Rati Mehrotra's Blog

Happy May Day! Happy short story day! Hah. Yes, I have a new story out today and it is a truly special one for many reasons, which I will lovingly detail below. The Library of the Apocalypse is a science fantasy story set in a future dystopian Toronto, and is free to read online in Issue 224 of Clarkesworld Magazine. It’s a very Canadian story, and one I could not have imagined writing a year ago. If you like my work at all, you should read this one. And if you have never read my work, why then,...

New story day! My short story Men with Tails is now live at Uncanny Magazine and free to read online. This story was both tremendous fun to write and a catharsis of sorts. It is the first time I have written a character with the same long COVID symptoms that I have. I feel seen! By myself, lol. Seriously, though, I hope my fellow sufferers in the world of short speculative fiction do feel seen. Long COVID is not a homogenous disease. It presents differently in different people. No matter what yo...

My maternal grandmother Bimla Tandon has passed away at age 92. She leaves behind a younger brother and sister, three daughters, six grandchildren and three great grandchildren, whom she loved unconditionally, the way only a grandmother can. I feel many things, not all of which I can currently parse, but above all I feel gratitude that I had her in my life for so long. I was her eldest grandchild and she called me “the first flower in my garden.” She was a deeply loving, generous, wise, energeti...

Austrian composer Franz Peter Schubert lived for only 31 years, but left behind a vast body of work, including the song cycle Winterreise (Winter Journey), a setting of 24 poems by German poet Wilhelm Müller. The poet also died young, of a heart attack at 32. As for Franz Schubert, there is no conclusive cause of death. He possibly suffered from syphilis, and some of his symptoms resembled mercury poisoning. But it could have been typhoid, salmonella or even leukemia. Days before his death, grip...

If there’s no one to read them, do my words truly exist?

This angst-laden question is posed by the narrator of my latest short story Markets of the Otherworld now live at Uncanny Magazine. But it could be mine – in the spirit of the famous question “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

The answer, of course, is no. Sound requires ears. If there are no ears to hear, there is no sound. Stories, similarly, require listeners or readers. Existence in the...

Hello, hello. It’s been a while since I posted. Some quick writerly news first. Night of the Raven, Dawn of the Dove is getting both a Russian and a Spanish translation. I’m delighted, because I’m a firm believer in cross cultural pollination. The more translations that exist, the more bridges people can choose to walk across and meet each other.

I sold a new story to Uncanny Magazine that I hope to share with readers in 2024. It is, despite being a secondary world fantasy, one of the most perso...

It’s October, my book release month! I received the finished copies of FLOWER AND THORN and they’re just gorgeous. The book is out on 17th October, but I’ll be doing a launch in-person at my favorite local bookstore Bakka Phoenix Books on 21 October at 3 pm. Link to event page is here. If you’re in the GTA and enjoy reading fantasy, I hope to see you! The first chapter is free to read if you want to try it out. If you can’t make it and want a signed copy, you can pre-order from the store and the...

Do you ever think about the sun signs of the characters in the books you read or the shows you watch? I do, and I always know my main characters’ sun signs when I write them. Not to be superstitious, but it’s a fun exercise, and one way to develop characters on the page. If you’ve read my books and are curious, here are the sun signs of all the major characters!

FLOWER AND THORN
Out 17 October 2023

A young flower hunter must retrieve the rarest and most powerful magical flower after giving it to...

Hello! Hope everyone is having a great summer. I just received my ARCs (advance reader copies) of Flower and Thorn. Isn’t it pretty? To celebrate, I’m doing an international giveaway for one signed copy! The giveaway ends on 31 July. I will pick a winner at random and announce on 1 August. Details here. All you need is an Instagram account.

The book releases on 17 October, and I will be doing a book launch at 3 pm on Saturday, 21 October, at Bakka-Phoenix Books in Toronto. There will be snacks....

Delighted to share that Night of the Raven, Dawn of the Dove is a 2023 Aurora Award nominee for Best Young Adult Novel! You can view the entire ballot here. The Aurora Awards are Canada’s annual English-language Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards and I am so thrilled my medieval Indian fantasy is a finalist.

Thank you to everyone who read and nominated! Huge thanks to my agent Mary C. Moore and all the many people at Wednesday Books who worked on this book and made it possible, especially my fa...