Fourteen Stones releases in October 2022!

Thanks so much to everyone who supported our crowdfunder! Fourteen Stones goes to print very soon and will be out in the world this fall. Huge thanks also to my wonderful indie publisher, The Patchwork Raven, who took on my project as their first full-length fantasy novel, and have been the most supportive champions for my work that I could ask for!

Fourteen Stones is a literary fantasy about a group of refugees, their search for home, and how their journey reshapes lives and changes the politics and futures of two nations. The Patchwork Raven calls it “a gorgeous fantasy novel, so different to anything we have read before,” and praises its rich storyline and deeply human characters. “We can’t wait to share it with the world!”

Click here for an interview with me and Jax Goss at the Raven, with all the inside scoop on Fourteen Stones! You can also visit the book’s own page for more info and excerpts.

If you’d like to stay up to date about the book’s release, when you can buy it, and the events I’ll be doing later this year, you’ll find that info on the book’s page and on my blog. Please consider subscribing!

Other News:

My short story “Coreopsis” is now live in The Los Angeles Review! “Coreopsis” was also longlisted in Dzanc Books’s 2022 Disquiet Literary Contest. Per judges’ comments, “A richly atmospheric story, ‘Coreopsis’ brought to mind both ‘The Handmaiden’s Tale’ and ‘The Stepford Wives,’ even as it stays both fresh and authentic. The threat of war that looms over this short, succinct story, feels all too real.”

New online writing classes coming soon! Check out my Classes page for more.

Would you like help with your writing project from a prizewinning author and experienced teacher? Visit my Manuscript Consulting page for details.

About Me:

Kris Faatz (rhymes with skates) is a fiction writer and musician. Her first novel, To Love A Stranger, was a finalist for the 2016 Schaffner Press Music in Literature Award and was released May 2017 by Blue Moon Publishers (Toronto, ON). Her second novel, literary fantasy Fourteen Stones, is forthcoming in 2022 from The Patchwork Raven (Wellington, NZ).

Kris’s short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including The Baltimore Review, Kenyon Review Online, Streetlight Magazine, Potomac Review, and Reed, and has received recognition in various competitions, most recently winning Tiferet Journal‘s 2020 fiction contest. She has been a contributor at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the recipient of a Peter Taylor Fellowship at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops. In 2018, she served as a preliminary-round judge for the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award. She currently teaches creative writing with the Community College of Baltimore County, Baltimore County Public Library system, and Baltimore Bridges, and is a regular presenter at the Bay to Ocean Writers Conference, run by Maryland’s Eastern Shore Writers Association. She is also a performing pianist.

As a no-holds-barred reader, Kris has special devotion to Barbara Kingsolver, Terry Pratchett, Richard Adams, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, Christopher Moore, and Neil Gaiman. She loves hiking and exploring the outdoors, especially if it involves lakes, oceans or streams. She lives in Maryland with her husband, jazz saxophonist and composer Paul Faatz, and feline contingent Alafair, Templeton, and Fergus.

BOOKS:

Find To Love A Stranger in paperback and e-book formats on Amazon, and in paperback at Barnes and Noble.

Connect with me (and leave a review) on Goodreads!

Praise for Kris’s debut novel:

“To Love A Stranger is a page-turner, a story that will resonate with the reader for a long time to come.” – Geeta Kothari, author of I Brake For Moose and Other Stories

“Faatz takes her reader into the music in a way that feels genuine and serious, yet never overly technical. Her sentences make me want to listen to Chopin’s third Ballade, to Brahms’ Hungarian Dances.” – Hannah Howard, author of Feast

“To Love A Stranger was written with the harmony of humanity in mind. To Love A Stranger is a song.” – Leesa Cross-Smith, author of Whiskey & Ribbons

“It’s the kind of book people don’t write enough anymore, one where you’re just with the people, and there’s nothing to get in between you and them.” – Tom Andes, author