This week, Patrick and John welcome author, Sarah Kozloff, whose Nine Realms epic fantasy quartet is complete and will be released by TOR one a month starting today, February 18th, with A Queen in Hiding!

About Sarah Kozloff: Sarah has spent her life immersed in literature, narrative, and film.

After a degree in English at Dartmouth she worked in film production in NYC. She earned a Ph.D. from an interdisciplinary program at Stanford University, joining the Film Department of Vassar College in 1988. In 2009 she was awarded the William R. Kenan Jr. Endowed Chair.

In 2012, while teaching a senior seminar on American Women Directors, she realized that neither the books nor films of Lord of the Rings could pass the Bechdel Test. That summer, she grabbed her laptop and started imagining a world that awaited the return of the queen.

She didn’t know then that this leap into creative writing would spark a new career. Her epic fantasy quartet, The Nine Realms, is forthcoming from TOR. All four books, A Queen in Hiding, The Queen of Raiders, A Broken Queen, and The Cerulean Queen, will be published January through April 2020.

She lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and a shifting menagerie of pets, who mistakenly believe they are suitable replacements for grown sons.

About A Queen in Hiding (The Nine Realms Book 1): Orphaned, exiled and hunted, Cerulia, Princess of Weirandale, must master the magic that is her birthright, become a ruthless guerilla fighter, and transform into the queen she is destined to be.

But to do it she must win the favor of the spirits who play in mortal affairs, assemble an unlikely group of rebels, and wrest the throne from a corrupt aristocracy whose rot has spread throughout her kingdom.

This week’s picks:

* Sarah: For All Mankind (Apple TV+)

* John: Reader Come Home:The Reading Brain in a Digital World by MaryAnnE Wolf

* Patrick: Weather by Huey Lewis & The News

* Patreon Pick 1: Locke & Key (NETFLIX) Picked by Paul Jackson

Links:

* Sarah Kozloff on Twitter

* John Anealio on Twitter

* Patrick Hester on Twitter

* The Functional Nerds Patreon Page

* Patrick Hester on Instagram

* Patrick’s Book: Into the Fire (available everywhere)

© 2020 Patrick Hester and John Anealio

This podcast contains original music by John Anealio.