now you see her...
Bestselling author of historical fiction including THE ARCTIC FURY and the Five Queendoms epic fantasy series (SCORPICA, ARCA).
Have you been listening to Worldbuilding for Masochists? What a fab podcast. Thrilled to be an invited guest, especially when the topic is near and dear to my heart. I had a great time recording this episode, talking about how gender intersects with other world building concerns. Because a god complex is a terrible thing to waste!
Ooh, here’s another fun one! Paste Magazine did a roundup of the most anticipated fantasy books coming in 2023, and guess who’s there? ARCA, by yours truly!
Couldn’t agree with this more:
“Too many people slept on Scorpica, the first installment in G.R. McAllister’s sweeping Five Queendoms series, an epic tale about a matriarchal society in which a decade passes without a single daughter being born. Time to fix your life with sequel Arca, which deals with the political fallout, as multiple powerful women scheme and maneuver against each other.”
Check out the whole list here.
Ooh fun! If you’re excited for the next book in the Five Queendoms series, you’ll want to get your entry in on this one!
Advance copies of ARCA are up for grabs on Goodreads — enter to win!
If you’ve been waiting for Scorpica to come out in paperback, wait no more! You can buy it from your local independent bookstore, Barnes and Noble, other bookstores, or online.
Want a sense of what’s inside? This was a fun little graphic to put together:
Hello! The paperback of SCORPICA will be here before we know it, on November 15!
Need a little nudge to get your order in before then? Well, if you pre-order and enter this giveaway, you’ll have a chance to win a signed galley of ARCA, the next book in the series! Which means not only a rare signed advance copy of the book, but you’ll find out what happens to these characters several months before everyone else! Cool, right?
Click here for the thingamabob for entry (not glam but it does the trick).
And remember, they’re only pre-orders until November 14, so order your copy before then! Where should you pre-order from? Literally anywhere. Here are a few of my favorite options:
The paperback release of SCORPICA is right around the corner! November 15, a couple Tuesdays from now.
To celebrate, my publisher is running a 100-copy giveaway of the paperback on Goodreads — so be sure to enter to win!
(But don’t rule out pre-ordering your own paperback either — there’s an announcement coming soon on what that might win you! Stay tuned…)
Hi there! Such fun stuff happening this fall! First of all, New York ComicCon was an absolute blast. Also, did you know SCORPICA will be available in paperback in just a couple short weeks? Yay!
Last but not least for today, I’ll be appearing at the Texas Book Festival this weekend and I absolutely cannot wait! It’ll be my first book festival in quite a while. I’ve got a panel on Saturday, November 5, in conversation with Rebecca Roanhorse: it’s called “Big Fantasy” and it’s going to be awesome.
Hop on over to the festival site for details!
Remember when I said I had two online events this week? It’s actually three, surprise! I’m on Instagram Live with Kate Khavari, author of A Botanist’s Guide to Parties and Poisons, talking about “Writing While Momming” tonight.
Join us if you can!
Great vote of confidence from Off the Shelf here — SCORPICA tops their list of fantasy and sci-fi reads for an “epic” book club discussion! Obviously, I have to agree.
Plus, have you seen the other names on this list? Jennifer Egan, N.K. Jemisin? Some pretty fantastic company.
“Why don’t we see more science fiction and fantasy novels set in worlds run by women?” It’s a question I’ve been asking myself ever since I got the idea for my epic fantasy series The Five Queendoms, and today, it’s a question I’m asking on LitHub.
In the process of talking about some potential theories behind the scarcity of matriarchy in speculative fiction, I get to call out some of my favorite recent novels that do incorporate matriarchal societies, like Rebecca Roanhorse’s Black Sun and Samantha Shannon’s Priory of the Orange Tree. Plus I get to cover the whole sub-sub-genre trend where women can only be in charge if most or all of the men get killed off — what’s up with that?
And here’s the kicker:
Some reasons for avoiding matriarchal settings are solid; some are sketchy. But here’s what I hope: I hope no writer out there is avoiding setting their story in a matriarchal society because they think it’s already been done.