Tordotcom Publishing is thrilled to announce that Ruoxi Chen has acquired Flowers for the Sea, Zin E. Rocklyn’s debut novella, pitched as Kai Ashante Wilson’s The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps meets Rivers Solomon’s The Deep. The two-book deal, for World English rights, was brokered by Roseanne Wells at The Jennifer de Chiara Agency.
Survivors from a flooded kingdom struggle alone on an ark. Resources are scant, and ravenous sea beasts circle.
Among the refugees is Iraxi: a commoner who refused a prince, she’s pregnant with a child that might be more creature than human. Her fate may be darker and more powerful than she can imagine.
Said author Zin E. Rocklyn:
I am beyond words excited to be working with Ruoxi Chen and Tordotcom Publishing to bring my water baby novella into the world. She was born of my frustration and love for humanity as a Black woman. Plus I couldn’t help but smile at the idea of Lovecraft rolling in his grave. Thank you, Diana M. Pho, for bringing me into the fold. Can’t wait for the world to experience this!
Said editor Ruoxi Chen:
Zin E. Rocklyn is already an essential and urgent voice in fantasy, and we’re unbelievably lucky to have their debut novella on our list. Flowers from the Sea is a gorgeous, gothic novella that devours what’s rotten about the legacies that came before it and will show readers something vividly, wonderfully new.
Zin E. Rocklyn is a contributor to Bram Stoker-nominated Nox Pareidolia, Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters, Brigands: A Blackguards Anthology, and Forever Vacancy anthologies and Weird Luck Tales No. 7 zine. Their story “Summer Skin” in the Bram Stoker-nominated anthology Sycorax’s Daughters received an honorable mention for Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year, Volume Ten. Zin contributed the nonfiction essay “My Genre Makes a Monster of Me” to Uncanny Magazine’s Hugo Award-winning Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction. Their short story “Night Sun” was published on Tor.com. Zin is a 2017 VONA and 2018 Viable Paradise graduate as well as a 2021 Clarion West candidate. You can find them on Twitter @intelligentwat.
Flowers for the Sea will be available from Tordotcom Publishing in 2021.
