I’m proud to announce on behalf of Tor.com that consulting editor Justin Landon has acquired two novellas from debut author Sarah Gailey. The novellas—the first of which is titled The River of Teeth—takes one truth, that hippos were once considered by the U.S. government for meat production, and spins a tale of an America that could have been.
Winslow Remington Houndstooth and his band of killers have a simple job to do—clean up the Mississippi and the bloodthirsty feral hippos who’ve claimed it. These mercenary cowboys come from every corner of the hippo-infested American frontier, and none of them are afraid to get blood on their hands in the name of fortune. They’ll wade into the Mississippi astride their hippopotamuses with their six shooters and Bowie knives in hand, and they’ll show you what the American West was really about.
Sarah Gailey is a Bay Area native and an unabashed bibliophile. She lives and works in beautiful Oakland, California. She enjoys painting, baking, vulgar embroidery, and writing stories about murder and monsters. Her fiction been published internationally; her most recent credits include Mothership Zeta, Fireside Fiction, the Colored Lens, and the Speculative Bookshop Anthology. Her nonfiction has been published by Mashable, Fantasy Literature Magazine, and The Boston Globe. You can find links to her work at her website. She tweets about dogs and makes dad jokes @gaileyfrey, where you can and should follow her.
Justin Landon had this to say:
I get weak in the knees for alternate histories. Always have. River of Teeth takes one of the oddest ideas in Congressional history, importing hippos for meat production, and wades into that marshland like a boss. One part Unforgiven and two parts The Italian Job, Sarah Gailey’s debut novella reclaims the American West, reminding us of the diverse people who settled it and defeated the hippo scourge that threatened a nation. I’m not engaging in hyperbole when I say Sarah is one of the most vibrant new voices in genre fiction. I suggest getting in on the ground floor. She’s gonna be huge.
Sarah Gailey had this to say:
I’m thrilled to pieces to be working with Tor.com on the River of Teeth books. This imprint is really extending the legacy of novellas; they put out spectacular genre fiction, and they’re not afraid of a little bloodshed. All of that makes them the perfect home for my hard-living, knife-wielding hippo-cowboys. I can’t wait to see the River of Teeth duology flourish under the steady hands of the Tor.com team!
You can look forward to The River of Teeth publishing in mid-2017.
