2014 Reading, Books 112-114

112) The Secret Journal of Ichabod Crane by Alex Irvine

Sleepy Hollow is my latest obsession (though I was not happy with this Monday's episode!), and this book is a quick, pleasant companion read to the first season. I thought the voice and writing were quite strong. That said, it was like episode commentary--Ichabod's thoughts on the battles and monsters we saw him face on the show and his musings on Katrina and Jeremy--where I was hoping for more of a deleted scenes approach. My favorite parts of the show are Ichabod's sometimes baffled and reliably snarky commentary on 21st century life and his relationship with Abbie, so I wanted more of that. If anything, the book had less. Ah, well. That's what fanfic is for!

113) Losing Our Way by Bob Herbert

This isn't the book I'd recommend if you're looking for something happy and hopeful. It's about the mistakes America has been making as a nation for almost my whole life, and certainly for as long as I've been politically active and aware. Growing income inequality. Aging infrastructure. Endless wars going on below most Americans' radar. Education "reform" that does more harm than good and doesn't address the true problem--namely that we have the highest child poverty rate of any advanced nation.

I see all this. I know all this. Mr Fraser and I are doing well, in the big scheme of things. We're far from the 1%, but we're well above the median income for our city, which is above the U.S. median. I don't worry about money on a day-to-day basis. We've never been hungry. And yet I don't feel truly secure, since we've arrived at this comfortable position fairly recently, and I know both of our industries could suffer greatly in another downturn. And Seattle is a rich city, and we live in a good if not especially tony neighborhood--yet I still see decaying infrastructure all around me, from tire-eating potholes to bridges that probably should've been replaced a decade or two ago, but we'll just keep our fingers crossed and hope the maintenance crews know what they're doing, given that we live in earthquake country.

When the Great Recession first started, I had hopes that people would look back to the 30's and see an opportunity to revive the WPA or something like it. Rebuild those bridges. Shore up the levees. Reinvest in the basic science that will save lives 20 or 40 years down the line or see our great-grandchildren colonizing Mars. Acknowledge that Keynes was right and deficit-spend now to see the dividends in a more prosperous future. I don't know why I was so naive. I'd like to hope things will change--and Herbert tries to end on a hopeful note, calling for citizen action--but I don't think enough people are listening.

114) Once Upon a Winter's Eve by Tessa Dare

And on a much lighter note, this Christmas novella is a quick, engaging read about lovers reunited. It isn't a history geek historical romance--I don't think anyone was all that worried about the French invading England by 1813. If it'd been 1803, sure. But it's fun and well-written, and I always enjoy a good holiday novella at this time of year. When you're busy with your own end-of-year responsibilities, the short reads hit the spot.

A Christmas Reunion and Freedom to Love - now available for preorder!

It's been almost a year now since my last new release, but I'm about to have two in very quick succession. Both are now available for preorder at most major ebook retailers!

A Christmas Reunion - November 24, 2014

A Christmas Reunion is a 29,000-word Regency romance novella about a pair of star-crossed lovers reunited after a five-year separation--and just days before Cat, the heroine, is due to marry another man.

My goal with this story was to create something romantic, festive, and just the perfect length to read while flying home for the holidays or waiting for that Thanksgiving or Christmas turkey to cook.

I wrote it during January and February, when the weather was still dark and wintry but after the Christmas carols were supposed to be put away until December rolls back around. My iPhone holds a large collection of Christmas music, running heavily to carols, wassail songs, and choral pieces. I kept myself in the right mood to write the holiday by listening to carols like "The Holly and the Ivy," "Bring a Torch, Jeannette, Isabella," and "Gaudete", but only in my car when I was completely alone.

If you'd like to learn more about this story, read an excerpt, and/or preorder your copy, visit A Christmas Reunion's page at my website.

Freedom to Love - January 5, 2015

Freedom to Love releases the same week as the 200th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans--which is only fitting, since it opens in the immediate aftermath of that conflict. My hero, Henry Farlow (whom some of you may remember as Elijah Cameron's officer friend from A Dream Defiant) is wounded and knocked unconscious during the battle. When he awakens, he wanders away in a daze, only to be taken in by Therese Bondurant, a free woman of color, and her enslaved half-sister Jeannette. They save his life--and a few days later he's able to return the favor, but in a way that forces the trio to flee into the American wilderness lest they find themselves charged with murder.

This is a full-length, 99,000-word historical romance, and among other things it has pirate treasure, a voyage aboard the steamboat Enterprize (once I saw that name, I had to get my characters aboard her), alligators, a Methodist circuit rider, and a tornado.

For more information, an excerpt, and preorder links, visit my Freedom to Love page.

Cover for A Christmas Reunion

I promised you one more Christmas-related post for this hot July week, and here it is! My 2014 holiday novella, A Christmas Reunion, now has a cover:

Isn't it pretty? I think it perfectly captures the emotion of the story, which is all about star-crossed lovers reuniting at Christmas just a week before she's supposed to marry another man.

(Incidentally, my first thought on receiving a new cover is always, ALWAYS, "But that's not what they look like!" Which I've accepted will inevitably be the case--it's not like I can draw more than stick figures myself, so I can't show you what the characters look like in my head. And in cases where they closely resemble some celebrity, it's not like, say, Cam Newton is going to take time off from his lucrative day job as an NFL quarterback or Tom Hiddleston from his as a major actor to, like, pose for my covers, so unless they have a double out there in the romance novel cover photo modeling industry, still not gonna happen. In this case the characters are pretty close, though in my head the heroine has lighter, redder hair.)

Christmas in July

As some of you know, I'm originally from Alabama, though I live in the Pacific Northwest now. My native state has famously hot and muggy summers, and I remember one day in particular when I was home from college for the summer and was driving around running errands.  The DJ on one of the radio stations announced that the AC was down in the studio, and he had to do something to cool off...so he broke out the Christmas music. And for the rest of that 95-degree Deep South summer day, he played carol after carol. The thing is, it did seem to help. My car was a tiny, aging 1980 Dodge Colt whose AC only sorta worked, and I swear I felt cooler for all that joy to the world and those herald angels singing.

Seattle summers aren't anywhere near as brutal as Alabama's, but most of us don't own air conditioners. Mr. Fraser and I are lucky enough to have a window unit in the master bedroom, but the rest of the house starts getting uncomfortable once it gets much above 80. As I type this it's 82 outside and I'm sweating in my writing office despite open windows and a fan. So maybe it's time to think cool winter holiday thoughts again.

And Entangled Publishing is here to help. Today and tomorrow they're hosting a Christmas in July event on Facebook. Do stop by if you need a reminder that winter is coming. And if you'd like to pick up a quick Christmas read to enjoy at the beach or to save on your e-reader for the holidays, my short novella Christmas Past is available year-round wherever ebooks are sold!

Time-traveling PhD student Sydney Dahlquist’s first mission sounded simple enough—spend two weeks in December 1810 collecting blood samples from the sick and wounded of Wellington’s army, then go home to modern-day Seattle and Christmas with her family. But when her time machine breaks, stranding her in the past, she must decide whether to sacrifice herself to protect the timeline or to build a new life—and embrace a new love—two centuries before her time.

Rifle captain Miles Griffin has been fascinated by the tall, beautiful “Mrs. Sydney” from the day he met her caring for wounded soldiers. When he stumbles upon her time travel secret on Christmas Eve, he vows to do whatever it takes to seduce her into making her home in his present—by his side.

And later this week I'll have more Christmas-themed news to share!

Announcing A Christmas Reunion

My 2014 Christmas novella from Carina has a title at last--A Christmas Reunion--and a release date of 11/24/14. Watch this space for more details as the release date draws closer, and in the meantime you can check out an excerpt at my website!

2014 Reading, Books 1-3

Time to start a brand new year's reading log! My goal this year is to read 120 books, so I'm shooting for 10/month. And since I had Thursday and Friday off as well as New Year's Day, I'm off to a good start for January. 

My only other goal is to have as much fun with reading as possible this year. Unless it's part of my judging assignment for the Ritas or something I need to research for one of my manuscripts, everything I read will be chosen because it's entertaining and/or fascinating.

This is a reading log rather than my book reviews. I personally don't feel comfortable wearing a reviewer's hat as well as an author's--if you give a scathing review to a best-seller, you come across as jealous, while if you're hard on a newbie, it feels like punching down. So on this blog I'm just listing what I finish, with a few short notes on what I got out of the reading experience. Since I don't finish books unless I enjoy them, you can assume that if I was reviewing, any book listed would at least get a 3.5 stars/B- grade.

1) The Sharing Spoon, by Kathleen Eagle.

I'm not a big fan of small town/rural or Western romance, but Kathleen Eagle is one of my exceptions. Her husband is Lakota, she lives in Minnesota, and for the most part she writes the world she lives in--which means her Native American characters feel like real human beings from a real culture rather than Mystical Fonts of New Age Wisdom. This book is a collection of three holiday novellas (one Thanksgiving and two Christmas), and all of them worked well for me, though the historical "The Wolf and the Lamb" was my favorite. All in all, a good read to say farewell to the holiday season and usher in the new year.

2) Rosemary and Rue, by Seanan McGuire.

Since my introduction to McGuire was the far lighter-toned Discount Armageddon, I was surprised and initially taken aback by how much darker and grimmer this urban fantasy world is. Rosemary and Rue introduces half-human, half-fae San Francisco detective Toby Daye, who lost fourteen years of her life by being transformed into a fish while investigating a case for her faerie liege lord. Back in her own form, she doesn't want anything more to do with her old career or her fae connections. But of course she's not really going to be able to escape...

I don't think I'll ever love urban fantasy as much as I do epic and historical fantasy, but this was an intriguing page-turner, and I expect I'll keep reading the series from here.

3) Hyperbole and a Half, by Allie Brosh.

I've been a fan of Allie Brosh ever since my first encounter with Clean All the Things! So naturally her book was at the top of my Christmas wish list. It's a series of illustrated essays, a mix of blog posts and new material that's both laugh-out-loud funny and thoughtfully self-aware. The essays on depression are especially illuminating. I'm not very prone to depression myself--my personal demons tend to take the form of anxiety and panic instead--so her description helps me see and connect to what my friends and relatives who do live with depression are going through.

Twelve Days of Christmas Past

Christmas is over...or is it? Traditionally, the Christmas season actually runs through Epiphany on January 6--hence, the Twelve Days of Christmas.

If you're glad to have the hectic round of cooking and shopping over, but would like to savor the spirit of the season a little longer, you can now pick up my time travel novelette Christmas Past as part of a four-story anthology, Twelve Days of Christmas Past, which also includes stories by Rebecca Thomas and Emily Larkin. It's only $2.99 and is available at:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Google
All Romance eBooks

TBR Challenge - Holiday Romance

'Tis the season, so this month's TBR challenge theme is Holiday Reads.

I chose This Wicked Gift, Courtney Milan's debut release and part of the 2009 HQN holiday anthology The Heart of Christmas. I bought it shortly after release because I'd heard so many wonderful things about Milan--including raves from a friend who finished second to her in an unpublished contest, then judged her entry in another contest and said she no longer had the slightest regrets about coming in second because Milan's writing was just that awesome.

And yet somehow I didn't get around to reading the novella until this year despite having read others of her books and completely agreeing that she is Just That Awesome. I'm not sure why, except that every time I looked at the anthology on my Kindle, it didn't happen to be the holiday season and I decided to save it for later.

Well, "later" finally came. I read the novella during a quiet evening on our Thanksgiving trip to Oklahoma (yes, I read my December TBR challenge book in November--I had lots of reading time for a change that week, and I knew my first half of December would be insane). It's brilliant. The anthology is worth the purchase price for that story alone, IMHO. It's such a rare treat to read a Regency with non-aristocratic characters, for one thing, and the writing and characterization are a pleasure for readers like me who live for smooth, skilled prose and characters who feel human and three-dimensional. Strong, strong recommend.

Much as I've enjoyed doing the TBR Challenge this year, I've decided not to join again for 2014. Looking back over my reading journal for this year, I decided I want 2014 to be more spontaneous. Somehow the instant I need to read a book, whether for a challenge like this, judging the Ritas, or for research, it becomes homework. And I'm enough of a Muggle version of Hermione Granger that I like homework in moderation, but for the past couple years I feel like I've been missing the joy of grabbing a book just because it's what happens to strike my fancy at that moment.

So, Susanna, are you ever going to write a novel again?

Several years ago, I decided it was high time I teach myself to write novellas. The shorter length didn't come naturally to me. The very first manuscript I ever finished, a chaste Regency in the heroine's first person POV that eventually morphed into my second published book, A Marriage of Inconvenience, clocked in at 150,000 words. Even in my newbie state I understood that was far too long to sell, so I ruthlessly trimmed it down to 100K. Which my brain apparently decided was the One True Length, because without me especially trying, every single novel I've written since has been somewhere in the 90-100K range, at least on first draft.

But I'm not the world's fastest writer, to put it mildly, and it occurred to me that if only I could intersperse my novels with novellas, I could build up my backlist a lot faster. However, it took me three discarded novellas before I managed to finish one. You see, with those failed novellas, I wasn't so much writing ideas that naturally belonged in a shorter form as novel ideas I found interesting, but not necessarily 100,000 words worth of interesting. Recipe for failure, that.

I then focused my mind on what made a workable novella-length romance. I thought of a couple who already knew each other, forced by circumstances to marry immediately, and wrote A Dream Defiant. I brainstormed a Christmas story covering less than 24 hours and ending with a Happily For Now (with strong possibility for Happily Ever After) instead of one of those baby epilogues I'm sappy enough to be fond of, and wrote Christmas Past. And I thought of a pair of star-crossed lovers reunited at Christmas and wrote my 2014 holiday release (title TBD).

Now, the most common criticism I've seen in reviews for both A Dream Defiant and Christmas Past is that readers thought there was too much story there for the brief page count. Without going into lengthy engagement with said reviews, I'll just say that I can see the readers' points in both cases. I've often had the same reaction to other authors' novellas as a reader. However, I do plan to keep writing novellas and trying to master the art of making a love story feel real, lasting, and weighty in 40,000 words or less.

That said, I didn't set out to release three novellas in a row--it just kinda worked out that way. And I'm delighted to announce that I've just sold another NOVEL to Carina Press. It's a sequel to A Dream Defiant, working title My Lady Defiant (though that could change). It stars Henry Farlow (whom readers of A Dream Defiant may recall as Elijah's officer friend who gives Elijah work on the side as a clerk to help conceal what modern readers will recognize as dyslexia), who is wounded at the Battle of New Orleans. He wanders off the battlefield in a daze, gets lost...and is rescued by Therese Bondurant, a femme de couleur libre struggling to keep her inheritance despite the fact her feckless planter father never got around to updating his will to align with American law. A few days later Henry gets to repay the favor by rescuing Therese and her half-sister and brother--but under circumstances that force them to flee for their lives.

That's all I'll say for now, since we're still over a year out from my release date (which is TBD, but most likely early 2015). I still need to finish writing the thing! But it is, indeed, a novel, and one I hope you'll enjoy once it reaches virtual shelves.

I'm a Fresh Pick!

Last night I got a happy surprise in my inbox--Christmas Past is the Fresh Pick for today over at Fresh Fiction! Thanks to all the readers who selected it.

2013 Reading, Books 103-108

I spent much of November in something of a reading drought, but managed to break it over Thanksgiving week. We visited my in-laws in Tulsa, so I had the whole week off work with two long flights on either end--perfect reading time!

103) Women in English Society 1500-1800, Mary Prior (ed.).

My next randomly chosen research selection, this one had less to do with the world I write about than I expected because it would've been bettered titled Women in English Society 1500-1700. Only one of the chapters had much to say about the 18th century. (My books are set in the opening decades of the 19th century, but the Regency has more in common with the Georgian 18th century than the Victorian heart of the 19th.) That said, it was informative and interesting in a dry, academic sort of way. I was particularly intrigued by the chapter on Tudor bishops' wives, because I so take for granted the respected role of a Protestant pastor's wife that I'd never properly considered how unprecedented and even scandalous married clergy would've seemed to the people of England just after the break with Rome.

104) The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, by Tom Reiss.

The fascinating biography of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas (father of the famous author), son of a French marquis and a Haitian slave, brought to France as a teenager by his father a few years prior to the French Revolution. He enlisted in the cavalry as a common soldier, but after the Revolution he rose to the rank of General D'Armee. Toussaint Louverture held the same rank, but the next black officer to hold an equivalent rank in a western army? Colin Powell.

He died relatively young, in 1806. Still, I'm surprised that with my years of reading about his era I'd never heard of him before. Partly that's because my focus is more on later parts of the Napoleonic Wars, but I've read about the invasion of Egypt and the Italian campaigns he was involved in without encountering him, either. Turns out Dumas, who held strong republican beliefs, didn't like Napoleon, who returned the contempt with interest...and when it was in Napoleon's interest to curry favor with slaveholders and reinstate racist laws, there wasn't a place for a commander like Alex Dumas. Hence his small place in the history books...

105) 250 Things You Should Know About Writing, by Chuck Wendig.

I enjoy Wendig's blog and Twitter commentary on writing and writers, and this short book was a good set of quick reminders about various aspects of the fiction-writing process. I expect to refer to the character and plotting sections in the future.

106) Eat, Play, Lust, by Tawna Fenske.

Another very short read (do you sense a theme here?), a fun quick romance where a yoga instructor heroine with food issues begins a promising relationship with a chef who helps her enjoy the pleasures of food along with other pleasures of the flesh.

107) This Wicked Gift, by Courtney Milan.

For my last read in my romance TBR challenge for 2013--theme, holiday reads--I read Courtney Milan's first published work. More detailed post to come later in the month.

108) Game Change, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.

Gossipy account of the 2008 election. In political terms that now feels like ancient history, but reading it brought back some of the intensity of living through it. Confirmed and intensified my already emphatic opinion that the Democrats dodged a major bullet by not nominating John Edwards. And I like Hillary and am ready to support her if she runs in 2016, but she'd sure better pick a better team to run her campaign.

Announcing Christmas Past!

I can at last announce that I have a novella coming out from Entangled Publishing for the 2013 holiday season, now available for preorder from Amazon. Christmas Past will be released on November 25, just in time for the holiday season.

Time-traveling PhD student Sydney Dahlquist’s first mission sounded simple enough—spend two weeks in December 1810 collecting blood samples from the sick and wounded of Wellington’s army, then go home to modern-day Seattle and Christmas with her family. But when her time machine breaks, stranding her in the past, she must decide whether to sacrifice herself to protect the timeline or to build a new life—and embrace a new love—two centuries before her time.

Rifle captain Miles Griffin has been fascinated by the tall, beautiful “Mrs. Sydney” from the day he met her caring for wounded soldiers. When he stumbles upon her time travel secret on Christmas Eve, he vows to do whatever it takes to seduce her into making her home in his present—by his side.

I had fun writing this story because as a historical author I rarely get the chance to write about anything to do with my everyday life. My home city of Seattle wasn't even founded until 40 years or so after the time period my stories are set in. But for Christmas Past I was able to write a heroine from Seattle who'd desperately love to go back to my cloudy city and a 21st-century life not entirely unlike my own. Also, she's a PhD student in a world where time travel exists and is primarily used for academic research. My day job is in research administration, so I enjoyed the world building of figuring out how universities and research institute would manage and regulate time travel--though I promise that the inner workings of the temporal review board and the fierce competition for limited grant dollars in historical epidemiology are only hinted at on the page!

Christmas Past is a short work, only 13,000 words, which Wikipedia informs me is sometimes termed a novelette. In other words, it's bite-sized, designed to be read in one sitting--perfect for this busy season while you're waiting for your pies to bake or on a quick flight home for the holidays. (Though if your flight takes you across a continent or an ocean, I do have longer books available!) In any case, I hope you enjoy my first venture out of the strictly historical!

A Dream Defiant release day and blog tour!

My new release (and first-ever novella), A Dream Defiant, hits virtual shelves tomorrow, July 29!

Spain, 1813

Elijah Cameron, the son of runaway slaves, has spent his whole life in the British army proving that a black man can be as good a soldier as a white man. After a victory over the French, Elijah promises one of his dying men that he will deliver a scavenged ruby necklace to his wife, Rose, a woman Elijah has admired for years.

Elijah feels bound to protect her and knows a widow with a fortune in jewels will be a target. Rose dreams of using the necklace to return to England, but after a violent attack, she realizes that she needs Elijah's help to make the journey safely.

Her appreciation for Elijah's strength and integrity soon turns into love, but he doubts she could want a life with him, knowing the challenges they'd face. As their relationship grows, she must convince Elijah that she wants him as more than a bodyguard. And she must prove that their love can overcome all obstacles, no matter the color of their skin.

A Dream Defiant is now available for order pretty much wherever ebooks are sold, including:

• Directly from my publisher, Carina Press. Note that Carina is having a sale on historical romances through July 31 at midnight Eastern time. Order now and enter coupon code HISTC25 and you can get 25% off on all historical romance purchases, including my three previous releases.
• Amazon.com
• Barnes & Noble
• Google Play
• iTunes
• Kobo
• All Romance eBooks
• Amazon Canada
• And, for my European readers, Amazon UK, Amazon France, and Amazon Germany

I will be doing a brief blog tour over the next week or so, and at several stops will be giving away a copy to one lucky commenter.

• It's not too late to comment on my Friday post at Risky Regencies.
• July 29 - Cecilia Grant's blog
• July 30 - the Carina Press blog
• July 31 - SOS Aloha
• July 31 - Romance Cooks
• August 1 - Excerpt at Unusual Historicals
• August 2 - Novel Reflections
• August 4 - Q&A at Unusual Historicals
• August 6 - Romancing the Past

At Romancing the Past...

Today I'm at Romancing the Past, talking about what inspired me to write A Dream Defiant.

A Dream Defiant cover reveal!

My July 29 release, A Dream Defiant, now has a cover!

Spain, 1813

Elijah Cameron, the son of runaway slaves, has spent his whole life in the British army proving that a black man can be as good a soldier as a white man. After a victory over the French, Elijah promises one of his dying men that he will deliver a scavenged ruby necklace to his wife, Rose, a woman Elijah has admired for years.

Elijah feels bound to protect her and knows a widow with a fortune in jewels will be a target. Rose dreams of using the necklace to return to England, but after a violent attack, she realizes that she needs Elijah's help to make the journey safely.

Her appreciation for Elijah's strength and integrity soon turns into love, but he doubts she could want a life with him, knowing the challenges they'd face. As their relationship grows, she must convince Elijah that she wants him as more than a bodyguard. And she must prove that their love can overcome all obstacles, no matter the color of their skin.

28,000 words

A Dream Defiant is available for preorder now at Amazon, Amazon UK, Google Play, the iTunes Store, and Barnes & Noble, with more e-tailers to come as my release date approaches.

A Dream Defiant - now available for preorder on Amazon!

I still don't have a cover for my July 29 release, A Dream Defiant, but it's now available for preorder on Amazon.

Spain, 1813 

Elijah Cameron, the son of runaway slaves, has spent his whole life in the British army proving that a black man can be as good a soldier as a white man. After a victory over the French, Elijah promises one of his dying men that he will deliver a scavenged ruby necklace to his wife, Rose, a woman Elijah has admired for years. 

Elijah feels bound to protect her and knows a widow with a fortune in jewels will be a target. Rose dreams of using the necklace to return to England, but after a violent attack, she realizes that she needs Elijah's help to make the journey safely. 

Her appreciation for Elijah's strength and integrity soon turns into love, but he doubts she could want a life with him, knowing the challenges they'd face. As their relationship grows, she must convince Elijah that she wants him as more than a bodyguard. And she must prove that their love can overcome all obstacles, no matter the color of their skin. 

28,000 words

I'll post the cover as soon as I get it. Also, Amazon always posts books for preorder way ahead of anyone else, but like my other books, this will be available wherever ebooks are sold in due course.

I have a title! (And also a reading update)

My 2013 interracial historical romance novella now has a title--A Dream Defiant. I just finished my first round of edits, and I'll have much more to say about the story as its July 29 release date draws closer.

I've been busy with edits and Christmas prep, but I've managed to squeeze in a little reading time, and now that I'm off work till Jan. 2, I plan to fit in a lot more before the new year. Tune in 12/31 for my last reading update of the year, plus my top ten reads of 2012.

101) The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy Sayers. I read this once before, years ago, but I didn't remember the details. Not the best Lord Peter book by a long shot, and I kinda skimmed most of the bell-ringing arcana, but an enjoyable read. Right now it's available as a Kindle book for $2.99, so a good deal if you're looking to fill out your digital Wimsey collection.

102) Tim Gunn's Fashion Bible, by Tim Gunn with Ada Calhoun. A combination brief history of most commonly worn articles of clothing and guidelines on choosing appropriate and flattering modern versions of said articles.


103) The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan. I recently watched Ken Burns' Dust Bowl documentary and wanted to learn more, and this book was highly recommended. It's a gripping, horrifying read, and it's stunning to think such a disaster, both ecological and economic, happened in my country less than a century ago, within my parents' lifetimes, albeit barely (Dad was born in 1929, Mom in 1932). And while my parents grew up in rural poverty, at least they had the blessing to grow up in a place (central Alabama), that's actually endowed by nature with a climate suitable for farming and rich, quick-growing forests. It also gave me a better appreciation, not that I ever truly doubted it, that FDR and the New Deal saved this country and that we ought to be using the current downturn to reinforce and strengthen the safety net, not tear it down in pursuit of debt-cutting and austerity that any sensible reading of our own history, not to mention the current state of much of Europe, shows would only make things worse.

Sorry. Got a little political there...

104) The Betrayal of the Blood Lily, by Lauren Willig. Book 6 in the Pink Carnation historical spy-romance series, which are always great fun, though I often find myself skimming past the modern framing story. I particularly enjoyed this entry, since I'm fascinated by late 18th/early 19th-century India.

105) Ichiro, by Ryan Inzana. A graphic novel about a boy with an American father and Japanese mother learning about the Japanese side of his heritage, considering questions of war, peace, and atrocities committed by both nations, and, oh, getting pulled into the spirit world. Not my usual reading, but thoughtful and beautifully illustrated.

Reading Update - Memoir, Mystery, and Romance

Still inching toward 100 books read on the year...

86) Evolving in Monkey Town, by Rachel Held Evans. Memoir about how a girl who grew up in the airtight certainty of conservative Christianity discovered she didn't have all the answers after all and learned to live with a faith that has questions and uncertainties. At the risk of talking about religion more than I normally do on this blog...I can relate.

87) The Book of Mormon Girl, by Joanna Brooks. An interesting book to read right after Evolving in Monkey Town, since it's also the story of a woman raised in a conservative religious background who struggles with her faith while deciding to stay within it. I think what struck me most, surprised me, really, was her sense of connection to the history of the Mormon faith. To my eyes, it's an awfully short history--I mean, my native state (Alabama) wasn't even one of the original thirteen, and it's still older than the Mormon church. But I can see how if you're actually descended from people who made the trek to Utah with Brigham Young, it wouldn't be the kind of thing one could lightly walk away from.

88) Bruno, Chief of Police, by Martin Walker. A delightful mystery set in a village in the South of France. It has an unfashionably leisurely pace--the dead body doesn't show up till the end of Chapter 4--which IMHO worked well by mirroring the peaceful, timeless lifestyle Bruno values and strives to protect. I was also impressed with the way Walker balanced the overall loveliness and humor of his story with the darkness of the murder plot (the corpse is found with a swastika carved on his body). I look forward to reading the rest of Walker's fiction and quite possibly some of his nonfiction, too.

89) An Illicit Temptation, by Jeannie Lin. A short novella (or long short story--I'm never sure where these lines are drawn) featuring a secondary character from My Fair Concubine. Like Lin's other books, it's set during the Tang Dynasty, though it takes place among the nomadic Khitan people. (The heroine is a Chinese woman, purportedly royal, on the way to the Khitan ruler as a treaty bride.) A quick read that nonetheless feels satisfying and wholly fleshed out.

Any book I post about on this blog is one I liked enough to finish and therefore enough to recommend...but books #88 and and #89 were especially good reads, contenders for my top ten on the year. If you like mysteries or historical romance, give them a try.

I'm a novella-ist!

My editor at Carina just told me that they'd like to acquire my latest work--and my first successful attempt at a novella! Every other manuscript I've ever completed came in somewhere between 85,000 and 100,000 words, and it took me multiple attempts to figure out what kind of story worked at a quarter that length and how to convey a complete emotional arc in a compressed word count.

The title remains TBD, as does the release date, though it'll almost certainly be in the second half of 2013. For now, I'll just say that it's an interracial romance set in the aftermath of the Battle of Vittoria in 1813. The hero, Elijah Cameron, is the son of slaves who escaped a Virginia plantation during the American Revolution to take the British Army's offer of freedom to runaway slaves who helped the war effort. The heroine, Rose Merrifield, is an ordinary English village girl with an extraordinary gift for cooking. Watch this space for more information...

What I've been reading lately

So, I've had a bit of a reading drought the past couple weeks, partly because I went back and read Captain Vorpatril's Alliance again slowly, to savor it properly after bolting through it the first time around.  I do that a lot with Bujold's books--they just get richer on re-reading.

That said, I have a few novellas and graphic novels to add to my 2012 reading count:

59) Slow Summer Kisses, by Shannon Stacey. A contemporary romance novella with a heroine decompressing from a downsizing at her grandparents' summer cabin and a hero who downsized himself a long time ago. I'm not usually a huge fan of small town contemporary romances, but this story really worked for me, and also did a great job convincing me of the characters' compatibility and hopes for happiness despite the relatively short length--I finished it in three half-hour sessions over lunch last week.


60) Serenity: Better Days, by Joss Whedon, Brett Matthews, and Will Conrad. This graphic novel read just like an episode of Firefly--a fun one, but not one of my all-time favorites from that 'verse.

61) Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale, by Joss Whedon, Zack Whedon, and Chris Samnee. Shepherd Book's backstory. I liked this one better than the previous one, but it still felt a bit...incomplete, I guess. I would've liked a bit more of Book's post-conversion life, and some of his childhood hardships seemed a little obvious, but I still enjoyed it.

62) Kilts & Kraken, by Cindy Spencer Pape. Another Carina novella, this one a mid-19th century steampunk romance set in Scotland. I'm not inherently into steampunk, but I enjoyed this book, which like Slow Summer Kisses managed plenty of character development in its short length. (I'm working on a novella now myself, so I suppose I'm studying the form.)