Author Archive
New contest: “A Night to Surrender” and “A Week to be Wicked” by Tessa Dare
Tessa Dare’s third Spindle Cove book, A Lady by Midnight, is out this week, so I thought it would be a good time to give away the first two books in the series!
Book 1: A Night to Surrender. Spindle Cove is Susanna Finch’s brainchild: a community for troubled women, where they can be free to be themselves without having to worry about men.
Here in Spindle Cove, young ladies enjoy a wholesome, improving atmosphere.” Susanna indicated a knot of ladies clustered by the hearth, industriously engaged in needlework. “See? The picture of good health and genteel refinement.”
In unison, the young ladies looked up from their work and smiled placid, demure smiles.
Excellent. She gave them an approving nod.
Ordinarily, the ladies of Spindle Cove would never waste such a beautiful afternoon stitching indoors. They would be rambling the countryside, or sea bathing in the cove, or climbing the bluffs. But on days like these, when new visitors came to the village, everyone understood some pretense at propriety was necessary.
But when the government decides Spindle Cove could be a target for a landing by Napoleon’s forces, Victor Bramwell is sent to organize a militia. Suddenly Spindle Cove is full of men, and Susanna’s peaceful community is at risk.
What I love most about this book is that the hero is an alpha…and so is the heroine. Watching them fight and maneuver and flirt to come out on top as the chief authority in Spindle Cove is incredibly awesome! (And sexy…) Plus there’s lots of heartwrenching family drama and a fantastic cast of minor characters (out of which I hope to see many more books!).
But even more than A Night to Surrender, I love:
Book 2: A Week to Be Wicked. And this one’s signed by the author!
Geologist and spinster Miranda Highwood wants two things: keep rake Colin Sandhurst away from her sister, and get to Edinburgh in time to present at a scientific conference. She decides to kill two birds with one stone and talks Colin into pretending to elope with her to Scotland.
This book contains so many of my favorite things, I don’t even know where to start: geek heroines, fossils, a rake who’s a rake because he can’t sleep when he’s alone in the bed (seriously, one of my favorite tropes EVER), a roadtrip, making up exciting fake identities together, making out “just to see what it’s like”…the list goes on. Miranda and Colin are both so precious and heartbreaking and I love them madly.
Just comment on this post to enter, and make sure you enter your e-mail address on the comment form–it won’t show up to other commenters, but I’ll get it and then I can easily notify you of your win. As always, if you want to be alerted when a new contest goes up, I recommend signing up for my newsletter.
NB: I got AWtBW signed at the RWA National Conference. Ms. Dare isn’t involved in the giveaway and the book isn’t personalized. So if you want to tell her how much you loved her books, this isn’t the place. That would be her website. (But this IS the place to tell ME how much you loved it!)
FLESH-BAG: a shirt
New History Hoydens post up! Part 1 of 2, excerpts from James Hardy Vaux’s 1819 Dictionary of the Flash Language (i.e. criminal slang).
BEST: to get your money at the best, signifies to live by dishonest or fraudulent practices, without labour or industry, according to the general acceptation of the latter word; but, certainly, no persons have more occasion to be industrious, and in a state of perpetual action than cross-coves [criminals, as opposed to square-coves, honest men]; and experience has proved, when too late, to many of them, that honesty is the best policy; and consequently, that the above phrase is by no means à-propos.
Without the Mace, the House is totally powerless
New History Hoydens post up on some interesting UK Parliamentary traditions, including: the mace, the House of Commons snuff-box, and my personal favorite, the House of Commons opera hat! Yes, I know they don’t use the opera hat anymore, but they DID until 1998.
(Longtime readers may recognize the post as a revised and illustrated version of this one…in which case I will be extremely flattered that you remembered it!)
The actual loss to government by the sudden destruction of the Custom House cannot be calculated
History Hoydens post up on the London Customs House fire of 1814! The fire destroyed not only the Customs House and all the records of the Revenue Service (including the irreplaceable notebooks kept by revenue officers stationed all over England), but also many of the surrounding buildings—partly because a rumor started that there were barrels of gunpowder stored in the building and the firemen refused to get near it…
Come and tell me about your favorite disaster!
The throat was too narrow to admit the hand
New History Hoydens post up! The 1808 Stronsay sea monster, which washed up on the beach in Orkney. Eyewitness testimony, snobbery, cryptozoology, and Lord Byron!
When public terror was calmed, and calm had led to reflection
New History Hoydens post up! I bought an engraving of the burning of the Barrière de la Conférence at a flea market yesterday, and I talk about the history of the engraving and the burning of the Paris Customs Houses on the first day of the French Revolution!
Never shake thy gory locks at me!
New History Hoydens post up, about the history of sightings of murder victims. Cool stuff! Apparently the idea was taken so seriously through the first part of the eighteenth century that a ghost sighting of someone could be enough to open a murder investigation without any other reason for suspicion!
New contest: “Wild Ride” by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer
ETA: This contest is closed. The winner is Justine!
I’m giving away a copy of Wild Ride by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer, signed by Jenny Crusie. She is one of my absolute idols and I’m so excited to have met her and be able to do this!
Here’s what I said about this book in my Goodreads review:
I knew in advance that I would love this book because it was by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer and because it was about an amusement park that is also a demon prison.
I adored every character, and the plot was fabulous. I especially loved the way the portrayal of demons started out very black/white, good/evil, and then grew more nuanced. (This is what I wanted so badly to see on Buffy and never did–yes, we got demon and vampire characters who were obviously not evil, or not more evil than humans anyway, but the ideology never changed from “stake them on sight, they HAVE NO SOUL!”)
I think my favorite character was Cindy, the ice-cream maker. I loved her ice cream and how her subconscious manifests as dragons and how when the demons were acting out everyone’s worst fear, they chanted at her “Hungry, hungry, can’t feed us!” What can I say, I’m a cook.
Plus, I loved the recurring theme of the fortune “He loves you as much as he can, but he cannot love you very much,” because my mom actually got that fortune one time.
Just comment on this post to enter, and make sure you enter your e-mail address on the comment form–it won’t show up to other commenters, but I’ll get it and then I can easily notify you of your win. As always, if you want to be alerted when a new contest goes up, I recommend signing up for my newsletter.
NB: this is a copy I got signed at the RWA National Conference. Ms. Crusie isn’t involved in the giveaway and the book isn’t personalized. So if you want to tell her how much you loved her book, this isn’t the place. That would be her website. (But this IS the place to tell ME how much you loved it!)
Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Rose
SPOILER ALERT
So…it’s being confirmed all over the internet that Benedict Cumberbatch’s role in the new Star Trek movie is…
Khan.
There are no words for how angry I am. Why would you give one of the most iconic roles in Star Trek, a major role for an actor of color, to a white person? Why?
Not only is this gross on its own, but it goes against everything original Trek was about, everything it means and stands for.
I just…I guess it’s not officially confirmed yet and until then I will hold out hope it’s not true, but several different sources seem pretty sure. I am crossing EVERY PART OF MY BODY right now.
I’m sure there will be all kinds of amazing essays about this soon that will express how I feel better than I can, but in the meantime, here are two articles I’ve linked to before.
This one is about Uhura in the new Star Trek movie. I’ve always found it really, really difficult to describe or articulate how this invisibility feels, how it affects you and the way that you view and experience media. I remember someone posted a one page article or somesuch wherein all of the actors in STXI had just one little soundbyte type quotation about their character and their feelings about the original version. John Cho’s was him noting that his reaction to Sulu was essentially: “OMG AN ASIAN GUY IS ON TV.”
This one is a moving essay about the Earthsea trilogy and how it felt to the author to finally read a fantasy story with characters of color in it. Seriously, read this. I cried. But I remember Dad saying, how come you never see anybody like that in the stories you like? And I remember answering, maybe they didn’t have black people back then. He said there’s always been black people. I said but black people can’t be wizards and space people and they can’t fight evil, so they can’t be in the story.
Remember that story about how Whoopi Goldberg saw Uhura on TV and told her mom, “I just saw a black woman on television; and she ain’t no maid!”, and how that empowered her to believe she could be a successful actress?
It makes me miserable to think that little kids watching the new movie will get the opposite message: You can’t do this. No one wants to see your face or hear your voice.
Someone’s buried alive, you know you want to read about it
New History Hoydens post up! The Very Bloody History of the Hawkhurst Gang of smugglers (no relation to Adrian!), including a pitched battle with a village, a raid on a Customs House, and some good old-fashioned torture and murders.