The only thing worse than having dozens of unread books on your shelf is when half of them are by people you’re friends with so you have the additional guilt of being TERRIBLY BEHIND on friends’ books. The only thing better than reading books that have been on the TBR shelf for years is reading one by a friend and it turns out to be WONDERFUL. DESDAEMONA is one such book, written by– –ah, see, now, this is where it gets meta. :) Ben Macallan is the main character of…
Picoreview: A Royal Night Out: charming. A Royal Night Out is ever so loosely based on V.E. Day in England, 1945, when a young Elizabeth and Margaret were granted permission to go out into the crowds to celebrate like everybody else. In real life, this apparently happened after Elizabeth, standing up on the balcony with her parents, realized she couldn’t *see* any of the people, not at all, because of the spotlights on the royal family, and she wanted to be able to see and participate. The movie is an…
I’ve finished the first revision pass on IMMORTAL BELOVED, which has been a very interesting project to revisit. The final third is visibly stronger than the middle third; the middle third is visibly better than the first third. I knew I’d learned a lot writing it, but it’s interesting to see it so clearly. There are still a *lot* of things to fix. Worldbuilding, character relationship development, the poorly handled head-hopping (I don’t mind head-hopping, especially after writing MAGIC & MANNERS, but there are chapters where even *I* don’t know…
I had a brief visit to Oxford last month and although I didn’t have a decent camera with me, got a handful of pictures that I was very happy with, with my phone. I haven’t “matted” them, but I’ve concluded if I wait to do that I’ll never post another Photo Friday again, because I’ve just got too many other things going on right now. (I need a Beautiful Assistant to do that kind of work for me. Plus a lot of other stuff. If only I was rich. :))…
I’m trying to keep my nose to the grindstone while also being caught in this frustrating window of hurry up and wait. I put in an order for a proof for MAGIC & MANNERS on the 6th and it still hasn’t arrived, so I went and looked up why and the damned thing says it’s still ‘pending’. I don’t understand why, unless I’m supposed to tell the system that it’s print-approved, except as far as I can tell that will propagate it into the publication system and I don’t want…