Let’s Talk About The Weather
It’s quite amazing how much time people spend talking – or more often, bitching – about the weather. It’s too hot, too cold, too wet, too miserable, or you’re stuck inside when it’s absolutely beautiful out.
Apr 18
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Apr 17
Covering History
Making covers for historical books is difficult for many different reasons. At its base is the same problem as writing history: people will rate it as wrong if it doesn’t match their preconceptions, even if their preconceptions are wrong. (There never was, and there never will be a writer of historical anything that is besieged by people who say they’re completely wrong, just making up stuff and pig-ignorant. And most of the time those people should turn those slurs on themselves.)
In sum, the problem of historical covers as of historical novels is bridging the gap between times and cultures. But for covers that’s only the beginning. Read more
We Continue
It’s been an entire week since Mrs. Dave left us. Food stocks are low. I have part of a jar of olives, two meat sticks, some salt, and a jar of Luxardo cherries, left. The Barbarian Horde ransacked the refrigerator almost immediately, and have begun waylaying passing stroller-pushing Military Mommies and ransoming them for candy. The ravening howls are indescribable, and I’ll hear them in my sleep until the day I die. I’ve built myself a barricade of books and cookware. If I don’t survive this, tell Mrs. Dave I tried.
Oh, no. I hear the patter of ‘orrible, little feet … Read more
The Power of the Human Spirit
I have no doubt we’ve all seen the images from Paris yesterday of Notre Dame burning. While I disagree with the opening comments from Robin Roberts this morning that we will remember where we were when we saw the spire falling, the sight of the historic cathedral engulfed in flames will remain with us. So will the image of the cross over the altar taken afterwards, with the cross seeming to glow in the smoke and dark. But it is the story I heard this morning about the men and women who volunteered to face the danger and go inside while the cathedral burned in an attempt to save the treasures still there during the renovations that caught my attention. Read more
‘It sucks’
They asked you to critique their novel.
You like them, they’re a friend, and you would like to help.
And how hard can it be?
And then you find out just how hard…
So how do you tell someone ‘It sucked. Don’t quit your day job.’?
That is, if you wish to remain friends? Read more
Apr 14
Fresh books! Hot off the electronic press!
New books! Get your brand-new piping hot books here, fresh from the word-forge!
First, brand new from Jason Feusting, and excellent friend and now a fellow published author, By Dawn’s Early Light!
Eric Friedrich was supervising the last ice harvesting shift for his ship’s shot-up environmental systems when they detected an anomalous ice comet drifting by. Investigating the icy tomb, Eric finds a ship that couldn’t exist- a relic from a nation the Protectorate killed billions to erase from history… And will kill even more to keep it secret!
When his world explodes, Eric must make allies in the unlikeliest places, and seize even the slimmest chance of survival while unraveling a conspiracy that shattered planets and set off interstellar war!
Second, our own Amanda Green just wrapped up the Nocturnal Lives series with Nocturnal Revelations!
As a cop, Mackenzie Santos knows every shift might be her last. That was driven home two years ago when Samuel Wilcox came much too close to killing her. She still had nightmares of waking in the morgue. But that was nothing compared to leaning she is descended from one of the oldest and most powerful shapeshifter bloodlines. Until the night she “died”, she always believed shapeshifters and werewolves were the thing of bad Hollywood movies.
Now she knows differently. Monsters really do walk among us. Some are human. Some are shifter. . . And one wants her dead.
Worse, so much worse, whoever it is wants to reveal the existence of shapeshifters to the humans. He–or she–doesn’t care about the consequences. Somehow Mac and those who know her secret must discover who their enemy is and stop them before it is too late. But can Mac do that and stay alive?
Third, Alma Boykin has a new real-medieval-and-magic out, this time with mining and stonecutters and a city out to claim its independence from a neglectful noble, with Miners and Empire!
Aedelbert Starken, a master stone-cutter, will tell you shapes stone, not magic, but the gods have different plans…
Aedelbert came to the free city of Garmouth with his partner in order to build three new smelters for the ore – a complicated task, but one they’re masters at. Before they can complete the job, a noble with a grudge threatens the mines and the city. Now they’re caught up in a race between the men of Garmouth and the mines, the noble, and the forces of ice and water.
Aedelbert wants nothing to do with any of it. The Scavenger, however, has other ideas. And what He gives, He can also reclaim…
Fourth, Old NFO is back in the Rimworld series with an AI who learned subtle trickery and smartassery all too well from its creator! Jace, by J L Curtis
Roberto de Perez engineered his escape from the soul-killing drudgery of corporate leadership, to a remote research lab under an assumed name to play with research projects, like the creation of AIs more powerful than any protocol envisioned.
Freedom isn’t perfect: As a mid-level lab manager developing a brand new self-aware AI that’s actually better suited for combat shuttle control, Roberto unwittingly crosses a line with an external agency he didn’t know cared, and his own internal bureaucracy isn’t happy, either. What he doesn’t know is that there are people determined to keep him from succeeding at any cost.
What he doesn’t realize is his new AI has learned to manipulate the system all too well from watching Roberto, and everyone underestimated what it will do when its existence is threatened…
And last but not least, Margaret Ball has a regency romance meets… selkies? As delightfully off-kilter from the norm as you’d expect from the author of MatheMagics! Salt Magic, by Margaret Ball!
Bookish and shy, Sabira has a perfect marriage of convenience to the elderly Lord Steinnland and his library, marred only by her family’s urging to trick her husband into releasing his claim to their island fastness. But time and tide bring the irritating, if handsome, Viscount Iveroth, and on his heels, scheming visitors who kill her elderly Lord and release a plague of sea monsters.
Now Sabira must travel to the city of Din Eidyn and fight to save her home and her people, with Iveroth as her only ally. But as they battle black magicians and drawing room politics, the hardest fight of all is hiding her growing feelings for the Viscount… and the fact that she’s not human…
(Full disclosure: I wrote/helped write the blurb on Jason, JL Curtis, & Margaret Ball’s books, though it wasn’t for compensation. Unless you count the food OldNFO feeds me, as the carrot (cake) to the stick of the arched-eyebrow look of “have you gotten that written yet?” I just think they’re awesome, and want to share great stories with you!)
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