Published in 2020
154 pages
AJ Fitzwater is 1000 tiny dragons flapping furiously inside a meat suit, living between two fault lines in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Their short stories have been published in Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer Magazine, Giganotosaurus, and other venues and anthologies of repute. Their capybara pirate collection “The Voyages of Cinrak The Dapper” and their WW2 Land Girls shapeshifter novella “No Man’s Land” were published in 2020.
Two Sir Julius Vogel Awards hunker on their shelf, and the Clarion Class of 2014 hunkers in their history
What is this book about?
No Man’s Land is a historical fantasy and a love story set in the golden plains of North Otago, in the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Dorothea ‘Tea’ Gray joins the Land Service and is sent to work on a remote farm, one of many young women left to fill the empty shoes left by fathers and brothers serving in the Second World War.
But Tea finds more than hard work and hot sun in the dusty North Otago nowhere—she finds a magic inside herself she never could have imagined, a way to save her brother in a distant land she never thought she could reach, and a love she never knew existed.
Inspired by feminist and LGBTQ+ history and family memories of North Otago in wartime, A.J Fitzwater has turned a piece of forgotten women’s history into a tapestry of furious pride and love that crosses cultures, countries and decades.
