Huntress is now in paperback!
Today is the official publication day for the paperback edition of my novel Huntress, my retelling of a hero's quest. (SPOILER: There are lesbians.) Woohoo!! Although the paperback cover isn't too different from the hardcover, it is slightly different, so here it is:
As you can see by that seal in the upper right, the paperback edition of Huntress includes a short story, "The Fox," which has never before been in print. It was originally published online in Summer 2011 at Subterranean, but I'm really pleased to have it included now with Huntress since it has a sort of epilogue-ish feel.
"The Fox" is about Kaede, the main character of Huntress, two years after the end of the book, and it involves her encounter with a fox spirit. The story actually sprang from a scene that I cut from one of the many drafts of Huntress, and then when Gwenda Bond invited me to write a short story for Subterranean (my first shorty story in 10 years!), I knew immediately that I wanted to adapt that cut scene into a story.
The paperback edition of Huntress also includes a sneak peek at the first pages of my next novel, Adaptation, which comes out September 18th. As you may remember me saying, Adaptation is very different from Ash and Huntress, so if you're super curious as to what I mean by "different," check out the paperback and read the preview chapter. I hope you'll like it!
One of my favorite parts of the Huntress paperback is the newly redesigned spine, which includes the front cover image on the side. I think it looks very cool.
I love that the girl on the cover is so fierce (though in a meditative way!) because that's absolutely one of the reasons I wrote this book. I've read so many fantasy novels in which the main female character is super kick-ass … and then she falls in love with a guy. Not that there's anything wrong with that! And it's not like it's shocking — I mean, most heroines in novels, kick-ass fantasy or not, are straight.
But I really love a kick-ass girl. (In fact here's a list of my favorites.) And while I've truly enjoyed many of these (straight) fantasy novels (and even enjoyed many of the romances — since you don't have to be straight to enjoy a straight romance), in my heart of hearts I wanted to read an epic fantasy adventure in which a girl kicks ass and falls in love with another girl. That fantasy? That's Huntress.
If you're interested in picking up a copy of the paperback, you can get it at Book Passage (my local indie, where you can request a signed copy and I will stop by and sign it for you), IndieBound, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Book Depository.
And ... to celebrate the paperback release, I'm giving away three signed paperback copies of Huntress to three lucky winners. One copy will be reserved for an international winner, so yes, this giveaway is open internationally. The deadline is June 30, 2012. Good luck!
All you have to do is enter via the Rafflecopter widget here: