Unlike my personal journals, this identity hasn't been around long enough to acquire hosts of abandoned friends and "who are these people anyway?" journals I'm subscribed to.

HOWEVER! I have noticed a definite trend of duplication between the LJ and DW lists.

So! Please, if you would, help me out here:

• If you have both an LJ and a DW, and you crosspost, please let me know which one you consider your primary one, and I'll subscribe there.


• If you crosspost but have no preference, let me know that, and I'll use Dreamwidth.


• If you only use one service, I can probably figure it out. I'm not deleting anything but duplicates.


• If you want to grant me access to locked posts, that's at your discretion. I probably won't grant it back, as I don't make friendslocked posts on this account. This is essentially my public author blog.


• If you only know me by this name, but want more access about my RL trials and tribulations than I post here, go over and drop a comment at my personal account, name of rikibeth. It's also mirrored from DW to LJ. Leave a comment at whichever location you'd prefer I read you at.


• Keep in mind that I haven't been posting overmuch there, lately, either.


• But I'll be doing some filter maintenance there soon. Mostly concerning who's interested in being on the filter about bipolar disorder. Totally opt-in. I don't want to burden anyone who doesn't want to hear about it. But if you do, rikibeth is the place to find it. I'm not likely to talk about it a lot on this one, but I'll add anyone who wants to know there.


• I won't drop you from the author journal if you subscribe to the personal one, or vice versa. I can handle THAT much duplication.  See edit below. You might get some duplication yourself, as I'm certainly going to hassle my friends with post any really important writing news to the personal LJ.


• If you know me as both author and ordinary slob, and only care about one info stream, defriend/unsubscribe at will.


• If you don't care about either, defriend/unsubscribe at will!
•  
• ETA: If I only subscribe to you on DW, but subscribe as both my author and personal self, I might take you off the author-journal reading page. Access will not be affected. I may defriend people from the author LJ if I've friended you both as my author and personal self. This will not affect your access to any author stuff, because that journal's public! And, again, if you ONLY care about the author stuff, and don't subscribe/friend my personal journals, I'll stay subscribed to YOU as my author self. I'm interested in ALL of you! Just, you know, not twice, or four times over.

Thank you SO much for helping me improve the signal-to-noise ratio of my friends feeds!

Sail Away by Lee Rowan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A collection of short stories set in the same universe as Ransom. I found them all delightful; I already love her Royal Navy officers William Marshall and David Archer, and the stories featuring Captain Smith and David's cousin Kit were just as sweet. The bonus story by Charlie Cochrane was fun, too -- I'm even willing to put up with a discussion of head lice if I'm getting the treat of a hair-combing scene!

Lee Rowan draws a great deal of her inspiration from the same sources I do, and the characters are warmly familiar and appealing. Her attention to historical accuracy is commendable, and her characters' affection for each other is strong and tender. And the two het stories at the beginning of the collection were just as satisfying as the ones of William and David. She has a good feel for how explicit a scene needs to be to serve the story.

All in all, enjoyable and satisfying romance.



View all my reviews

Promises Made Under Fire by Charlie Cochrane

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Charlie Cochrane is one of my favorite m/m authors, and in this book, she delivers once again.

It's set in WWI, beginning in the trenches, and shifting back and forth between there and England when the protagonist has leave, and concluding after the war. As you might expect, it's a story woven through with loss. But it's anything but tragic.

As you also might expect of a story of romance between men set in the time period, it's a story of secrets and careful deceptions, and the efforts that men have to make to build relationships in the face of social and legal sanctions. I'm addicted to this trope even while it makes me cry out at the injustice of it -- there's hardly a better way to put obstacles in the way of two characters getting together without making them do stupid things or requiring a specific and persona villain. So the cautious, uncertain way the romance builds had me cheering the boys on.

There was also an element of class conflict, and the way it was handled was both deft and a surprise; to say more would be a spoiler, so I won't. But I love class conflict, and I really enjoyed it.

As is typical of Charlie's books, what sex there is is described only in the mildest and least explicit of terms. But don't think there wasn't any sexual tension. She can get more out of a light touch on the arm than many authors can get out of a full-on sex scene. I was listening to the audiobook version in the car, and I squeaked out loud when the characters finally kissed!

A note about the audiobook: it's lovely. I bought it intending to use the WhisperSync function to switch between the ebook and audiobook versions, but I wound up listening to the entire thing. The narrator read at a pace and level of expressiveness that I could easily follow along -- and that is rare for me with a book I don't already know very well, and doubly rare if it's not a book I've chosen on the strength of the narrator's voice. (Why yes, I will gladly pick up just about anything narrated by Paul McGann and Samuel West, and I'm loving the Georgette Heyer titles narrated by Richard Armitage, though, again, the Heyer titles are ones I know essentially by heart.) If you like the audiobook format, or even if you don't usually but think it might be convenient, I heartily recommend this one.

It's a beautiful story, and I give it four out of five stars.



View all my reviews

 Well. I got really distracted by starting an exercise program. Then I overdid it and crashed. And I completely blew being able to write "Publishing the Banns", because for all that I had an outline and a nice chunk of research, I lacked a voice for the POV character. And there was mundane stuff like filing taxes (I still have to do my state taxes) and getting my teenager's FAFSA and CSS profile done. And tumblr changed their interface to the point where I found it nearly unusable.

So. Back on the horse. I have a month to do a 25K story for a Riptide call for Regency romances, and I have a premise for that, if not a full outline or anything, and at least one character has a voice, so that's something. It's going to be a F/F story, so if Riptide doesn't take it, or I don't finish it in time, I can cut 5K out of it and turn it in for the Storm Moon call "An Improper Arrangement", due in June. Then it's working on expanding and polishing "Sometimes Sin's a Pleasure", for the Total E-Bound call "Frost Bites", winter vampire stories. In between times, I can work on the Mimi and Olivier novel. Also, I've now been assigned an editor for Love Continuance and Increasing, and while I haven't heard from her yet, the deadline for that is 5/31.

In non-writing things, there's the state taxes (which I should do today), and on Monday I'll start going to the gym (or, depending on weather, running outside) again, and a Sailbros expedition to the USS Constitution next weekend, and I need to register for summer session classes, and the eternal job of Cleaning Up Around Here. Plus I should get back in touch with the shrink.

In writing-RELATED stuff, there's the Rainbow Book Fair in NYC in April, where I'll get to meet the marketing director for Storm Moon, because I'm putting her up at my house, and I have some books I can review, and suchlike.

So. Radio silence hopefully over, and I look forward to being in touch with folks again.

I loved this book.

I've loved Catt kingsgrave 's writing for a number of years now, and "lesbian selkie historical novella" had me at "selkie". I bought it as soon as it came out, but it sat in my to-read queue for a while, because of writing and research-reading that took priority.

The lead character, Mairead, is strong and capable while still having to deal with the limitations and challenges of being a woman who's attracted to women, during World War II, in a place as isolated as Orkney. She's very sympathetic, while still having plenty of rough edges to her character.

The selkie element is handled beautifully. It's matter-of-fact without taking away the mystery or fantasy of it; it's got a similar tone to The Secret of Roan Inish. Mairead and some of the other characters don't need to believe anything but the evidence of their own eyes, but you get the sense that other characters would dismiss it as mere fancy and legend, and that, to my taste, is exactly as it should be.

The eroticism is powerful, neither too flowery or too crude, just HOT.

I spotted the... should I call it a plot twist, or a secret, or what? Anyway, I spotted it well before the overt reveal, but that didn't detract at all for me; it seemed reasonable that I, standing outside the story, could pick it up, but that Mairead wouldn't consider it until she was confronted with it. And the way she reacted felt true and right.

And the ending was just what I'd hoped.

I could wish that this was a full-length novel, but not because I feel that anything was missing. I'd just have liked to spend more time in that world.

I can tell that this is a story I'll be reading again. 

Buy it here: One Saved To The Sea

The Cross of Sins (Fathom's Five #1), Geoffrey Knight

Disclosure: Storm Moon Press provided a free review copy of this book to me.

I saw this book mentioned on a blog interview with the author, Geoffrey Knight. In the interview, he was talking about his childhood love for action heroes like the Six Million Dollar Man, and how he had always wished that the hot, manly action heroes could be getting it on with each other instead of the female love interests, and how he set out to write that. The Cross of Sins is his first book, and he said that people had described it as "Gay Raiders of the Lost Da Vinci Code".

Well, I said to myself. I can get behind that concept. In fact, it sounds like a lot of fun. So, as Storm Moon Press has a policy of providing free review copies of any of their books to their authors, I asked for one.

I wanted to like it. I really, really did. But this book has a lot of problems.

The first problem is one of writing style. Now, I freely admit that I am a fan of long, flowing sentences, and a habitual abuser of semicolons. One of my beta's key duties is reminding me to take them out. And I admit that short sentences are better suited to action scenes. But this goes beyond short sentences. Whenever there's a scene that's meant to be especially fast-paced, it's done in sentence fragments. Three or four strung together on separate lines, not only in fight scenes and chase scenes, but in sex scenes, too. That, for me, takes it from "fast-paced" into "jarring", and I wish Knight hadn't done it.

Second, there are clumsy bits of as-you-know-Bob exposition, like ""Professor, come quickly! It's Mr. Musa on the phone, curator of the museum in Ankara!" The professor already knows that Mr. Musa's the curator, why is the housekeeper telling him this? There's also over-repeated description, like the part where the reader is told twice in one paragraph and another time very shortly thereafter just how well-dressed the party guests are.

Then, of course, there's the basic premise, which is that the titular Cross of Sins is a Renaissance sculpture of the Crucifixion in which Christ is shown entirely nude, and that this in itself makes the artwork so controversial and so sinful that the Church, or a secret group within it, has been trying to suppress it or get hold of it for centuries. Okay, fine, every action-adventure needs a MacGuffin, but ONE GOOGLE SEARCH makes it clear that there have been numerous nude Crucifixions produced over the years, including in the Renaissance, but that while they have often been the subject of controversy and cover-ups, the mere fact that this statue was nude wouldn't be enough to make it a Super-Secret Artifact worth chasing after like the Ark of the Covenant, or the Holy Grail, or El Corazon. Please, make it a little easier to suspend my disbelief?

Speaking of suspending my disbelief -- there's the action sequences. Both kinds of action. Now, the hot man-on-man action was pretty good, for the most part. I did wonder how the underwater blowjob could have lasted for more than about 30 seconds, because I used to practice holding my breath in the swimming pool when I was a kid, and I didn't have my mouth open, either, and there was one bit about "long, hard Latino cock" that I found really off-putting, but other than that, not much to complain about.

But the action-adventure action? Oh, dear Lord. I will say this: in a movie, it would have been GREAT. I would have been laughing and whooping and clapping, even while I was poking whoever had come with me and saying "heh, why are the villains always such lousy shots?" -- but in a book, I have too much time to think about how jumping off a ledge into the open top of a double-decker bus would result in broken ankles at the very least, and getting that close to the lava in a volcano would result in seriously disabling burns, and wait a minute, if this guy broke his knuckles three paragraphs ago, how's he still punching with both hands? The stolen camel chase was pretty hilarious, though.

So, my opinion: potentially awesome movie, sadly disappointing book. As it's a first novel, I'd be willing to check out later ones in the series, to see if some of the beginner's clumsiness improves... but I really wish I could see the movie instead.

 But if any of you are going to be at Arisia, look for me at the Naughty Nurses table at 11-1 Saturday, or 1-3 on Sunday. Or look for Bellatrix Lestrange on Friday night, Idris the TARDIS on Saturday after 4PM, or fem!Jack Harkness on Sunday outside my tabling shift.

I look like this:

Project: Musketeer/Jewish playwright novel

 
All of a sudden, I have an irresistible plotbunny for a contemporary, Goth, geek, slightly chick-lit erotic vampire story.

Actually I know where it came from, because ketmakura and I were talking vampire anatomy and physiology, and vampire boners, you know, likeyado. (Of course you do. Don't you?) And, well, we were hypothesizing about how such things were achieved (she wants to know mechanics, I'm willing to ascribe it to the vampire's conscious intention), the potential duration (theoretically indefinite as long as the vampire had sufficient blood in his system, we agree), and why, exactly, a vampire might bother, since that's probably not their most effective pleasure source any more.

One reason why is pretty obvious: to seduce prey.

A secondary reason could be if the blood of an aroused or orgasmic person is able to provide the vampire with some of their pleasure. Which has awesome potential.

If you then add in the commonly posited idea that it's pleasurable to be bitten/fed upon by a vampire (logical enough, as it keeps the prey from struggling), well, that adds MORE awesome.

We're taking our stories in really different directions: hers is going on a D/s path, mine... like I said. Lighthearted humor, plus hopefully mindboggling sex.

But I gotta write it before it gets away.

eglantine_br ?

That thing you were saying about Elizabethan glassware?

I should have taken that as a warning.

I have spent the last three hours looking at genre paintings of the first half of the 17th century to try to figure out if Mimi would have more likely had glass or ceramic drinking vessels and what the hell they would have looked like. 

Also whether she would have taken bottles to the wine merchant and had them filled, or whether there were wine casks of a size small enough to have it make sense that she'd have bought a cask at a time for her own use. Always taking into account that she lives on the third story above the street.

Answers about what the wealthy did in their great houses are NOT USEFUL to me.

My best guess is that she would have had thick glass that wasn't stemware. Probably footed beaker things. Several bottles would have been easier to carry than a cask, but she would have gone pretty often, considering the general untrustworthiness of drinking water, and Paris had an especially inadequate municipal water supply -- might have been clean, but there were NOT ENOUGH fountains to go around, and I would really like more information on Parisian water-sellers. I know there was a guild, but it is HARD to track down.

The internet believes the entire world is England and the US, it feels like.

*sigh*