🎶 Here we go, here we go, here we go again 🎶
First off: I’m hot at work on the 2026 queer SFF books list. It’s turning out to be a doozy—we’re well over 180 queer books and I’ve only just reached September—but I anticipate having it out sometime in October this time around.
So if that’s the only reason you read this blog, welp: there you go. You’re welcome.
There’ve been… quite a few changes in the Doore-verse since we last checked in. I finished catastrophe!WIP and queried it. Then I wrote a whole ‘nother book about vampires and gators and hemophobia and queried that. I attended Sirens Conference in New Haven, CT, my first writing/books conference in, oh gosh, four years? It was great, and just the sort of reminder of what I love about books and publishing and the people involved that I needed.
(Speaking of Sirens, they’ll be back in 2027 and I can’t effuse enough about how great of a conference this is. Lots of people who like books just spending a few days together, talking about books.)
And good timing, because shortly thereafter, I signed with a new agent. We’ve been busy at work these past few months and I have so many exciting things in the pipeline. Plus cool new ideas that I’m busy writing into reality. Of course, with publishing everything is slow and nothing is guaranteed, so take all that with a grain of breath and don’t hold your salt.
…wait, that’s not how it goes.
And that’s not the only big news around here. I’ve also—after a lot of hesitation, talking it through, wringing my hands, listing out every worst case scenario—decided to take a few years off from day-jobbing. I’ve been juggling the equivalent of two full time jobs for years now and it’s taken its toll.
I’ve been pretty transparent about writing while balancing a dayjob and young kids, so I wanted to be transparent when that changed. Balancing the three has meant a lot of early mornings, tears, and sacrifices, and honestly—I wasn’t doing a good job of balancing it at all. Stepping back lets me spend more time with my family, reclaim my health, as well as let my wife focus on her career during a very critical time (buy me a coffee sometime and maybe I’ll get into it, phew).
As a side effect, that means more time for the queer SFF books list, more time for shouting about books in general, and, yes, more time for writing. So yay: maybe you’ll hear more from me.
It has also meant more time for reading, so for the first time since last January, let’s do a quick What has Kai been reading?
The Language of Liars by S.L. Huang
I finished reading this on the plane back from a summer trip. This was a good one to read all at once; I’d actually started it a few months ago, but I couldn’t immediately figure out where it was going, so I found myself reaching for other books instead. But then I committed on the plane and damn. I absolutely loved the way linguistics/language is so important to the plot, and how the MC clings to naivety and idealism, only to finally be forced to face reality—and expose it. This book (novella, really) has a slow but inevitable momentum and is best read all at once.
The Dragon Has Some Complaints by John Wiswell
I’ve always enjoyed John’s dark whimsy, and I’ll always be glad to read more of it. Thankfully, this was more of it. He’s a writer I can trust to be inclusive, and not only that seems to be doing that Golden Age SFF thing of writing towards the future/society he wants to see. So while there are Evil People and Evil Societies, the one we spend our time in is full of kindness, care, compassion, and people coming together.
Garrodigh, our three-headed dragon and protagonist, is hilarious, and there were several bits I was in tears about, and several times I had to share a line with my wife, because it’s just exactly my kind of humor. It’s a fast, fun, book, and doesn’t shy away from horrible things, but Everything’s Gonna be Okay. Which, you know, you can’t always trust a book to deliver you safely to an end, and I appreciate I can trust John to do that.
The Mercy Makers by Tessa Gratton
One of those books I’d been hearing about for a while, with good reason. I struggled to really sum this one up after I finished it, because it’s many things. It’s layered and tangled worldbuilding, it’s a flawed MC who thinks they’re Hot Stuff, it’s really good and delicious prose, it’s clever characterization, it’s pain and joy and not quite fun, not really, more angry and insistent. But what it really is, is indulgent.
Indulgent in its prose, indulgent in its characters, indulgent in its worldbuilding, indulgent in its plot—to the point where I almost put it down, truthfully, because it felt like it was going nowhere and our MC was just going to spin in tighter and tighter self-destructive circles until at the end of an exceptionally indulgent chapter, everything changed. The characters were likewise indulgent, with their whims, their wishes, and their ambitions (or lack thereof).
This is also another entry into the subgenre I’m calling Moon Wrong (yes, Fifth Season is a fine entry in the subgenre) and I’m keen on reading the next book in the series (trilogy?) just released this summer because a) are we fixing Moon Wrong? and b) where do you go from that ending?
Thrall by Rebecca Mahoney
See, finding books like this is part of the reason I keep creating the queer SFF books list. Lesbian vampires in the mountains of Tennessee? I don’t need to know anymore, sign me up. Except it’s not quite lesbian vampires, as our MC remains a pre-vampire thrall for the majority of the plot. That said, her love interest is still a muscular gal on the archery team with impeccable aim and their arc is delightful.
I picked this book up on Saturday, meant to finish reading another book first, decided to just skim the first chapter on Monday night.. and finished it two days later. This is both a great vampire book and somehow so much more: it’s vampires on a secluded college campus, yes; it’s lesbians, yes; it’s fighting for a life when you’ve so long been denied one, been in service to others, yes; and it’s the careless cruelty of chance.
It’s also vampires with teeth while also somehow still being fun and sexy; vampires that are still terrifying and old soul vampires who are Just Fucking Tired. I loved the questions about who you are when life changes, and if you can still be the same person and if that even matters—if you still deserve to live and love and thrive.
That’s it for fiction, but I also listened to The AI Con by Emily Bender which is one of those Reaffirming Things I Already Knew while also Teaching Me New Infuriating Shit kind of books. It might have kicked off my current WIP, and now I’m also listening to More Everything Forever by Adam Becker, another takedown of the AI hypetrain and the techbros profiting from it.
That was fun. Let’s do it again in September!
K. A. Doore 