Contract Signed: Owl Stretching

I'm happy to announce that I signed the contract for my next novel, Owl Stretching, with Immanion Press. I'm pleased that Storm wants to publish it and I hope that I have a cover as lovely as Ruby's art for Pelzmantel. It will be out in 2012 -- hurrah!



So what can I say to whet your appetite?



The first line: "It was in the fourteenth year of the war that Simon woke up." Main character quotes a lot and gets every single quote wrong. There's a road trip! I pull off the impossible task of making Worcester glamorous and exciting. There's a dead cat whose ashes need to be taken to Mount Auburn Cemetery, aliens and a 300 year old magpie.



I started writing it when Kurt Vonnegut died and I was thinking how dispiriting it was to realise there would be no new sad but funny novels from him. How I've been describing the book: it's an alternative history/science fiction/urban fantasy/shamanistic retelling of the Descent of Inanna/great American road trip that takes in Albany, the Berkshires, Kripalu and Boston. What could be better? Um, yeah.



It's not really as mad as it sounds -- and it works!



Don't take my word for it! As my pal Liz Hand says, "Laity is a remarkable sorceress." Trust her. She's a terrific writer.







Oh, and happy birthday, Mr. Borges!