Dedication

To what we have lost and what we can still save.

Acknowledgments

A book is a journey, and not one I could have walked alone.

My heartfelt thanks to the beta readers who read this book in whole or in part and offered essential feedback: Karin, Frey, Caro and Roy. Thank you all. This book wouldn’t be what it is without you.

In addition, I am grateful always for the support and counsel of all my loved ones during the writing and editing of this book, a period of time where (unrelatedly!) I found myself having to make some hard decisions about my health. And thank you to my lost worms, my rpg groups, and my writing communities, both online and local. Special thanks to AJ and Andi for the publishing advice and help! I am endlessly lucky in the quality and amount of my friends. Weird how I keep writing about found families even when I don’t specifically set out to, huh?

Janelle Monáe’s album ‘Dirty Computer’ and the Hadestown concept album by Anaïs Mitchell formed significant parts of the soundtrack of writing this book. Fans of the Twilight Mirage season of the Friends at the Table podcast will recognise an influence both in the themes of the setting and in me having the gleeful gall to name characters things like Significance O’Hallow.

Lastly, many thanks to Catherine and the team at Queen of Swords Press for wanting to publish my hopeful queer book. I couldn’t be happier that Foxhunt found its home with Queen of Swords. I will also never be over the beautiful and stunning cover by Laya Rose, my dream cover artist for this book. Thank you all!

Introduction

One of the roles of storytellers is to see us through hard times.

In long winters the community would gather by the fire to hear sagas of bravery and grandeur to distract them from the howling winds. Similar, to me, is the warm moment in the lounge when someone picks up the guitar and plays. Both help us remember the touch of the sun: to close our eyes and be elsewhere, and know the hard times aren’t forever.

There have been darker times than this for much of the world’s population, but no one would call the last few years easy. For a novel first drafted in 2017, and accepted for publication in 2021 – well. Maybe one day, dates that close to 2016 and 2020 won’t ring like a warning bell in a reader’s mind, but for now, you can imagine why my mind turned to escape, to a world that not only didn’t end, but flourished.