I’d had Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan on my list for a long time, but it wasn’t until I heard the movie was coming out in 2018 that I prioritized it. I’m glad I read the book first, since the two are a lot different. A lot of the plot points are the same,… Read More
Why You Need A Tanya Huff Shelf
There is a Tanya Huff book to fulfill any possible speculative fiction need. She can write in any genre she chooses and does them all well. Missing the first time you ventured into Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar or Katharine Kerr’s Deverry? The world of Huff’s Quarters series will give you plots, counterplots and magic rooted in… Read More
A Time Capsule and National Novel Writing Month
National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) has been taking place during each November since 1999. Its participants are challenged with writing 50,000 words during November in order to win. My own personal word count is currently at 25,000 so I found myself with time to make a post here. The halfway point also strikes me as a good opportunity for… Read More
The Unsettling, Intriguing Society of Menzoberranzan
My introduction to The Legend of Drizzt series came only this year, perhaps later than most. I grew up reading and re-reading mainly the Shannara series (which is extensive), The Lord of the Rings, stories from Garth Nix (young adult fiction), with a little of Stephen King‘s books dotted throughout that timeline. There was an early… Read More
We’ve all come a long way from Kansas! Feminism in The Wizard of Oz
We’ve all watched the MGM film The Wizard of Oz from 1939. But did you know that the original novel, written fully 39 years earlier, contained ideas about femininity that were quite progressive at that time and still are today? The feminist tendencies of his novels do not come as such a big surprise if… Read More
Where do words go when they die?
This post started out as a lamentation on the pitfalls of the writing and critique process. I wrote four paragraphs and then deleted them just now. Oops, I just did it again. You will never see those paragraphs or those words. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Maybe they were bad paragraphs.… Read More