July 2025: Warmongers: The Stack

War is a tragedy. Weaving between the present and a lost past, this is a story about war and memory and the things we do when the people we love stand in the way of our dreams.

That was how my proposal for the Warmongers project began. It continued thus:

When Shushvir hears that the God-King of Syon has died and the new one is crowned, she sneaks home after years of exile and banditry, with one plan in mind: destroy the woman who destroyed her, and ruin the country that maimed her, shamed her, and drove her from its glory. Once one of the brightest stars in the military of the War God’s chosen nation, now Shushvir bears the mark of a deserter branded across her face—all thanks to the new God-King, who is none other than Hiavn, Shushvir’s old lover, rival, and the person who betrayed her into disgrace.

I know, I know. Aren't we launching The Sovereign and Fate's Bane? What about Ambessa? Well, that's the thing with publishing--there's a really long lead time, and the work I'm actually doing right now is completely different. Right now, I'm just getting back from a lot of travel and new work and inundation of new ideas and people, so I'm trying to work my way back into this draft I'm drafting.

As you might have read in earlier posts where I discussed the origins of this book, I've had a startlingly clear vision of what I wanted this book to be from pretty early on. Startlingly clear vision of how to get there? Not so much.

In March, I wrote about taking the project day by day, layer by layer, and that's still true. I'm still getting words out most weeks (except for when I was traveling). Even when I got new tasks to work on for Fate's Bane or The Sovereign. (There’s a lot to get on with when you’re trying to launch a book—or two, or three.) Thanks to Jami Attenberg's #1000WordsOfSummer, I recently busted past 100k and the halfway mark this month. I'm at around 120k now. But the other thing I'm working on is filling the well with good shit.

Some friends and I were chatting and ended up on the topics of what books inspired or were part of the soup of creation for our novels (published and WIP). (I think it was inspired by the authors of Feast While You Can, the sexy romantic horror novel I have been raving about.)

While I had myriad inspiration for The Sovereign et. al., Warmongers was on my mind, so I dragged all these books out into the middle of the floor. (It was no great hardship; I have a tendency to put the books that I want to inspire me on a ledge or bookshelf to give me what I need through osmosis--or to guilt me into reading them if I haven't yet.)

I ended up with this, which doesn't include the digital ones that I'd like to read or the numerous recommendations I've already been given since this picture was taken…

These books are a combination of fiction and nonfiction, decades old and just published last year. Some of them are award winners. Some of them are classics. One of them is redacted because though I admire the craft of the work and want to steal from it, I don't want to promote the author anymore.

In the first image, we have: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon, Fool's Errand by Robin Hobb, The Daughters' War by Christopher Buehlman, Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin, The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar. Then The Forever War by Dexter Filkins, Thank You for Your Service by David Finkel, The Face of Battle and The Mask of Command by John Keegan, War: How Conflict Shaped Us by Margaret MacMillan, The Wolf Age by Tore Skeie, The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, What It Is Like to Go to War by Karl Marlantes.

In the second image: Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Goodbye to All That and I, Claudius by Robert Graves.

Ancillary Justice and The Fifth Season are on this list because they do something structurally that I loved, and if you've read both, you already have an idea of what's in store for you in Warmongers. I call it the resonance line. Both of those books won their respective Hugos and I think the emotional devastation their structures made possible is a huge reason. (I'm more interested in the emotional devastation than the Hugo.) I apologize to your hearts in advance.

Fool's Errand and The Deed of Paksenarrion are emblematic of a certain aspect of old guard fantasy that I particularly loved--and miss. A certain patience, a deliberate building of world and character that drags the plot along with it until somehow you're sobbing and hurtling through the pages at breakneck pace at the same time (which is how I seem to always feel about Robin Hobb).

Paksenarrion is also here, along with The Daughters' War, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Monstrous Regiment to see how other authors write about war. What have they said, and where do I agree? Disagree? What questions do they leave open and what spaces do I feel are still unexplored? What are the differences between veteran accounts and civilians? WWII vs Vietnam vs America's Forever War?

As a civilian, I also wanted to read more accounts of battle itself, including battle and leadership tactics, sensory and emotional details—all the little contradictions that exist in us as they’re represented on the battlefield. And though I may never fully understand what it’s like to be in pitched warfare, I am deeply obsessed with our societal obsession with it, as I’ve mentioned in my essay at Fantasy Magazine, and in my Gunn Lecture at KU earlier this year.

It is perhaps ironic that a couple of books that are influencing me extremely as I write these pages are not in the Stack at all: I stumbled upon them organically, the universe pushing them onto me over and over again until I could no longer deny them—and then I became obsessed. That’s Another Country by James Baldwin and Ammonite by Nicola Griffith. Neither of them are about war, exactly, but they are both about people, and bodies, and loving, and failing to love even when you’re trying so so hard. They are about fighting, fighting with everything you’ve got for everything you don’t. And their prose is beautiful, especially the attention to place, which is something I definitely want to get better at.

I am enormously proud of The Sovereign.

I want Warmongers to be even better.

One of the difficulties of all of these big ideas and hopes that I want to unpack, though, is that I often get wrapped up in the dangerous cycle of believing this book now has to say Great Things about war. And what scribble in a notebook can live up to that?

It’s paralyzing.

Instead, I force myself to step back. I don’t need to be the voice of a generation. Just one kid with a bunch of soldiers in their family. A kid who wanted to be G.I. Jane and Strider at the same time. I get to be one voice among many with this strange affliction.

Most importantly, I want to tell a story about Shushvir and Hiavn, a pair of women who who fell in love on the battlefield and then watched it all fall apart.

I probably won’t read all of these books by the time Warmongers is done. Hell, maybe not before it comes out. I may not finish the ones I start. Whatever I do read, though, inevitably will become a part of me, synthesized. You may be able to find traces of it in whatever Warmongers ends up being—maybe a challenge, maybe even a salute. It’s one of the most exciting things to me about writing—joining a conversation that goes millennia back.

I hope you’ll join in.

What (Else) I'm Reading/Watching

• Everina Maxwell's next novel: Speaking of resonance lines. I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about it yet by name, so let this be a whetting of your appetite. It was STUNNING. It was made for me. It actually had many of the same touchpoints as Warmongers and you will probably get it first, so when it comes out, I will be SCREAMING about it. For now, just know that she's written an excellent sapphic fantasy novel and it's amazing.
• The Forgotten King: This is a bit of a funny story that involves an uber driver and a fortuitously long ride. Turns out, my uber driver's brother and him made a fantasy podcast story called The Forgotten King and I swapped him a spare copy of one of my books in return. It's just the first book of what promises to be an epic in the style of old guard fantasy with some surprisingly emotional turns. I also loved the production of it with the voices and the sound effects. Great listen for a drive or a few long walks/runs.
• Please meet Spencer (just a baby). My partner introduced me to this run of absolutely unhinged instagram shorts and I will never forgive her for it. You're welcome.
• All of my Andrea Gibson albums. Which leads me to the editor's note just below the reminders.

Reminders

• Don't forget to sign up for a preorder reward for The Sovereign! It's a bunch of deleted scenes and exercises that didn't make it into the trilogy. At the link, you will also find a list of bookshops that will include signed bookplates for both The Sovereign AND Fate's Bane.
  • I've been sharing a few of these scenes for subscribers, including a Baby Touraine prologue and a scene from Cantic's POV.
• I've got one event officially on the books for this autumn--with Hannah Kaner at Toppings Edinburgh on Nov 4! Tickets are on sale now. We're working on others, and I'll let you know as soon as they're finalized.
• There's a giveaway on Goodreads for advanced copies of The Sovereign. It ends Jul 28. US only. (Sorry.)

Editor's Note

The thing about these posts is that I usually write them somewhat in advance--at least, if they're not strictly about news. So the above was all done before the news broke that Andrea Gibson, one of my favorite poets and a luminous figure in the spoken word community, passed away from terminal ovarian cancer. I was thrown for a loop. Writing about Warmongers might not have been the immediate go-to, otherwise. As it is, it was the post that I had ready. But I didn't want to let this moment pass by unremarked, because their work has been very important to me.

As many news outlets have seized upon, their poems were about love and war and genderqueer identity. But they were more than that, in the sense that some of these posts make love and war and identity feel generic. These poems were about living. And Andrea Gibson did that, down to the last, before and after their diagnosis.

It's a loss that touches me deeply; one of my tattoos is a line from a poem that they wrote, in their handwriting; they wrote it out for me when I brought them to my university's pride week in undergrad. "Say Yes" is the poem. Check it out if you like.

Let them inspire you to live a little harder in this world.

Until next time,

Stay sharp, my friends. But stay tender, too. And play loud.

C. L.