A Jolly Bagful of Updates
Featuring an excerpt of In the Shadow of the Fall
My fellow rapacious consumers of the written word,
We’re exactly two months from the D-day! D-day being launch day, launch day being when IN THE SHADOW OF THE FALL arrives. I’m excited!!! And exciting things are happening behind the scenes. First,
We’re Getting a UK Edition!
The duology was sold to Titan Books who will publish them in the UK & Commonwealth. Ergo, UK readers will be able to get this book from UK retailers in July. I will be signing some bookplates for ForbiddenPlanet, so if you’re interested in a signed copy of the book you might want to order from them. There’ll be a total of 250 signed copies, I’m told. So, you know, chop chop and whatnot.
Also, we are getting a Spanish edition!!!
This was quite frankly a pleasant surprise. I was not expecting foreign interest (I mean one generally hopes, but not expect, particularly before English language publication) but the translation rights gurus at CW are incredbily good at their job. So, it is my immense pleasure to announce that Duomervela Ediciones will publish the duology. They have previously published ridiculously fine writers like P. Djeli Clark and Zen Cho, so that bodes well. Maybe this will get me to complete those Spanish lessons …
(If there are any other territories you would like to see the books published in, do send them my way, or my agent’s way. I promise we don’t bite. )
I should mention that I have written Book 2. The writing and editing is done (currently neck-deep in copyedits, which is when some language and grammar savant takes a red pen to your questionable word choices). It’s even shown up in distribution channels (do not peek, for the description contains Book 1 spoilers). It will be released on January 28, 2025, roughly six months after book one. I’m glad about that and if there might be any of you holding out on the series completion before purchasing SHADOW you need not worry, or hold out. So go ahead and click that preorder button. Yes, you.
News
I appear in the latest episode of The Coode Street Podcast, chatting with Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe about my upcoming book, my villain origin story, and career plans for the future (world domination, duh). Both gentlemen are titans of the genre, have been it at it far longer than I’ve been alive, and possess between them a veritable repository of industry knowledge. Jonathan also happens to be my editor. The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.
In other news, I appear to have successfully hoodwinked my way onto an award ballot! My collection Jackal, Jackal is a finalist for the Locus Award! Color me gobsmacked. The book was released to considerable acclaim last year, but it’s always a shock to realise that people are reading it, and loving it enough to vote for it? I’m truly honored. It is up against some powerful contenders, though (Kelly Link, Peter S. Beagle) so I’m diligently tempering expectations.
Ok, that’s all for now. I’ll be looping back with more updates the closer we draw to publication.
Tobi
And now, for the excerpt:
ONE
Alone in the heart of the Sacred Grove, Ashâke lifted her torch and peered into the darkness.
The trees here were old—hundreds of seasons old, their huge white limbs draped in moss. The priests said these trees had been old back when orisha roamed the earth, and still they stood. Ashâke found it hard to shake the feeling of being watched, as she did whenever she came here, and spent a moment wheeling about, straining to see into the darkness beyond the trees. But if there was something there, if there was someone there, she couldn’t see them.
Ashâke licked her dry lips. Perhaps it is the orisha who watch me. Waiting for me. The thought sent chills down her spine. Surely they knew what she was soon to do …
She approached the biggest tree, a great white baobab leaning over the river. It stood some eighty feet tall, with bark so wrinkled that it looked like an old, withered face had been carved into it. One could tell a white baobab’s age by how many leaves it had left; this one was leafless, limbs oddly naked as they stretched out from a massive trunk. Ashâke dug her torch into the soft soil at its roots. Next to it, she dumped her pouch—which was heavy with her divination board and cowries, and with the tome she’d pilfered from the library, the one that had shown her how to do what she planned.
Ashâke shivered. It was mad, building an idan to summon and bind an orisha. But it was their fault. All their fault for refusing to speak to her, for refusing to choose her when they’d chosen her peers, chosen the others.
A gust of wind howled through the forest. Ashâke looked up to see rain clouds lit by intermittent flashes of lightning. Shango is striking his axes, she thought. A few heartbeats later, an earsplitting thunderclap cracked through the air, and from somewhere in the forest came the frightened caws of ravens. An omen? Ashâke hoped not. Shango was quick to temper, but it was not him she wanted, not him she sought to summon. She was desperate but had no death wish. Shango would smite her at the first opportunity. She could almost imagine her fellow acolytes, their faces full of wicked derision when they learned of her fate. And the priests, would they tut and shake their heads, muttering about poor Ashâke, whose inability to hear the orisha had driven her to such extremes?
Ashâke gritted her teeth and pushed the voices from her mind. No use dwelling over unfavourable thoughts. She turned her attention to the tree, and the gaping crevice between its roots. It looked ordinary to the casual eye; a bough dammed up with the rot of several seasons, but that was because Ashâke had made it so. Grunting with effort, she began to pull away the dirt—rotted palm fronds, dead leaves and twigs and soil—to reveal—
Eshu, lord of roads and crossroads, messenger orisha, stood before her. His effigy, at least. The greater orisha all had effigies in the temple—towering bronze structures that lined the walls of the Inner Sanctum. But this was no such effigy. For one, it was made of white clay, which Ashâke had painstakingly retrieved from the bottom of the river, diving into the cold water night after night, carefully sifting the riverbed, then stumbling sopping wet through the forest, freezing to her bones as she tried to make it back to the temple before the rousing bell. Moons and moons of dedication had led her to this moment, to the idan before her, carved with the language of binding. And once she performed the final ritual, at last, it would hold Eshu’s essence. She would ask her questions, and he would have no choice but to answer.
Why, then, did she hesitate? Why did her hands tremble, her heart flutter? Eshu’s blank eyes regarded her, and it seemed to Ashâke that his lips were upturned in the suggestion of a smile.
You’re frightened. Simbi’s voice rang loud in her head. What you seek is dangerous. It is not too late to turn back now.
And then what? Turning back would mean accepting defeat, condemning herself to … how many more seasons of ridicule? Her own peers were five seasons into their priesthoods. Yet here she was, stuck as an acolyte, suffering the jeers of the little runts who had come up behind her and now thought themselves her equal.
No. She had to know why the orisha refused to speak to her, where she had gone wrong.
“Ok,” she said, taking a deep breath to steel her nerves. “What needs doing must be done well.”
Ashâke placed two bundles of loudh in the idan’s outstretched hands and lit them. The incense burned, its faintly sweet smoke tickling the back of her throat. Next, she took her knife and drew it across her palm. It stung, and she bit back a whimper as blood bloomed in the fresh cut. Once her hand was full, she poured it over the flames, which hissed, the smoke turning black and pungent, the bitter smell of copper sharp in the back of her throat.
“Eshu Elegba,” she intoned. “Messenger lord of the orisha. The one whose path is two hundred and fifty-six. The one whose path is uncountable. I bind you with ashe, which gives me life. I summon you with the breath of Obatala. Come. Come forth.”
The wind wailed in the trees, nearly snuffing out the fire. Ashâke waited … but nothing happened. Why wasn’t it working? The glyphs she’d etched into the effigy should be aglow. Instead, they remained dull white. Ashâke blew out a frustrated breath and squeezed her fist over the fire again, but it had stopped bleeding. She grabbed the bloody dagger, choking back a whimper as she worked it deeper into her palm, until the blood flowed anew, hissing into the flames.
“Eshu Elegba. Messenger lord of the orisha. The one whose path is two hundred and fifty-six; the one whose path is uncountable. I bind you with ashe, which gives me life—”
Her hand moved of its own accord, slamming down on Eshu’s outstretched arm. It broke off and tumbled to the ground, the burning loudh snuffing out.
“What—?” She gasped, even as her hand swung for Eshu’s second arm. It flew off, spinning fast into the darkness, until it splashed into the river.
She stood there, blinking, struggling to understand what had just happened. A heartbeat passed, then two, then three …
The statue erupted in flames.
Ashâke yelped, leaping backwards. She tripped on a root and flailed desperately to stop her fall. Twisting at the last moment, she landed with such jarring force that her jaw snapped shut and arrows of pain shot up her arms. She howled. The entire sculpture was ablaze, the flames climbing high, high, licking the great white baobab. It was an unnatural fire, and in it she saw—
She saw a burning hall, every inch of it wreathed in golden flames. She saw a table, and seated behind it were shadows, voids in the shape of men, which even the raging fire did not consume. She heard voices, all of them speaking her name, calling her. Hands reached out of the dark, grasped at her, seeking to wrench her apart. Ashâke felt stretched, as though there were things in her head, things that shouldn’t be there.
“STOP!” she screamed. “STOP! I’M SORRY!”
She pushed to her feet and fled, running from the voices, from the things grasping at her. She had overreached. Who was she in her hubris to bind an orisha? Now she had angered Eshu, angered them all, and the orisha were nothing if not vindictive in their vengeance.
The ground vanished beneath her, and then she was falling, tumbling head over heels down the steep riverbank, slamming again and again into the slope. She splashed into the water, cracking her head on a gnarled root.
The darkness took her.