Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 18

My 2019 Capclave Schedule

I’ll be at CapClave in Rockville, Maryland this weekend, October 18-20, 2019. You can find me on the following panels.

Friday, 6:00 pm, Monroe
Economics of SF/Fantasy Worlds
A world is made up of many entwined parts. People need basic things to flourish. Where do they come from? How can you have a thriving city in the middle of a desert? If you can make gold, does it have value? How do you put a price tag on magic? Which books get it right and wrong?
Scott H. Andres, Victoria Janssen, L. Pene...

My September Reading Log

I read a lengthy anonymous review book this month, so my other reading was a bit sparse!

Fiction:
A Dream Defiant by Susanna Fraser is a short historical romance that I’ve been meaning to read for literally years. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, it features a black British soldier, Elijah, and a white cook, Rose, whose husband is killed unexpectedly. Of course Elijah has long harbored a crush on Rose, and of course Rose admires Elijah, because there is not a lot of wordcount in this story. I...

My August Reading Log

Nonfiction:
The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I by Larry Zuckerman was a slog, but not because it’s a bad book. It was a slog because it’s difficult to read about so much pure, unadulterated fuckery being done to people. Worse is the postwar mess of trying to get reparations or at least acknowledgment. For those who don’t have a lot of knowledge about World War One, Germany decided to invade neutral Belgium for a quick route to France. They then proceeded to occupy Belgium (a...

Keystone Comic Con 2019

I’ll be attending Keystone Comic Con in Philadelphia, PA this weekend.

You can find me to chat and sign autographs at the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society’s table on Sunday the 25th, from 10:00 am – 11:00 am and from 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm.

My July Reading Log

Fiction:
For a Readercon panel, I re-read The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein and its three sequels.
It did not matter to her that she walked in danger; it only mattered that she could speak and act freely again, and that the power given to her by her training and nature need not be hidden like some secret sin…The change, she knew, was only in herself; she was relieved of deception, and her mind was free to work on its familiar paths. She recognized for the first time that lies worked damage...

My June Reading Log

Fiction:
I re-read the entire The Comfortable Courtesan: Being Memoirs by Clorinda Cathcart (that has been a Lady of the Town these several years) series by L.A. Hall, which is very soothing to my nerves. I highly recommend this series if you would like to see the Ultimate Hufflepuff (with some Slytherin methods) going about her business with great success. On a second read, it is striking me how tiny mentions of things build throughout the text until they become Events, and change the status...

Steerswoman Series Book Club, Readercon 2019

This is a spoiler post! All spoilers, all the time, for all four books of Rosemary Kirstein’s Steerswoman Series.

Rather than put this off until I feel I can make a beautiful coherent post, I’m just going to post the notes I scribbled during the panel while trying to keep track of the discussion and at the same time mentally prepare what I was going to say next that fit into said discussion. As I am not Archie Goodwin, I cannot tell you which bits are verbatim and which summarized on the fly;...

My Readercon 2019 Schedule

Here’s where you can find me this weekend at Readercon, July 11-14, 2019, Quincy, Massachusetts.

Friday, 3:00 pm: Kaffeeklatsch
Theodora Goss and Victoria Janssen

Saturday, 12:00 pm, Salon A
“Classic Fiction Book Club: The Steerswomen Series”
Kate Nepveu [moderator], Elaine Isaak, Victoria Janssen, Yves Meynard, Cecilia Tan
Since the publication of Rosemary Kirstein’s first novel, The Steerswoman, in 1989, the Steerswoman series has become a quiet classic for its powerful female friendships,...

My May Reading Log

Fiction:
The Shirt on His Back is tenth in Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January series. I always buy her new ones in hardcover, and the line of unread ones on my shelf is a little embarrassing, so I dove in. Such bliss.

Alliance Rising: The Hinder Stars I by C.J. Cherryh and Jane Fancher is the first book set in this universe for a really long time, but since I’d read all of the earlier books in the series, some multiple times, I found I didn’t need to re-read anything to understand what was goi...

My April Reading Log

Fiction:
I finally read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, which everyone and all their cousins has been recommending as a terrific Found Family space opera since it came out. And it is that. For me, it had a slightly retro feel, which is by no means bad. I enjoyed it a lot.

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine follows the new ambassador, Mahit, to the powerful Teixcalaan empire as she tries to figure out how and why her predecessor was murdered. So far as names go,...