the dark & drowning preorder campaign is live
along with a playlist & some thoughts on style
I’ve just returned from San Diego Comic-Con! I took no pictures, signed a lot of ARCs, ate tacos for 2 of my 6 meals, and overall had an absolute blast. Thank you so much if you came to one of my signings or the sapphic romance panel!
Also, allow me to say a huge THANK YOU for your incredible (and incredibly overwhelming) response to the Wings of Starlight announcement last month. I knew a lot of you were likely scarred by this tragic romance as children, but I don’t think I really grasped how many. I’ll plan to talk much more about this book after A Dark and Drowning Tide releases. On that note: I’m giving away a signed ARC of A Dark and Drowning Tide! If you’re a subscriber, you’re automatically eligible to win. I’ll draw a winner tomorrow morning (July 30).
keep reading for
thoughts on style
a dark and drowning tide preorder campaign
playlist
trade reviews
Last month, I went on a circus retreat. It’s hard for me to describe how much I loved it. So many of my feelings about it live in sense memory: the happy exhaustion that comes from moving for 6+ hours a day; swimming in the ocean as it rains; watching a thunderstorm from the shower’s open window; bioluminescent trails in the water. It was a glimpse of what life could look like, if you were to arrange your life around your art. Moreover, it was an opportunity to talk to people who work in a medium that has nothing to do with words. You learn a lot when you look at creativity askance.
During one class, we were asked to do a creative exercise. All we had to do was move, in any way: a sweep of the arm, a kick, anything, as long as it was short and simple. Every now and again, we were asked to change the texture of our movement (say, increase or decrease the pace; make it choppier or more fluid). The point, I think, was to see how much variety you can introduce to even small gestures—and how you might have to adjust what you’re doing to accommodate your artistic or emotional choices. At any moment, what becomes possible or impossible?
When our instructor introduced this exercise to us, she said something like, “How many of you feel that you need to get out of your usual pattern of movement?” Several people raised their hands. I expected the follow-up to be “Well, here is an opportunity to do that.” Instead, it was “For the purposes of this exercise, don’t.”
When I think about what I learned at the retreat, I come back to this. What we do during an improv exercise is not really spontaneous; it’s what emerges from the well of your patterned movement: the kinds of things you do often and have practiced a lot, probably because you like doing them, or because your parents put you in ballet classes when you were six. “There’s nothing wrong with having a movement pattern,” our instructor went on, “because that’s what becomes your personal style.” I almost cried in the middle of class. Sometimes, I am so desperate to escape myself. Sometimes, in both circus and in writing, I find my personal style so ugly.
I don’t think I’m alone in this. As artists, we are cruel to ourselves. If style truly is an accumulation of life experiences; the things we’ve nurtured or have grown around like a trellised plant; the things we notice in the world around us—then I suspect that a big reason we recoil from our own stuff is the simple fact that we made it. It’s like your reflection in a dressing room mirror, or the sound of your own voice in a recording. There’s something viscerally unsettling about encountering yourself from the outside. No matter how you arrange the words or embody a character, it’s still just you beneath it all.
I don’t know exactly what to do with this. But I’m starting to believe that improvement or working outside your comfort zone isn’t incompatible with trying to recognize the beauty in what, to us, feels ugly and inescapably familiar. Your patterns—your style—are products of how you’ve moved through this world, physically and emotionally. They’re an expression of your unconscious self, an encapsulation of all the good and bad things you’ve held onto. Letting all that bleed into your art is vulnerable; of course we’re jarred when we look at it.
As I write this, I’m reminded of Jesse Armstrong’s Vulture article, where he reflects on writing season 4 of Succession:
Without the power American TV gives a showrunner, the temptation can be to write in a closed-off, invulnerable way with every scene sleek and sealed — less prone to misexecution or misinterpretation. And that’s a shame. Because I do think the cracks are where the light gets in — the bits of a show that elbow out at odd angles, the bones that stick in your throat.
I keep latching onto the phrase “the cracks are where the light gets in.” While he’s talking about taking narrative risks and leaving room for your audience, I can’t help thinking it applies here, too. It’s a phrase that—if not a direct reference to—brings to mind the chorus of Leonard Cohen’s Anthem1, which is itself a nod to a line in Emerson’s “Compensation:” “There is a crack in everything God has made.” All of us make art that elbows out at odd angles. That’s what makes it human.
That’s all I have for you. Now get out of here and go make art.
(And if you’re an aerialist, go to Sweet Retreats.)
preorder campaign
I am SO excited to share the details of the A Dark and Drowning Tide preorder campaign! It was a joy to work with each of these incredible artists, who’ve brought the characters to life so beautifully.
Submit your proof of purchase to receive:
an A5 print by Riotbones (@riotb0nes)
two stickers by Bri (@beforeviolets)
a signed bookplate (design TBD)
If you preorder from an independent bookstore, you will receive
all of the above
an additional 5x7” print by Ashe Arends (@spookgeist)
Details for this campaign:
open internationally
all formats (paperback, hardback, audio, ebook, etc.) are eligible
open until midnight on September 17, 2024
Lastly, if you preorder a signed and personalized copy from my local indie bookstore, Kepler’s, two exclusive prints will come tucked inside the book! For personalization, you can request your name, a quote, a doodle—really, anything you’d like! We’ll take personalization requests until September 3. If you order after September 3 or include no requests in the order comments, your book will just be signed.
I revealed the first exclusive print in the last newsletter, and I’m so thrilled to show you the second one. This one is by the incomparable Naomi Dale, who has painted Lorelei and Sylvia as Dicksee’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci. I’m OBSESSED. The textures and emotion in this piece are so beautiful, and I cannot wait for y’all to see it in person!
If you have any questions about the campaign, you can drop them in the comments. I’ll get back to you ASAP!
playlist
I hope y’all like depressing rock, because I am sharing A Dark and Drowning Tide’s official playlist today! These songs aren’t necessarily associated with any particular scene but loosely chart the evolution of Lorelei and Sylvia’s relationship. The last track, though, is something of a Lorelei theme song - and one of my favorites of all time. Another time, perhaps, I will describe the religious experience of hearing it live after loving LC! for 13 years.
trade reviews
‘tis the season for trade reviews.2 I’m so happy to share that A Dark and Drowning Tide received a starred review from Library Journal! This is perhaps my favorite trade review I’ve ever received; the playfulness of it delights me.
The expedition is in shambles, their mentor is dead, and Lorelei Kaskel and Sylvia von Wolff, enemies and rivals at every step of their academic careers, know that their heads are on the chopping block. Their king needs this expedition to succeed—or he needs a scapegoat for its failure, and either of them will do, even if neither of them is responsible. All they have to do is not kill each other, not let any of their fractious comrades kill anyone else, solve the murder, and find the legendary source of all magic before a traitor’s plans come to fruition. There’s little hope that either success or failure will save their necks. But they have each other, and that will have to be enough.
VERDICT: Take the deadly mystery and vicious academic politics of The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older, stir in the magic and the romance of the “Emily Wilde” series by Heather Fawcett (but make it sapphic), add several drops of the political shenanigans of epic fantasy, and stir with a sharp, prickly thorn of a main character to get this fraught enemies-to-lovers fantasy. YA author Saft’s (A Fragile Enchantment) adult debut is highly recommended.
As for the second review: I am having a brat summer, as is Publishers Weekly! Here’s what they had to say about A Dark and Drowning Tide:
stay humble <3
“Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack, a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in”
If you’re unfamiliar with the term: trade reviews are the reviews published by a few professional book-reviewing outlets (Kirkus, Library Journal, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly are the ones you’ll usually see, but there’s also BookPage, BCCB for YA and MG, and Shelf Awareness). They are a source of great dread for authors, especially because some reviewers like get a little cheeky (see also: mocking). A starred review indicates the publication thinks the book is of particular merit.
Okay thank you very much for this answer <3
Hello Al ! Can we expect any special edition for a dark and drowning? I'd like to know before I pre-order. But I guess there is none otherwise we'd known by now