Forgot my flash drive, so I can’t post the review I had in mind. I’ll just mention briefly that KERI is moving along, that I’m liking where I am with it — I just shuffled things around and moved a chapter forward and need to backfill behind it, and I like that because it gives me a clear direction for the next twenty or thirty pages. This will make it easier to pick up again if I take a short break, so I am. I’m re-reading DEEP DOWN and the I will read STRANGE COUNTRY. And then I will go back to re-reading Mary Stewart and Dorothy Dunnett mysteries for a while. And cookbooks. I like THE NEW BOOK OF MIDDLE EASTERN FOOD by Roden. Very approachable recipes compared to the Thai cookbooks by Thompson. I made the Moroccan beef with snow peas and preserved lemon and cracked green olives last night. It was very good.
Anyway, I don’t have a real post for today, so this is a good day to tour the internets:
Check this out: Over at Random Musing, Brandy’s giving away her favorite reads for the past several months. Those include Castle Behind Thorns, The Homeward Bounders, Islands of Chaldea, and a bunch more I haven’t read. I like the look of Pointe, but if you read Brandy’s review, it sounds like a tough read.
Always nice when someone else loves the same books you do! Here’s Charlotte’s review of Castle Behind Thorns. I like this bit: “I find it very pleasant (especially when I am frazzled, as I was when I read this one) to curl up with a book about people puttering around, trying to get by and find solutions to problems without to much actual conflict. (And when I am too tired to clean my own house I like to read about other people cleaning their magical castles/English cottages/19th-century abandoned mansions, etc.).” Me, too!
Janet Reid on word-of-mouth. Yes, this is why I am so happy to tweet, not about my own books — I think it’s boring when authors do that — but about other books I’ve read that I really loved. Also, did I mention Brandy’s giveaway? Now that’s putting your money where your world-of-mouth is.
Harry Connelly on the worst possible advice on how to handle negative reviews. Bad advice aside, I thought this comment was hilarious: “It’s supposed to be advice about reviews and what an author should do about them, but it’s the worst advice you could ever find, short of kidnapping reviewers so you can hunt them on your private game reserve.”
Oh, did you all recall that Heidi of Bunbury in the Stacks is getting married very soon? I enjoyed this post of hers about love in the air. Also, Laura Florand! Plus, Heidi adds, “We’re getting married in my hometown and heading out more than a week early, which means lots of travel time and some much-needed moments of down time midst all the craziness. Of course, we’ll also have a (short but sweet) minimoon wherein we’ve booked a private cabin at the edge of Yellowstone for a few nights. I plan to kick back, relax, and hopefully read a little–I’m planning to take these three with me, but do let me know if there are any other must-reads!” — so if you DO have any other must-reads to suggest, of course you should drop over and comment on her post.
Okay, one more, I wanted to share this link to some short reviews by Liz Bourke, mostly because of this: “Well, folks: The City of Silk and Steel [update: I think she probably means The Steel Seraglio, which is the title that’s coming up on Amazon.] is not at all the book I feared it would be. It is, instead, a brilliant story, a story about stories, about justice and hope, friendship and love between women. It is graceful and accomplished and in many ways one of the kinder novels I’ve read in the SFF genre. It’s a marvelous book, and I can now recommend it highly.” Okay, yeah, that’s the sort of comment that makes me sit up and take notice.
There you go!
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