Myth, the Universe, and Everything

A quick congrats to Stacia Kane for her most recent book birthday: Sacrificial Magic just released on the 27th. Here's to it doing well!

But the big congratulations go to Geoffrey Ashe, whom I've mentioned on the blog before as the Arthurian scholar I've had the privilege of studying under (and dining with) on my few trips to England. It's old news at this point, as the Guardian article was posted way back on December 31, 2011, but I just found out last week: Geoffrey has been made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for his service to Britain's heritage. His wife sent 'round a photo of the ceremony (which sadly belongs to the press agency, so I can't reprint it). Instead, I thought I'd post a photo of Geoffrey at Glastonbury Abbey, giving one of his lectures to our group back in 2009.



Congratulations, Geoffrey!

For the last couple (longer?) of years, Suduvu has been hosting a cage match of SFF characters, the wins determined by voters. This year's competition features some exciting protagonists, including



Kelly Meding's Evangeline Stone and Stacia Kane's Chess Putnam. The fictional accounts of how writers imagine the matches would go are always hugely entertaining, but trolling through the pairings just to see who's shown up this year is as much fun by itself.



So: Fight! Fight! Fight!

Some of you may have caught the two columns I wrote for Flames Rising (with the intention of writing several more) about the differences in the types of paranormal romances and urban fantasies that make up the scale of books inside the boundaries of the genre (or expanding them). After a conversation with my library boss, I decided to start putting together a big ol' list and synopsis of sub groupings for her, since it's what I read, and I recommend a lot of titles to our patrons. Just because someone digs vampires in Sookie and Anita Blake doesn't necessarily mean it's the vampires they're after -- in fact, the last person I was giving recommendations to started out from those two series and ended with, "Actually I'd like to have something a little more light hearted and funny," and so I sent her in the direction of shanna_s's Enchanted Inc. So in my list, I'm trying to suss out the qualities that might attract someone to a novel -- maybe they are vampire crazy, but maybe they're looking for something snarky with a Sex and the City vibe (in which case they need Happy Hour of the Damned by mdhenry). Maybe what they loved about Jim Butcher's Dresden Files was actually the private investigator angle, in which case you could go with devonmonk's Allie Beckstrom books, the Connor Grey series by Marc del Franco, of blackaire's Nocturne City series. (There are actually scads of PIs in urban fantasy -- I've just named a few.) Do they want an urban fantasy series with a con artist? Try the WVMP novels by Jeri Smith-Ready. And from there, if they love the radio angle, try Carrie Vaughn's Kitty the Werewolf books or stacia_kane's Megan Chase series. Maybe they totally dug the government agency aspect of Hellboy and B.P.R.D. in the comics, in which case, they should be reading antonstrout's Simon Canderous series. I could keep on this thread for some time -- the point is, while some people are vampire nuts, a lot of UF and Paranormal Romance readers might get a kick out of different aspects of the novels than just vampires vs. werewolves -- which is sort of a non-UF reader way to boil it down.

So, I thought it was hilarious today when Jackie Kessler posted a parody song about urban fantasy (using the tune for "Popular" from the musical Wicked). Did I make sure to include everyone on that list in my list? Who of those famed urban fantasists have I yet to read?

(Of course, I disagree with his looking down on Paranormal Romance, but that could be a whole other entry.)

So many book birthdays today!

Welcome to the world, Thorn Queen by blue_succubus; The Eternal Kiss, featuring a short story by kazdreamer; My Soul to Take, rkvincent's first YA novel; Destined for an Early Grave, the fourth installment of frost_light's Night Huntress series; and Demon Inside by stacia_kane, who is a guest today over at Bitten by Books. Whew!

One of the cool things about book birthdays is that you notice which authors you're following are also following authors you're following. Meaning: ilona_andrews retweeted rkvincent's post about the releases from frost_light and Jenna Black (who I'm not yet following; I've got one of her books on my desk, borrowed from a friend, but haven't had a chance to read her yet). Chandra Rooney blogged about kazdreamer. blue_succubus is showing up all over the twitterverse today, in no small part through the retweets of Team Seattle. Watching this kind of connectivity in the writing community is fascinating, and it's one of the things I love about the way the Internet is changing the way writers interact -- with each other, and with their fans.

But what's even better than online interactions among writers is, to me, the classic -- the good ol' writing group. Substrate met this past Sunday: four writers in my living room, plus one significant other/first reader, plus one writer joining us via Skype from his summer location of California. We looked over three pieces, a short story, a full novel (the first we've had submitted to Substrate), and three new chapters of a novel we've been getting in pieces. I didn't have anything this go round -- I've been having enough trouble keeping up with my deadlines -- but reading and discussing other people's work makes my writerly brain function *better.*

I'm really looking forward to the day when I can celebrate some Substrate book birthdays.