For Immediate Release July 3rd, 2026
Lexington, KY:
Apex Book Company is excited to announce the acquisition of Blessings from War Island by Janna Miller. Pitched as resting between the literary style of John Wiswell's Someone You Can Build a Nest In and the quirky voice of Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries, this novel is a contemporary fantasy with an autistic war goddess, socio-economic roots, and pop-culture humor.
Finally freed from a remote island with rude pigeons and smutty paperback romances, Aaya is an ancient war goddess with no war to fight. When a vengeful queen contracts her to start a war against a modern predatory lender and his empire of debt-collecting toads, Aaya realizes that she is not the murderous bitch she used to be.
Except when it comes to avenging her sister—the one whose death left a hole in her heart the size of every battle ever fought and every war never won. Aaya discovers the location of her sister's once-lost resting place and strangely, the closer she gets to her sister's grave, the more bones and indebted souls she finds.
The pattern of betrayal reminds her why she became a rampaging goddess in the first place. With her immortality and Depression Glass collection hanging in the balance, no one in the world is safe, unless Aaya can see past her present fury to the truth she missed long ago.
Blessings from War Island is a genre-defying title, making you laugh on one page and then rail against the capitalistic system the next. This novel explores loss, vengeance, and perhaps a quality the world struggles to grasp today: hope.
Janna Miller is an AuDHD cat collector, flash fiction editor, student loan defaulter, and school librarian from North Carolina. She has published more than fifty short stories in SmokeLong Quarterly, Shenandoah, and Best MicroFiction, among others. She has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best MicroFiction, and the Pushcart Prize. Her flash story collection, All Lovers Burn at the End of the World, was published in 2024 from ELJ Editions. She is also a grateful submissions editor for SmokeLong Quarterly and spends a lot of time with various short-lived, and sadly expensive crafts.
Blessings from War Island is scheduled for release in July 2027 and has distribution through IPG.
