JordanCon Follow Up
So, JordanCon was great! I sold some jewelry, which was awesome, but not actually my primary purpose in going. However, I will take just a moment to revel in this photo of my name in the program:
I also achieved my primary and secondary goals. I met Seanan McGuire and I got Brandon Sanderson to sign my copy of Warbreaker, which had previously been defaced by Dan Wells. So, that was all made of win!
Seanan is as awesome as I had hoped. She was funny and intelligent and very nice. She even complimented my skirt! So, I’m chalking that up in the happy-shiny category.
Brandon was also very nice. I only saw him on one panel and at his signing because I was going to all Seanan panels and I had to miss Saturday for rehearsal. 
However, coming home turned out to be lucky. I got a package from my MPS rep that had two promo kits for Brandon’s The Rithmatist, which comes out May 15. I was planning to get him to sign them and do a giveaway, but I met to earnest fans while I was standing in line. Here’s Paige from Truth or Consequences, New Mexico with her bag.
I probably won’t have a regular blog post this weekend because I’ll be at the Magic City Art Connection at Linn Park. I’m in Booth #208, so if you’re local you should stop by. The show runs Friday & Saturday from 10-6 and Sunday from 10-5. It’s a rain or shine event, so grab an umbrella and head over!
I’m also (because I’m a crazy person) in a Steampunk rendition of King Lear this weekend and next weekend at Eastlake United Methodist Church. The show is being put on by the Bards of Birmingham and is going to be awesome! I made some steampunk crowns for the major players. I’ve got two very small roles, but the show is going to be amazing!
One more reminder, don’t forget to enter my Stolen Magic giveaway or my Wildwood Dancing giveaway!
JordanCon!
So, I’m writing this post a little early because I’ll actually be at JordanCon this weekend. I’m leaving early Friday morning to get there in time to set up in the art show. I’ll try to get pictures of everything I’m taking (unlike DragonCon last year, where I don’t have pictures of most of what I sold). The main reason I’m going is to meet Seanan McGuire; author, musician, and podcastor extraordinaire.
I ‘met’ Seanan at LepreCon 37, where she was the featured musical guest. But she was also on a panel that I went to and she was really cool. So I picked up her book in the dealer room and promptly forgot about it by the time I got home. It wasn’t her; it was me. I was too busy. I was seeing other books. I had costuming commitments. I was sure it was a very nice book, but…
That phase lasted longer than I want to admit to.
Seanan was on the Sword & Laser podcast doing an author interview. I remembered that Seanan was cool, so I sat down and watched the interview. She talked about her alter ego, Mira Grant. Mira Grant writes medically based horror. Mira Grant writes about zombies! Mira Grant is my new best friend. Ok, so she’s not, she’s a pen-name for an author who doesn’t know me, but I spent a quality weekend with the ~2000 pages of the Newsflesh trilogy and its assorted novellas. I’ve talked about the books before. I even picked the final book, Blackout as one of my Top 10 Books for 2012. They’re amazing.
After I read those I started to devour all things Seanan. And, I got an extra-special bonus! Mary Robinette Kowal READS THE OCTOBER DAYE NOVELS!!!
So, that was many, many Audible credits down the rabbit hole.
Seanan has a new series (book 2 just came out a few weeks ago) called the InCryptid series. The protagonist is a xenobiologist by night and a professional ballroom dancer by day. They’re amazing. There is an attractive boy who belongs to a secret society pledged to wipe out all of the cryptids and, incidentally, Verity’s entire family. They date. It’s a thing. I may give this series extra love because there’s a recurring side character named Carol who is a gorgon. And, as we all know from the name of my blog, I have a thing about Medusa.
I’m in the middle of listening to book 2, Midnight Blue-Light Special, and it’s amazing too.
Did I mention the talking, highly religious mice that worship her family? It’s like Disney on really, really good drugs.
There is also the SF Squeecast. It’s an approximately hour-long, approximatley monthly podcast wherein sci-fi professionals squee about things that make me happy. It’s what got me to buy the pilot of Mockingbird Lane, which I loved. And I’m sad there isn’t anymore. But I’m really happy I watched what there was. Seanan is one of the main Squeecasters along with Lynne Thomas, Cat Valente, Elizabeth Bear, and Paul Cornell. This podcast is well worth your time! One of my goals in life is to get published so I can be a guest on the SF Squeecast. Also, to be published, but the SF Squeecast thing is a pretty big part of that.
So folks, that is where I shall be this weekend. I’ll try to bring back pictures from JordanCon. Especially if I can get Brandon Sanderson to sign the book that Dan Wells defaced when he came to the store. That should be fun. And please, do yourselves a favor, go read something from Seanan McGuire. Especially, if you can get your hands on it, her Hugo-nominated short story, Rat-Catcher. It’s so good! Seanan is nominated for five Hugos this year, so you should have some confidence that I’m not steering you wrong on this one.
Gateway Drugs
I just finished reading You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to the Coffee Shop: Scalzi On Writing by John Scalzi. Some chapters in the book are adapted from posts off his blog, The Whatever. One chapter, in particular struck me, wherein Scalzi was writing about Outreach and Gateway Science Fiction. Now, this is an older article, from 2005 in fact, so I don’t know that he still feels the same way, but I found it very interesting.
The argument he is reacting to is that Fantasy is overtaking Sci-Fi. Whether that is true anymore, or even was true in 2005, Scalzi argues that one of the reasons for that might be that sci-fi tends to be written for well-informed science fiction fans. As a genre, it’s constantly trying to tread new ground and advance upon the works that are already published. Which is great, but what if you haven’t read those works? What if this is your first science fiction novel? Or even your first fantasy novel? What if this is your first walk on the geek side? Where do you start?
Well, I have ideas about that and I’m going to share them with you, because I’m generous like that.
Let’s start with science fiction. I read probably one sci-fi book to every four or five fantasy books. Partly, because until recently I didn’t quite know what to read. I’d pick up things that looked like this:
Ok, there’s a girl in a Jedi hood and a giant cat man… I guess I could read that. I do, in fact, like cats. And I did read that series and it was pretty good. Good enough that I tracked copies down last year so I could re-read it. It starts off pretty easy. There’s a girl with telepathic powers on a human colony world. Bad aliens who look like lizard-bugs are oppressing the humans and good aliens, who look like cats, have become stranded on the planet. They team up with the girl and a new galactic alliance is started. Also, an inter-species marriage, but more on that in book 2! (There’s a shower scene, it gets weird.)
On the other hand, I wouldn’t pick up things that looked like this: 
Nothing against John Ringo, but to my teenage self covers like that made me assume that the book would by hyper-macho and probably full of stupid action scenes. (This was a time in my life before I started to actively seek out stupid action scenes.) I was also pretty sure that there would be long lists of alien names that I couldn’t pronounce and which contained extraneous apostrophes; K’zorth and T’lax seemed like possible species names.
So, I watched Star Trek and Babylon 5 and X-Files, but didn’t consider myself a sci-fi fan. I liked fantasy! Fantasy was easy. It was fairy tales and Tolkien and things I didn’t have to think hard about. But there are only so many retellings of King Arthur I can stand. And so I ventured out of my magic filled cave and once more poked around the edges of science fiction. This has been a repeating pattern for the last twenty years or so. I’ll dangle my toes in the sci-fi pool, but I’m never quite willing to take the plunge and call myself a full-out fan. Well, until recently. So, here are the books that hooked me:
Friday by Robert Heinlein
I know Friday is a somewhat controversial choice. Heinlein seems to either make fans or enemies. There aren’t a lot of people I’ve come across that just feel ‘meh’ about him. Friday, in particular, gets called out for being especially misogynistic. I, personally, don’t find it so, but if you want to debate about it I’ll be happy to. There’s one scene in particular that most people cite. It’s an upsetting scene, I won’t deny that, but I come out of it with a very different message than its detractors. Again, if you want to debate about it, I’d be happy to.
But, for me, Friday is a story about an amazing woman who seems to be part James Bond, part She-Ra, and pretty much pure awesome. Friday, the character, is a genetically engineered woman with strength and speed well above the human average. She has made her way in life working for an organization involved in spying and courier work. The book’s setting ranges from a post-United States North America, to New Zealand, to the Moon, and finally into deep space. Heinlein throws you into an obviously science fiction future within the first page, but you don’t really have to know the how’s behind everything. You just go with it and it works. This is very much a character driven story rather than a setting or gimmick driven story. It’s not about the gizmos of the future, but how Friday uses them to accomplish her aims.
There’s also plenty of romance for those inclined. The book plays with some of Heinlein’s more radical notions of family structure, which I’ve always found fascinating.
I’m a huge Heinlein fan in general, and Friday is probably my favorite of his works, followed by To Sail Beyond the Sunset and I Shall Fear No Evil. (All of which, incidentally, have female, or at least female appearing, protagonists.)
Old Man’s War by John Scalzi 
Ok, even Scalzi admits that Old Man’s War is heavily influenced by Heinlein, so it’s not surprising that I love it. It is probably most similar to Starship Troopers, but clearly has nods toward the breadth of Heinlein’s work. Again, much like in Friday, you don’t need to know a ton about the great works of science fiction to get Old Man’s War. You learn things as the protagonist does. If you don’t get all the nods to Heinlein, that’s ok, the ideas are still cool.
Old Man’s War is set in a future where Earth has achieved interstellar flight (privately) and found itself in a colonial space war. Since space travel is handled by a private company they employ private soldiers in the Colonial Defense Force. When you turn 75 you can enlist and they send you off into space where you are mysteriously turned into a soldier. No one on Earth knows exactly what the process is because the trip to the stars is strictly one way. John Perry, recent widower, decides to take that trip. The novel follows him through the transformation into a soldier, and then into the war he’s signed up to fight.
I loved this book. I read it for the Sword and Laser Book Club and really enjoyed it.
Touched by an Alien by Gini Koch 
This book is the sci-fi equivalent of the paranormal romance. Kitty Katt gets caught up in an interstellar war when she takes out a monster in front of the Phoenix courthouse one day after jury duty. Before she knows it she’s being literally whisked off her feet by a handsome alien in Armani. Kitty is unconventional, sassy, and always accessorized with the only purse in creation bigger than mine (it’s a Hello Kitty messenger bag in case you were wondering, because I’m a grown up!).
I’ve torn through several books in this series. It’s a pretty gentle (though full of sexy-times) introduction to the basic principles of science fiction. It’s also just a lot of fun.
Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke
This is an excellent graphic novel of a regular girl who finds herself lost in space. It’s officially aimed at younger readers, but I adore it and I can’t think of a reason why any other reader wouldn’t. The art is adorable and the story is fantastic. There’s also a sequel called Legends of Zita the Spacegirl. I love them so much! They’re great for readers who enjoyed graphic novels like Bone and are now looking for something with a sci-fi edge to it.
I want to add a couple of Honorable Mentions to the list.
The Dragon Riders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey – But Sara, you say, these are books about giant, telepathic dragons! They’re clearly fantasy! True, but the people on Pern are actually space colonists. It’s totally in the books! They’re sneaky, sneaky sci-fi pretending to be fantasy. But, there are totally space ships if you go back far enough. And the dragons are just an awesome happenstance of xenobiology.
Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry – This is basically viral zombies meets the Bourne Identity. I’ve gushed, and gushed, and gushed about Maberry before on the blog, which is one of the reasons I’m restraining myself to keeping in in the Honorable Mention section. This is the perfect book for folks who like super high action stories. These books don’t stop. There are no breaks. They just grab you and drag you face-first through the awesome.
The Rook by Daniel O’Malley – James Bond meets the X-Files. Enough said. (Even though Mary didn’t love it, which makes me sad, but she’s still my friend.)
Partials by Dan Wells – Again, like Maberry, I’ve gushed alot about this book, so I’ll restrain myself this time. I will say that It’s awesome. Post-apocalyptic, dystopian, with androids. Translation: made of win.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Don’t forget! You’ve still got time to enter my giveaways – Stolen Magic Giveaway Wildwood Dancing Giveaway
Regency House Parties with Stephanie Burgis
Stephanie Burgis is one of my favorite authors. If you read this blog regularly I’m sure you’re aware of that. Her latest book, Stolen Magic, just came out this Tuesday. She’s doing an awesome blog tour to help promote her book and today, she’s here with us! We decided to talk about Regency house parties since Stolen Magic takes place at a house party. Read the interview! Buy the book! Then go watch the BBC’s Regency House Party!
Make sure to look for the giveaway at the end of Stephanie’s post!
-Sara
There’s just something about house parties! The very idea gives me a little thrill every time I spot it on the back of a book or a DVD case. All those different people thrown together in one house for days on end with no escape…what a perfect recipe for drama, as tension erupts and boils over!
There’s a reason why there’s a whole subgenre of “country house mysteries”. There’s also a reason why so many historical romance novels take place at country house parties. Sooo many dangerous–or exciting–opportunities for men and women to be thrown together all through the days and evenings!
…And of course there’s so much potential for intrigue, too, as people plot behind closed doors or use secret passageways to sneak back and forth. Add in priest holes and servants’ corridors (which were traditionally hidden behind the walls of a great house’s public rooms), and the opportunities are endless.
When I think of my own favorite house party stories, I think of country house mysteries by Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer; historical romance novels by Lisa Kleypas, Georgette Heyer, and Eloisa James; and, of course, the movie Gosford Park.
I hope some readers will also come to think of Stolen Magic, as my heroine, dauntless thirteen-year-old Kat Stephenson, spends her days defending her older sister against snobby new in-laws in a pre-wedding house party of horror…and spends her nights sneaking around the echoing halls of Hepworth Park, pursuing secret, magical adventures of her own.
Smugglers, spies, and a mysterious Marquise all join in the mix, but 
mostly…
There’s just something about house parties.
In honor of Stephanie’s post I’ve got two giveaways! First!!! We’re going to give away a copy of Stolen Magic. Click this link to enter –> Stolen Magic Giveaway
Second! Because I love you guys so much, I’m giving away an audiobook of Wildwood Dancing by Juliette Marillier – Wildwood Dancing giveaway
Animate Ink
Giveaway announcement!!!!
The winner of my Renegade Magic earrings is… William Griesmer! Congratulations and I’ll email you about sending them out.
Thank you everyone who entered. I’ve got another great giveaway planned for April. Details will be in next week’s post along with our guest blog by author, Stephanie Burgis!
So, this seems to be my year to read about animate drawings. I read The Rithmatist by Branson Sanderson on 
my New Year’s train ride. That book involves magicians who can bring chalk drawings to life and duel with them. I reviewed it more here.
I also recently finished Ink by Amanda Sun. Katie Greene has recently lost everything. Her mom has died and her grandfather is too sick to take her in. The only relative left is her Aunt who lives in Japan. Katie has lost her family, her friends, and even her language. Her aunt has enrolled her in a regular Japanese school instead of an English school in the hopes of helping her assimilate. It’s working…. sort of. But there’s so much to remember and it’s even harder when she isn’t fluent in the language.
While trying to get something she left behind in the lockers she overhears a horrible break up between Tomohiro, unattainable senior and star of the kendo team, and his girlfriend. The breakup centers around a portrait of another girl in Tomo’s sketchbook. The book gets tossed around during the fight and Katie sees something unbelievable, the drawing moves! Tomohiro gathers up the papers and bolts out of the school before Katie can pin him down and get an answer.
She doesn’t leave it there. Katie starts to follow Tomo to find out why the ink moves around her. He keeps warning her off, but she’s persistent. She’s found something in Japan that interests her and makes her forget about everything she left behind and she’s not going to give him up. Everyone warns her away from Tomohiro, even Tomohiro himself. He’s got a really bad reputation. He had to leave another school after his best friend got hurt really badly under mysterious circumstances. His new best friend has ties to the Yakuza. He’s not particularly nice, except when he is… It’s all so confusing, but Katie needs him to explain what is happening to her.
Ink has started to move in her presence; drawings come to life, the ink in her pen seemed like it was going to attack her… She needs to understand what’s going on and why it’s stronger around him.
I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads. It’s got some first novel problems with pacing, but I read it in one day so that didn’t bother me too much. I suspect that if I were reading a few chapters a day it would be a bigger issue. Katie has some Bella Swan-like issues of being enthralled by a guy who is unbelievably bad for her. She takes some really stupid risks, but I’m thinking back to how I felt when I was a teenager, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have been that stupid. Especially after something devastating like losing my Mom. On the whole, I think she’s foolish, but believable. I loved the elements of Japanese mythology (altered though they may be) in the book. Sun’s descriptions of the city were evocative. 
The other nice thing, is that unlike Bella, Katie isn’t passive. If Tomo left her she wouldn’t lock herself in her room she’d track his ass down and smack him. She stands up for herself in some pretty terrifying situations. I don’t agree with her taste in men (there is, of course, more than one other guy vying for her attention), but she’s by no means a passive, damsel in distress type. I’ll look for the next book in the series (although, since I read this in ARC I’ve got at least a year to wait).
Sun has written a prequel novella, Shadow, that’s due out in June if you’d like to get some more of the world of the Paper Gods series.
I forgot to put my list at the end of the last post. Sorry! Here is the list of books I’ve never read before:
Without a Summer by Mary Robinette Kowal
The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson
Old Man’s War by John Scalzi
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
Trapped by Kevin Hearne
Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter
The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi
The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
Alien Tango by Gini Koch
Alien in the Family by Gini Koch
Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger
Alien Proliferation by Gini Koch
Storm Front by Jim Butcher
Redshirts by John Scalzi
Alien Diplomacy by Gini Koch
The Quest of the Warrior Sheep by Christine Russell
Dust & Shadow by Lyndsay Faye
The Wells Bequest by Polly Shulman
The Far Traveler by Nancy Marie Brown
The Mouse With the Question Mark Tail by Gregory Peck
The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Club Monstrosity by Jesse Peterson
Wednesdays in the Tower by Jessica Day George
A Beautiful Friendship by David Weber
Hunted by Kevin Hearn
Beauty & the Werewolf by Mercedes Lackey
Motor City Fae by Cindy Spencer Pape
Sweet Revenge by Zoe Archer
Aunt Dimity & the Lost Prince by Nancy Atherton
Ink by Amanda Sun
Carnal Innocence by Nora Roberts
Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon by Nancy Atherton
Death on Demand by Carolyn Hart
If you want to see everything I’ve re-read this year you can check out my Goodreads shelf. Speaking of Goodreads, they were bought by Amazon.com. I’m not sure if I want to freak out about it or not. On the one hand, Amazon has its fingers in A LOT of pies. That makes me a little nervous. On the other hand, I’m not sure we’re going to see a ton of change in the Goodreads experience, at least up front. Jeff O’Neal, editor of Book Riot, has a thoughtful examination of the deal and its implications.
At the end of the day, I’m not jumping off the Goodreads ship right now, but that might change depending on how Amazon monetizes the site. I don’t do any of my buying from Goodreads anyway because I work at a bookstore, but if the long list of available buying options narrows down to just Amazon I might bail on principle. I’m like that. I haven’t bought Exxon gas outside of an emergency because I was a small child when the Valdez disaster occurred and it made me really mad. I don’t buy Nestle products when I can figure out which companies they own either because of a boycott started in 1977. For the record, I was born in 1979. I literally got this boycott with my mother’s milk. I have wacky principles which will rear their hydra-like heads at strange times. I use Amazon for lots of things, mostly crafting supplies, but their scope kind of scares me. They’re into almost everything and the Goodreads acquisition is just one more piece of that.
Why The Books You’re Looking For May Be Missing
So, Simon & Schuster and Barnes & Noble are in a fairly bitter fight about discounts and pricing. The New York Times wrote about it last week. The biggest impact is that Barnes & Noble has decided to dramatically cut their Simon & Schuster orders and limit display space for S&S titles. This means that the big name authors might be a little harder to find, on the shelf instead of on a giant display directly inside the doors, but the smaller authors might be missing all together.
M.J.Rose, author of The Book of Lost Fragrances, has written a blog entry listing some of the books that don’t seem to have been picked up for in-store stock. All of these books are still available at B&N.com, but their absence from store shelves will likely dramatically impact sales.
One of my favorite authors, Stephanie Burgis (author of Stolen Magic), wrote a heartbreaking blog entry about how it felt to discover that the final book in the Kat trilogy was not being stocked. Can you imagine? You’ve worked for years to tell a story you love and then find out that a major bookstore chain isn’t carrying the final volume. Not because your sales weren’t good, or the buyers didn’t like your book. They’re not carrying it as a negotiating tactic.
And it’s not even a particularly good negotiating tactic. Amazon.com has tried the same thing. The biggest case was when they were fighting with MPS in 2010 about e-book pricing. Amazon stopped selling MPS books in an effort to get them to adopt Amazon’s preferred e-book pricing schedule. And IT DIDN”T WORK. MPS held out and Amazon gave up and reinstated regular business. Granted, they’ve added that cranky little price set by publisher tag to the e-books, but they’re selling them and the physical books all the same.
MPS sales were hurt by that. Just as S&S sales are being hurt by B&N, but both publishers will make it. It’s the authors and the readers who will be most hurt. If you’re a huge fan of an author, you’ll find the books. They’re out there! You can order them online or from another bookstore, (like the one I work at!). But what about the books you’d normally stumble upon as a happy accident? Those are the ones that you, the reader will miss. And there are probably authors out there that won’t recover from a hit like this. Imagine being a debut author and there’s just nothing there when your book comes out.
I don’t have a solution. But I highly recommend you read the blog posts I linked above. Especially, go check out M.J. Rose’s post because she’s listing books she knows are being affected. Check them out, see if you might want to give them a read. Then pick them up, or heck, even order them from B&N to show them that people want these books.
And they’re all available through your local Indie bookstore too. Just remember that.
Aunt Dimity Has Taken Over My Life… Again!
Just a quick reminder – there are only 6 days left to enter my Roman Coin 
Earrings giveaway.
I haven’t been talking very much this year about my personal reading challenge, but, of course, I do have one. I’m hoping to top last year’s 113 new books read. So, my stated goal is 110, but really, I’m hoping for 125. I’m doing pretty well so far with thirty-three books under my belt. (I’ll post a full list at the bottom.)
But, recently, I’ve been distracted. You see, I got an advance copy of the forthcoming Aunt Dimity book. I love Aunt Dimity. i have loved Aunt Dimity since I was a teenager and my mom presented me with Aunt Dimity’s Death. I have devoured all nineteen of the currently published volumes, plus the forthcoming twentieth book, Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince. Each one is a little gem unto itself.
They are, technically, mysteries, although there is rarely a body. Most of them have something fairly profound to teach me about life, beauty, the nature of friendship, and family. But they’re not saccharine. They don’t really moralize at the reader so I don’t feel like I’ve had a message shoved down my throat on a wave of Karo syrup. Which is good, because while I like Karo syrup I prefer it to come with pancakes (I’m southern) not sermons.
Aunt Dimity is not actually the protagonist of the books. Lori Shepherd is the star of the books. Lori is an American. An informal expert on antique books and manuscripts. She is perhaps a little prone to flights of imagination but how could she not when she has Aunt Dimity in her life?
Aunt Dimity is no ordinary aunt! For one thing, she is not actually related to Lori. Dimity Westwood and Beth Shepherd met during WWII while they were each working in London. They remained best friends until Beth passed away a few months before the first book opens. Dimity and Beth never saw each other again, but they exchanged letters for the rest of their lives.
The other unusual thing about Aunt Dimity is that… well, she’s dead. But certainly not departed. She elegantly haunts a blue journal and communicates with Lori through elegant, copperplate script. Now you see why Lori’s flights of fancy aren’t so strange?
When Dimity passed away she left Lori with the means and motivation to go to England, which is where most of the books are set. England unfolds in the books the way I always watched it on PBS programming as a child. There are villages and fetes and ladies in big hats. But Nancy Atherton doesn’t wrap everything up in sweetness and light. There are petty jealousies, big cities, homeless people, theft, and spite. It is still a world that I can recognize, but maybe with the edges softened a little. I know that we’re going to solve the problem and, much like the girl scout motto, leave the world of the books better than we found it. More than anything, these books are full of hope. It was a heady brew for a depressed teenager, and I still indulge in it today. So, when a new book came out in the series I got a little tipsy on it.
I got Aunt Dimity & the Lost Prince last Wednesday (3/13). I took it home. I finished it Thursday. It was great. Next, I read the new book in Cindy Spencer Pape’s steampunk series. That took an evening. And I had to finish an ARC of Ink by Amanda Sun. But I just couldn’t get Aunt Dimity out of my head. But, I realized that I had MISSED AN AUNT DIMITY BOOK!!! I rushed through Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon. A Renn Faire has come to the village and no one is quite sure what to make of it. I LOVE Renn Faires so I can’t believe that I missed it!
I wasn’t satisfied after that. I need more Aunt Dimity. I decided to go back and re-read Aunt Dimity’s Death. Although, technically, I listened to it on audio. Then I couldn’t resist Aunt Dimity: Down Under, which is like a love letter to New Zealand, one of my all-time favorite places to visit. Over the last week I’ve also gone back and revisited Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin, Aunt Dimity: Detective, Aunt Dimity’s Christmas, Aunt Dimity Digs In, Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday, Aunt Dimity: Snowbound, and I started Aunt Dimity’s Good Deed last night. I’m sort of accidentally reading in reverse order, but I’ve read all of them before, so it doesn’t matter.
The publisher has gone in a new direction with the book covers. Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince and Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon show the newer, cleaner covers, while the Aunt Dimity’s Death and Aunt Dimity’s Good Deed give you an idea of the original, cozy covers. I like both.
Several of the book are currently available on Audible.com. Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince will also be out on audio when it releases on April 18. I highly recommend it!
I’ll also remind you, that if you sign up for a free trial at audible you can get an audibook for free. I highly recommend the Aunt Dimity books. (No, Audible doesn’t sponsor me, but they do sponsor the Sword & Laser podcast, Do I Dare to Eat a Peach, and Writing Excuses, all of which I love so much.)
Renegade Magic Giveaway
Full wrap around cover of Renegade Magic
I have more exciting news! Author Stephanie Burgis will be doing a guest post here in April. She’s doing a blog tour for the US release of her third book, Stolen Magic, which comes out April 2! I got impatient and imported it from England when it came out there. It’s pretty amazing, but I’m going to save my review for the last post of March right before the book is due out. Because I like to tease you.
But, you might be saying to yourself, the title of this blog post seems to indicate that there is a giveaway. What does that have to do with anything?
I’m so glad you asked!
Renegade Magic, book 2 of the Kat, Incorrigible series, came out in paperback this past Tuesday. So, to celebrate it’s release date I’ve created a pair of earrings inspired by Kat’s trip to the roman baths in Bath, England. While these coins are a little smaller than actual Roman currency coins, jewelry, finger foods, and needleworking supplies have all been found in the drains of Roman bath houses. So Kat might have found some coins like this during her unauthorized dips into the baths.
The giveaway will run until March 30 and I’ll ship the earrings anywhere in the world. They’re currently on copper earwires, but that can be changed to surgical steel if you’d prefer.
To enter the giveaway all you have to do is leave a comment here. You can earn extra entries by following Stephanie on Facebook or Twitter. It’s that easy!
Audiobooks
We finished our run of Proof last night. I’ve had about half an hour in the car each way to the theater, so I’ve had lots of time to listen to audio content. I thought I’d share some of my musings on the wonder of audiobooks.
I finished David Weber’s A Beautiful Friendship and I’m about halfway through Nora Robert’s Carnal Innocence. It’s set in Mississippi so I’m being very entertained by the narrator’s accents. There are apparently two versions of the audiobook; one with a man narrating (which I’m listening to) and one with a woman. I find it very interesting when a romance novel gets a male narrator. The protagonists are usually female, or as in this case, the narrative is divided between multiple male and female perspectives. I wonder sometimes if male narrators are chosen so that female listeners don’t get uncomfortable listening to another woman describe intimate details. I don’t know that that’s why. It’s just a guess.
I will admit to being fairly uncomfortable if I get to a steamier scene when I’m in the car in traffic or something. Even if I’ve got headphones in I feel like the other people around can tell what I’m listening to! There are other books that I find too intense to listen to. City of Thieves by David Benioff (who is now famous for writing the scripts for Game of Thrones) is one that I started on audio and had to stop listening to. It’s narrated by RON PERLMAN! This is awesome. However, there are horrors of the seige of Leningrad that I don’t actually want Ron Perlman whispering into my ear. It’s also MUCH easier to skip traumatic scenes if you’re reading rather than listening. (Seriously, if you like animals, skip pages 111 & 112. Really. Skip them.) I consider this one of the best books I’ll probably never read again. It is exceptionally well written, but some of the parts are very tough on the reader.
Then there are the audiobooks where the reader just doesn’t quite work for me. Hissy Fit by Mary Kay Andrews is one of those. It’s not that the narrator was bad, but she played the protagonist a little ditzier than I would have prefered. It’s minor, but she just didn’t sound right to me when compared with the character voice in my head. The audiobook was also abridged, which always bothers me. She does the audio versions for lots of Mary Kay Andrew’s books so I think it’s just me. That’ll happen sometimes. I’ve decided how the character would say something and if the narrator does it differently then it makes me a little twitchy.
I go back and forth on authors that read their own books. Sometimes it’s awesome, but every now and then it just doesn’t work. Madeline L’Engle used to be the only narrator you could get for A Wrinkle in Time. Her voice just didn’t work for me on that book. There is a new version available now.
On the other hand, Mary Robinette Kowal narrates her book Shades of Milk & Honey and is really great. It took me a little while to get used to her English accent though. I listen to her on the Writing Excuses podcast, so I’m pretty familiar with her regular speaking voice. So suddenly having authentic sounding British Mary! was a little disconcerting. I highly recommend the book, the audiobook, the sequels, and the signing we’re having with her in September! (There shall be tea and cakes!) And possibly regency costumes if I’m feeling really ambitious.
Another amazing author/narrator is Catherynne Valente. I recently listened to her book, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. The tone of the book is a little dry and very elaborate. I’m not sure anyone but the author would be able to do it just right. I like this book extra because the protagonist’s name is September and my birthday is in September so I’ve always felt proprietary about it. It is one of the best months and so, would of course make a good name for an adventurous little girl.
Goodreads Giveaway
Hey Guys, I’ve been working on a play – Proof at South City Theater. We’ve got three days left if you’re in the area. Because of this, I’m behind on the blog. I’m really sorry. Eventually, I’ll have either guest posters or have a set of posts ready to go when I get overwhelmed.
In the meantime, enter my Goodreads giveaways!
Archipelago by Monique Roffey
The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen
Medusa's Library 