14 Nov 2025 4 min read

Letter of News: New Short Story, Goodreads Choice Awards, Book Deals

Dear Readers,

One month and two letters ago, I wrote,

Just one more bout of travel in two weeks, for two weeks, and then I'll let winter settle over me and put me to bed.

I hadn't intend to prophesy my return so literally. After wending a warm and wonderful way through Britain, France and Spain, I returned to Canada on November 9 to find the season's first snowfall blanketing everything, and wreaking havoc on the last leg home, the less of which is said the better.

But the trip itself was utterly beautiful. I have photos and moments to share in greater detail later on. In brief, it was the kind of journey where feeling pushes up through your skin and keeps you close to tears throughout, where one loveliness after another creates whirlpools of gratitude to swim through and make you give thanks even for the drowning.

Book Week Scotland

That said, it was strange and dislocating to realize that, for the first time in over a decade, I flew to the UK without visiting Scotland. But I carried it with me for much of the journey, as I revised a story set in Glasgow that will be serialized in the Scottish Book Trust's newsletter next week. I was invited to write something for Book Week Scotland on the theme of Friendship, which, if you've read anything of mine, is something of a recurring concern, so I was very glad to say yes.

It's the first short story I've written in a couple of years, since "John Hollowback and the Witch," and it was an interesting challenge. I've never written something for serialization before, and knowing that it would be broken up in chunks over seven days, I tried to use that as the structure, so the story itself takes place over the course of a week.

It's called "A Road Less Taken," and I'll give you a sneak peek of the first line:

I had my heart broken the same week the crown jewels were stolen from the Louvre.

I revised it while listening obsessively to Florence + the Machine's new album — in a cafe in Brighton, on a ferry crossing the channel between New Haven and Dieppe, on trains rushing through the French countryside, until I finished it in a hotel bed in Paris. If it's any good at all it's thanks to Stu's relentless encouragement, the kind rubber-ducking of Sophie Burnham and L R Lam, and the clever, generous gazes of Sarah Rees Brennan and Eliza Chan. I'm very grateful to all of them.

Stu pointed out that, with my short story collection coming out in March, "A Road Less Taken" is the first story I could consider for my next one. And that's its own strange country of feeling to journey through. Some things end, and others begin. Seasons change, the world turns.

Goodreads Choice Awards

I was genuinely surprised and delighted to see The River Has Roots make it into the first round of the Goodreads Choice Awards in the Fantasy category. It's in absurdly good company – here's a sampling (not the full list, just what fit comfortably in a screenshot after I refreshed a bunch of times to make sure The Everlasting and A Drop of Corruption were both in the frame with my book because I loved them):

A screenshot of eight book covers tiled in two rows of four. Top row, left to right: The Society of Unknowable Objects by Gareth Brown, Alchemy of Secrets by Stephanie Garber, The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow, Katabasis by R. F. Kuang. Bottom row, left to right: A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett, The Strength of the Few by James Islington, The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson, and The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar.

Anyone with a Goodreads account can vote! The voting happens in two rounds, and the first round closes on November 23. The brief is literally “vote for your fave,” so please don’t feel constrained by not having read everything in a category before making a choice — just pick whatever you read and enjoyed! This is a way for everyone to shout about the stuff they loved this year within the Goodreads ecosystem and generates more buzz for and awareness of books heading into the holiday-gifting season.

Book Deals!

With the overall note that Kindle deals often lead to price-matching at other e-tailers, so you may want to check those –

And if you've always wanted a hardcover copy, you can still pre-order the shiny new deluxe edition of This Is How You Lose the Time War that comes out November 18! That's next week, somehow! it's INCREDIBLY beautiful, as evidenced by this box of them I received.

A box full of copies of the new deluxe edition of This Is How You Lose the Time War, featuring new cover art, stenciled edges, designed endpapers, and a deluxe printed and debossed case. Instead of the red and blue birds on the original cover, this one shows two letter envelopes, flaps open, mirroring each other vertically on a distorted grid; the top one opens on to a red star field, and the bottom one opens on to a blue starfield. Surrounding them is a pale oval ribbon on which the title and authors' names are written.

That's all I have time for today – I'll share more trip photos and links and reminiscences next letter.

Wishing you all tenderness and strength in the darkening parts of the year,

Love,

Amal

Selfie in which I'm standing in front of a very green London park, with greenery pushing through the black bars of a tall iron fence. my long dark hair is down loose over my shoulders and I'm wearing rounded brown-tinted sunglasses, pinkish tinted lip balm, a green and black keffiyeh and an olive green corduroy jacket. Glimpses of pearl earrings and layered gold-toned necklaces are visible through my hair and scarf. There are wisps of silver-white hair at my temples.