Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 24

November Reading Log

Fiction:
A Trifle Dead by Livia Day is a humorous small-town mystery. I enjoyed all the quirky characters and the to-me-unusual setting of Hobart in Tasmania; there’s also a lot of excellent, excellent food description, as the first person narrator owns a cafe and likes to experiment. I feel smug about the mystery because I figured out who the villain was, but that didn’t impair my enjoyment. The only thing that annoyed me a little was the Scottish character whose dialect was written out.

Aft...

Book Sample-palooza

I’m going to have some time to read over my Christmas holiday, so I went through my wishlist and downloaded a whole slew of samples (see below). I will report back once I get through them all! In the meantime, if you have read any of these books and either loved or hated them, feel free to let me know in comments.

I can no longer remember who recommended most of these to me. All of the authors are new to me except for Daniel José Older and Kate Elliott.

—The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai As...

My Philcon 2015 Schedule

I’ll be at Philcon in Cherry Hill, NJ this weekend. My schedule is below.

Sat 11:00 AM, Plaza I
“The Legend of Korra” Victoria Janssen (moderator), Brandon Wright, Laura Kovalcin, Hakira D’Almah, Savan Gupta

While its prequel show “The Last Airbender” had strong appeal for both younger and older fans, Korra – with its older cast and more mature themes- was clearly not intended just for children. Set seventy years after the events of The Last Airbender in a world heavily influenced by both the...

October 2015 Reading Log

October was a pretty sad reading month for me! I was extremely busy, which was part of it, and I seem to be in a bit of a fiction slump as well. The only fiction I finished was 1) a sequel and 2) a book for anonymous review, but I did finish a nonfiction book I’d been working on for months.

Fiction:
I started, but did not finish, The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi, an author recommended to me by Gardner Dozois way back before this novel even came out. It seems to be a space opera caper nove...

September 2015 Reading Log

Fiction:
That Scandalous Summer by Meredith Duran is the first historical romance I’ve read in, it seems, forever. The characters are intriguing! The hero is a doctor whose brother is trying to bully him into marrying; the heroine is a widow whom he discovered drunk and sleeping under a bush. It turned out I wasn’t as much in the mood for a romance as I’d hoped, but I did really like the complex relationship between the hero and his manipulative brother; they’re at odds, and angry with each o...

CapClave 2015

October 9-11, 2015, I’ll be at CapClave in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

My schedule is below.

Saturday, October 10, 2015, 12:00 PM – 12:50 PM
“Urban Fantasy & Paranormal Romance”
Victoria Janssen, Alma Katsu, Dina Leacock (moderator), Sherin Nicole
What is the genre? What authors and works should people be reading?

Saturday, October 10, 2015, 1:00 PM – 1:50 PM
“Food In Fiction”
Ann Chatham, Brenda W. Clough, Victoria Janssen (moderator)
Even heroes and dragons have to eat. The food in a work of f...

CapClave 2015

Next weekend, October 9-11, 2015, I’ll be at CapClave in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Here’s my preliminary panel schedule:

Saturday, October 10, 2015, 12:00 PM – 12:50 PM
“Urban Fantasy & Paranormal Romance”

Saturday, October 10, 2015, 1:00 PM – 1:50 PM
“Food In Fiction”

Sunday, October 11, 2015, 10:00 AM – 10:50 AM
“The Appeal of Doctor Who”

August 2015 Reading Log

I’m finally caught up with book logging!!! I did less pleasure reading last month because I was working on review books (which I don’t discuss here).

Fiction:
I was so satisfied with Power and Majesty by Tansy Rayner Roberts, first in the Creature Court trilogy, that I moved on to the second book, The Shattered City. Things got worse all over the place, hooray. There are multiple intriguing female characters, and though it shouldn’t need saying, I will say that they interact with men but are...

2015 Sales

I actually have some publishing news for once!

Thunder of War, Lightning of Desire: Lesbian Historical Military Erotica will be out in October 2015 from Lethe Press, edited by Sacchi Green. I ended up with two stories in the anthology.

“Delivery” is set during World War One (try to contain your shock) and takes place during a very long ride in an ambulance through unsafe territory. The ambulance driver is tough and tomboyish, from the American West, and the English engineer is realizing how...

July 2015 Reading Log

Fiction:
I re-read Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in order to moderate a Readercon discussion on the book, for which I volunteered at the last minute.

I also read Persona by Genevieve Valentine for a Readercon discussion. It’s not that long. Set in a future where international politics takes place (nominally) through the medium of national celebrity diplomats – Faces – and the freelance press is underground, sometimes in the guise of paparazzi (Snaps), it follows one Face (Suyana Sapaki)...