💅🏻 Splendor Over Mediocrity
Books for the hot bath and the cold plunge
Remember ten MILLION years ago in my newsletter when I said I was starting this small press (INSANE IDEA) and we’d be kickstarting some time in 2025?
Well we’re aiming for the fall, and our Pre-Launch page is live! You can sign up here for notifications that will let you know when the campaign—and pre-orders for our books!—goes live.
We’re kickstarting to print our first book, J.M. Sidorova’s The Witch of Prague, and we just signed the contract on our second, a physical edition of Zen Cho’s The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo, which is going to make such a darling little pocket novella, I cannot WAIT.
J.M. Sidorova is the author of The Age of Ice*, a book I adored and a book which was one of the guiding lights as we were discussing what kind of press we wanted Homeward to be. A book with elements of magic and wonder and mystery and horror that flexed literary muscles in its themes and execution. A book that seasoned SFF readers couldn’t quite get their heads around, that wasn’t marketed to literary readers at all; a book ill-served by the expectations marketing set up for it, that deserved SO MUCH BETTER! (You can read more about it, and Sidorova, here.) The Witch of Prague exists in a similar space: a brave and brazen book about bodily autonomy, misogyny, resistance to authoritarianism, and agency both sexual and political, this book mixes 1960s communism with medieval unicorns, and we are OBSESSED.
The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo is an effervescent and life-affirming little book that tackles weighty issues with good humor, much like its narrator. You can buy it right now as an ebook—and you should!! Because I am dead certain that once you read it on your screen you will want to hold it in your hands just as much as we do. Besides, it’s the perfect book for a bubble bath, and nobody wants to risk their phone/kindle/computer like that. A paper book—well, those ripply, water-stained pages just show how much it’s been loved.
Anyhow. I know there’s a lot of really garbage and upsetting stuff happening in the world right now (speaking of: Jail Support Los Angeles, World Central Kitchen, and Trans Life Line are all serving communities who need our help right now), but we also think stories are important, and profound, and can be life-saving. If you think so too, please join us on this adventure.
*it’s a Bookshop affiliate link, duh