“It’s funny, raunchy, romantic and satisfyingly twisty” say editors
“Top Tips for Loving a Lizard” is one of my favourite long stories ever, It will appear sometime this year from Wizard’s Tower Press – a so called small press which has award winning books and an excellent reputation in SFFH. Eg they publish my friend Juliet McKenna among other things.
I don’t even have the cover, the preorder links ,or the exact launch date. And it’s four weeks until The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Terror launches. So you’ll hear a lot more when I know.
It’s a novella (under 40k words) and is matched with Ellen’s novella which is both utterly different and yet chimes beautifully with mine and vice versa. And we get on famously.
The blog/newsletter I will issue when I do know this stuff is called “Why Top Tips is the story of my heart.”
PRESS RELEASE
Wizard’s Tower Announces Wiz Duo #4
http://wizardstowerpress.com/
August 18th, 2026
Wizard’s Tower is delighted to announce the fourth in our series of back-to-back novellas. Wiz Duo #4 will include stories by Ellen Mellor and Stephen Cox.
As usual we have selected stories that complement each other. In this case both Ellen’s ‘Marooned Off Ceres’ and Stephen’s ‘Top Tips for Loving a Lizard’ are first contact stories in which the lead protagonist is queer-identified.
Ellen Mellor said: “I’m so happy that Wizards Tower chose my story for publication. I loved every moment of writing (and rewriting and redrafting and…) Marooned Off Ceres and the finished product (with absolutely spot-on editing by Jo Hall) exceeded my every wish for it. It’s exactly the sort of story I love—a science fiction story in which the trans identity of the protagonist is an important part of who she is but doesn’t overshadow the rest of her. I feel that stories written by and centring trans people are needed more than ever to show that we have our own voice and we will not allow ourselves to be silenced.”
Stephen Cox said: “This is the story of my heart, the story I wished my queer teenage self could read. I wrote it for the glorious joy of writing it, but I’m also conscious of how sinister forces want to put us back in a box. We must imagine better futures, because we can make what we can see and feel.”
Editors Roz Clarke & Joanne Hall said: “We knew we wanted to publish Ellen’s novella as soon as we read it. It’s rare that a story makes us spit tea laughing AND makes us cry, and the ending was so perfect.
And Stephen’s story arriving at the same time just felt like serendipity. It’s funny, raunchy, romantic and satisfyingly twisty. We both have a real soft spot for first contact stories, and we’re delighted that these two novellas work so well together.”
Publisher, Cheryl Morgan said: “Thanks to the ongoing erosion on civil rights in the UK and USA, it is becoming harder and harder for stories with queer themes to get accepted by mainstream publishers. This is especially true for trans stories, and for trans-identified authors. At Wizard’s Tower we will continue to publish queer stories, by queer writers, because we know there is a need for them.”
To keep up to date on this,
Yes, it is frankly not perfect timing but it is before the two big events I am going to this year, and two books in a year is a zillionty times better than no books out in a year.