“I never did like to leave a story unfinished”

wayward children sideblog ♡ icon credit to jel-illustrations

[aroaessidhe]

aro & ace books: with internal illustrations!

Don’t Let The Forest In - YA horror - ace MC - internal/cover art by Jana Heidersdorf

The Wolf Among The Wild Hunt - NA dark fantasy - aroace MC/SC - internal art by Andrew Garin

In The Jaws of an Oak - adult horror/erotica novella - internal/cover art by author

Elatsoe - YA paranormal - aro coded ace MC - internal/cover art by Rovina Cai

Little Thieves - YA fantasy - demi MC/LI - internal art by author

Every Heart A Doorway - NA fantasy novella - ace MC - internal art by Rovina Cai

Fallen Thorns - NA urban fantasy - aroace MC (& SC) - internal/cover art by author

The Traitor & The Wretch - fantasy/adventure/romance - demisexual MC (1/2) - internal illustrations by Rowan MacColl

When The Tides Held The Moon - historical fantasy romance, demisexual MC (1/2) - internal illustrations by author

#aspec books / aspec database / tumblr masterpost

info included here is brief! please see my database for full details of the books

[literalliterature]

A few doors encountered by Wayward Children. Might make this into a bookmark for myself idk

[ID copied from alt: A narrow, vertically oriented canvas showing 3 different doors rendered in black lineart, meant to look like ink sketches on parchment. The first door at the top resembles ancient Greek architecture, with a pomegranate and branches decorating the top, Ionic columns on the sides, and a narrow entryway leading into blackness. The second door below that is round and nestled into the base of a tree, and the third, slightly ajar, is heavy and damaged wood with lightning emerging from it. At the bottom is cursive text that reads, "be sure." End ID.]

[linovadraws]

Sometimes you go into your sketchbook from 2018 and you find a random gag from Comes Tumbling Down and it still makes you laugh out loud.

[0rchidm4ntis]

“Both girls, through different routes, down different roads, had come home.”

[wayward-children]

Wayward Children's Short Stories, Placements in Canon, and (Official) Links to Read

In Mercy, Rain

Jack Wolcott was only twelve years old when she and her twin sister Jill, descended the impossible staircase and found herself in the Moors, a world of drowned gods and repugnant royals. After abandoning her sister to a vampire lord, and under the tutelage of a mad scientist who can do impossible things with flesh and living lightning, Jack quickly learns that in the Moors, death is merely a suggestion.

Takes place during Down Among the Sticks and Bones. Published July 18, 2022.

Skeleton Song

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions—slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere . . . else. Adventures are always interesting, but they’re not always happy.

From the worlds of Wayward Children comes a story of love, of devotion, of bones wrapped in flesh.

Takes place before Every Heart a Doorway. Published Oct. 26, 2022.

Juice Like Wounds

In the course of every great adventure there are multiple side-quests. All too often these go unreported—perhaps because the adventurers in question fail to return to the main narrative due to death or other distractions, and sometimes because the chronicler of the events decides to edit out that part of that particular history for reasons of their own (historians are never infallible)—but occasionally we get another window into our heroes’ world.

In Juice Like Wounds we once again get to meet Lundy, and some of her companions. Lundy’s main adventure is detailed in In an Absent Dream (which is nominated for a Hugo Award, this year!) and you should definitely read that. Before or after this tale is up to you.

Remember: Side quests are fun.

For the reader, at least…

Takes place during In An Absent Dream. Published on July 13, 2020

[ghostsandyoumightdie]

O, January -- the beautiful pseudo-season where Seanan McGuire takes me by the hand, places it in the palm of a doomed child, and sends me on an adventure with her.

[alwaysbeyondhope]

I didn’t realize just how many languages Every Heart A Doorway has been translated into. And the cover art for some of them are SO.FUCKING.GORGEOUS. Like gorgeous pomegranates all over the covers.

And y’all know how I feel about pomegranates.

Trying to get ALL foreign language copies of EHAD - or the entire Wayward Children series - would be a BIG undertaking - both getting the books and then having the shelf space - and I already need like 2 more bookshelves for all of my Seanan McGuire / Mira Grant / A. Deborah Baker books. And comics. And CDs. And chapbooks.

I just wanna be able to see ALL the books I own. Because I’m so in love with them and I just wanna look at them to make me feel good

[stilltheturtlemoves]

on the Moors

[yeehawpim]

[spaceinthecage]

was reading “Down Among the Sticks and Bones” by Seanan McGuire and felt mighty need to sketch Jack and Jill

[seananmcguire]

Dr Bleak doesn't sound like he came with that name, does that mean that mad doctors get to chose their names in the Moors? And if so, what would Jack's be?

She never got to find out.

She had dreams, in the windmill.  Humans can dream anywhere, even in fantastic lands that should seem like dreams unto themselves, and Jack was no different.  She lay in her room, shoulders to the stone, and dreamt, not of mattresses and feather pillows, but of the day when the scalpel passed to her own two hands, when she became one half of the broken mirror of the leadership of the Moors.  She dreamt herself gruff and cold and kind, like the man who worked so hard to keep her safe, even when he thought she didn’t see.  She dreamt herself merciful.

One day, she would be the one who went to the castle, and it would be Jill at the head of the table, Jill demanding custody of a foundling.  And she would find a way to trick her sister, who was forgetting how to be clever in favor of being cruel, and she would bring that child home to Alexis, who would have her feather pillows, if that was what she wanted, and they would do their duty, together.  They would protect the Moors, together, the mad scientist and the mad scientist’s beautiful wife, and it wouldn’t matter what the people came to call her, because she would always know who she was.

She was the lightning’s daughter, and the child of a man with the storm in his hands, and she had chosen this, she had chosen this, she had chosen this all along.

Here is the trouble with dreamers:

They wake up.

[seananmcguire]

I know you didn't want more sexuality asks but thank you so so SO much for confirming Jack as pan. The paucity of pan characters is frustrating, and the fact that those that do exist are automatically promiscuous is infuriating. So thank you.

You are totally welcome.

Part of why I feel a little ish-y about the sexuality asks is that, well.  Jack is pan, no question, and she flirts a little with Christopher during Every Heart.  But her only serious relationship, to date, is with a woman named Alexis, and while her sexuality is absolutely a part of her, on paper, currently, she looks bi.  I didn’t want to Dumbledore, you know?

[seananmcguire]

In 2016, I took you all to school with Every Heart a Doorway, introducing a world of portals and peril, and all the strange, loving, deeply damaged people who lived there.

In the years since, we've been to worlds almost without number, from the sweet shores of Confection to the watery wonders of Belyyreka and everywhere in-between. But most of us have never forgotten Nancy Wolcott, the first wayward child whose tale we followed, and which went to stillness with Nancy herself, when she returned to her calling as a living statue in the Halls of the Dead.

Now the Halls are in danger, and Nancy is coming home to save the world she chose and the people she loves, but there and at the school.

January 6th, 2026. Come with me, Through Gates of Garnet and Gold.

Pre-orders are open now.

[seananmcguire]

Hi Seanan, I'm so sorry to be this person, but I think that in your recent promo you have Nancy Jack and Jill's last name by mistake!

That said, I'm so excited to have another book featuring Nancy. She's one of my favorite ace characters ever and I'm stoked for the new book <3

...you're right, I do. I was typing in a hurry, because the book information fed out to retailers without me being warned about it, and I was sort of panicked. :( I'm sorry.

I'm glad we get to see Nancy again. She's always been difficult because her backstory book would just be "Nancy stood still. Nancy stood still some more. Nancy stood still again." So we needed a forward book, not a backward one.

[seananmcguire]

Hello, I know you get probably about a million of these a day and the likelihood of you seeing this is low. But I just saw the announcement for the new Nancy book and had to say thank you for letting us step back into her world and her mind. I learned what asexuality was because of her and finally, finally felt seen and understood in a way I never had before.

Your work in general is always a delight, but Nancy and the other Wayward children will always hold my heart the most. Thank you for the joy you bring in the world, and I hope I haven't bothered you overmuch for writing this.

I love Nancy. She was created because a friend of mine said that she never got to see people like herself in books unless those books were entirely about asexuality. She never got to have adventures and just be.

So I made her Nancy. I wasn't aware, at the time, of the trope of connecting ace characters to gothic things and the dead: I was pulling on the Addams Family and a comic called Gloomcookie, and my own time in the Bay Area goth scene, where all those same trappings were associated with extremely sexually open people. So I actually thought Nancy being a charcoal sketch was innovative. Oops.

You don't bother me at all by writing to me. Honestly, it's nice to hear when I'm doing something right. You have made me smile.

[seananmcguire]

The Hebrew word for "one" is אחד, ehad. Every time I see a reference to Every Heart a Doorway, I smile about the fact that it's #1 in the Wayward Children series and also abbreviates to Ehad. No question, just thought that might make you smile.

It does!  What a fun fact.  :)

[manfrommars2049]

Middlegame by breath-art via ImaginaryMindscapes