Reminder: Goodreads is hosting a giveaway of 20 copies of Interference. Enter here before November 14.

Not sure if you’ll like the book? You can read the first chapter here. You can hear a preview of the audiobook here. You can also read a few reviews at Goodreads.

Ready to buy? Links to online and bookstore outlets for the hardcover, ebook, and digital audio are here.

Want to meet me? I’ll be at Windycon, a Chicago science fiction convention, on November 15, 16, and 17, at the Westin Lombard Yorktown Center, 70 Yorktown Center, Lombard, IL. On Saturday, I’ll be participating in the Writer’s Workshop in the morning; at a reading at noon; on the panel “Talking to Little Green Men (Alien Languages)” at 1 p.m.; and autographing at 2 p.m. The rest of the weekend I’ll be wandering around more or less aimlessly. Come say hi.

I’ll be at Magers & Quinn Booksellers, 3038 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis, MN, on Thursday, November 21, at 7:00 p.m. It will be Sci-Fi Night with Naomi Kritzer and Marissa Lingen. Naomi’s YA technothriller novel, Catfishing on CatNet debuts on November 19.

Not sure if you’ll like me? You can read interviews at PaulSemel.com and the Verge.

Warmth and food!

At a dinner recently, I found myself sitting next to an eight-year-old. I’m working on a trilogy of novels about a medieval queen, Urraca, who is eight years old when the novel opens, so I thought I’d use his help to see if I gauged the maturity of the character right. He was very willing to help.

I explained the situation. In those days, a woman wanted to learn everything she could about her husband’s work so that if he died or went on a long trip, she could take over. Since Urraca knew she might grow up to be a queen, she wanted to learn everything she could about being a king.

He asked, “Did kings need to know what queens did, too?”

“Well, no.”

“That’s not fair.”

“No, it isn’t,” I admitted.

“What happens if the queen dies?”

“The king would get a new queen.”

“So,” he said, “it’s like an iPhone that dies. You throw it away and get a new one because phones aren’t important. If you can just get a new queen, then queens aren’t really important.”

He had immediately identified the underlying conflict that Urraca faced throughout her entire life (and in the trilogy).

Kids these days … they give me hope for the future.

Armed In Her Fashion by Kate Heartfield

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a fun book — and it just won the 2019 Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association’s Aurora Award for Best Novel. Congratulations, Kate!

A grumpy, greedy, dying widow, her head-in-the-clouds daughter, and a mercenary soldier who is secretly a woman join up with another rag-tag group of refugees fleeing medieval Bruges at war. The weapons against them include plague, revenants, and horrible animal-human-weapon chimeras sent by the Chatelaine of Hell, who has betrayed and imprisoned her husband, the Hellbeast.

As life goes from bad to worse for these refugees, they find they have no choice but to defeat the hellish Chatelaine and her ghastly army. It looks impossible – a mad plan, suicidal in fact, and complicated, but the widow’s money is in hell and she’s going to get it back.

Besides the action, plot twists, and historical accuracy, a bright thread of humor runs through the story and ties it up in a bow like a gift: a thinking woman’s tale of medieval sword-and-sorcery.

View all my reviews

These coleus plants come direct from my living room: happy, healthy, colorful, accustomed to human interaction, and mostly harmless.*

The book launch for Interference will be at 7 p.m. Thursday, October 24, at Volumes Bookcafe, 1474 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago.

The novel goes on sale October 22.

On the 24th, I’ll be reading from the novel, answering questions — and giving away the plants in the photo made from cuttings from one of my own houseplants.

The idea behind the novel Semiosis and its sequel Interference started when some of my houseplants tried to kill other plants. So far, these coleus seem enthusiastic but not aggressive.

*No guarantees. As it says on the cover of Interference, “Sentience craves sovereignty.” Who knows what these plants are thinking?

Tor Publishing is giving away 20 copies of Interference at Goodreads.

If you’re a member of Goodreads, click here to enter! (Limited to Goodreads members in the US and Canada, sorry.)

The novel goes on sale in a week, and if you’re not feeling lucky, you can pre-order it now.