, as well as offering reading recommendation Be the Serpent podcast - Live Recording17 Aug 2019, Saturday 11:00 - 11:50, Wicklow Hall 2B (CCD)Be the Serpent is a speculative fiction, media, and fanfiction analysis podcast hosted by three redheaded fantasy authors. Come join us for a live recording, featuring trope taxonomies, enthusiastic dissection of this episode’s featured stories, dozens of recs, and more dirty jokes than you could shake a snake at. It is, after all, a podcast of extremely deep… literary merit.Autographs: Saturday at 13:0017 Aug 2019, Saturday 13:00 - 13:50, Level 4 Foyer (CCD) Kaffeeklatsch: Alexandra Rowland17 Aug 2019, Saturday 16:00 - 16:50, Level 3 Foyer (KK/LB) (CCD)Fan podcasts18 Aug 2019, Sunday 15:30 - 16:20, Odeon 5 (Point Square Dublin)Podcasts have become a popular way to talk about and hear about our fannish favourites, share the latest theories and plot developments, and find new things to love. Our panellists discuss the challenges and delights of podcasting, and help you find new podcasts to check out.Breaking the Glass Slipper podcast - Live Recording19 Aug 2019, Monday 11:00 - 11:50, Wicklow Hall 2B (CCD)Since 2016, the ‘Breaking the Glass Slipper’ podcast has championed female voices in speculative fiction. Now into our third season and with a British Fantasy Award nomination under our belt, we’re excited to host a live recording at Dublin 2019. Our subject is inspired by the Emerald Isle itself: the place of islands and island mythology in the human imagination.

Wow! This is the first time I really get to do one of these! I'm so excited--there's so many little landmarks of first-time-publishing joys and I am celebrating each of them no matter how trivial. A novel, A CONSPIRACY OF TRUTHSA flash fiction story, "Love in Every Stitch"A nonfiction essay, "One Atom of Justice, One Molecule of Mercy, and the Empire of Unsheathed Knives"More than twenty episodes of Be the Serpent: A Podcast of Extremely Deep Literary Merit (with Freya Marske and Jennifer Mace)This is also my first year with any professional-qualifying sales, which means I'm eligible for the Campbell award!

I'm thrilled to announce that I'm joining two other fabulous fantasy authors, Freya Marske and Jennifer Mace, to start a brand new podcast! Be the Serpent is a podcast of extremely deep literary merit, and our first episode ("False Utopias and... Robot Sex?!") airs this coming Wednesday, the 31st. We've been conspiring about this for a solid month and we're so excited to for you to hear what we've got planned! Follow BtS on Twitter and Tumblr for updates, and if you have questions for us in future episodes, shoot us a message there or via serpentcast@gmail.com.

This week I was a guest on TWO different podcasts! I've never done podcasts before, but these were LOADS of fun. First, Rocket Punch Radio had me on for an interview about A CONSPIRACY OF TRUTHS and some shop talk about worldbuilding. Listen to that episode here. Second, my excellent friend Ryan Boyd hosted me on Rank and Vile, where we talked about Dr Who's "Blink" and whether we can really call Gremlins 2 a "bad" movie. That episode can be found right here, full of charisma and banter and our usual style of adorable flirting.

WOOOOOO! After five long years of wrestling with Wordpress, I've finally switched over to a new host. And bought my own domain name like a goddamn adult. I have truly Arrived.