The night before the election, when I hadn’t slept for two days from pain from both the literal stormfront and the pressure of what was hanging over the world, I asked my friend Celia Lake for a sanity check on how crazy it might be to try to publish a book before the end of the year.

I thought she’d say “settle down, that’s not realistic.”

Instead, Celia thought about it for a minute, and said, “I think you could make that timeline if you have the text by Thanksgiving, and I could format it for you in about half an hour.”

I really needed that. I still need that.

(Celia, if you see this, thank you so much for giving me something to hold on to.)

I knew when Biden dropped out in July that Kamala wasn’t going to win.

I’d hoped for a few weeks that the country might surprise me. That the mad red hatters wouldn’t actually all crawl out from under the rocks to make sure the smart, joyful, competent brown woman lost to a doddering, demented old fascist because they were all going to put the uppity woman in her place.

There have only been two other times in my life when I’ve wanted so desperately to be wrong about what I saw coming.

Unfortunately, I was right all three times, no matter how badly I’d wanted to be wrong.

(I really feel for Rahat, who is the type of prophet who foresees the dangers that other people don’t see, and who can’t always stop himself from knowing things he doesn’t want to know.)

I did not have time to write an entire novella of cozily vindictive witches-vs-the-patriarchy wrath in a week where I was numb with grief and scrambling to keep it together and also organizing a whole conference.

I didn’t have time or energy to spare but it came pouring out of my hands anyway.

I didn’t want a brown woman’s victory over the forces of the patriarchy to be the most unrealistic part of a fantasy with cursed spellbooks and flying carpets and shapechanging cats. But here we are.

And I love Najra. She’s the smart, scheming, ambitious, asexual, book-loving witch-archivist part of me has always wished I could be. (If it weren’t for the fact that I’m also much more like Rahat, soft and fat and anxious and not at all neurotypical and fretting over whether or not I’ve kept the required mask in place well enough for the necessary public performances. Not to mention the foreseeing things I really wish I didn’t. )

So Najra is going into the book, and Priye is going into the book too, and so is Shai Madhur, the gentle priest who feeds even the granary mice, because everyone is welcome.

I’m hoping to set up a pre-order for December 21 or 22, and then to be able to tie in to Karryn’s cozy sale on the 29th.

I’m going to see if I can post about each of the novellas between now and then too. If nothing else, I’ve got to polish the blurbs. (And, since this is me, shorten them too.)

Also since this is me, here’s a recipe.

Najra’s Crimson Witch’s Brew

• 2 cups hot water
• 1 tsp dried hibiscus flowers
• 1 tsp dried rose flowers
• 2 green cardamom pods, cracked open and the black seeds pulverized
• (Optional) A few drops of screwpine, which also sounds properly witchy, but if you don’t have it a few drops of Rooh Afza or rosewater will do
• 1/4 tsp sumac (optional, but if you’re feeling exceptionally sour, go for it)
• Simple syrup (half and half water and sugar)

Steep the flowers and spices, covered, for about five to ten minutes, while muttering imprecations about the patriarchy.

Taste the brew straight. Make a sour witch face as needed.

Get determined to grab your own damn happy ending, at least for this cup.

Add 1/2 tsp at a time of your simple syrup, stir, and taste again.

When you’ve determined what level of sweetness brings you joy, note it down in your spellbook.

Or if you hate everything in the universe (including sharp-edged tisanes) right now, go pour out the cup over a weed you’d like to kill. Then consider opening the nearest bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon instead.