The Qwillery

Each month you will be able to vote for your favorite cover from that month's debut novels. At the end of the year the 12 monthly winners will be pitted against each other to choose the 2019 Debut Novel Cover of the Year. Please note that a debut novel cover is eligible in the month in which the novel is published in the US. Cover artist/illustrator/designer information is provided when we have it.

I'm using PollCode for this vote. After you the check the circle next to your favorite, click "Vote" to record your vote. If you'd like to see the real-time results click "View". This will take you to the PollCode site where you may see the results. If you want to come back to The Qwillery click "Back" and you will return to this page. Voting will end sometime on March 7, 2019, unless the vote is extended. If the vote is extended the ending date will be updated.

Vote for your favorite February 2019 Debut Cover!

10,000 Bones

The Beast's Heart

Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones

The Familiars

Polaris Rising

The Psychology of Time Travel

The Ruin of Kings

Same Same

 

pollcode.com free polls

The Qwillery: Welcome to The Qwillery. What is the first piece you remember writing?

Leife Shallcross: Somewhere in a box I have a story I wrote and illustrated when I was about six called The Princess and the Ghost. It involved hidden treasure. I first tried to write a novel when I was about 15 – that one never got finished, but I still have it, all in longhand in old exercise books left over from school.



TQ:  Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

LS:  Definitely on the pantser end of the spectrum, but I’m finding it more and more useful to challenge myself to learn how to plot better.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

LS:  Ugh. Plotting. See previous answer. It’s the kind of thing that makes all my procrastination instincts kick in. But when I actually force myself to sit down and do it, I always end up enjoying it.



TQ:  What has influenced / influences your writing?

LS:  Probably mostly the books I read during my formative years. I love stories where the world is so vibrant and immersive it becomes a character all on its own, and I love lush, descriptive language and understated, dry-as-bones humor. Authors who really inspired my love of story and language in my youth include Jane Austen, Tanith Lee, M M Kaye, Joan Aiken and Diana Wynne Jones. But then, there’s so many incredible authors writing today that continue to inspire me.



TQ:  Describe The Beast's Heart using only 5 words.

LS:  Enchanting, slow-burn, fairy tale romance. (I definitely didn’t cheat, hyphens are allowed.)



TQ:  Tell us something about The Beast's Heart that is not found in the book description.

LS:  In my tale, Beauty has two sisters and they get their own stories.



TQ:  What inspired you to write The Beast's Heart? What attracted you to the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast?

LS:  Firstly, I love that Beauty and the Beast isn’t an insta-love story. They spend quite a lot of time getting to know each other before Beauty realizes she’s fallen in love with him, and I love a slow-burn romance. Secondly, I love the idea of the Beast’s enchanted castle being this magical hidden world at the heart of the forest. When I started writing this story, it was mostly a way of losing myself in a fairy tale and getting to hang out in a magical chateau with ensorcelled gardens. Pure self-indulgence.



TQ:  Do you have any other favorite fairy tales?

LS:  This is like asking me to name my favorite kind of cake! There are so many delicious kinds! I am definitely partial to a Cinderella story. Catskin is one of my favorite variants on the theme, and if you want a stunning version of that, the Sapsorrow episode of Jim Henson’s The Storyteller TV series from the late 1980s is wonderful. Then there is a great Norwegian fairy tale called Tatterhood where the main character is a princess who slouches around in a ragged hood, rides a goat and beats up trolls with a wooden spoon for fun.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for The Beast's Heart?

LS:  So, so much! I’ve been intimately familiar with the fairy tale since I was a child, so my research was mostly about the setting I chose, being 17th Century France. It was lots of weird, bitsy stuff, like 17th Century cutlery, clothing, food, nutcrackers, wedding customs and French names. For example, forks were not really in common use in 17th Century Europe. They weren’t unheard of, just not common. So you won’t find any forks in The Beast’s Heart. I also had to do a bit of research on fireworks.



TQ:  Please tell us about the cover for The Beast's Heart.

LS:  I can’t tell you how much I love the cover. It makes me think of 17th Century tapestries, and the roses are so very fairy taleish. The artist is Lisa Perrin, and she has done a bunch of other book covers and quite a bit of illustration. Her work is so beautiful. I’m just thrilled and honored to have it on the cover of my story.

Website: www.madebyperrin.com

Insta: @madebyperrin



TQ:  In The Beast's Heart who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

LS:  The hardest character was definitely Isabeau (aka Beauty). Because it’s his story, I spent so much time in my Beast’s head and had to stop at one point and deliberately move out of that space to see the story from her point of view. She’s got an awful lot going on, but the story is so centered on the Beast, I found I hadn’t paid enough attention to her motivations and drivers and she was coming across as a bit of a cipher. The easiest character was probably Claude, the younger of my Beauty’s older sisters. She’s lovely, but she’s not a complicated person.



TQ:  Which question about The Beast's Heart do you wish someone would ask?

LS:  Question: Fanfic: yes or no?

LS: Dear God, yes! I have a kind of bingo list of author goals and that’s definitely on there. Having the privilege of someone enjoying my story world so much they write fanfic just so they can spend more time in it would just be too exciting.



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from The Beast's Heart.

LS:

Quote 1: Enchantments and dreams: I suspect they are made of the same stuff. They each beguile the mind and confuse the senses with wonder and strangeness so all that was familiar becomes freakish, and the most bizarre of things intimate and natural.

Quote 2: There is always a way to break a curse.



TQ:  What's next?

LS:  I’m working on another fairy-tale-themed story - this one is based on Cinderella, but my Cinderella has faked her father’s death in order to get him out of his disastrous second marriage and then she gets caught up in a nefarious plot that threatens the crown. I’m also working on a series set in 18th Century London with runaway heiresses and dissolute viscounts and magic and murder. Lots of fun.



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

The Beast's Heart
Ace, February 12, 2019
Trade Paperback and eBook, 416 pages

A luxuriously magical retelling of Beauty and the Beast set in seventeenth-century France–and told from the point of view of the Beast himself.

I am neither monster nor man—yet I am both.

I am the Beast.

He is a broken, wild thing, his heart’s nature exposed by his beastly form. Long ago cursed with a wretched existence, the Beast prowls the dusty hallways of his ruined château with only magical, unseen servants to keep him company—until a weary traveler disturbs his isolation.

Bewitched by the man’s dreams of his beautiful daughter, the Beast devises a plan to lure her to the château. There, Isabeau courageously exchanges her father’s life for her own and agrees to remain with the Beast for a year. But even as their time together weaves its own spell, the Beast finds winning Isabeau’s love is only the first impossible step in breaking free from the curse . . .

About Leife

Leife Shallcross lives at the foot of a mountain in Canberra, Australia, with her family and a small, scruffy creature that snores. She is the author of several short stories, including "Pretty Jennie Greenteeth," which won the 2016 Aurealis Award for Best Young Adult Short Story. The Beast's Heart is her first novel.









Find her online at leifeshallcross.com, Facebook.com/LeifeShallcrossAuthor, Twitter: @leioss, and Instagram.com/Leife.Shallcross.

Happy Monday!

There is two debuts this week:

The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas;

and

The Beast's Heart by Leife Shallcross.






From formerly featured DAC Authors:

The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders;

The Memory of Fire (The Waking Land 2) by Callie Bates is out in Trade Paperback;

Danger's Fate (Holly Danger 6) by Amanda Carlson;

The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo;

The Test by Sylvain Neuvel;

and

The Burning Island by Hester Young.

Debut novels are highlighted in blue. Novels, etc. by formerly featured DAC Authors are highlighted in green.

February 10, 2019

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
Tales from the Multiverse: Stories Beyond Your Imagination	Doug Pilley	SF/F - Collection

February 11, 2019

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
Danger's Fate (e)	Amanda Carlson	SF/Dys/PA - Holly Danger 6
Unhallowed Ground (e)(ri)	Heather Graham	SupTh/GH - Harrison Investigation 6
Harrison Investigation Series Volume 2: An Anthology (e)	Heather Graham	SupTh/GH - Harrison Investigation

February 12, 2019

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
The Goblin Emperor (h2tp)	Katherine Addison	F
The City in the Middle of the Night	Charlie Jane Anders	SF/AC/AP/PA
The Memory of Fire (h2tp)	Callie Bates	F - The Waking Land 2
The Sorcerer's Appendix (h2tp)	P. J. Brackston	M - A Brother's Grimm Mystery 4
The Complete Homecoming Saga: The Memory of Earth, The Call of Earth, The Ships of Earth, Earthfall, Earthborn (e)	Orson Scott Card	SF - Homecoming Saga
We Are Where the Nightmares Go and Other Stories (h2tp)	C. Robert Cargill	SS
The Night Tiger	Yangsze Choo	Hist/LF/FariyT/FolkT/LM
Early Riser	Jasper Fforde	CF/Dys/Th
Murders and Metaphors	Amanda Flower	PCM - A Magical Bookshop Mystery 3
Terminal Uprising	Jim C. Hines	SF/AP/PA/HU - Janitors of the Apocalypse 2
Bubba and the Cosmic Blood-Suckers (h2tp)	Joe R. Lansdale	F/H/HU
The Nine Cloud Dream	Kim Man-jung Heinz Insu Fenkl (Tr)	FairyT/FolkT/LM/Korea/Classics
The Revenant Express	George Mann	SP/PI - Newbury & Hobbes 5
The Psychology of Time Travel (D)	Kate Mascarenhas	SF/TT/M
A Richard Matheson Collection: Hell House, Somewhere in Time, What Dreams May Come (e)	Richard Matheson	H/TT/GH
All Roads End Here	David Moody	Dys/H/SF/AP/PA - The Final War 2
The Test	Sylvain Neuvel	SF/HSF/Dys/Pol
The Heavens	Sandra Newman	LF
Lord	João Gilberto Noll Edgar Garbelotto (Tr)	LF/Psy/UF
The Lock In Series: Lock In, Head On, Unlocked (e)	John Scalzi	CyP/MedTh
The Beast's Heart (D)	Leife Shallcross	RF/FairyT/FolkT/LM
The Cassandra	Sharma Shields	LF/FairyT/FolkT/LM
Texas Front: Salient	Scott Washburn Jonathan Cresswell-Jones	SF - The Great Martian War 1
The Burning Island	Hester Young	Sus/Psy/CW - Charlie Cates 3

February 13, 2019

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
The Song: A Tor.com Original	Erinn L. Kemper	SF/NF

February 14, 2019

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
Black Wings	Megan Hart	DF - Fiction Without Frontiers
The Playing Card Killer	Russell James	H/Cr - Fiction Without Frontiers
The Nightmare Girl	Jonathan Janz	H - Fiction Without Frontiers

February 15, 2019

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
The Graves of Saints (ri)	Christopher Golden	UF - Shadow Saga 6
Sins of the Son (e)	Lydia M. Hawke	SupTh - Grigori Legacy2

D - Debut
e - eBook
Ed - Editor
h2mm - Hardcover to Mass Market Paperback
h2tp - Hardcover to Trade Paperback
ri - reissue or reprint
tp2mm - Trade Paperback to Mass Market Paperback
Tr - Translator



AC - Alien Contact
AP - Apocalyptic
Bio - Biographical
CF - Contemporary Fantasy
CoA - Coming of Age
Cr - Crime
CW - Contemporary Women
CyP - Cyberpunk
DF - Dark Fantasy
Dys - Dystopian
F - Fantasy
FairyT - Fairy Tales
FolkT - Folk Tales
FR - Fantasy Romance
GH - Ghost(s)
H - Horror
Hist - Historical
HistF - Historical Fantasy
HSF - Hard Science Fiction
Hu - Humor
LF - Literary Fiction
LM - Legend and Mythology
M - Mystery
MR - Magical Realism
MTI - Media Tie-In
NF - Near Future
Occ - Occult
P - Paranormal
PA - Post Apocalyptic
PCM - Parnormal Cozy Mystery
PI - Private Investigators
PNR - Paranormal Romance
Pol - Political
PP - Police Procedural
Psy - Psychological
PsyTh - Psychological Thriller
RF - Romantic Fantasy
SE - Space Exploration
SF - Science Fiction
SFR - Science Fiction Romance
SO - Space Opera
SP - Steampunk
SS - Short Stories
Sup - Supernatural
SupTh - Supernatural Thriller
Sus - Suspense
TechTh - Technological Thriller
Th - Thriller
TT - Time Travel
VisM - Visionary and Metaphysical

Note: Not all genres and formats are found in the books, etc. listed above.

Stacey Halls

The Familiars
MIRA, February 19, 2019
Hardcover and eBook, 352 pages

To save her unborn child, she will trust a stranger.

To protect her secret, she must risk her life.

1612 Pendle Hill, England

Young Fleetwood Shuttleworth is with child again. As the mistress of Gawthorpe Hall, she is anxious to provide her husband with an heir. But none of her previous pregnancies have come to term. Then she discovers a hidden letter from her physician that warns her husband that she will not survive another pregnancy.

Distraught over the frightening revelation, Fleetwood wanders the woods of Pendle Hill, where she comes across a young local woman named Alice Gray who is gathering herbs. A midwife, Alice promises Fleetwood she can help her deliver a healthy baby. But soon Alice is drawn into the frenzied accusations of witchcraft sweeping the countryside. Even the woodland creatures, the “familiars,” are suspected of practicing the dark arts. Can Fleetwood trust that Alice is really who she says she is?

As the two women’s lives become intertwined, Fleetwood must risk everything to prove Alice’s innocence in order to save her own unborn child. The hunt for witches reaches fever pitch. Time is running out. The trials are about to begin. Both their lives are at stake. Only they know the truth. Only they can save each other.

Set against the Pendle Witch Trials of 1612, this rich and compelling novel draws its characters from historical figures as it explores the lives and rights of seventeenth-century women, ultimately raising the question: Is witch-hunting really just women-hunting?

Micah Dean Hicks

Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones
John Joseph Adams/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, February 5, 2019
Hardcover and eBook, 304 pages

Swine Hill was full of the dead. Their ghosts were thickest near the abandoned downtown, where so many of the town’s hopes had died generation by generation. They lingered in the places that mattered to them, and people avoided those streets, locked those doors, stopped going into those rooms…They could hurt you. Worse, they could change you.

Jane is haunted. Since she was a child, she has carried a ghost girl that feeds on the secrets and fears of everyone around her, whispering to Jane what they are thinking and feeling, even when she doesn’t want to know. Henry, Jane’s brother, is ridden by a genius ghost that forces him to build strange and dangerous machines. Their mother is possessed by a lonely spirit that burns anyone she touches. In Swine Hill, a place of defeat and depletion, there are more dead than living.

When new arrivals begin scoring precious jobs at the last factory in town, both the living and the dead are furious. This insult on the end of a long economic decline sparks a conflagration. Buffeted by rage on all sides, Jane must find a way to save her haunted family and escape the town before it kills them

Jenn Lyons

The Ruin of Kings
A Chorus of Dragons 1
Tor Books, February 5, 2019
Hardcover and eBook, 560 pages

"Everything epic fantasy should be: rich, cruel, gorgeous, brilliant, enthralling and deeply, deeply satisfying. I loved it."—Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians

When destiny calls, there's no fighting back.

Kihrin grew up in the slums of Quur, a thief and a minstrel's son raised on tales of long-lost princes and magnificent quests. When he is claimed against his will as the missing son of a treasonous prince, Kihrin finds himself at the mercy of his new family's ruthless power plays and political ambitions.

Practically a prisoner, Kihrin discovers that being a long-lost prince is nothing like what the storybooks promised. The storybooks have lied about a lot of other things, too: dragons, demons, gods, prophecies, and how the hero always wins.

Then again, maybe he isn't the hero after all. For Kihrin is not destined to save the world.

He's destined to destroy it.

Jenn Lyons begins the Chorus of Dragons series with The Ruin of Kings, an epic fantasy novel about a man who discovers his fate is tied to the future of an empire.

Kate Mascarenhas

The Psychology of Time Travel
Crooked Lane Books, February 12, 2019
Hardcover and eBook, 336 pages

In 1967, four female scientists worked together to build the world’s first time machine. But just as they are about to debut their creation, one of them suffers a breakdown, putting the whole project—and future of time travel—in jeopardy. To protect their invention, one member is exiled from the team—erasing her contributions from history.

Fifty years later, time travel is a big business. Twenty-something Ruby Rebello knows her beloved grandmother, Granny Bee, was one of the pioneers, though no one will tell her more. But when Bee receives a mysterious newspaper clipping from the future reporting the murder of an unidentified woman, Ruby becomes obsessed: could it be Bee? Who would want her dead? And most importantly of all: can her murder be stopped?

Traversing the decades and told from alternating perspectives, The Psychology of Time Travel introduces a fabulous new voice in fiction and a new must-read for fans of speculative fiction and women’s fiction alike.

Peter Mendelsund

Same Same
Vintage, February 5, 2019
Trade Paperback and eBook 496 pages

In the shifting sands of the desert, near an unnamed metropolis, there is an institute where various fellows come to undertake projects of great significance. But when our sort-of hero, Percy Frobisher, arrives, surrounded by the simulated environment of the glass-enclosed dome of the Institute, his mind goes completely blank. When he spills something on his uniform—a major faux pas—he learns about a mysterious shop where you can take something, utter the command “same same,” and receive a replica even better than the original. Imagining a world in which simulacra have as much value as the real—so much so that any distinction between the two vanishes, and even language seeks to reproduce meaning through ever more degraded copies of itself—Peter Mendelsund has crafted a deeply unsettling novel about what it means to exist and to create . . . and a future that may not be far off.

Jessie Mihalik

Polaris Rising
The Consortium Rebellion 1
Harper Voyager, February 5, 2019
Trade Paperback and eBook, 448 pages

“Polaris Rising is space opera at its best, intense and addictive, a story of honor, courage, betrayal, and love. Jessie Mihalik is  an author to watch.”--Ilona Andrews, #1 New York Times bestselling author

A space princess on the run and a notorious outlaw soldier become unlikely allies in this imaginative, sexy space opera adventure—the first in an exciting science fiction trilogy.

In the far distant future, the universe is officially ruled by the Royal Consortium, but the High Councillors, the heads of the three High Houses, wield the true power. As the fifth of six children, Ada von Hasenberg has no authority; her only value to her High House is as a pawn in a political marriage. When her father arranges for her to wed a noble from House Rockhurst, a man she neither wants nor loves, Ada seizes control of her own destiny. The spirited princess flees before the betrothal ceremony and disappears among the stars.

Ada eluded her father’s forces for two years, but now her luck has run out. To ensure she cannot escape again, the fiery princess is thrown into a prison cell with Marcus Loch. Known as the Devil of Fornax Zero, Loch is rumored to have killed his entire chain of command during the Fornax Rebellion, and the Consortium wants his head.

When the ship returning them to Earth is attacked by a battle cruiser from rival House Rockhurst, Ada realizes that if her jilted fiancé captures her, she’ll become a political prisoner and a liability to her House. Her only hope is to strike a deal with the dangerous fugitive: a fortune if he helps her escape.

But when you make a deal with an irresistibly attractive Devil, you may lose more than you bargained for . . .

Joe Ollinger

10,000 Bones
Diversion Books, February 5, 2019
Trade Paperback and eBook,

Fast-paced and thought-provoking, Joe Ollinger has written a debut science fiction novel that reads like a thriller and will be loved by fans of Paolo Bacigalupi and Richard Morgan.

On the planet Brink, calcium is cash. The element’s scarcity led the world’s government to declare it the official currency. In the decades since, the governments of other colonized worlds have suppressed shipments of calcium in order to maintain favorable exchange rates, while Brink’s Commerce Board has struggled to negotiate importation quotas to keep the population alive and growing.

Taryn Dare is a Collections Agent, a specialized detective tasked with finding black market calcium and recovering it, so that the Commerce Board can recycle it and distribute it as currency. Taryn is fueled by one goal: to save up enough currency units for a one-way ticket to a better world. But when a job recovering a human corpse uncovers a deadly conspiracy in the system, Taryn is drawn into an investigation that may threaten her life, and the very fabric of her society.

Leife Shallcross

The Beast's Heart
Ace, February 12, 2019
Trade Paperback and eBook, 416 pages

A luxuriously magical retelling of Beauty and the Beast set in seventeenth-century France–and told from the point of view of the Beast himself.

I am neither monster nor man—yet I am both.

I am the Beast.

He is a broken, wild thing, his heart’s nature exposed by his beastly form. Long ago cursed with a wretched existence, the Beast prowls the dusty hallways of his ruined château with only magical, unseen servants to keep him company—until a weary traveler disturbs his isolation.

Bewitched by the man’s dreams of his beautiful daughter, the Beast devises a plan to lure her to the château. There, Isabeau courageously exchanges her father’s life for her own and agrees to remain with the Beast for a year. But even as their time together weaves its own spell, the Beast finds winning Isabeau’s love is only the first impossible step in breaking free from the curse . . .