My Flying Lizard Circus

Some good news:

Both Queen Demon and the Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute anthology, made it on the Locus Recommended Reading List:

https://locusmag.com/2026/02/2025-recommended-reading/

with a lot of other excellent books and stories, including a new section for translated works.

You can also vote on the list for the Locus Awards. Anybody can vote here with an email address: https://poll.voting.locusmag.com/ though they have you fill out a demographic survey first with how many books you read per year, etc.

Of course a lot of great work did not end up on the list, like I was surprised not to see The Witch Roads and The Nameless Land duology by Kate Elliott, which I thought was excellent.

I updated my sticky post with: PSA: if you get an email out of the blue that is supposedly from me, offering to help you with marketing or other publisher services, or asking for money, it is not me, it is a scammer. Also, if you see me on Facebook or Threads or XTwitter, that's not me either.

This is a very common scam now, one of the many scams aimed at aspiring and new writers.


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I'm still sick, ugh


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Nice article on Queen Demon on the Daily KOS:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/1/5/2361356/-The-Language-of-the-Night-Martha-Wells-takes-on-colonization

One of Wells’ most compelling gifts as a writer is the way she interrogates trauma, and trauma is very much in evidence in her recent works, especially in both Murderbot and The Rising World. Where the Murderbot stories form an enslavement narrative as personal journey and healing, the Rising World series applies a wider cultural lens to trauma and loss.

Kai has seen his world ripped apart twice: the way to the underneath, the world of his birth, is shut off; the world of his above existence, the world of the Saredi, is also gone, both of them murdered by the Hierarchs. (You could argue that the third traumatizing loss-of-world is losing Bashasa, but that lies in the gap between past and present narratives.) In the past narrative, a vanquished Kai himself is imprisoned in the Summer Halls until Bashasa frees him and he joins the ad hoc rebellion.

Great interview about Murderbot:

Bifurcating Character with Incisive and Witty Inner Monologue: a Masterclass with ‘Murderbot’ Co-Showrunners Paul Weitz and Spirit Awards Winner Chris Weitz


Since SecUnits issued by the Corporation Rim ­(a group of mega-corporations ruling the galaxy in the distant future) are sentient, complete obedience to human orders is guaranteed by the “governor module” in each unit. However, Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgård, who nabbed an Emmy for his intricate and chilling performance in the HBO series, Big Little Lies), figures out how to disable its module to gain autonomy. “Murderbot is sentient from the get-go — it’s basically a slavery narrative. It’s important to Martha that Murderbot was always sentient,” Chris says of the close collaboration with consulting producer, Wells. “All the SecUnits are under human control. They can think for themselves but can’t act for themselves. So, they experience this torture of being at the disposal of others.” In addition to exploring themes of humanity and free will, the series also calls into question the issue of personhood, as Paul notes: “To what degree are we going to grant personhood to non-human intelligence?”

https://www.filmindependent.org/blog/bifurcating-character-with-incisive-and-witty-inner-monologue-a-masterclass-with-murderbot-co-showrunners-paul-weitz-and-spirit-awards-winner-chris-weitz/


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I'm trying to get back into the swing of things after basically three weeks of travel in October, catching up on household stuff, trying to get ready for the holidays, getting back into working on the current book. I think I was more mentally exhausted than physically, but it was still a lot.

I didn't stay more than a day in any one city (except for two nights in Allentown, PA, which was lovely) and I was mostly leaving before most of the hotels started to serve breakfast, so I was living on a lot of airplane food. I did get to ride the train for the first time in the US (the Acela Amtrack) which was fun. I've ridden trains in Sweden, the Netherlands, and Scotland, but never here.

There was a lot of emotional overwhelm, seeing so many people, but also it felt really good, because they were all people who cared about books and art and creativity. The smallest crowd was in New York, about 40-50 people, the largest was in Seattle with around 300. The Texas Book Festival in Austin was like an encapsulation of the whole trip, being in a giant crowd of people (the largest in the festival's 30 year history) who were all "books, books, books!" I've heard that people seemed to be going to more arts-related events lately, and that was what I saw on my trip.

I don't think I posted about this yet: https://us.macmillan.com/tours/martha-wells-queen-demon/

There's more info at that link, but here's a brief list of the tour stops and dates:


- Mon. Oct. 6 at 7:30pm: Brookline Booksmith with Holly Black, offsite at Arts at the Armory (Brookline, MA)

- Tues. Oct. 7 at 7pm: Politics & Prose (Union Market location) moderated by Leigha McReynolds (Washington DC)

- Wed. Oct. 8 at 7pm: The Strand, with Meg Elison (NYC, NY)

- Fri. Oct. 10 at 6pm: Let’s Play Books, with Chuck Wendig, offsite at Muhlenberg College (Allentown, PA)

- Tues. Oct. 14 at 7pm, Third Place Books (Seattle, WA)

- Wed. Oct. 15 at 7pm, Iron Dog Books, with Nalo Hopkinson offsite at Waterfront Theatre on Granville Island (Vancouver, BC, Canada)

- Thurs. Oct. 16 at 7pm, Powell's (Cedar Hill location) with Jenn Reese (Beaverton, OR)

- Mon. Oct. 20 at 7pm: Bookpeople, with Ehigbor Okosun (Austin, TX)

- Tue. Oct. 21 at 6:30pm: Murder by the Book (Houston, TX)

- Thurs. Oct. 23 at 6pm: Nowhere Bookshop (San Antonio, TX)

- Saturday Nov. 8-9 Texas Book Festival, Austin TX

- Sat. Nov. 15 at 2pm: Hyperbole Bookstore, offsite at Ringer Library (College Station, TX)

The audio version of “Data Ghost” my short story from the recent Storyteller: the Tanith Lee Tribute Anthology is now online at Pseudopod!

https://pseudopod.org/2025/09/26/pseudopod-995-data-ghost/



Also, Queen Demon, the sequel to Witch King, will be out on October 7, in ebook, hardcover, and audiobook narrated by Eric Mok.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/queen-demon-martha-wells/b7abd63577bd30a5?ean=9781250826916&next=t

If you missed the live recording of the Murderbot interview episode at WorldCon, you can watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-JRHSABM24

This includes the special message to me that the show's cast sent, which was awesome.


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I'm still sick, but getting better bit by bit.

Woke up to a fantastic review of Queen Demon in the August Locus. Here's an excerpt:


This is a fantastic novel, set in a fascinating world with truly compelling characters. It is shot through with grief, with the reverberations of destruction and the aftermaths of trauma: While the past timeline gives us emotional focus on the characters’ griefs, immediate traumas, and desperate choices, the present makes plain the extent of the Hierarchs’ destruction of the rest of the world, the scars in the landscape, in societies, in the vanishing of entire cultures. New societies have built themselves out of the ruins, in the shadow of what was lost and in its absences. While we see it particularly from Kai’s perspective, understanding his losses and his wounds, his scars and his griefs, and what healing has been possible for him between the past and the present, it’s not unique to Kai, either. Loss with all its jagged edges looms over this fragile recovery. These scars wear not only upon the main characters but upon their allies and opponents, too: Trauma, both personal and generational, is a strongly motivating factor and a weight that influences most of the personal relationships and many of the political interactions that we see.
-- Liz Bourke, Locus August 2025


Queen Demon is the sequel to Witch King, and it will be out in ebook, hardcover, and audiobook (narrated by Eric Mok, on October 7

A really thoughtful essay on Murderbot: ‘Even If They Are My Favourite Human’: Murderbot Just Explained Boundaries

https://countercurrents.org/2025/07/even-if-they-are-my-favourite-human-murderbot-just-explained-boundaries/

“I Don’t Know What I Want”: The Line That Changed Everything

In the final moments of the season, Murderbot says: “I don’t know what I want. But I know I don’t want anyone to tell me what I want or to make decisions for me. Even if they are my favourite human.”

This is not a dramatic declaration. It is confusion wrapped in clarity. A sentence that holds discomfort and self-awareness in equal measure. It reflects a truth often ignored in stories about intelligence and emotion: that it is okay to not know, as long as that unknowing belongs to the self. In a world that constantly demands certainty, this line opens up space for uncertainty without shame.


* And a great interview with Alexander Skarsgård!

https://collider.com/murderbot-finale-alexander-skarsgard/

So, it just wants to start fresh and get away, and figure out who it is and what it wants. It doesn't really know that. I quite enjoyed that Murderbot didn't end up having answers to all the questions or knowing exactly what it wants. It's more messy and complicated than that. But it definitely knows that it needs to find its own path and make its own decisions, to make its own mistakes, and not have the Corporation or anyone tell it who it is or what it wants.

In Psychopomp, with me, Wole Talabi and Alix E. Harrow:

https://psychopomp.com/fantasy/issue97/interview-with-world-fantasy-finalists-part-one/


And in Scientific American:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/were-light-years-away-from-true-artificial-intelligence-says-murderbot/

Kerr County Flood Relief Fund

The Kerr County Flood Relief Fund supports relief and rebuilding efforts after the flood of July 4, 2025. Your generosity helps our neighbors recover.

The Community Foundation - a 501(c)(3) public charity serving the Texas Hill Country - will direct funds to vetted organizations providing rescue, relief, and recovery efforts as well as flood assistance. The Fund will support the communities of Hunt, Ingram, Kerrville, Center Point, and Comfort. All donations are tax-deductible, and you will receive a receipt for your gift.

https://cftexashillcountry.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=4201


And Kerrville Pets Alive! is taking donations for rescue and fostering lost pets.

https://kerrvillepetsalive.com/?link_id=3&can_id=588b5a597b5d30fd7e36b213e5ba6987&source=email-freedom-is-fought-for-not-given&email_referrer=email_2803907&email_subject=how-you-can-help-texas-flood-victims&&