Believe it or not, my second novel is projected to come out in March 2026!
It is called The Witch of Prague and can be described as literary fantasy/magic realism/historical novel, or, simply put, a fairy tale for the adults in the room. It is set in 1967-68 Prague, Czechoslovakia.
I am pretty excited about this book.
To disambiguate right away, yes, there is another Witch of Prague, by an American writer F. Marion Crawford, published originally in late nineteenth century and still available in print. In fact if you do a web search right now with The Witch of Prague as a prompt, Crawford is what comes back. But there soon will be another.
The echoing title is deliberate, there are references to Crawford's book in my book, and the nom de guerre of one of the characters in my book is coined by another character based on their reading of the original Witch of Prague.
Other than that and, of course, the setting -- Prague -- the two books cannot be more different.
My publisher is a small but mighty press, Homeward Books.
The novel's epigraph is from the 12th century writings by Honorius of Autun, and it says the following: The unicorn is a very fierce beast with only one horn. To capture it, a virgin maid is placed in the field. Notice this "is placed" passive voice, and you have the first clue for what the book may be about. And yes, it does have unicorns, too. Not the Silicon Valley kind, but a proper unicorn from the famous Medieval tapestry known as The Hunt of a Unicorn.-- yes, this one (one of the panels) --
But it is not all or only about unicorns.
I have been talking about the book at Readercon this summer and very recently at the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association convention in late September in Spokane, WA, where I was giving out advance review copies. (THANK you, everyone, for talking with me, and letting me load you with another book in your stack of books from the trade show! If you are reading this book now, I do hope you are liking it). If any of you, dear blog visitors, have meandered here because of those interactions, that's great; if you've been blown here by the unfathomable winds of the internet, thank you for coming.
As it happens, Homeward Books has launched a kickstarter for this book https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/homewardbooks/homeward-books-the-home-for-book-without-a-home/ which is where you can preorder it and learn all kinds of things about the book and the publisher. Please visit the campaign!
Thanks,
J.