2014 Reading, Books 94-96

I've spent the past week fighting off some kind of viral crud that kept me home from work and made me sleepy, breathless, and lethargic. I'm now a week behind on all those lovely "September New Year" projects I blogged about last Monday, but on the positive side I got a lot of reading done! I'm finally feeling better, though, and about ready to dive back in to writing, exercising, cooking healthy foods, and all that important and virtuous stuff.

94) And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts

This was one of the most harrowing and compelling reads I can remember. It focuses on the early years of the AIDS epidemic, mostly from the point of view of the gay men in L.A. and San Francisco who were among its early casualties and of the scientists and clinicians who tried to figure out what was going on despite political stonewalling from all sides. It brought back memories for me of the early to mid 80's, when I was pretty far removed from the crisis--as a heterosexual adolescent girl growing up in the rural South--but still hyper-aware of this strange and terrifying new disease.

There's so much I could say about this book, but what struck me more than anything else is how terrible we are as a species about responding to a slow-moving crisis. Our fight-or-flight mechanisms serve us pretty well with immediate threats, but it's stunning how long it took pretty much everyone involved to take the obvious steps when it was more than clear that AIDS was a blood-borne and sexually transmitted illness with a long incubation period. It reminded me, of all things, of some of the current controversy over climate change--that clinging to a minuscule possibility that the overwhelming preponderance of evidence is wrong because accepting that evidence means you need to make big changes.

95) Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

This book took a few chapters for me to get into it, but after that I couldn't put it down. It's an unusual book, at least for me, but I enjoyed the combination of spy adventure, friendship, courage, and sacrifice it contained.

96) Sweet Disorder by Rose Lerner

Full disclosure: Rose Lerner is one of my critique partners and a very good friend. All that said, if you enjoy historical romances written in a strong voice, with a deep grounding in history that only adds to the richness of characterization, the poignancy of the romance, and the sexiness of the love scenes, you should read this book.

2014 Reading, Books 85-87

85) Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution by John Paul Stevens

Wherein retired Supreme Court Justice Stevens reviews what's broken in the American political system from his unique judicial perspective and proposes some constitutional remedies--e.g. undoing Citizens United, classing the death penalty as cruel and unusual punishment, and finding a way to limit gerrymandering. While I don't disagree with any of his ideas, I found the book dry going at times. And, I sadly doubt there are enough people with the power and will to make a difference who'll listen to him.

86) White Stallion of Lipizza by Marguerite Henry

I started this book a time or two as a child but never got through it. It had nothing to do with racehorses, after all, unlike my favorite Henrys, King of the Wind and Black Gold. Now I want to go back and re-read those books with an adult's eyes, because this isn't just a horse book--it's a book about dedicating yourself to an art and a craft, to creating beauty for its own sake, to perseverance, to keeping alive your culture's best traditions.

87) The Regency Underworld by Donald A. Low

A readable introduction to crime and punishment in Regency England, with a heavy focus on London.

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!

2013 Reading, Books 64-72

Catching up on everything I read while traveling...

64) Decisive, by Chip Heath & Dan Heath.

An extremely useful look at how to short-circuit some of the issues that commonly lead to bad decision-making. It gave me some good ideas for how to evaluate my writing career and whether my current path will take me where I want to go and how to balance competing priorities in my life as a whole. This was a library copy, but I'll definitely be buying my own soon.

65) Sprig Muslin, by Georgette Heyer.

For the 2013 TBR Challenge. Detailed comments here.

66) My Life Next Door, by Huntley Fitzpatrick.

A sweet YA romance about the daughter of a perfectionist single mother (who also happens to be a state senator) who falls for the boy next door--from the big, crazy, chaotic family with 8 kids her mother completely disapproves of. A fun story, though I found the heroine's mother and her campaign manager just a bit over-the-top compared to the other characters.

67) An Heiress at Heart, by Jennifer Delamere.

For my Rita finalists challenge. Detailed comments here.

68) Always and Forever, by Farrah Rochon.

An enjoyable contemporary romance set in a small Louisiana town that managed to get past my "no small American towns" filter with its engaging hero and heroine and by not forcing the hero to give up his dream of opening a business in New Orleans to show that Real, Authentic American Life belongs in a small town.

69) Captain Ingram's Inheritance, by Carola Dunn.

Old-school Regency romance that focuses as much on the hero and heroine's community and families as their relationship. I liked it a lot, but if you haven't read Lord Roworth's Reward you'll be pretty lost.

70) What Kings Ate and Wizards Drank, by Krista D. Ball.

A guide to help writers of historical fiction and historically based fantasy write more realistically about what their characters would've eaten and how they would've obtained and prepared it.

71) Swept Off Her Stilettos, by Fiona Harper.

A perfectly delightful confection of a friends-to-lovers story. I couldn't imagine a better book to while away several hours of a long, turbulent plane ride.

72) Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Search, Part 2, by Gene Luen Yang, Michael Dante DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko, Dave Marshall.

The latest entry in the graphic novels filling in some of the gaps between Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. It didn't give me as many answers as I'd hoped for about Zuko's mother, but it's visually beautiful and kept me interested enough to immediately go preorder the final book in the trilogy.

Back from RWA (and July TBR Challenge post)

Yesterday I finally got back into town after my combined RWA National and family reunion trip to Atlanta, so I've got a lot of blogging to catch up on. I also need to post about my RWA experiences at some point. Suffice it to say it was a good conference, and I came out of it with a few new ideas and new connections.

For now, well, I'll start by catching up on July for the 2013 TBR Challenge.

Sprig Muslin, by Georgette Heyer.

This month's theme was the Classics--a classic author, book, trope, or however you choose to interpret it. I ended up going with Georgette Heyer, since the Regency genre as we know it certainly wouldn't exist without her. I read most of her books in high school, since my library had a good collection, but I don't remember this one.

I have a confession to make. Despite her genre pioneer status, I only like Heyer's books--I don't love them. I feel the same way about Tolkien and high fantasy, incidentally, albeit for different reasons. The fact that many of my favorite books wouldn't exist without them doesn't make their books my favorites. With Tolkien, the issue is that I always feel like I'm watching his characters from a distance, that I'm observing the stories rather than connecting to and participating in them. With Heyer...well, ever since I read A Civil Contract I haven't been able to forgive her for what she did to Jenny Chawleigh. Jenny wasn't of the gentry or the aristocracy, therefore she didn't deserve a truly happy ending--at least, that's the subtext of the book as I read it. Ot She didn't get love and devotion; she got respect and contentment. And as someone whose own ancestry is FAR from genteel, I got angry about that.

I know a lot of people love Heyer and love A Civil Contract in particular for its realism. And I can totally understand and respect that. But for whatever reason, that book's ending triggered something personal for me that changed how I look at her work as a whole. And, yes, I realize I'm not being wholly consistent. I read books with aristocratic characters all the time. Two of my favorite fictional crushes are Lord Peter Wimsey and Count Aral Vorkosigan (not that either of them had any trouble conjuring up romantic feelings for a commoner, come to think). The fact that the Duke of Wellington was as elitist as can be doesn't make me admire him any the less--though there are a few quotes of his where I always shake my head in exasperation that anyone that smart could say something that stupid.

But when I'm reading fiction and I feel like the author is endorsing the idea that I ought to regard anyone as superior or inferior because of an accident of birth, I end up, shall we say, in an argument with the text. And, yes, I know, Heyer is a product of her times...but she's a contemporary of Dorothy Sayers, and while the class issues are certainly there in Sayers, they're not on anything like the level of A Civil Contract. And maybe throwing in an American author is apples to oranges, but Louisa May Alcott is decades earlier and has the Phebe-Archie secondary romance in the Rose books, where Phebe is an almost literal nobody. She started out as a servant in the family, and IIRC came from a workhouse and didn't know who her parents were. Mind you, most of Archie's family disapproved of the match just as much as you'd expect of a family with generations of money and status behind it, but you never feel like the text is telling you they're right.

Anyway...all that said, I enjoyed Sprig Muslin. It's a classic Heyer romp--frothy, madcap, and fun. I read it in less than a day, and enjoyed every word. However, I would've liked to see more interaction between the hero and heroine, and I got to arguing with the text again at the end when it was made clear that the secondary heroine, a young, headstrong beauty, belonged with her future husband because he'd keep her in check, which her doting guardians had never managed to do. I got the sense he'd be a benevolent husband/guardian, but it still gave me a bit of a squick.

Favorite reads of the year so far

Happy Independence Day to my fellow Americans! I'm off from the day job today, but I have to work Friday--which, looking on the bright side, means this week feels like it has two Fridays. I'll be having a low-key celebration with my family. Mr. Fraser is making waffles for breakfast, a tradition for almost every holiday we're not traveling, since they taste just as good on Labor Day or Presidents' Day as they do in July. Then we'll grill hot dogs and I'll bake Miss Fraser's favorite cake, which has white icing transformed into an American flag with strawberry stripes and blueberry stars.

It just occurred to me that the year is half over. (Insert ritual "How did THAT happen?" comment here.)  That means it's time to post my top ten reads of the year so far, in the order I read them:

1) Julie's Wolf Pack

Third in Jean Craighead George's beautiful YA series about a young Inuit girl who finds refuge among a wolf pack and keeps ties with them even after being reunited with her family, this one is almost all from the POV of the wolves themselves, and it works surprisingly well. She doesn't quite anthropomorphize them but still makes them extremely relatable, somehow.

2) Libriomancer, by Jim C. Hines.

First in a fantasy series with a really clever concept for its magic--basically, books make magic by the collective belief of readers in the stories' worlds, and libriomancers can pull objects out of those books temporarily. This doesn't give the unlimited power you might think--among other things, too much magic use wrecks both the libriomancer and the book, and you can only pull out objects that would fit through an ordinary-sized physical copy of the book. E.g. if I were a libriomancer carrying a copy of a book from the Sharpe series, I could pull out Sharpe's sword or the telescope Wellington gave him, but a cannon wouldn't fit. The story and characters are as good as the concept, and I'll be eagerly awaiting the sequels. I've already preordered the sequel, Codex Born.

3) A Year of Biblical Womanhood, by Rachel Held Evans

I'm easily hooked by the type of memoir where someone spends a year trying to live a lifestyle that's foreign to them, cooks their way through a famous cookbook, or whatever. This one was both hilarious and unexpectedly moving. Evans comes from a background almost identical to my own--I'm ~10 years older, but we grew up within 40 or 50 miles of each other, and the biggest obvious difference between our good Alabama Baptist families is that mine roots for Auburn in college football while hers supports Alabama. (I was really disappointed that the month she was trying not to be contentious was October 2010 rather than November of that year, because she talked about her struggles during the South Carolina game rather than the epic Auburn comeback. And yes, I know Bama has since won two more national championships. 2010 was still awesome.)

Anyway, Evans is also like me in having wrestled with the increasing conservatism of the evangelical church, though AFAIK she hasn't yet gone as far as I have in running away from it--I'm now Episcopalian, which I suspect has some of my Baptist ancestors spinning in their graves. So for this book she spends each month of a year trying to live out one of the biblical commands to women literally, both to show the absurdity of a hyper-literal approach and to find God in unexpected places. She also talks a lot about women's power and strength, in the Bible and through history to the present. I think what will stick with me most is her discussion of the Proverbs 31 woman, which I was taught to think of as the perfect homemaker--someone I hoped to become during my more conservative days and now rebel against. But Evans discovers that in the Jewish tradition, that text isn't used prescriptively, but as praise for whenever a woman shows courage, generosity, integrity, and like virtues. In Hebrew the words the King James Bible translates as "a virtuous woman" are "eshet chayil"--a woman of valor. I'll never be a Proverbs 31 homemaker, but on my best days I can be a woman of valor.

4) Miss Jacobson's Journey, by Carola Dunn

This one is a traditional Regency, with a PG, kisses-only sensuality rating, but with a decidedly non-traditional heroine and setting. The heroine, Miriam Jacobson, is an English Jew who's been living on the Continent with her doctor uncle for nine years after having become estranged from the rest of her family by rudely rejecting the suitor the matchmaker brought for her. Now she wants to go home, but at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, journeying from France to England isn't a simple task. She and her maid/duenna are recruited by Jakob Rothschild to help two men smuggle gold to Wellington in Spain, with the promise of help getting home once she completes her mission. Naturally, one of the men in her party is the suitor she rejected all those years ago, and he's grown and matured in the intervening years into a far more attractive man than she ever would've dreamed possible...

From the time I started reading traditional Regencies in high school, I've always loved any non-traditional setting. (Not that I don't love a nice country house party or London Season tale, too.) Following the drum in the Peninsular War? I'm there. Congress of Vienna? Fascinating. Canada? More, please. Brussels just before Waterloo? Wonderful! America, before, during, or after the War of 1812? Why not? So this book had me halfway to hooked from the beginning because of the setting, and the story delivered on its promise. I enjoyed all the characters, the sweet romance worked beautifully for me, and I've already bought more of Dunn's backlist.

5) Whose Names Are Unknown, by Sanora Babb.

I heard about this book while watching Ken Burns' Dust Bowl documentary. It was originally written and accepted for publication in the 1930's, then rejected after The Grapes of Wrath came out because the acquiring editor figured there wasn't room for TWO Dust Bowl/Okie migrant stories. (Which is so laughably different from today's market, where every hit spawns a dozen imitators.)

I'm glad I read this book. It's more literary than my usual taste, but it has a kind of subtle, deceptively simple beauty, and it sort of rounded out my understanding of the Dust Bowl era, I think, in the way that good fiction can bring the past to life better than documentary alone.

6) Things I Can't Forget, by Miranda Kenneally.

I've been a Kenneally fan ever since I read the query letter for her first YA romance, Catching Jordan, (her agent posted it on a blog as an example of an effective query), but I think this book may be my favorite so far just because I identified with the heroine so much. I've been told that's a simplistic reason to enjoy a book, but oh well. I was Kate when I was 18, and for several years afterward. Painfully good, afraid to break the rules, convinced that my beliefs were the only right ones and therefore pretty dang judgmental even if I was better than Kate at keeping my mouth shut about it. So I enjoyed watching Kate begin to come to terms with life's complexities and ambiguities, and I loved seeing a character like her (and my younger self) grow and change.

7) Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, by Anne Lamott.

Anne Lamott's books don't always work for me, but this one blew me away. The Thanks and Wow chapters in particular helped me remember to stop and revel in the Eternal Now of the current moment, instead of always straining toward a longed-for future when I might be able to quit my day job and write full-time, or else flinching away from the inevitable future in which someday I must die. I found myself reveling in the life all around me, even in the spring pollen that makes me sneeze and coats my pretty black car with an unsightly yellow film. I remembered my favorite lines from For I will Consider My Cat Jeoffry:

For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.

...and also quoting one of my favorite lines from a character in the Vorkosigan saga: "Every day is a gift. Me, I tear open the package and wolf it down on the spot," not to mention, of all people, Bon Jovi: "I just want to live while I'm alive."

So I guess you might say the book made an impression on me. Thanks, Anne Lamott!

8) Sacred Games, by Gary Corby.

Third in a series of light, fun, yet richly researched mysteries based in Periclean Athens. This entry is set at the Games of the 80th Olympiad in 460 BCE, and our sleuth, Nicolaos, a fictional elder brother to Socrates, has to pair up with a Spartan to investigate the death of a star Spartan athlete the night after the opening ceremonies. (The primary suspect is an Athenian, and everyone agrees the only fair solution is to have one man from each city investigate, because at that point in history there was no such thing as a neutral city in any dispute between the two rival powers.) Corby does an excellent job bringing the bloodthirsty, superstitious, and quirky aspects of Greek culture to life, while simultaneously making his characters and their world human and relatable. I recommend this especially for fans of Lindsey Davis's Falco series, as the tone is quite similar.

9) The Strange History of the American Quadroon, by Emily Clark.

The book that made me withdraw a submitted manuscript so I could fix its utter historical inaccuracy. See more detail here.

10) The Ides of April, by Lindsey Davis.

First in a new series of mysteries set in Ancient Rome, this book is linked to the Davis's Falco series, but it takes place about a dozen years after the last one, and we never actually see Falco and Helena. The sleuth is their adopted daughter, Flavia Albia, an independent young widow who's taken up her father's old profession and lives on her own. Falco and Helena are evidently doing fine, and Albia drops in to visit regularly--it's just that all those meeting are told rather than shown. Hopefully that won't be the case throughout the series, though I can understand wanting to establish Albia as an interesting character in her own right.

The book got off to rather a slow start, and I might not have stuck with it were it not for my long-standing love for the Falco series. But about 40% in, the story took off and I started caring about Albia for her own sake. I guessed the whodunnit fairly quickly, not to mention the love interest, though there was a sort of mini-mystery about the latter I must confess to being totally oblivious to until it was spelled out for me. In any case, I'm looking forward to book two next year.

(Incidentally, this one wins my favorite cover of the year to date. So pretty!)

2013 Reading, Books 37-39

37) Things I Can't Forget, by Miranda Kenneally.

I've been a Kenneally fan ever since I read the query letter for her first YA romance, Catching Jordan, (her agent posted it on a blog as an example of an effective query), but I think this book may be my favorite so far just because I identified with the heroine so much. I've been told that's a simplistic reason to enjoy a book, but oh well. I was Kate when I was 18, and for several years afterward. Painfully good, afraid to break the rules, convinced that my beliefs were the only right ones and therefore pretty dang judgmental even if I was better than Kate at keeping my mouth shut about it. So I enjoyed watching Kate begin to come to terms with life's complexities and ambiguities, and I loved seeing a character like her (and my younger self) grow and change.


38) Consider the Fork, by Bee Wilson.

If you enjoy culinary history or the history of everyday things, you'll probably love this book. It's a history not of what we eat, but of the technology we use to prepare and consume our food, from pots to refrigerators to the kitchen space itself. It's too general an overview if you're looking for, say, what a French kitchen was like in 1780, but it's packed with fascinating anecdotes, and it made me think about any number of things I usually take for granted.


39) Lord Roworth's Reward, by Carola Dunn.

This is a sequel to Miss Jacobson's Journey, which I read earlier in the year. It's a sweet, chaste traditional Regency romance set during and immediately after the Waterloo campaign and featuring a hero who's so sure he's found his perfect future countess that he doesn't notice just how much love is involved in his friendship for another, less suitable, young lady until it's almost too late. I enjoyed it a lot, with two small caveats: 1) The sheer number of famous Waterloo quotes and incidents referenced in the story came across as a bit of an infodump, especially since the hero heard about most of them secondhand and they weren't necessary to move the plot forward. 2) The story treats the urban legend that Nathan Mayer Rothschild used his advance knowledge of the outcome of the battle to make a fortune on the London stock exchange as fact, when actually there's no contemporary evidence for it and it seems to be an anti-Semitic tale that sprang up later in the 19th century. That said, a lot of histories cite it as fact, Dunn herself clearly isn't anti-Semitic, and Rothschild is portrayed in a positive light. So I don't hold it against her--I just feel compelled to point out the issue, since I'm pedantic like that, especially given the roots of this particular legend.

Five favorite books you've (probably) never heard of

A couple of weeks back, fellow Carina author Veronica Scott challenged me to a Five Favorite Books meme. Since I find it all but impossible to narrow it down to just five for all time out of all the books I've ever read, I toyed with various ways to limit the list. Five Favorite Historical Romances. Five Favorite Non-Historical Romances. Five Favorite Classics. Five Favorite Kids' Books. Five Favorite Research Sources. Etc. (And now that I think about it, I can do just that for future posts, whenever I'm stuck for something to blog about. Win!)

But for this challenge I decided to do Five Favorite Books You've (Probably) Never Heard Of. OK, it's not like I'm the only literary omnivore out there, so you may have heard of some of them. But if anyone else out there has read and loved all these books, you're my long-lost sister or brother, and I want to compare libraries with you next time I'm stuck for what to read next.

1) In This House of Brede, by Rumer Godden.

I'm a married Episcopalian romance novelist, so you wouldn't expect me to be the target market for a book about a woman who leaves behind a high-powered career (at least, by 1950's standards) in her 40's to become a Benedictine nun. But this is a gorgeously written book whose characters and their community spring to life on the page. I've re-read it more times than I can count, and I expect to go back to it again and again in the years to come.

2) The Jennie trilogy, by Elisabeth Ogilvie.

• Jennie, About to Be
• The World of Jennie G.
• Jennie Glenroy

This trilogy, sadly, is out-of-print and unavailable as e-books, but there seem to be plenty of affordable used copies on Amazon. I read and adored the first two books from my hometown library when I was in high school and later picked up the whole trilogy at a library book sale. 

If you like my books (and maybe you do, since you're reading my blog!), there's a good chance you'll like these, even though they're historical fiction with romantic elements rather than romance. They're Regency in time period but not in tone, the heroine is gentry rather than aristocratic, and the hero...well, I'm not going to give you spoilers! The first book is largely set in Scotland, and Scottish culture pervades all three. 

3) Wellington: The Years of the Sword, by Elizabeth Longford. 

My favorite Wellington biography. (Between being a military history geek and research I did for the alternative history that's my book-under-the-bed, I own several. I know. I'm quite aware what a big geek I am.) It's a beautifully written, human portrait of a fascinating man.

4) The Old Buzzard Had It Coming, by Donis Casey.

This one you can buy for your Kindle or Nook, and right now it's only $0.99 as an e-book! First in a mystery series set in rural Oklahoma in the early 20th century, with an amateur sleuth who's the mother of nine children on a farm. It sounds too unlikely to work, but IMHO it does. The voice is lovely, with lots of historical detail and texture.

5) Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales, by Nathan Hale (and yes, that's his real name).

One Dead Spy

Big Bad Ironclad

Donner Dinner Party (available for preorder)

These fall into the select category of books Miss Fraser and I love equally, though at age 8 she's the one in their target market. They're graphic novels about American history, with the conceit that Nathan Hale (the spy one, not the author) as he's about to be hanged is taken up into a history book, where he sees what's to come for the new nation. With his newfound knowledge, he delays his execution by telling stories to his hangman and the British officer there to supervise. They're equal parts hilarious and historical. I'm not sure I'd recommend them if you don't have a kid (or niece, nephew, grandchild, etc.) to share them with, but if you do, buy them now.

2013 TBR Challenge - Miss Jacobson's Journey

February's theme for the 2013 TBR Challenge was Recommended Read, but I only had one book that qualified--generally, if a friend I trust recommends a book, I read it quickly rather than letting it gather virtual dust on my Kindle. I tried the book (which shall remain nameless, given the delicacy of giving negative reviews when I'm an author myself), but the author's voice didn't work for me, and two chapters in I wanted to strangle both the hero and heroine.

Since I'm a firm believer that life is too short to read books that don't work for you, I gave up and went to my LONG list of possibilities for April's New-to-You Author Category. I selected Miss Jacobson's Journey, by Carola Dunn.

It's a traditional Regency, with a PG, kisses-only sensuality rating, but with a decidedly non-traditional heroine and setting. The heroine, Miriam Jacobson, is an English Jew who's been living on the Continent with her doctor uncle for nine years after having become estranged from the rest of her family by rudely rejecting the suitor the matchmaker brought for her. Now she wants to go home, but at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, journeying from France to England isn't a simple task. She and her maid/duenna are recruited by Jakob Rothschild to help two men smuggle gold to Wellington in Spain, with the promise of help getting home once she completes her mission. Naturally, one of the men in her party is the suitor she rejected all those years ago, and he's grown and matured in the intervening years into a far more attractive man than she ever would've dreamed possible...

From the time I started reading traditional Regencies in high school, I've always loved any non-traditional setting in the subgenre. (Not that I don't love a nice country house party or London Season tale, too. I just crave variety.) Following the drum in the Peninsular War? I'm there. Congress of Vienna? Fascinating. Canada? More, please. Brussels just before Waterloo? Wonderful! America, before, during, or after the War of 1812? Why not? India? Yes, though I've seen some that make me wince with cultural stereotypes.

So this book had me halfway to hooked from the beginning because of the setting, and the story delivered on its promise. I enjoyed the characters, the sweet romance worked beautifully for me, and I will definitely be buying more of Dunn's backlist.

2013 Reading - Books 13-15

I had a good reading weekend, adding three more books to my annual tally.

13) Miss Jacobson's Journey, by Carola Dunn. This was my February selection for my TBR challenge, so I'll be posting about it in more detail later in the month. Suffice it to say I liked it a lot and will be reading more by the author.


14) Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics, by Jonathan Dudley.

A quick read--it only took me 3-4 hours--which surveys how the American evangelical church's beliefs about abortion, gay rights, environmentalism, and evolution developed. Dudley doesn't have the page count to go into any of these topics in detail, but he makes a convincing case that the views much of the church considers "the plain sense of Scripture," are recent innovations, and that rejection of evolution is particularly problematic because it's led so many evangelicals to distrust ANY science that's inconvenient for their worldview--such as the evidence for global warming or the innateness of sexual orientation. I wish I'd had this book years ago when I was wrestling with some of these very issues.

15) Book Which Shall Not Be Named, #3 - Let's just say that if every Rita judge likes this one as much as I did, it'll be a finalist. The author was new to me, but I'll be reading more of her work in the future.

Congratulations to Alyssa Everett!

Today my long-time critique partner Alyssa Everett's first book from Carina Press released.  Technically, it's not her debut book, but that book is caught in the Dorchester death spiral, so this is the first book of hers that you can actually find for sale wherever ebooks are sold:

Alyssa has a lovely historical voice, and I recommend Ruined by Rumor to anyone who likes their historicals to pay attention to the mores of the time.

Buy it directly from Carina.

Buy it for your Kindle.

Buy it for your Nook.

Reading report, week of April 17

I'm now over halfway to my goal of 75 books read in 2012! Hopefully I'll make 100.

38) The Seduction of the Crimson Rose, by Lauren Willig. Fourth in the Pink Carnation series of Regency romance/spy romps with a modern framing story. I enjoy Willig's voice, and I can rely on her books for a fun read. I liked this book's central couple. I don't think I'd want a steady diet of such cynical heroes and heroines, but these two seemed so very well-matched, and I'm glad they're going to go be cynical together instead of her curing him with her youthful innocence or anything of the kind.

39) White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf, by Andrew Bobrow-Strain. An engrossing look at how America embraced industrial white bread during the early and mid-20th century, then gradually turned away from it from the 70's onward. I was born in 1971, and when I was little we had store-bought white bread on the table every night. By the time I hit middle school, Mom was buying whole wheat bread and doing some of her own baking, and there was no bread on the table at all if we had rice or potatoes with the meal. Back then I thought she was trying to eat healthier because of specific health conditions she and Dad had or were at risk for. Now I see that she was, consciously or not, moving with the trends.

And now my 8-year-old lectures us over the whiteness of the baguettes and ciabatta loafs we occasionally eat. "Don't you know whole wheat bread is more healthy?" she proclaims in all the certainty of her youth. I wonder what our grandkids will be telling HER in 30 years or so.

Another week's reading

I've been neglecting this blog shamefully of late, largely due to a pinched nerve flareup. I'm trying to save my best computer time for my writing. But I never stop reading, and here are books 7-9 toward my goal of reading 75 books in 2012:

7) Margarita, by Joan Wolf. This is a traditional Regency romance--i.e. a subgenre with less sex and often a bit more history than you generally find in historical romance. They're rare in print publishing nowadays, but more and more trad authors are reviving their backlists as ebooks, as is the case with this book, originally released in 1982.

Wolf delves deeply into the actual history of the time period even by the standards of the subgenre. In this case the heroine is the daughter of a Venezuelan man and an English woman, and she loses all her family fighting in Bolivar's revolution. She goes to her English grandfather for lack of any other options, and after he dies she finds herself married to the cousin who inherited his title and estates. It contains multiple elements that would be a tough sell in today's market--very young heroine (17 when she marries), a rather distant omniscient POV, a hero who doesn't give up his mistresses until long after marrying the heroine, and a hero and heroine who are cousins (anathema to your typical American reader, though I've read Mansfield Park and Rose in Bloom often enough that I can put on a 19th century brain for the duration of the read and not be bothered by it). I enjoyed it, though I don't think I'd want omniscient POV in most of my romance reading.

8) Cinderella Ate my Daughter, by Peggy Orenstein. I heard Orenstein interviewed on Fresh Air a few weeks ago and knew I had to read this book. She's a few years older than I am, and her daughter is about the same age as mine, so we're both experiencing a certain disconnect in seeing the very pink, princessy, and girlie-girl culture our daughters are pushed to conform to--one that's in many ways more constricting than what we knew in the 70's despite all the strides women have made in the past 30-40 years.

It's a quick read, and one that doesn't pretend to have all the answers, either to why the cultural shift happened or how to raise a confident, true-to-herself daughter in the midst of it. (For the former, she points to similar moves to shelter and cherish daughters during previous economic and cultural crises.) Speaking from personal experience, one of the persistent and unexpected challenges of parenting Miss Fraser has been the fact she DOESN'T embrace her surrounding culture. She's a tomboy--not unusually so, but she reminds me of myself at the same age, more interested in animals and animal stories than dolls or fairy tales, and she doesn't like pastels or fussy, dressy clothes. One day when she was barely 2 and just starting to get really verbal, she pushed away a pink floral-print set of overalls I was trying to dress her in and said, "No flow-flers! No pink!" And she has stuck to that line ever since, though she'll wear fuchsia or raspberry shades. When her grandmother or aunts and uncles try to call her princess, she frowns and says, "I'm NOT a PRINCESS!" I wouldn't have her any other way, but it makes her surprisingly hard to shop for, given how gender-coded and branded so much children's merchandise is these days.

Obviously, this isn't a major problem. My daughter is happy and has plenty of friends at school. It just bugs me that this pattern exists and is so strong. Miss Fraser is fully aware that the mold exists and she doesn't quite fit it. We've talked a lot, at her initiation, about the different ways of being a girl, and how it's fine for her to be, as she puts it, "a little bit girlie," because she enjoys Littlest Pet Shop and My Little Pony and the like, but that above all she needs to be herself and accept other people for being themselves.

9) The Hundred Days, by Antony Brett-James. More Waterloo research, this one a compilation of various eyewitness accounts. In many cases I wished I could know more--e.g. the young Prussian volunteer who talked in a matter-of-fact way about his female sergeant, who was so brave that when she married another sergeant after the war she had three military honors pinned to her gown. And I was flabbergasted by the account of the woman hosting the ball where the Prince Regent was when the officer bringing the victory dispatches and captured French eagles caught up with him--she called it a dreadful night because everyone deserted her ball to either celebrate or try to get hold of a casualty list. She actually said she thought it would've been better for the messenger to wait quietly until the morning!

Buried Treasures

Just in time for the last-minute holiday shopper (or anyone looking for a good airplane read), I thought I'd do a post recommending some of my favorite buried treasures. This isn't a Best Reads of 2011 list--I'm saving that for January, since I typically get a lot of reading in over the last two weeks of December between long plane rides and being away from work. These are just books I think deserve more buzz and a wider audience.

I didn't give myself any hard and fast rules for what constitutes a buried treasure. Most of them are little-known books by little-known authors, but I threw in a few lesser-known works by popular or classic authors, especially when my favorite isn't the book or series that gets all the buzz.

However, since this is meant to be a shopping guide of sorts, I limited myself to books readily available new in either print or electronic form, priced no higher than $12 or so. Which meant saying no to Clyde Edgerton's Raney, though I love his Southern voice and reading it is like stepping back into my 70's and 80's Alabama childhood. It also ruled out Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat, though I swear everything else LM Montgomery wrote is readily available.

In no particular order:

Assiniboin Girl, by Kathi Wallace
Buy for Kindle

This book was originally published by the now-defunct Drollerie Press, but it looks like Wallace has re-released it as a self-published Kindle book. It's a YA coming-of-age story about a Native American girl who's grown up in New York knowing little about her heritage, but, after being orphaned and sent to live with an aunt and then her extended family on the reservation, develops a deeper connection to her past. With a certain amount of what I guess could be described as magic realism. It's a difficult book to describe or categorize, and it's not the most polished work I've ever read, but I couldn't put it down.

No Quarter, by Broos Campbell
Buy for Kindle
Buy for Nook
Buy the paperback from Powell's (though the price is above my target range)



Age of Sail (1799, to be specific), but in the American navy. First in a series following Matty Graves, a young midshipman just setting out on his career. Campbell has a wonderful American historical voice and a way for bringing little-known corners of history to light. I'd love to see the three books that are out so far become big hits so he can keep writing and follow Graves all the way through the War of 1812. If you like Patrick O'Brian or Bernard Cornwell (very different voices, I know, but Campbell's voice is different from both), do give this series a try.

And, doesn't the second book in the series, The War of Knives, have a gorgeous cover, in a badass war story way?

In This House of Brede, by Rumer Godden. (not available in ebook)
Buy from Amazon
Buy from Barnes & Noble
Buy from Powell's

If you looked at the rest of my bookshelf (or even just the rest of this list), you'd never guess that one of my favorite books of all time is this quiet, rambling story of Benedictine nuns in mid-20th century England. But it is. Almost all my favorite books share a strong sense of place and communities of characters who seem so real to me I feel like I could step into the story and know how to fit into its world. Brede Abbey and Dame Philippa, Sister Cecily, Sister Hilary, Dame Catherine, and the rest are one of those communities to me, just like Narnia, Barrayar, Terre d'Ange, Peter Wimsey's London, or Marcus Didius Falco's Rome.

Captive Bride, by Bonnie Dee
Buy for Kindle
Buy for Nook
Buy from Carina Press



(Speaking of covers, isn't this one a beauty?)

I will always at least try a historical romance with an unusual setting, and this interracial romance set in 1870 San Francisco worked for me. Dee made me completely believe her hero and heroine found true love and deep knowledge of each other despite lacking a common language at first, and also that they would find a way to make their cross-cultural relationship work despite all the challenges they would face in their place and time. Also, I would love to see more historical romances set on the West Coast, as opposed to the conventional Westerns with deserts and cowboys. Give me more of the early days of places like Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco, please!

Eight Cousins/Rose in Bloom, by Louisa May Alcott
Both free for Kindle.
Or $0.99 for both for Nook
Or you can pay a little more for the paperbacks

Not that obscure a pair of books, obviously, but I think fewer people have read them than Little Women or An Old-Fashioned Girl. They're actually my favorite Alcott books, I think because they're the only ones in which the heroine marries the same man I would've chosen myself.

The Golden Key, by Melanie Rawn, Jennifer Roberson, and Kate Elliott (not available for Kindle)
Buy from Amazon
Buy for the Nook
Buy from Tattered Cover



This book blew my mind when I first read it over a decade ago. You mean fantasy isn't just swords and sorcery? Fantasy cultures are allowed to evolve and change technologically and politically just like real ones? You mean magic could take a form other than potions or wands and spells? (In this case, paints.) Now that I've also discovered Guy Gavriel Kay, Jacqueline Carey, George RR Martin, and Lois McMaster Bujold, to name just a few, it no longer seems so unique and revolutionary, but it's still an excellent book.

The Winter King, by Bernard Cornwell (print only)
Buy from Amazon
Buy from Barnes & Noble
Buy from the Tattered Cover

Don't get me wrong, I love Sharpe and wish Cornwell would get back to the Starbuck series. But I think his Arthurian trilogy, which begins with this book, is the best thing he's ever written.

Lady Elizabeth's Comet, by Sheila Simonson
Buy for Kindle
Buy for Nook

One of the many traditional Regency romances that's gained a new lease on life as an e-book, and the most delightful and freshly written one I've found.

The Old Buzzard Had it Coming, by Donis Casey
Buy for Kindle
Buy for Nook
Buy the paperback from Powell's

First in one of my all-time favorite historical mystery series. The heroine, Alafair Tucker, a farmer's wife in early 20th century Oklahoma, is a surprisingly effective amateur sleuth, and the books have what I always love in my historical fiction, a vivid sense of place and time. The first book is only $0.99 for Kindle and Nook, so if you enjoy mystery at all, give this one a try.

Books read, week of 12/13

Even as I scramble my way through a hectic holiday season, I'm finding time to read. (I'm also waiting with eager anticipation to see what my LibraryThing Secret Santas got me and Miss Fraser. Neither of my Santees was much of a romance reader, but I'm hoping they'll like my fantasy choices. I got both of them some Bujold and one His Majesty's Dragon, which apparently was one of the top ten most-given books this year.)

In the meantime, I've been reading...

The Deception of the Emerald Ring, by Lauren Willig. I'm not always the biggest fan of spy Regencies, but I love this series because it never takes itself too seriously and yet is very intelligently written--not an easy combination to find.

Bold, Brave, and Born to Lead: Major General Isaac Brock and the Canadas, by Mary Beacock Fryer. As I'm sure the title reveals, I got this book as research for An Infamous Marriage. It's YA military history/biography. Not sure how wide a readership that gets, but it's just right for what I'm looking for--information to give my hero, a protege of Brock's, a backstory without getting bogged down in minutiae. (Brock, for those of you who've never heard of him--a group that would've included me until a few months ago!--was probably the most talented British commander in the War of 1812 and is regarded as a hero in Canada for blocking American attempts to invade in the summer and fall of 1812. Unfortunately for the British and their Native American allies, he died less than a year into the war.)

Raised Right, by Alisa Harris, is a memoir by a young woman raised in the Religious Right who's kept her faith but changed her politics...and that's really all I can say about it without saying more about religion and politics than I like to do on this blog. Suffice it to say that if it sounds relevant to you, you'd probably enjoy reading it.

Books read, week of 11/15

After last week's somewhat gloomy reads, I decided I was due for some lighter fare.

First, I blazed through The Ionia Sanction, Gary Corby's second historical mystery featuring Nicolaos, a fictional older brother to Socrates (who makes occasional appearances as the last 12-year-old brother any 21-year-old man would want around, because he's such a logical little know-it-all). Nico is ambitious and is trying to rise in Athens' new democracy under the reluctant patronage of Pericles, which in this adventure leads to a journey to Persian-controlled Asia Minor in search of traitors and murderers. Corby does a great job balancing history and story, making Nico and his fellow Athenians relatable while still highlighting just how far removed their attitudes and worldview are from our own.

Sheila Simonson's Love and Folly is billed as a traditional Regency romance (one of the many old trads given a fresh lease on life as ebooks), though it's really more a few months in the lives of two families caught up in political tumult in 1820. There is a love story, but it's more a subplot than the focus of the book. In any case, I love both of Simonson's books that I've read so far because they feel so specific and particular. Neither the characters nor the settings are remotely generic, and her world feels three-dimensional.

Finally, I re-read Dorothy Sayers' Clouds of Witness, the second Peter Wimsey novel, now out in a Kindle edition. I'd read it years ago, but unlike Murder Must Advertise or the Harriet Vane sequence, I don't feel driven to revisit it every year or two, so I'd forgotten most of the details of the mystery. I enjoyed it, and it's important to the overall sequence in introducing Lord Peter's family (including his mother the Dowager Duchess, who is made of awesome) but it's just not the same level of masterpiece as, say, Murder Must Advertise or Gaudy Night.

Welcome, Joanna Chambers!

I'm delighted to welcome Joanna Chambers here to talk about her new book, The Lady's Secret, a Regency romance which releases today from Carina Press! Take it away, Joanna:

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My heroine, Georgy Knight, is a failed-actress-turned-stagehand. She embarks on a quest to prove that she and her twin brother Harry are legitimate and that Harry is the true Earl of Dunsmore. To enable her to search Dunsmore Manor for evidence, she dresses as a man and obtains a post as the valet of the hero who is due to spend Christmas there.

The set up of the book enabled me to play around with some fun stuff: master-servant relationships, cross-dressing and gender, what masks hide and what they reveal. And tying a lot of this stuff together is clothing. Male clothing in particular.

Georgy obviously has to disguise herself in male clothing, but in a way, Nathan does too, using his clothing as an elegant sort of armour to enable him to present an invincible appearance to the world. Nathan's clothes are the epitome of style, and Georgy sees the appeal of all this gorgeous paraphenalia:

From the wardrobe she drew a green velvet riding coat and ran a brush over it to make the nap lie correctly. Buckskin breeches. Clean linen—drawers, a shirt, a cravat. All of it pristine white, and the cravat starched to perfect straightness. Silk hose. A tall, black curly-brimmed hat that she turned over and over in her hands, enjoying its craftsmanship, the pleasing lines of it, its dense, velvety blackness. She brought out his riding boots, cleaned just yesterday, even the soles. They were so polished they looked as though they’d never been worn. Even so, she fished out a soft cloth and gave them one final burnish. As she worked, the tinkle of cutlery, the rattle of china and the rustle of paper reminded her that Harland was breakfasting a few yards away.
- The Lady's Secret

I had particular fun writing the dressing, undressing and bathing scenes. At one level, there was the satisfaction of showing that Nathan and Georgy's physical attraction to one another, but on another level, the stripping away of clothes and revealing of skin became a metaphor for the stripping away of other kinds of masks and layers. You can read one of my favourite scenes, the shaving scene, here.

Do you like Regency fashions? Or those of any other historical period? And can you think of other dressing/undressing/bathing scenes you've loved in fiction?

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More about The Lady's Secret:

London, 1810
Former actress Georgiana Knight always believed she and her brother were illegitimate—until they learn their parents were married, making them heirs to a great estate. To prove their claim, Georgy needs to find evidence of their union by infiltrating a ton house party as valet to Lord Nathaniel Harland. Though masquerading as a boy is a challenge, it pales in comparison to sharing such intimate quarters with the handsome, beguiling nobleman.

Nathan is also unsettled by Georgy's presence. First intrigued by his unusual valet, he's even more captivated when he discovers Georgy's charade. The desire the marriage-shy earl feels for his enigmatic employee has him hoping for much more than a master-servant relationship...

But will Nathan still want Georgy when he learns who she truly is? Or will their future be destroyed by someone who would do anything to prevent Georgy from uncovering the truth?

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Joanna blogs here, and she can be found on Facebook and on Twitter as @ChambersJoanna

Weekly book post, 10-11-11

This week I've been plugging away at a biography of Tecumseh as part of my research, but I also found time to finish two Regency romances. I'd describe both as traditional, but with big twists.

Pembroke Park, by Michelle Martin, is a lesbian Regency. One of the heroines, Diana, is fully aware of her orientation and as out as one could safely be in Regency England (i.e. not very, but she's cheerfully unconventional, and has enough money and rank that she can get by with it), while the other, Joanna, whose life is more hemmed in by traditional social restrictions, only knows she's never felt passion for any of her male suitors, including her deceased husband, whom she was fond of. It's a sweet and often poignant story, and I was willing to cut Martin a certain amount of slack on errors WRT forms of address and points of law, because she wrote it back in 1986, before such details were just a Google search away.

Mr. Bishop and the Actress, by Janet Mullany, is a romance between an estate steward (i.e. an upper servant) and an actress/courtesan who, at thirty, is trying to go respectable. Told in alternating first person POV, it's a fun romp.

Welcome, Rose Lerner!

Rose Lerner and I met in 2004, long before either of us were published, at the Emerald City Writers Conference. Over the years we've become critique partners and good friends, and I'm delighted to welcome her here today to talk about her new release, A Lily Among Thorns. I first read this book years ago for critique, and it's one of my favorite historical romances EVER. Solomon and Serena are such wonderful, well-developed characters, and I love how they play against the usual romance stereotypes. Today Rose is answering my questions about her books, not to mention Avatar: the Last Airbender (one of our current favorite shows), and giving away a copy of A Lily Among Thorns to one reader who comments by midnight on Monday. I know you do extensive research for each of your books. What was your favorite part of your research for A Lily Among Thorns? Probably the research on London. During the Regency, the divide between London and the rest of England was really marked, kind of like the way we conceptualize New York City versus small-town America. It's not just based on the reality of those places, it's symbolic. (Anyone else tune in for the first episode of Hart of Dixie?) Most aristocrats of the time had a foot in both places, because they spent the Season in London and the rest of the year at their country estates. But Solomon and Serena, my hero and heroine, both work for businesses that are based in London. They're Londoners year-round. That means something important about their self-images and about how others see them. Plus, Serena has strong ties to the seedier side of London life. So I wanted the feel to be right. The Regency Underworld by Donald A. Low, Black London by Gretchen Gerzina, Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century by Graham Robb, and Immigration, ethnicity, and racism in Britain 1815-1945 were all great resources for me. What was the hardest part? A forged marriage certificate is an important plot point in the book. My protagonists can't find a reliable way to prove it's forged, so they decide an annulment is the simplest way to go. But annulments were hard to get! Society valued the security of marriage very, very highly and made it very difficult to invalidate. I've read over and over that you could get an annulment if a marriage wasn't consummated, but it's just not true. The truth is that you could get an annulment if the husband was permanently impotent--and there was a hard-to-fake test to prove it. Using a false name was not, in and of itself, grounds for annulment, and neither was being underage. Mistaken identity (twinswap, anyone?) was a pretty safe bet but irrelevant to my book. Coercion and fraud were grounds for annulment but what exactly constituted coercion and fraud were interpreted differently by different judges, and in all cases interpreted fairly narrowly. I tore my hair out over this stuff! I love that LAT has such a unique title. Why did you choose it? I like using quotes for my titles. They carry a lot of associations and meanings with them, and that really appeals to me. My first book was called In for a Penny from the saying, "In for a penny, in for a pound," which worked a few different ways with the story, and my WIP is tentatively titled Sweet Disorder, from a poem by Herrick. "As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters" is a quote from the Song of Solomon. (And I'd like to thank Alyssa Everett for convincing me to keep the title in that form. I was originally planning a play on words that would have been a big mistake.) What I like about the title is that it speaks to how Serena misreads situations because of her own fears. She sees Solomon's faith as a threat to their relationship, because a respectable Christian could never accept someone with her past and reputation. But to him, his religion also means the love expressed by the Song of Songs. It's about doing the right thing, but it's also about reconciliation and forgiveness. She also sees herself as a cold, prickly person who can't help hurting the people around her--a thorn among lilies. But Solomon helps her see the truth: she's a lily among thorns, a vulnerable young woman who's managed to survive and even do well, despite danger and challenges on all sides. Your heroes tend to be "betas." Did you set out to write betas on purpose, since they're so rare in the genre, or is that just the kind of hero your muse delivers to you? Can you see yourself writing an alpha hero someday? (Not an alpHOLE, of course ;-)  ) Hmm, it's tricky. In the case of Solomon, I definitely did it on purpose. There was a very particular type of alpha hero that was popular in Regencies when I started writing Lily. He was beautiful and fashionable and snarky and he showed absolutely no emotion. He had two tells: going a shade whiter under his tan, and a muscle working in his jaw. That was it. His mother could die in front of him and maybe he'd go all out and do both. The heroine in these books was usually very innocent and very emotionally open. She won the hero over by giving him the unconditional, almost unshockable acceptance he'd never gotten from anyone else in his life. And I wanted to see what that dynamic, specifically, would look like if you switched the genders. In general, it's a little more complicated. I think in romance, sometimes "alpha" is equated with "strong." But when you get right down to it, it's just a personality type. To me, alpha means natural leader, someone who in any given situation will be calling the shots. Beta means someone who can stand back and give someone else their full support. Both of those are great things! They take different kinds of strength, that's all, and are conducive to different kinds of weakness. And I wish there was more of both available. I have a lot of love to give! My very favorite type of hero is a combination, really. To me, Nev (the hero of In for a Penny) is a...well, I guess the kinky term would be "switch." I don't know if there's a romance term. He's the leader of his group of friends. People on his estate naturally like him and look up to him. When he needs to take control of a room, he can. But he's willing to step back and let Penelope be in charge when he thinks it makes sense. My favorite flavor of alpha is so alpha he hasn't got anything to prove. Half the time he doesn't have to make you do what he says, because he can make you want to do what he says. He can even let you run things for a while and still know he's in charge, really. SEE: Captain Kirk. He can turn command over to Spock without thinking much of it--but that's his ship, Mister, and it always will be. And my favorite flavor of beta will shut you down in a heartbeat if he doesn't trust you or like how you're doing things. I think what people miss, with the idea of betas, is that a beta chooses who to give his loyalty to. He doesn't just roll over for anyone that walks in off the street! And he can take all that energy that he would have put into maintaining his personal control over situations, and put it somewhere else. SEE: Mr. Spock. He's got no interest in running the Enterprise. He loves being a Science Officer, and he's perfectly content to let Kirk have the responsibility, the credit, and the glory. That doesn't mean he can't 1) beat Kirk in a fight or 2) beat Kirk in an argument, if he thinks it's necessary. But most of the time, he doesn't. Two different personality types in a mutually beneficial and emotionally satisfying relationship based on affection and trust. Beautiful! Again, this doesn't mean I don't love lots of types of heroes, including the stiff-upper-lip alpha with a jaw square enough to draw a blueprint off of. Can I see myself writing an alpha? Definitely. In fact, I've got a plot bunny for a high-performing, alpha revenue officer right now! I don't know when I'll get around to his story, but hopefully soon. What are you working on now? I'm almost done with a draft of a book about the 1812 Parliamentary general election. By the local rules of her town, the middle-class heroine's husband would be eligible for a vote...if she were married. (Yes, this is historically plausible!) The younger-son-of-an-earl hero is sent to the town to find the heroine a husband, but as we all can see coming a mile off, he falls in love with her himself! It's not sold yet so I don't actually know yet if it will be my next book out, but believe me, when I know, I'll tell everyone who will listen! (Had to throw in an Avatar question!) I know Azula is your favorite, but what about the Gaang? Aang, Katara, Sokka, Toph, or Zuko? Speaking of things we could all see coming a mile off, definitely Zuko. I love how cranky and angry he is. I love how he's staked his identity on living up to his father's standards even though those standards have never done anything but humiliate him and devalue who he really is. I love how he's not very good at things and compensates by trying way too hard and taking everything way too seriously. I love how dramatic he is about everything. I love that it seems perfectly reasonable to him that after his uncle refuses to blast him with lightning, he should go stand on a mountaintop in a storm screaming at Nature to do it instead. I just want to give him a hug and a towel and say, "You're getting all wet, sweetie, maybe you should take a nap instead." But really, I could go on for that long about every single person in the Gaang. Avatar is one of the very best shows I've seen for just really consistent, sharply drawn, endearing characterization. Thanks for stopping by, Rose! By the way, the Kindle edition of her 2010 release, In For a Penny, is on sale for $3.79 through 10/3.

Release Day!

Today is release day for my SECOND novel (which I think means I get to call myself multi-published now, woohoo!), A Marriage of Inconvenience.

I got a lovely review at Heroes and Heartbreakers. Also, Carina Press is offering my first book, The Sergeant's Lady at half price through April 29.