What’s the last good story you read?
Why did you like it?
I just finished a beta read for Ice, by Jim Curtis. In which revenge is a dish best served cold… but revenge isn’t the only thing that comes to he who waits.
What have you published lately? How many more do you plan to publish this year?
I’m stubbornly still planning on finishing 4 this year, even if I’m still too sick for coming up with words… Just means I’ll have to be faster, when I’m healthy!
Be excellent to each other.
Mad Genius Club 
23 responses to “Tell Me Something Good”
After Drake’s death I decided to read, well listen to actually, the Belisarius saga. I loved the first book. The second and third were also good, but I think the first has still been the best.
And before that I was reading Ringo’s Black Tide Rising series. I really, really want to see the video of Faith set to Tub Thumping.
I’ve been reading and enjoying Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries. The action, characterizations, tone… just about everything in them is well written. I feel I should point out their definite leftward orientation (the good characters live in a Perfect Socialist Society, and corporations are Bad) but the overall worldbuilding and strong storylines far outweigh that aspect of things. The fact that the background I mentioned is just sort of there, and not emphasized, is one thing I like about them.
I’ve managed to accumulate ten unfinished stories, at least two novel-sized. When I figure out which needs to go first (and finish them!) I can have a lovely Spring with regular publishing.
And new covers and updated back matter for the early books, that I ought to get up before the surge . . .
Reading the latest installment in C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner series. I was excited to get it, after the four-year hiatus — but it seems *thinner,* compared to previous volumes. I’m starting to think she needs to wind it up in some way, so that there’s a sense of completion, so that it doesn’t just drag on and on and end in a whimper.
Trying to stick the ending on one story and revise another. It’s slow going. I hope it’s just feeling under the weather.
I’ve been sucked into a lot of the Andrew Wareham series, esp. the pre-1900 ones. The combination of career-advancement-from-scratch with social constraints with periods of disturbance/opportunity (Industrial Revolution, East India Company, commerce, military-political administration, etc.) have been very appealing in portraying the application of intelligence and diligence to advancing in life.
I recently read the first three books of David Weber’s and Jason Halo’s Gordian series.
The first one was a thriller where they discovered that Time Travel didn’t work the way they thought it did, and they needed to keep the multiverse (which they didn’t know existed) from collapsing.
The second one was of similar danger.
The third was a buddy cop book. A good buddy cop book, I already have the next one on order from the library.
But it made me think that all the nailbiting we went through in the first two books was just to set up the background for the buddy cop series.
I read and enjoyed Cedar’s Jade Star recently. The main character had a great voice. I reread a bunch of Tom Simon’s essays in Death Carries a Camcorder and Writing Down the Dragon, because it was that or try to read post-Tolkien epic fantasy for myself.
I’ve been listening to Karen Savage, one of the Librivox narrators, read Mansfield Park and Scarlet Pimpernel. Scarlet Pimpernel seems to be an older, less polished recording with a less good audio setup – I haven’t gotten very far in it. Mansfield Park is something of a revelation. For one thing, it becomes clear that a lot, though not all, of the problem with this book as narrative fiction is that the young women of the estate (Maria and Julia Bertram, Fanny Price) are estranged from each other and have no one to confide in for long stretches of the story. It also becomes clear that we are supposed to be sort of indulgently amused by a lot of the romantic leads’ more self-deluded moments, in a way that isn’t necessarily obvious when you’re busy parsing Austen’s more complicated sentences for yourself. In general, the main theme of the book is self-delusion and self-deception, which is I think a large part of why it’s one of her least adapted books – neither Hollywood nor its British counterparts really want to hear what she has to say on this topic.
A graduate of the University of Dallas wrote her Ph.D thesis on Mansfield Park. A major portion of it was about gratitude, and how it shapes Fanny. She also wrote about how we see gratitude completely differently and often resent it. UD is reported to have said they were going to have to completely review how they taught the book, because of this thesis. So I’m just tossing the word gratitude out to you.
Her sense of gratitude does indeed shape her strongly and it is something that modern readers have trouble coming to grips with; I was more thinking about how literally everyone else in the story goes around constructing elaborate monologues to convince themselves that what they personally want is A Good Thing.
“to convince themselves that what they personally want is A Good Thing”
Actually I love that way of thinking about the book. Don’t forget the queen of elaborate justification, Aunt Norris.
Yep, definitely and especially Aunt Norris. There’s also a lot of it from all sides during the whole business with the play.
I read the last book in the series The Vixen War Bride. This one is called The Dark Ones and it is quite a bit darker than some of the others. (The Cupcake Girls, #5, was also pretty dark.) I still loved it. I also loved that it finished the series … I’m not sure how to say this … exactly where/how the whole thing started.
I wrote my first short story last year and published Jessamyn’s Yarn. I would like to finish another this year. I’d like to know this time what kind of book I am writing but so far it’s eluding me.
‘The Vixen War Bride’
I’m guessing that the title doesn’t mean what it sounds like. May I please know where this series can be found, and what genre and such it is?
https://www.amazon.com/Vixen-War-Bride-Book-ebook/dp/B092YNRGG
Space Military Comedy of Manners. Basically, post-WWII Occupation of Japan dramedy, but with mildly fox-like (ears and tail) humanoid aliens in place of Japanese people. I got bored with the alien culture and the misunderstandings between the lead couple about three books in; but it might work better for people who are either more military-adjacent than I am or more into j-dramas and k-dramas.
Also, the series did speed up a bit in book 4 and book 5, while book 6 is not about a comedy of manners at all.
Thanks for the link and explanation.
Here’s another vote for the Vixen War Bride series. I greatly enjoyed the first three books, but then life intervened and I have not read the second half of the series. Going to remedy that now.
I’ve just started the third book of Lee Jackson’s After Dunkirk series. It’s a WWII adventure saga that follows four siblings and their roles in the war.
The books are a great example of how excellent storytelling can carry the reader through a hiccup here and there. That first book was so darn exciting and riveting I couldn’t put it down. So, to answer the question: it’s the story telling I like. Also, the characters are good people.
On my own work, I’m doing the last bit of polishing for the final installment of my Martha’s Sons series. It’s been over a year since the last one came out, which bothers me, but this is the one where I’ve got the two leads in the same book, so it took a lot longer to write.
When this is done, I’ve got a new world to build. It’s been percolating in the back of my head, so I know a surprising amount about it. I’ve even got a plot. Woo hoo.
Released a book today, have a novella and another novel done and “simmering.” Am 1500 words into a Wyrd West short story, and will get that and another short done, then start the Merchant novel.
Fun reading – A guidebook to the Baltic Capitals that was written in 2001 by a Brit. Very dry sense of humor: “Regular visitors may remember the Hotel Tallinn that used to besmirch this site. Luckily all traces of it have been removed and should never return.” (19) A bit like the best of the original Blue Guides, but not as dense. (“A short detour will take the visitor to a chapel popular with summer visitors. Both overcrowded and overrated, it is better to continue down the road 2.4 kilometers, then turn right to find the charming and unspoiled Church of St. Vitus, notable for the high altar painted by [famous northern Renaissance artist].”)
What’s the name/author of the guidebook? Inquiring for a Lithuanian-descent husband…
The 2001 Bradt Guide “Three Baltic Capitals” by Neil Taylor et al. Updated editions are available.
Last book I read was a beta of Alma’s new book (which I have now bought, along with Jim’s new one).
I released ‘Texas in the Med’ just before Christmas 2023, and I’m now doing editing passes on books 1 and 2 to fix typos, grammar errors, etc.