This is not a book report. But. It is about a book.

So. Wow. Okay.

I feel like I’ve already been talking about this for a long time. No, seriously. For like a really long time .

But now, we’ve officially moved beyond the Realm of Vague Talk. We’ve entered the Land of Imminent Book, and I can finally (finally) give you a look at what’s been going on behind the scenes for months (years!).

As you may or may not be aware, Tess, Maggie , and I have been critique partners for a very long time. So long that when I post about something we’re doing, I often forget to give you any sort of context. So long that it’s hard to conceive of a time when we were not critique partners. My writing career has literally not existed in any significant form separate from the three of us knowing each other.*

Okay, let’s back up. Right away, from the beginning, before everything—before books on shelves—we started doing this thing.

At first, it was just a little thing.

It was a fiction blog shared between the three of us, and we’d write short stories really fast and post them the same day and egg each other on and get tons of practice at narrative structure and economic character development and not procrastinating.

And then, so slowly it was kind of hard to pinpoint, it stopped being a little thing and started being a big, awesome thing, and that wasn’t us—that was you guys, and the way you showed up every week and got involved and talked to us and talked to each other and made it less like three writers shouting stories into the internet, and more like a community.

And now, after four pretty incredible years, the Merry Sisters of Fate has grown into this:

For real.

The simple version is, here is a book that’s an anthology of our stories. And the complicated version is that it’s also way more than an anthology. It’s a retrospective and a conversation and a scrapbook and a diary, and it’s coming this fall from Carolrhoda Lab and we are so, so happy with how it turned out! And to celebrate our happiness, we’re giving away three shiny brand-new ARCs and the contest is very, very easy, so go enter!

Now, because it’s kind of hard to describe exactly how The Curiosities happened, here’s a video about our motivations, where we look neat and brushed and are wearing makeup.

Also, because it’s kind of hard to describe exactly how The Curiosities happened, here is a video about the behind-the-scenes. In this one, we’re wearing pajamas and making a huge mess and very little sense.

It probably goes without saying, but the finished product is kind of a synthesis for these two videos.

(But the manically-productive pajama part more.)

*Except for a few times when I sold some short fiction to horror markets, but I was totally flailing back then and really, really didn’t know if I was even pointed in the right direction.