Meerkat acquires Bacon’s first Sauútiverse novel

Meerkat Press has acquired African-Australian author and editor Eugen Bacon’s Crimson in Quietus, the first novel set in the speculative Afrocentric Sauútiverse.

Crimson in Quietus spans the five-planet Sauútiverse, which orbits a binary star. In this literary mystery the investigator is not a detective but a sound magic scientist, Muso’mi: “an expert, highly gifted from childhood in the art of consuming sound.”

Bacon is a founding member of the Sauúti Collective, a group of African Australian writers of speculative fiction. Her development of Crimson in Quietus was supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund as part of University of Tasmania’s three-month Hedberg Fellowship, according to the publisher.

Bacon has woven “Tasmania’s rocky outcrops, natural caves, cascading waterfalls, rivulet trails and swimming holes into the Sauútiverse,” said the publisher. “When her friend unearths a secret but disappears before she can disclose it, Muso’mi transverses the pools of quietude across the planets to follow her research and find the missing woman.”

Bacon is a Solstice, British Fantasy, Ignyte, Locus and Foreword Indies Award winner. She is a twice World Fantasy, Shirley Jackson and Aurealis Award finalist, and a finalist in the Philip K Dick Awards, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards (for her novel Serengotti), and the Nommo Awards for speculative fiction by Africans.

Bacon is also co-editor of Sauúti Terrors, two anthologies from the Sauútiverse, to be published by Flame Tree in January 2026 and January 2027 respectively.

Publisher Tricia Reeks said, “I connected with this exquisite and extraordinary story in such a powerful way, in the only way that Eugen’s writing can move me – as far back as Claiming T-Mo, through Mage of Fools and more, all of them Black speculative fiction. I knew at once that I wanted to publish this new novel.”

Meerkat has scheduled Crimson in Quietus for September 2026.

Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions