C.C. Bridges's Blog, page 2
July 28, 2020
Tuesday – Boardgames
Things I Love Tuesdays is a weekly feature on my blog where I talk about things I love. Books, movies, it’s all good. Keeping things light and fun.
When most people think of boardgames, they might come up with something like Monopoly or Checkers, or even these days Settlers of Catan. I started out with many of the same. However, about 15 years ago we began to get into boardgames that took up a lot more time and, well, space.
My first foray into such complicated gaming was with the second edition of Arkham Horror, which pits the players against the game itself. You play as a team of investigators, and from the very beginning the game is stacked against you. We rarely won, and when we did, it was an incredible sense of victory. And remember when I talked about space? Well this game took up our entire dining room table with two leaves, and we had to store the component pieces in two separate plastic boxes that hardware stores sell to keep nuts and bolts in.
As my son has gotten older, we’ve gotten him into more and more complicated games. Some of his favorites include Clank!, Quacks of Quedenburg, Space Base, and Everdell.
But the idea of boardgames conjures up images of groups of friends gathered around a table, sharing food and drink as they play. Right now, that’s not possible to do in person. But we have found a way to have virtual game night.
There are two main digital ways to play games (that I am familiar with! I believe there are others!). Tabletop simulator, which is available on Steam for about 20 bucks, and Board Game Arena, which is a browser based system. Sometimes we even play online when the three of us are home together – it makes it a lot easier to clean up (Clank! Legacy, for example, took a good twenty minutes to setup and just as long to break down).
And while it’s not the same as having a game night with friends, right now I’m enjoying our virtual games and conversation.
Would you like to check out virtual game night? Let me know in the comments!
July 25, 2020
Christmas in July!
I usually really enjoy Christmas in July. They decorate the boardwalk. Some poor dude dressed as Santa Claus is on the beach having kids sit on his lap. They pump Chrismtas music through the loudspeakers. It’s all very jolly and fun. And usually 90 degrees.
But no boardwalk for us this year. However, if you are itching for some sweet, fun Christmas stories to escape into, I have a bunch!
A Christmas Yarn
Librarian Gavin MacCauley isn’t expecting any surprises this holiday season. It’s the usual rush of helping patrons, and knitting items to donate to the local hospital. But his world is turned upside down by the cutie who walks into knitting club looking to learn how to crochet a scarf.
Jonathan Mercier has just moved to town and is desperate to find a new craft for his traditional, handmade gift for the aunt who adopted him. When his elderly neighbor strong-arms him into attending the library’s knitting and crochet club, he falls hard for the kind (and hot!) librarian running the class.
But with Christmas coming, and time running out to finish the gift, will these two find the time for each other?
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The Puzzle Box
Elementary school art teacher Cole Peters is expecting a lonely Christmas this year while his longtime boyfriend, James Carducci, is on deployment with the Army. However, a box from James contains puzzles that lead Cole on a scavenger hunt through the greatest moments of their relationship. Together with his best friend Liz, Cole works his way through each clue.
The final puzzle could lead Cole to a gift beyond his wildest expectations
Lost and Found
Two lonely men, a lost teddy bear, and a sprinkle of holiday magic!
On a snowy night before Christmas Eve, Tyler Martin finds himself stuck in a Chicago airport, unable to get home to his family on the East Coast. After missing last year due to his jerk of an ex-boyfriend, the idea of not making it this time hurts. When he finds a lost teddy bear in the waiting area, his night changes for the better.
Aaron Klein is a bored airport worker, taking the Christmas shift because he’s Jewish. He doesn’t expect to hit it off with the hot guy who brings a lost teddy bear to his desk, but it might end up being everything he didn’t know he was looking for.
Originally published as Teddy Bear Christmas.
July 20, 2020
Tuesday Post – Slightly Sinful
Things I Love Tuesdays is a weekly feature on my blog where I talk about things I love. Books, movies, it’s all good. Keeping things light and fun.
Do you keep every book you read? If not, how do you decide what is worthy of shelf space?
I read a lot of regency romance novels, and I rarely hold on to the books after I’m finished with them. They all go on to good homes, but I am rapidly running out of shelf space for the books I do want to keep. So it’s a rare occasion that I end up putting something on my keeper shelf.
One of those books is Mary Balogh’s Slightly Sinful. I’ve read quite a few of Balogh’s books, and she’s one of my favorite authors in the genre. But I don’t keep all of her books. In fact, most of the time I try to check them out of the library.
I can’t actually recall purchasing Slightly Sinful. It seemed to appear in my ever growing to-be-read pile. Even though it’s part of the Bedwyn series, I hadn’t sought it out for that purpose – in fact, I don’t believe I’d read any of the other books in that series.
This book is incredibly tropey. The heroine is hiding in a brothel (and all the ladies she works for have hearts of gold). The hero has amnesia. They have to pretend to be married! And not only did the heroine and hero have their happy ending, but so did all the women in the brothel.
And yet…when I closed the back cover of that book, there were tears in my eyes, and I sighed. I felt too full of emotion. I knew I could not give this book up – not to a friend, not to the free cart at the library. No, I needed to put it back on my keeper shelf, where it has sat for several years.
I read so much I can’t always recall plots of the books I’ve read. But I mostly always remember how a book makes me feel. And for that reason, Slightly Sinful is one of those things I love.
Do you have a book you can’t give up? Tell me about it in the comments.
July 13, 2020
Things I love Tuesdays: Crafting
Things I Love Tuesdays is a weekly feature on my blog where I talk about things I love. Books, movies, it’s all good. Keeping things light and fun.
Welcome to the first installment of “Things I love Tuesdays.” Here is where I get to talk about things that make me happy. In the words of Marie Kondo, they spark joy. This week, I’m going to talk about crafting.
Now, I’ve always been a yarn crafter. I’ve been crocheting since I was about 4 years old, which puts me at…well, at a couple of decades of crochet. I tried knitting, but I could never get into it. Crochet was just easier for my brain. I could work on a scarf or a blanket and not have to think about it too hard.
But right now it’s summer, and it’s a little too hot to have a lot of yarn on my lap. Somehow, I ended up diving headfirst into paper crafting, specifically card-making. It’s not really surprising – a friend of mine is a demonstrator for a stamping company. I’m not going to name the company because this blog isn’t about me selling anything (although if you really want to know, leave me a comment and I’ll tell you:).
I started small, with a card kit, and I loved it. But I was quickly frustrated by the limited options. I wanted to do more. Hence me placing an order for much more stuff, and watching more tutorial videos on YouTube that I care to admit. I found my favorite presenters, and subscribed to their channels. I started by imitating their designs before playing with my own. I wouldn’t say I’m good at it, by any means.
It’s incredibly relaxing. I had a migraine the other day, so I disappeared into my “craft room” where I have all the paper supplies set up and made a card. There’s something meditative about cutting the paper, stamping the image, and then gluing it all together. By the end of the session, I have something pretty that I’m proud of, and that I can send off in to the mail to a friend to brighten their day. (The “craft room” is a spare table set up in the basement with all the boxes of Christmas decorations and my husband’s classic video game collection, so hardly instagram worthy stuff here).
Now I’m excited about the Holiday catalog, and making cards for Halloween and Christmas. I don’t know what I will end up creating, but I do know there will be a lot of glitter involved.
Do you have a favorite craft? Tell me about it in the comments!
April 28, 2020
Musings on Casino Royale in the 21st century
Note that the following reveals spoilers both for the 1953 novel Casino Royale, and the 2006 Movie starring Daniel Craig. CW for sexualized violence. I am using the Kindle Locations for citation purposes.
When I first started out in my desire to read the James Bond novels, my husband asked if I wouldn’t find them annoying. “Aren’t they sexist?”
In a way, he was right, but I find myself surprised in other ways. (Note I will not be touching on the racism in these books, because it’s not my lane, plus others have done it better.) I was pleasantly surprised by the heroine in Moonraker who was way more competent than Bond, and it’s only her smarts that gets them out of the impossible situation (see my live tweet of that book here).
But today we’re going to talk about Casino Royale. I had recently binge watched the Daniel Craig Bond movies at the request of a friend. (which, in the opposite of the traditional ‘only the even numbered’ Star Trek movies are good’, is better on the odds. The first and third are far superior to the second and the mess that is the fourth movie.)
My friend had asked the question – why does Bond do what he does? Why is he loyal to the Crown? He doesn’t have any reasons to be especially patriotic, not that we can see. In fact, he seems to be downright mistreated by the service (specifically talking the Craig iteration here).
I believe the novel Casino Royale answers a lot of these questions.
Fleming’s prose is rather prosaic. There doesn’t seem to be anything special about it, and a lot of time is spent deciphering what he meant – there’s a lot of French in Casino Royale, and he constantly references brands while contemporary at the time, mean very little to me now – especially when it comes to cigarettes. There is so much smoking in the Bond books, which is another way it functions as a snapshot of its time.
But every so often, Fleming will throw in some philosophical turn of phrase that will have me sitting back and chewing on the words.
One of those is Bond’s musings on Luck:
“Luck was a servant and not a master. Luck had to be accepted with a shrug or taken advantage of up to the hilt. But it had to be understood and recognized for what it was and not confused with a faulty appreciation of the odds, for, at gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck. And luck in all its moods had to be loved and not feared. Bond saw luck as a woman, to be softly wooed or brutally ravaged, never pandered to or pursued. But he was honest enough to admit that he had never yet been made to suffer by cards or by women. One day, and he accepted the fact, he would be brought to his knees by love or by luck. ” (Fleming Loc 550)
There’s a lot to chew on there. But our main takeaway for the purpose of this essay is how Bond others women. They are as intangible and ephemeral as luck. (There is also an undercurrent of violence against women in this book that I don’t recall in Moonraker.)
But this is plainly foreshadowing. Having seen the movie, I know that both will take Bond down in this book – his luck at cards will fail him, and he will be brought to his knees by a woman.
After chewing on this for a while – I’ve decided that how Bond feels about women is his greatest flaw. It’s because he doesn’t take Vesper seriously as anything but a piece of arm candy that he ignores his instincts – on several occasions. From the description of the scene in the night club after they’ve “beaten” Le Chiffre, it’s very obvious something is wrong.
As a spy, Bond is clearly noticing Vesper is doing something strange with her cigarette. Her attitude is all wrong for what’s just occurred. But because he dismisses it as “women, they sure are weird and moody!” he ignores the obvious cues that something is very wrong.
(And then when she’s kidnapped he has the audacity to blame her and goes on a pages long rant while he’s driving to her rescue.)
It actually makes him a very bad spy. He does the same thing in Moonraker – ignores his intuition and instincts when he damn well should know better.
But why?
Bond is a deeply broken individual. He has this amazing conversation with Mathis while convalescing (and poor Mathis was done dirty in the movies. He’s a wonderful character.)
Bond had just told Mathis he wants to retire. He can’t see the difference between the heroes and the villains anymore. He says “History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.” (Fleming Loc 1647). Bond goes on a rant defending the devil (ok, Lestat) and then Mathis has the most amazing line in the entire book.
“Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles.” (Loc 1707).
And this is the one thing Bond can’t do. I’m not sure if it’s the war and the spy business that have broken him, or if it happened to him before joining the military. After seeing people as targets and marks, spies and enemies, he has lost the ability to see them as human beings.
It’s no accident that the torture 007 undergoes in this book is emasculating. That’s because any ‘love’ he feels for Vesper is tied to proving his masculinity. It’s very shallow, based on her looks and how accommodating she is toward him during his recovery. It continues to establish Bond as incapable of deep emotion.
The movie, in contrast, does a much better job of establishing real feeling between 007 and Vesper. That is, of course, because they throw Mathis under the bus. It’s obvious that someone has to have been working for the other side, and the movie can’t rely on Bond’s sexism for ignoring this. Also, the two have much more interaction in the movie to establish a relationship than in the book.
Instead, we have Vesper taking Bond to a remote Bed and Breakfast in France, where she quietly freaks out the entire time thinking someone has followed them out there. Bond seduces her by putting his hands on her breasts. It’s actually quite uncomfortable to read, and there seems to be something of a resistance to her being with him at all. It’s another reason their relationship reads as shallow.
Thus when Bond finishes his dip in the sea and is determined to ask her to marry him, it’s like total whiplash. This is more evidence that his ‘love’ for her is related to how he’s dealing with recovering from torture.
(Sidebar on the torture scene. I was honestly shocked when I got to it because I had thought the scene gratuitous in the movie, only to be surprised to find that it came from the original source material. Bond is tied naked to a bottomless chair while his testicles are whipped by Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen in the movie). What is especially interesting is that Bond hopes that his torture gets to that place where he has been told by other agents that he will experience euphoria instead of pain. I sat back as I read this and thought “sub space?” Is Fleming talking about sub space??? Quick check shows that Story of O was published in 1954, BTW.)
Another quote gives insight into Bond’s character. “Bond looked at her tenderly. Like all harsh, cold men, he was easily tipped over into sentiment.” Bond is intended to be the kind of character with a crusty exterior and a heart of mush. The problem is that once again it shows how he can’t have a relationship of equals with Vesper, because he sees her similar to how some men see dogs – something to pat on the head and humor.
The only ‘flaw’ in their great ‘love’ in Bond’s mind, is when she lies to him about who she’s calling on the hotel phone. This leads to days of friction between them, until Bond asks her if they can’t go back to the beginning (Loc 2094) – when everything was simple and easy, and they were happy making love all the time. Relationships don’t work like that – the fresh bloom always fades, but Bond wouldn’t know this, he’s never had a relationship last long enough to know.
After that final confrontation Vesper conveniently kills herself. There are *hand-wavey* plot reasons for this. She’s a double agent. If she doesn’t do what they say they’ll come for her and possibly James, but who cares about her lover who they were ostensibly holding in order to get her to cooperate in the first place. So she kills herself out of an act of love for him.
And look, now he’s all determined to take out SMERSH, the organization behind it all. Poor Vesper, yet another fridged female character. And to put the final nail in the coffin, Bond acts like he doesn’t give a damn. “The bitch is dead” he says in both the movie and the book – they are the final words of the novel, in fact.
Is it that easy for him to turn off his love for her? Was he never in love with her in the first place? Is he just really really good at compartmentalizing?
I think Bond can only find love with someone he thinks of as an equal. Not arm candy. Not even someone he sexually desires. Never anyone he thinks of as an object. And until he can think of women as human beings, he will never go beyond the surface level of the emotion known as love.
December 13, 2019
Regarding my titles formerly with Dreamspinner
Some of you may have noticed the titles I had published with Dreamspinner are no longer available. I recently had the rights returned to me. I have plans for the books.
Heaven Corp (Angel 1089, Exodus, and Angels Rising) will be self-published in the new year. I need the time to figure out if I’m going to be doing new covers and figuring out formatting the books.
Love in the Time of Hurricanes: I am thinking of turning into a novel and self-publishing that.
If all goes well, I hope to have the two Christmas Shorts, The Puzzle Box, and Teddy Bear Christmas, out before the holiday.
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December 2, 2019
A Christmas Yarn – plus giveaway
A Christmas Yarn is now available for pre-order! And to celebrate, I’m having a little giveaway. Check out the Rafflecopter widget at the end of the post.
Blurb: Librarian Gavin MacCauley isn’t expecting any surprises this holiday season. It’s the usual rush of helping patrons, and knitting items to donate to the local hospital. But his world is turned upside down by the cutie who walks into knitting club looking to learn how to crochet a scarf.
Jonathan Mercier has just moved to town and is desperate to find a new craft for his traditional, handmade gift for the aunt who adopted him. When his elderly neighbor strong-arms him into attending the library’s knitting and crochet club, he falls hard for the kind (and hot!) librarian running the class.
But with Christmas coming, and time running out to finish the gift, will these two find the time for each other?
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October 7, 2019
Cover Reveal and Pre-Order for The Superhero Division
Check out the new cover for “The Superhero Division.” You can pre-order now or if you have Kindle Unlimited, read for free on October 16th!
Blurb:
When your evil twin is the competition…
Socket, a techno-telepath, is too busy to think about his crush on his best friend, Valor. Murderous robots are invading from another dimension, and he needs to use all his skills to put together a team of superheroes to counter the threat. This doesn’t mean he stops thinking about what might have been, especially when his double shows up.
Valor loves being a superhero – he loves the media attention, the way the public adores him. But the fight gets serious when the robot attacks start increasing. Luckily, they have help, another version of Socket from an alternate dimension. To his surprise, he finds himself attracted to this twin of his best friend.
The alternate Socket has his own agenda, one that doesn’t involve matchmaking or falling in love. And if he gets his way, everything Socket and Valor worked for will be destroyed.
Content Warning: A character has sexual assault as part of their background. They are also at one pointed triggers into having a flashback.
(originally published by Musa Press)
September 2, 2019
Cover Reveal and Pre-order for Wolf Knight
Check out the new cover for my novella “Wolf Knight.” You can pre-order now, but the book will be released on September 18th!
Blurb: Renee Wyvern fought her way to join the ranks of the Wolf, the only order of all female knights in Hedlund. She’s determined to demonstrate her skills at the annual tourney and win honor for herself and her order. First, however, she needs to escort Hedlund’s princess back home. She’s not prepared for the attraction that strikes her.
Princess Adelaide is tired of hiding. She’s been forced into the convent for the past five years, and now she must let herself be sold off in marriage to ensure the continued peace. But her heart is captured by the dashing knight who guards her unexpectedly perilous journey. Maybe it’s time for her to start acting like a princess and take what she wants.
They are kept apart by honor and duty. Can love somehow win the day?
(originally published in the To The Victor anthology by Less Than Three Press)
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August 7, 2019
Cover Reveal and Pre-order: A Corgi Named Kilowatt
I’m so happy to show you the new cover for “A Corgi Named Kilowatt.” This cover was challenging for me to put together. I had to work with three separate images and make them look like they belonged together. And choosing the right corgi was tough!
This story was originally released in Less Than Three Press’s Silver & Gold Anthology. It is now available on its own for the first time!
Blurb: Evan Andrews is a graduate student content with spending his days in a library reading poetry. His existence is rocked when hot, sexy, and much too old for him Marc Romano stumbles into his life. The guy has everything, plus he loves dogs. Evan is immediately smitten.
Marc didn’t expect to be older than the professors when he decided to go back to college. He immediately puts his foot in his mouth around Evan, and if weren’t for his dog Kilo playing matchmaker, that would have been the end of that.
Sparks fly between Evan and Marc, but will those sparks ignite, or will their difference in age extinguish the flame?
The novella will be released next week, but you can pre-order it now if you wish!
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