Recent Reads: Fake Flame: very cute. This is a a fake-dating book that has the brass tits to actually examine the trope of fake dating from within it own pages. Our Heroine, an English lit teacher, is being harrassed by her ex who won’t take no for an answer; in an attempt to get rid of him, she ends up almost setting a piano on fire, and Our Hero, a firefighter, arrives on the scene. Sparks, as one might say, ensue. Our Hero ends up offering to be her fake…
Picoreview: My Lady Jane – actually quite entertaining You know how I wrote MAGIC & MANNERS after a PRIDE & PREJUDICE watching-and-reading binge caused me to ask “what if the Bennet sisters had too much magic instead of too little money?” Well, My Lady Jane feels like somebody did that with Tudor England, except their all-consuming question was, “What if instead of Protestants, England had shapeshifters?” Now, lest you think this means we’re pro-Catholic in My Lady Jane‘s fantasy England, let me rush to assure you that there don’t appear…
I am, with extremely mixed feelings, trying out Kobo+, which is Kobo’s subscription service, like Kindle Unlimited for Amazon. Here’s the utterly ridiculous thing: I have zero problem with people using KU or Kobo+, so why do I feel weird about it? I do not know. But I do. If I were more likely to get through books faster, I’d just check them out from the library, but I’m all too aware that many, indeed most, of my books lie around waiting for months or years for me to read…
Picoreview: Hit Man: fairly entertaining I like actor Glen Powell, and the reviews said he was good in this Netflix Original (at least, I think it’s a Netflix Original; it’s on Netflix, anyway), which they also said was sexy and funny and stuff. To my surprise, it’s actually pretty sexy, which is very unusual for modern movies. And it is funny, if also sort of over-the-top unbelievable in ways that I didn’t just settle into, but instead kept kind of looking askance at. But it’s also apparently sort of based…
Last week I had to go down to Dublin, and a friend brought me out to lunch to celebrate having signed with an agent. We went to Bar Italia, which is fantastic btw, and when the waitstaff arrived to ask if we’d like to look at a dessert menu, my friend said, “Yes! We’re CELEBRATING!” They asked what we were celebrating, and I explained I was a writer and I had just signed an agent after looking for one for a very long time. They gave me, and then my…