erin

litjoy special editions

LitJoy has put together this spectacular special edition set of my books and I’m thrilled that it’s finally been revealed.

This set features both The Night Circus and The Starless Sea in a custom, tarot-inspired slipcase. This set is signed and also annotated by me in my questionable handwriting, with dozens of notes and references and memories scribbled in the margins. The covers are foiled (The Night Circus in silver and The Starless Sea in gold) and include metal charm inlays. The page edges are illustrated to coordinate with the slipcase. They are truly something special.

So many incredible artists are involved in conjuring these editions and I am honored and delighted to have their work enhance these stories.

Book cover designs by Lichen & Limestone

Slipcase and page edges by Fyodor Pavlov 

Tip-in illustrations by Maria Arteta and Patsy Lascano

Illustrated endpapers by Simona Jančíková and Patsy Lascano

My endless appreciation to all of them and the wonderful team at LitJoy. It has been such a pleasure to watch these editions evolve. I was lucky enough to get to see a great deal of the behind-the-scenes for these, glimpses of processes and planning and sketches, and it has been a bright light in a dark time to see such creative people bring these editions to life.

Much more information about these editions on LitJoy’s website! These sets are limited and preorders will open at the beginning of February. 
By erin, ago

goodbye 2025

2025 was tiny bunnies in the yard and a hundred transient blackbirds in the trees, April snowstorms and long autumn walks, unexpected house repairs and too many vet visits (Vesper is fine now, thankfully), and a lot of avoiding the internet and re-reading fairy tales.

This website is overdue for an update. I’m not around enough to understand all the WordPress things anymore. For awhile all of the images vanished and then they all came back particularly large. We’ll see how this post goes. Hopefully sometime in 2026 I’ll be able to sort it all out.

We went to Nightwood at the Mount again this year, first time seeing it with snow which made it even more magical. It has quickly become my favorite end-of-year tradition, wandering through light and sound in the cold.

This year I re-taught myself how to fold origami cranes, to do something simple and quiet and repetitive without any reason beyond having little paper birds where there previously were none. There are flocks of them all over my office now, in colorful piles.

2025 brought the gorgeous Folio Society edition of The Night Circus (illustrated by Cristina Bencina with a new introduction by me), the most vibrant, shiny new edition of The Night Circus from Acrylipics (currently on sale!) and a sparkling tea blend inspired by The Starless Sea from Old Growth Alchemy. 

It is possible that there have been additional beautiful things afoot this year that may be arriving in 2026. I remain eternally grateful that these stories continue to be wrapped in such creative, tangible packaging by so many wonderful artists.

I wrote a lot this year. 

Not as much as I might have liked, as a number of unexpected time-consuming things appeared along the way, but I have more pages than I did this time last year, and some of them might even end up in the book.

It’s not a book yet. It’s not even half a book. It’s still mostly word soup but maybe there are some sentences floating around in there as the words cling to what might be their proper neighbors.

It’s very hard to write a book right now. Writing has never not been hard for me and now I’d use the typical analogy of pulling teeth but pulling teeth seems fast, at least. It always takes me ages to find my way through a story, and this one feels slower than usual though if I stopped and did the year math it might be average. There’s an analogy in here somewhere about slowly chipping away at a tooth to accomplish the removal but that sounds terrible. 

(I had one of those classic anxiety dreams the other night where my teeth were falling out only this time they were made of gold and labradorite, make of that what you will.)

(The entire end of 2025 writing sentiment is expressed in depth and much more perfectly by my friend Chuck Wendig over here.)

I am currently contemplating some different tactics in an attempt to get more words on paper in 2026. Tricking myself back into that creative bubble. Attempting to be more tactile about the whole process. We’ll see how it goes.

Favorite books I read in 2025:

Lolly Willowes – Sylvia Townsend Warner

The River Has Roots – Amal El-Mohtar

The God of the Woods – Liz Moore

Wild Dark Shore – Charlotte McConaghy

The Everlasting – Alix E. Harrow

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter – Stephen Graham Jones

Honorable mention for Cat Nap by Brian Lies which is a wonder. Highly recommended if you like cats, art, art history, picture books or any combination thereof.

Favorite video games I played in 2025:

Blue Prince

(that’s it, that’s the list)

It would be unfair to put anything except Blue Prince in this category this year as it is not only far and away my favorite game of the year but easily one of my favorite games of all time. 

This is everything I ever wanted in an atmospheric puzzle game, from the art style to the music to the gloriously layered mysteries. There is so much story here to find in empty rooms and red envelopes and clues hidden in plain sight. I love this game.

A large, sprawling mystery of a house is precisely where I wanted to be this year, slowly exploring and marveling and uncovering. I’m on Day 125 and I still have more secrets to find.

And of course I already ordered plush Swim Bird.

Beyond Blue Prince I did very much enjoy Avowed and also Hades 2 though not quite as much as original flavor Hades. I replayed a lot of things this year (new game+ for both Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Elden Ring, started a new Animal Crossing island), I played several games I am nowhere near finishing (Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, Ghost of Yōtei, Oblivion Remastered), I bounced off Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 because I’m terrible at turn-based but I watched lots of it when Adam played it and it deserves every bit of the acclaim, and here at the very end of the year I have become oddly enamored of Two Point Museum even though I am not normally a management sim person, it is a delight.

This year sounded like the Sound Bath playlist on Apple Music and synthwave radio on Lofi Girl and so much Florence + the Machine.

I do (mostly) love Everybody Scream but the Florence album that was on continuous repeat this year was Symphony of Lungs. The original version of Lungs was on constant repeat a million years ago when I was writing The Night Circus, so this album feels both familiar and beautifully different, like revisiting a place that isn’t the same anymore and you aren’t, either, but it feels comforting in its strangeness.

And within that strangeness it’s this track that’s my new favorite, one that I’m not sure I ever even remembered the title of the first time around in those circus days. This one feels like a different time, a different place, a different story in my head.

I will, as usual, not be online that much in 2026 but I will post anything of import here and on bluesky and instagram and I’ll likely still be retumbling pretty things over on tumblr. 

Time keeps feeling like it is slipping by, back here in the ice and the snow again, but we hold on to real things as it passes: kittens and love and paper birds, lights in the woods and stories crafted by often-tired human hands.
By erin, ago

acrylipics night circus & other almost-autumn things

There is a beautiful and extremely shiny new edition of The Night Circus coming from AcryliPics. I love what they’ve done with the colors in all the jewel tones and those incredible edges. I can’t wait to see it in person.

The AcryliPics Night Circus goes on sale today, August 30th, at 2pm EST.

In case you missed it: awhile back I talked with the wonderful Christina Orlando about The Night Circus in general, the Folio Society edition in particular and possibly a few things about the new book as well over on Reactor. (And video games, of course. Blue Prince remains astonishing and perfect.)

Everything at Out of Print is 20% off this weekend (through September 1st) including their Night Circus collection

My dear friend Marty Cahill’s debut novella, Audition for the Fox, comes out on September 16th and it is a marvel. I’m still not sure how he managed to fit so much world in such a slight volume, it feels like a fox trick. (Vesper is equally captivated.)

The leaves and the light here have started to turn already, autumn impatient to arrive. 

I’ve been mostly offline and that will continue into the fall though I do check in on Bluesky occasionally (there are bunnies over there at the moment) and I continue to repost pretty things over on tumblr. 
By erin, ago

the folio society edition of the night circus

I am over the moon that this stunning edition of The Night Circus is now available from The Folio Society. I have been a fan and a collector of their beautiful books for years so it is an honor and a delight to have the circus included in such company. 

This edition is illustrated by the incredible Cristina Bencina and has a new introduction by me (mostly about blank notebooks and time) and so many beautiful, thoughtful details, from the endpapers to the red ribbon bookmark.

Everything about the book design is gorgeous and Cristina’s illustrations are luminous and unique, I adore the way she combines lines and color. 

I am endlessly thankful to have this story encased in such a work of art. 

(Vesper remains skeptical as always.)
By erin, ago

goodbye 2024

I’m not sure what to say about 2024. It was a year. It’s over now. It went by quickly but seemed endless at times. I flipped through a dozen photos of baby goats on our 2024 calendar. Many things were terrible but there were baby goats to count the days with as they passed.

It was a year of coordinated number book anniversaries: The Night Circus turned 13 on September 13th. The Starless Sea turned 5 on November 5th. I would have done something festive if I’d thought of what and had the energy or the time. Let’s pretend there were parties, somewhere, dressed in technicolor and dipped in gold.

(Also Adam & I had our 10th wedding anniversary and Vesper turned 6, she was not being helpful with all of the nicely-numbered anniversaries but it’s okay because she can’t do math.)

This year a bunny spent a great deal of time in our yard eating the clover. One day in the spring while we were sitting on the back porch the tiniest fawn I have ever seen wandered up and tucked itself into the tall weeds near the trees maybe fifteen feet away from us and stayed there near invisible all day for baby deer daycare, standing up occasionally to stretch its tiny legs. Now that the snow is back there are fox prints again, circling the house, silent unseen pacing in the cold.

This year brought the gorgeous Books Illustrated version of The Starless Sea, the Vintage Classics version of The Night Circus, FairyLoot‘s beautiful editions of both books and Folio Society‘s centennial edition of Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter which I wrote the introduction for. 

(Next year has more pretty things in store, I will share them whenever I am able to.)

I had a slow writing year. I am a slow writer at the best of times and the last while has been decidedly not so best. I have bits and pieces and fragments and I don’t know how they fit together yet.

I spent more time figuring out what the new book isn’t but hopefully that will get me closer to figuring out what it is. I know the place, I know these people, I know the mood. I know who’s playing that piano down the hall and what’s skulking out in the shadows in the garden. I need to figure out the way to thread the story through it all.

I sometimes say I got to write The Night Circus in a bubble, because no one was waiting for it, and for The Starless Sea I had to try to create an imaginary bubble to write in. I think I need some imaginary bubble reconstruction for this one, a stronger space to seal myself away from everything so I can listen to the story better.

I had a slow reading year, too. Much of the to-read pile languished unread. I read bits of things and nonfiction on [redacted] topics and a fair amount of books but only fell in love with a few of them, slight volumes savored briefly in between research reading, a new adventure by a beloved author and a French classic from 1913.

Favorite books I read this year:

Linghun by Ai Jiang

The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed

The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes) by Alain-Fournier

Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart by GennaRose Nethercott

Moonbound by Robin Sloan

The Melancholy of Untold History by Minsoo Kang

(Honorable mention to Jedediah Berry’s The Naming Song which I read last year but was published in September. I have not seen it on nearly enough best-of-2024 lists, it is wonderful.)

Favorite video games for 2024 (in two categories this year!)

Favorite video games I played in 2024 (appropriately, the year of the dragon):

Dragon’s Dogma 2  – I bounced off the first one fairly early but I loved everything about this, from the long perilous traveling around the map to the fact that my best armor didn’t involve pants. 

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree – I wasn’t sure it would live up to the main game but it does and in some ways it’s even more glorious. (Except for the final boss which is hot nonsense.)

Dragon Age: The Veilguard – Dragon Age: Inquisition is the game of my heart so my expectations were high and this met them in a lot of ways. Emmrich is my new favorite BioWare romance. I wish the whole game was longer. I hope we don’t have to wait another 10 years for more.

Favorite video games I played with Adam this year (we play a lot of games together where we trade the controller back-and-forth or I just help with puzzles and yelp at jump scares):

Astro Bot

Stray

Alan Wake 2

Silent Hill 2

We don’t play a ton of tabletop games but we’ve been playing a lot of Escape the Dark Castle this year with varying degrees of escape success but it’s always fun. It’s easy to learn, different every game, and delightfully creepy.

This year sounded like Fleet Foxes and Lofi Girl Halloween and Zelda on piano and Radiohead and Vitamin String Quartet. When trying to choose a single song that sounded like 2024 I kept going back to this one and this version of it in particular, from several solstices ago. 

I will likely not be online terribly often in 2025, not that I am online that much anyway. (Currently I am most active on bluesky and tumblr and instagram, more or less in that order.) I am going to attempt to have a year that has fewer screens and more fountain pens and bunnies and clover, continuing to be a woodland hermit.

Around here we will be writing a book (mostly me) and taking naps in the pink sparkle unicorn house (mostly Vesper).

I hope your 2025 has some warmth and softness and magic in it.
By erin, ago