Pistols, petticoats, and portals stud a pair of rollicking eighteenth-century adventures (that soon become something quite a bit more complicated) in upcoming Tor.com Publishing novellas Alice Payne Arrives and Alice Payne Rides by Kate Heartfield.
Said acquiring editor Lee Harris:
When I read Alice Payne Arrives, it made me smile. A lot. And sometimes that’s enough to let an editor know that this is the right book for them. It’s pure, unashamed fun from start to finish! Why you should read it: Highway robbery, time travel and Victorian automata. You need no more reasons. This book is going to make you smile a lot, too!
Said author Kate Heartfield:
There’s a note from late 2015 in my “ideas” folder about a highwaywoman who has to solve a mystery to save her own neck. More notes follow, their tone terse and almost annoyed. I had other projects on my desk. But Alice Payne was tapping on my shoulder, waiting to step out onto the road. As 2016 unfolded, I found Alice standing at my side, helping me find one possible answer to another question: How did humanity end up in this timeline? The story needed a big stage and a fast pace. It was, in other words, a novella, at the end of which it’s clear that Alice’s adventures have only begun. I have to pinch myself to believe that I get to work with Lee Harris and Tor.com. I’ve been an eager reader of the Tor.com novella line and it’s a joy and privilege to see Alice’s adventures join those ranks.
Kate Heartfield is a former newspaper editor and columnist in Ottawa, Canada. Her first novel, a historical fantasy called Armed in Her Fashion, is coming from ChiZine Publications in May 2018. Spring 2018 will also see the publication of her interactive novel for Choice of Games, inspired by the Canterbury Tales. Her short fiction has appeared in several magazines and anthologies, including Strange Horizons, and Lackington’s. Her novella The Course of True Love was published by Abaddon Books in 2016, as part of the collection Monstrous Little Voices: New Tales from Shakespeare’s Fantasy World. Her website is heartfieldfiction.com and she tweets at @kateheartfield.
Alice Payne Arrives will be published by Tor.com Publishing in late 2018, and Alice Payne Rides will follow in the spring of 2019.
The deal was negotiated by Jennie Goloboy at the Donald Maass Literary Agency.
