Abigail Barnette's Blog, page 20

SOPHIE

Well, it’s official. The last installment of The Boss Series is on-sale. And here is everything you need to know!

The conclusion to the internationally bestselling saga…

It’s been fourteen years since Sophie Scaife tried to run away to Tokyo only to find herself seduced and stranded by an enigmatic stranger. Now thirty-two and a reluctant socialite presiding over a lavish Hamptons estate with that stranger and their partner, she’s living a life she’d never dreamed of—and a love more perfect than she could have imagined.

She just never thought she’d end up raising someone else’s children. Technically not a mother—and definitely not cut out for motherhood—Sophie struggles to figure out her role in the parenting of Neil’s precocious granddaughter, Olivia, and El-Mudad’s teen daughters, Amal and Rashida. But when a custody dispute threatens to topple the family they’ve built, Sophie learns just how fiercely she’ll fight for them.

And when a dark secret is exposed, fighting is what the Elwood-Scaife-Atis will have to do to save the life of the last person Sophie ever thought she’d protect.

E-Book: Sophie is currently available in .epub at Smashwords and .mobi at Amazon. I’ve recently switched from uploading .docx files to Smashwords to uploading .epub and I didn’t realize that .epubs didn’t convert to multiple formats the way .docx does. So, I’ll get that fixed AQAP. As always, there’s a gap between when the book comes out and when Smashwords distributes to other major retailers.

Audio: Currently, there isn’t a deal in place for audio, but it’ll happen, I’m sure. Details to come.

International: See above.

Radish: I had so, so wanted Sophie to debut on Radish the same day as the ebook, but I’ve got to coordinate it with Radish’s release schedule. As soon as I know further details, you’ll be the first to know!

I’m really feeling the love today from everyone on social media. This series has truly been a journey for me. I’ve been writing this series through poverty, C-PTSD, epilepsy, three Doctor Whos, two major breakdowns, one broken bone, and a Trump presidency. Thanks to everyone who cheered for Sophie and me along the way.

Onward and upward. New series details coming soon.

The Year of Chaotic Creation Update!

I said I would do it. And now it’s here.

It’s the year of Chaotic Creation. And my, what a year it has been.

Ah, I see it is the 13th of January.

[insert the endless shriek of a thousand souls withering in the icy grasp of a godless universe]

How have I passed the time so far? What have I created, aside from the very, very brief animation above?

I made fan art of my own characters. I started out with Iris, from Nightmare Born:

She’s outlined in purple because that color is a theme in the book.

I tried to cartoon-ify Sophie from The Boss, too, but I forgot her shoes and, as Bronwyn Green noted, it looks like Sophie is aware of the oversight:

Please note, I left plenty of room to do shoes and even a shadow on the ground but I was like, eh, fuck it, good enough.

Look, I’m just getting the hang of digital art, okay? I’ve never used a Wacom tablet before and although I am an eternal child, I am also an old. I’ll get better. I’ve even got plans for what I’m doing with this skill when I do get better!

I’ve also started learning some very, very, very basic game design. Will I ever make a game? Who the fuck knows. But it will be nice to know how they work.

“But Jenny,” you may be saying to yourself, “What about your Patreon posts and other posts here?” You’re probably not saying that because you’ve been following this blog and you’re so much nicer to me than I could ever possibly be, but never fear, it’s been lurking in the back of my mind. I’ve been working on those things, as well, but my brain has been pretty overwhelmed with the violent insurrection and the whole civil war thing we have going on of late, so I can only do a little at a time. But you know what? I’m actually very, very, very proud of what I’m getting done, even if it’s not a huge word count every single day.

I hope you’re all staying happy, healthy, and not-seditious. If you aren’t already subscribed to my YouTube channel, it might be worth your while; I’ll be uploading some content soon (internet issues have made uploading anything a total nightmare) and it’s gaming oriented, so if you’re into The Witcher, Stardew Valley, or Graveyard Keeper, smash that notification button or however the kids are saying shit these days.

My Personal “Bests Of” 2020

Here’s some stuff that happened this year that I particularly enjoyed, presented in a stream-of-consciousness kinda way because I’m high and these block paragraphs are attractive to me.

Carole Fuckin’ Baskin This year, I converted much of my wardrobe into big cat print to model myself after my hero, Carole Baskin. As someone with a long-time interest in tigers, I knew who Baskin was from Big Cat Rescue’s videos and various news stories. But I’m not like that into tigers. I just think they’re really cool and lions are, too. I’ve always said that if I won the lottery, I would start a sanctuary for big cats. Then, I saw Tiger King and I was like, ha ha ha, fuck that, no thank you very much. But I finally had the Baskin backstory. And I love her. Let’s all be honest with each other: ehhhh…looks kinda suspicious, right? Suddenly, everyone is talking about this evil woman who murdered her husband and is just running some shifty business and trying to ruin the competition. Where was this person? I didn’t see that person in the documentary. I saw a hero. A woman who had a change of heart about the exploitation of animals for profit and decided that a rich white man had to go. A rich white man who picked her up on the side of the road when she was nineteen or some shit? So what if a dude like that gets accidentally covered in sardine oil? How did she become the villain of the piece? We’ve got a choice between a meth-dealing human trafficker who murdered baby tigers, two guys who have definitely involved tigers in sex acts while completely sober and also likely murdered baby tigers, and Carole, a lady who may or may not have murdered a regular old human who abandoned his family to fuck a teenager? Yeah, okay. Whatever. She’s a badass whether or not she killed that dude and she’s definitely been a highlight of my 2020. If I lived near her sanctuary, I would volunteer there for sure. But only things where I don’t have to actually get by tigers because I am very, sensibly, terrified of them.

Did you know I can dance? I didn’t! Definitely, the best part of the year was the part where we weren’t living in the end times. I really liked that part. Especially because there was still live theater to participate in, which is one of the great loves of my life. See how pretentious that sentence was? That proves that I’m a theater person. But earlier this year, in the weirdest, wildest twist of fate imaginable, I ended up in a production of Chicago. When I told my husband, he was like, wait, are you sure? And that’s because I’m a really bad dancer. And I’d just gotten the all-clear to walk without an air cast after breaking my foot in late 2019. Somehow, I ended up in the iconic “Cellblock Tango” as Hunyak. I had to learn Hungarian lines. I had to learn to dance. It was hard. I spent a lot of time on my ass with an ice pack on my foot, doing the arm choreography from the sidelines. I can’t believe I got the chance to do it, but I did, and I really surprised myself.

 

 

This meme that hit FB about two minutes after Trump’s covid diagnosis:

 

Not having to go anywhere. If there was any upside to 2020, any tiny crumb of joy that it can’t snatch away from me, it’s this: I never had to force myself to fulfill plans I had made when I was in a more functioning mood weeks before.

Rachel True’s True Heart Intuitive Tarot. If you’ve ever tuned into my currently hiatus-ed YouTube live broadcasts where I get drunk and read tarot for viewers, you know I’m a big believer in intuitive reading. Rather than looking up every definition in a book, you read about the cards and spend time with them and get a sense of their energy and then you look at them differently every time you do a reading. At least, that’s how I do it. The art on True’s deck is incredibly fresh, but not in the way many decks will just slap a cool picture with zero interpretive imagery on it just because it’s pretty. All the traditional themes of the card meanings are there, presented in new (and often more effective) ways. And the book is amazing. Part memoir, part tarot instruction, True ties each of the Major Arcana cards into anecdotes about her life and acting career, written in a way that feels incredibly personal, as if the reader is having a conversation not only with True, but with the cards themselves. Overall, the deck and the book present themselves as a thoughtful friend who’s kind, but who will also tell you the truth even if you don’t want to hear it at the time (but you know in your heart they’re right). A++ would let these cards read me again and again.

I got to help a swan cross the street. We were driving down the road (in the old days, when you could eat at restaurants), headed into the city for family breakfast because we all wanted pancakes but we didn’t want the clean up, when on the side of a busy state highway we spotted a swan in distress. Swans are not friendly animals, nor are they safe to be around in most cases. They’re more dangerous than you’d think. But I’m not a smart person, I’m a caring person, and when I see an animal in trouble I have no choice but to abandon all sense. I told Mr.Jen to pull over. He did, but he wasn’t super thrilled about this particular journey into the heart of nature. I got out of the car and crouch-walked toward the hesitant swan, who started coming toward me. It was at this moment that I remembered that swans are dinosaurs and I was like, what the fuck am I doing? I’m going to die like Newman in Jurassic Park. As it got super close, I tried to see if it was hurt, if it had fishing line wrapped around it or something like a bone sticking out, but it just looked like a regular, not-injured swan. I was like, “Hey dude, what do you need?” and this thing made eye contact with me, bobbed his head at the road, and deliberately put one foot on the pavement. It blew my mind. This animal was clearly communicating to me that it wanted to cross the road and it knew that I, a person, could help it do so safely. I don’t think he had room to take off. Or maybe it was smart enough to figure out that roads are a people thing but not smart enough to remember he can fly. Whichever it was, I stepped out in the road, Mr.Jen stopped traffic, and I escorted the swan to the soybean field across the street. Sorry, farmer.

Ashes of Love At some point in mid-May, I had watched pretty much all the English-language stuff on Netflix. And that’s when I found out about C-dramas. Friends. Romans (just in case the Swiss guard checks this blog), countrythem: Chinese fantasy television shows are like nothing you’re ever going to see on English-language TV. First of all, there’s like sixty episodes in a season, I guess. Second, production value and imagination is off the fucking roof. The heroine, Jinmi, is the secret daughter of this flower goddess who cursed/blessed her by making it impossible for her to fall in love. So, she thinks she’s just a random fairy. Or a grape. Sometimes they say she’s a grape? It might be the translation. But she does wear purple a lot. Anyway, there’s a whole thing where she sneaks into heaven in the sleeve of a phoenix she rescued. But the phoenix is Xufeng, a prince of the Heavenly Realm. And he’s one of those brooding, stand-offish heroes, while his foster brother, Runyu, who is…a dragon-water-thing? Look, this show has a lot going on in it, okay. Anyway, Runyu falls in love with Jinmi and Xufeng is in love with her, too, but she’s only interested in getting as much magical power as she possibly can. I’m not done with it yet, but at the moment they’re like, amnesiacs? Or something? Game of Thrones could never.

My friend Scarlett wrote a book for me. My lovely friend, Scarlett Parrish, wrote a book to appeal directly to my crush on Craig Ferguson. Take Me Home is a love-letter to Edinburgh, as I said in my longer review here. This was such a fun experience because I got to watch the story come to life in my Twitter DMs before I read the actual book. Definitely a highlight of 2020.

So many plants and mushrooms! One of the biggest revelations I had in 2020 was hey, I can smoke a lot of the plants that grow in my yard. I’m blessed to live out in the country in the Midwest in North America. There are so many plants just growing around, and once you pay attention, you can find medicine for free. This is like, no shit, real medicine, not “use essential oils.” There is a plant that grows all over my yard that is an honest-to-bog sedative. Like, I researched these little flowers that Native people throughout the Midwest and New England used as a sedative for women in childbirth. I put some in a joint for funsies and I’ve never felt so god damn relaxed. I’ve been buying garlic for years like a dipshit when there is a 20 x 20-ish patch of it just growing behind the landlord’s pole barn. He didn’t know, either! And we always pick the black raspberries (not blackberries!) that grow against the barn, but I didn’t realize I could make tea out of them. Did you know there’s a plant affectionately known as “witch’s Xanax” because a tincture of it can calm you down? Obviously, you have to be careful with this shit (especially with mushrooms, which are also free and just everywhere here but which are also sentient, trust me) and not just fuck around because you will die if you do that, but I have had a lot of downtime due to my increasingly miserable chronic pain condition and I got fascinated with this shit. I can’t wait for spring to get me some wild oats and eat dandelion leaves out of someone else’s yard who doesn’t have a dog.

Spiders. One of the best and most rewarding experiences of 2020 has been my increasing relationship with and understanding of spiders. I used to be afraid of them until I realized that it wasn’t them I was afraid of, but hurting them by accident. I didn’t want them to touch me because they surprise me and I might swipe at them. After I realized this, I suddenly didn’t have a problem with them anymore. And since then, I’ve taken time to really watch what they’re doing and tried to communicate with them. And you know what? So many people are missing out. Jumping spiders are really funny and they have personalities. Wolf Spiders can be aggressive, but they’re mostly curious. That only spiders I’m leery of now are tarantulas, because I can’t get over my fear of hurting one. They’re just way more fragile than the little spiders.

 

What were your highlights of 2020. There has to be something. Even if it’s just spiders.

 

2021: The Year Of Chaotic Creation

Here’s what I’m doing in 2021. If it sounds good to you, do it, too. I think after the hell year of 2020 and the fact that there really isn’t a ton of light at the end of the tunnel yet, we all need something to get us off the couch and away from doom scrolling and binge-watching, and generally just wandering around in a stupor. We might not be able to get out of the house, but we can get into our heads.

In 2021, I am creating chaotically. And when I say it’s gonna be chaos…it’s gonna be chaos. Because I realized that there is a) no reason that all of my creative energy needs to go into either secret projects I don’t show anyone for fear of feeling “monetized” or projects that are extremely monetized and b) I’m my own boss and I can do literally whatever I want.

Obviously, I’ve got the recaps I’m going to keep doing because I like doing those (although Buffy is getting harder to get on board with; Joss Whedon makes my skin crawl and he’s basically destroyed my love for the show). I’m going to devote more time to The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp, because I’m enjoying that, too.

But you know what else I enjoy? LITERALLY EVERYTHING.

If you stood in my office and you saw all the stuff in here, you’d be like, “This person has never finished a craft project in her life.” I have so many hobbies that in the past, I’ve had to actively participate in community craft fairs to be able to afford more supplies. I’m like some Dickensian urchin warming himself in a doorway, begging passers by, “Please, sir, just a drop of gouache?”

Here are all the things I like…do:

knitting
crochet
community theater
oil and acrylic paintings
painting and designing custom ouija boards
decorating miniature rooms in an unfinished wooden castle for no reason
play a little bit of a lot of different instruments, badly
sing
game
crafting theatrical props
writing thoughts about metaphysical stuff and rarely posting to a hobby blog
epoxy resin pieces
watercolor
counted cross-stitch
illustrating a children’s book I made up
bullet journaling
coloring in those adult coloring books which is a misleading name because there aren’t any bewbs.
soap making
needle felting
fanfic
writing screenplays/teleplays of my own work
So much weird mixed medium stuff

Writing is such a very small percentage of what comes out of my head. While I sometimes post art on Instagram, I generally keep it under my hat because I am a writer, you see, and there is only ONE THING I AM ALLOWED TO BE.

Everyone told me that when I turned forty, I would no longer give any fucks. Any at all. And surprisingly, the area hardest hit was my perception of myself and how I’d pigeon-holed myself. Not a single fuck left. I don’t need to keep a side hobby blog for my witchy-poo nonsense. There’s no reason I’m not allowed to put that here. And there’s no reason I’m not allowed to put my art here when it’s not a mental health update or something. And if I want to make a YouTube video of me singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in front of a green screen scrolling a constant loop of kittens barfing in the background? There’s no reason I shouldn’t put it on this blog.

It’s my blog.

Also, the description of what my company, Trout Nation Inc., does is very vague and I’m the sole shareholder. I’ve also heard that blogs are “dead,” so if I’m one of the last villagers in this abandoned valley, I’m gonna take this in a real, real strange direction.

I know, Business Centaurs aren’t strange enough.

I guess what I’m saying is, plan on seeing a bunch of random stuff next year, as I allow my creative self to do whatever it fucking feels like and I just vomit it in here and on my YouTube channel. If you decide to do the same thing, let’s call it a Chaotic Creation Challenge, and you wanna post stuff to your blog or your social media, put a link in the comments to share. I don’t care if you come back to this post in July like, “Just built the largest card house I’ve ever achieved,” everyone is going to be psyched for you.

Because I’m the President-King of Trout Nation and I decree that we all have to be psyched for each other.

I’m not saying that 2021 is gonna be our best year. I’m definitely not setting goals in stone; we’ve seen how well that’s worked out progressively every year since 2016. But I am saying that 2020 took a lot of stuff from us and it’s time to create in the face of destruction, if that does, in fact, make you feel more hopeful.

If it doesn’t, then I invite you to take the Miserable Bastard Challenge, which is like the Chaotic Creation thing but just staying super cynical and angry. I fully support anyone who just cannot fucking trust 2021.

THE FINAL BOSS BOOK! Title change, cover reveal, and release date!

READERS! IT’S HAPPENING! IT’S REALLY HAPPENING!

While I had planned to announce The Daughter‘s release date and reveal the cover last week, it just felt…wrong. And I didn’t know why. This is going to be the very last time I’m with Sophie. While I’ve been writing other books, as well, Sophie has been my main focus, my work wife, since I started writing the serialized version of The Boss in…was it 2013? I can’t remember. Either way, for the better part of a decade.

It was difficult to decide on a cover. I kept staring at it, going, “the title just doesn’t look right. None of this looks right. Is that even how ‘daughter’ is spelled? It looks so…wrong.”

I realized that out of all the titles in the series, none of them, not a single one, had referred to Sophie. For example:

The Boss referred to Neil.
The Girlfriend referred to Valerie.
The Bride was Emma.
The Ex was Stephen.
Obviously, Olivia is The Baby.
The Sister referred to Molly
The Boyfriend was El-Mudad

Sophie has never had top billing. When you read The Daughter, it’ll be clear who it refers to. But that person isn’t Sophie.

So, without further ado, the title and the cover for the final book in The Boss series will be (already ruined for you by the social media preview):

I can hear the shrieks of a thousand completists. Why, why, why have I broken the theme? WHY?! And also, the covers used to be only black and white and now you’ve got this lipstick-red going on? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY KINDLE?!

You may also notice that my pen name ain’t anywhere on that cover. All of the changes, the title, the red, no author name? It’s all because Sophie is the star. I’m giving her the spotlight.

If you weren’t here in the dark times of the Fifty Shades of Grey recaps, you might not be aware that though at the height of the madness I was receiving a hundred thousand or more hits per day, but I wasn’t making any money. I didn’t believe I deserved to get paid for my writing, that I was lucky enough to have people want to read it. After all, I’d lost my New York publishing contracts, my family was on food stamps, I was making about $200 a month editing for a small publisher and getting royalty checks for new novellas that never broke two figures. When I started writing this series, my goal was to write the anti-Fifty Shades and maybe someone would want to download it if I distributed it as an ebook. I had high hopes that the sequel, The Girlfriend, might actually sell a few copies.

It sold 20,000 copies its first week.

Today, The Boss and its sequels have sold over a million copies in the United States. It’s been a bestseller internationally, having hit shelves in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, France, and I’m sure other places I can’t think of without opening the folder on my computer labeled “foreign rights contracts.” This series changed my life, gave me a whole new career, and I couldn’t have done it without Sophie. I have no idea where she came from. I don’t know anyone like her. She just appeared in my head fully formed and I got the joy of watching her navigate everything I threw at her. This is her finale, so I’m giving her the send-off she deserves.

I mentioned before that I wouldn’t be releasing this book until after the inauguration in January. So, the official release date for Sophie is January 21st, 2021, or 1/21/2021 which has to be good luck somehow, right? It will hit Radish the same day as a new “season” of The Boss there. I’ll have pre-order information as soon as it’s available; in the meantime, keep on rockin’ in the free world.

My Favorite Adult High Fantasy Romances/High Fantasy With Romantic Elements

Over on Patreon, I’m running a Jealous Patrons Book Club feature where you can subscribe to recaps or discussion posts for A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas. I will refrain from putting my opinion on the book here, as that’s not what this post is about.

Instead, this post is about amazing High-Fantasy Romances or High-Fantasy with strong romantic elements that I have read and loved. There are titles on here you might recognize, but overall I feel like these books didn’t get the attention they deserved. You’re gonna see one and go, “Jenny, come on. You really think that one didn’t get enough attention?”

Yes. I think that even the most popular of these should be far more celebrated than they are, even if the only thing left is to declare an international day of appreciation and/or building a statue beneath which the author’s heart and brain will be entombed upon their death, that we may all be grateful to be so close to their most important parts.

That got grim.

Anyway, jam these in your eye holes or your earholes or the tips of your fingers. Which ever way you choose to read (though I’m not sure which formats all of these books are available in, to be perfectly frank). Oh, and I’ve excluded YA High Fantasy from the list because honestly, my list would be like, SUSAN DENNARD OKAY THAT’S ALL YOU NEED LOCK YOURSELF IN A ROOM AND READ EVERYTHING SHE’S WRITTEN, COOL?

These might also seem old, in terms of release. All but one of them are, indeed, decades old. But High Fantasy Romance has been something of a disappointment for me for the past few years. There was such a huge boom in the 00’s in the subgenre, but it feels like its’ petered out a bit. There was also a substantial rise in YA Paranormal Romance/Urban Fantasy/High Fantasy, so it did feel for a while like publishers went, “And the girly elf books go over here!” and I kind of wandered away from the genre and into books about WWII because congratulations, I’m your dad! But I’m always taking recommendations. Send them my way (and the way of everyone else) in the comments.

 

The Dream Thief, Shannon Abé.

In the remote hills of northern England lives a powerful clan with a centuries-old secret. They are the drákon, shape-shifters who possess the ability to Turn—changing from human to smoke to dragon. And from the very stones of the earth, they hear hypnotic songs of beauty and wonder. But there is one stone they fear.

Buried deep within the bowels of the Carpathian Mountains lies the legendary dreaming diamond known as Draumr, the only gem with the power to enslave the drákon. Since childhood, Lady Amalia Langford, daughter of the clan’s Alpha, has heard its haunting ballad but kept it secret, along with another rare Gift…Lia can hear the future, much in the way she hears the call of Draumr. And in that future, she realizes that the diamond—along with the fate of the drákon—rests in the hands of a human man, one who straddles two worlds.

Ruthlessly clever, Zane has risen through London’s criminal underworld to become its ruler. Once a street urchin saved by Lia’s mother, Zane is also privy to the secrets of the clan—and is the only human they trust to bring them Draumr. But he does nothing selflessly.

Zane’s hunt for the gem takes him to Hungary, where he is shocked to encounter a bold, beautiful young noblewoman: Lia. She has broken every rule of the drákon to join him, driven by the urgent song of Draumr—and her visions of Zane. In one future, he is her ally. In another, her overlord. In both, he is her lover. Now, to protect her tribe, Lia must tie her fate to Zane’s, to the one man capable of stealing her future—and destroying her heart.

The Dream Thief is technically the second book in Abé’s Drakon series, but it was my favorite. They’re all amazing; the world-building is top-notch, the details are meticulously consistent, and the characters don’t develop so much as they feel incredibly real the moment they’re introduced and we then watch these people that we already feel we know learn and grow from there. The romance was so compelling, I finished this book on two flights. And they weren’t even exceptionally long flights. I just sucked up this book as fast and hard as I could.

 

The Queen of Ieflaria, Effie Calvin

Princess Esofi of Rhodia and Crown Prince Albion of Ieflaria have been betrothed since they were children but have never met. At age seventeen, Esofi’s journey to Ieflaria is not for the wedding she always expected but instead to offer condolences on the death of her would-be husband.

But Ieflaria is desperately in need of help from Rhodia for their dragon problem, so Esofi is offered a new betrothal to Prince Albion’s younger sister, the new Crown Princess Adale. But Adale has no plans of taking the throne, leaving Esofi with more to battle than fire-breathing beasts.

Did you watch Game of Thrones and think to yourself, “Eh. Could be gayer?” Do you long for a fantasy world that dares to imagine what it would be like if queerness wasn’t stigmatized all to hell?

It’s this series.

 

Kushiel’s Dart, Ja cqueline Carey

The land of Terre d’Ange is a place of unsurpassing beauty and grace. It is said that angels found the land and saw it was good… and the ensuing race that rose from the seed of angels and men live by one simple rule: Love as thou wilt.

Phèdre nó Delaunay is a young woman who was born with a scarlet mote in her left eye. Sold into indentured servitude as a child, her bond is purchased by Anafiel Delaunay, a nobleman with very a special mission… and the first one to recognize who and what she is: one pricked by Kushiel’s Dart, chosen to forever experience pain and pleasure as one.

Phèdre is trained equally in the courtly arts and the talents of the bedchamber, but, above all, the ability to observe, remember, and analyze. Almost as talented a spy as she is courtesan, Phèdre stumbles upon a plot that threatens the very foundations of her homeland. Treachery sets her on her path; love and honor goad her further. And in the doing, it will take her to the edge of despair… and beyond. Hateful friend, loving enemy, beloved assassin; they can all wear the same glittering mask in this world, and Phèdre will get but one chance to save all that she holds dear.

Set in a world of cunning poets, deadly courtiers, heroic traitors, and a truly Machiavellian villainess, this is a novel of grandeur, luxuriance, sacrifice, betrayal, and deeply laid conspiracies. Not since Dune has there been an epic on the scale of Kushiel’s Dart-a massive tale about the violent death of an old age, and the birth of a new.

Content Warning: sexual sadism, rape/coerced consent, child grooming.

Even though this ultimate BDSM-flavored High-Fantasy, this absolutely sprawling tale of loves lost and gained and political alliances sealed behind closed doors is an international bestseller, it has not gotten the attention it deserves among the pantheon of High-Fantasy fiction. While some of the world-building feels dated (particularly a race of people clearly inspired by the Roma, who are not painted in the most flattering light), it tends to face harsher criticism than more problematic series in the genre.

Gee. I wonder what could make this series so different from A Song of Ice and Fire or Wheel of Time.

 

Night’s Rose, Annaliese Evans   

Beauty was not awakened by a kiss. For nearly one hundred years, Rosemarie Edenberg has worked tirelessly to wipe the dreaded ogre tribe from the earth. Now the tribe has gathered in London to work a spell that will destroy the scourge of their kind, the woman they call the Briar Rose.

Two magnetic men will unite to aid Rose–her mysterious Fey advisor, Ambrose, and the vampire, Lord Shenley, an Earl of scandalous reputation and even more scandalous appetites. One will save her, one will betray her, and both will challenge her to face the past that haunts her.

Once upon a time, she was ensnared in the mists of enchantment, cursed to sleep one hundred years. But this beauty wasn’t awakened with a kiss, and has never known happily ever after.

With the help of her handsome allies, Rose may yet find it.

If you’re familiar with the original tale of Sleeping Beauty, then you know there’s a big ole content warning for rape on this one (although if memory serves, it’s just referenced instead of on the page. I’ve never met a heroine like Briar Rose, and the addition of vampires and ogres and basically any fantasy creature you’re into makes this like…I guess the port-wine-dark-chocolate-bonbon of High Fantasy for me. It is intensely rich.

 

 Jewel of Atlantis, Gena Showalter

All Atlantis seeks the Jewel of Dunamis, which legend claims can overcome any enemy. Grayson James, human agent of the ultra-secret Otherworld Bureau of Investigation, has orders to keep it from the wrong hands — or destroy it. What he doesn’t know is that Jewel is a woman, not a stone! But once he meets this precious gem, destroying her is the last thing on his mind . . .

Jewel, part goddess, part prophet, is a pawn in Atlantis’s constant power struggles. She needs Gray’s help to win freedom and uncover the secrets of her mysterious origins. Gray needs her wisdom to navigate monster-ridden Atlantis. But need blossoms into passionate love as they fight demons, dragons, vampires-and a prophecy that says the bond between them could destroy them both.

This is one of those books that gets classified as Paranormal Romance just because vampires exist in the universe or because a character from the “real” world is involved. This is also another book where I’m recommending the second in a series, but you won’t be lost if you picked this one up first. This book is like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom but with a much more competent, less-insulting, non-shrieking heroine. I really think Gena Showalter doesn’t get the recognition as the titan she is because she’s published by Harlequin. Atlantis is a distinct fantasy realm with intriguing world-building and the pace of this book is Chiquita bananas; I tore through it in an afternoon.

 

Last, but not least:

Goddess of the Rose, P.C. Cast 

Empousai family roses have bloomed for centuries, thanks to the drops of blood their women sacrifice for their gardens. But Mikki would rather forget this family quirk and lead a normal life. Until she unwittingly performs a ritual, ending up in the strangely familiar Realm of the Rose. As its goddess Hecate reveals, Mikki is a priestess—and the Realm’s been waiting for her…

Long ago, an enraged Hecate cursed her guardian beast and the entire Realm with a slumber only a priestess can undo—and she’s counting on Mikki to set things right. The beast at first terrifies Mikki, but soon intrigues her more than any man ever has. Now, the only way he and the Realm can be saved is for Mikki to sacrifice her life-giving blood—and herself…

Again, not the first in a series. This is actually the fourth installment in Cast’s Goddess Summoning series but again, this could easily stand alone. It won’t, once you read this one; all of the Goddess Summoning books have the same level of emotion and high-stakes conflict both inside and outside of the central romance. It’s also one of the rare Beauty and the Beast retellings where the author actually has the backbone to…go there. You know what I mean.

 

What are your favorites? Leave a comment letting us know. Also, if you read some of these, come back and tell me what you thought!

Authors On Parler

Content Warning: hate speech of any flavor

This is a controversial post. I know that before writing it because people have told me that it’s controversial.

“I think putting people on a list is childish and unnecessary,” one person told me. “You’re going to name names and hurt someone’s career!” another said. Of course, the old chestnuts “freedom of speech!” and “just because they have a different opinion!” came up.

They were talking about my plans to out authors who joined Parler in the days after Donald Trump’s landslide failure in the 2020 presidential election.

For those unacquainted with the dregs of the internet, Parler is a Facebook alternative that brings together the worst of QAnon, MAGA, militia aficionados, Christian Dominionists, and more white supremacists than you can shake a blue lives matter flag at. Feeling “censored” by Facebook’s policy of gently suggesting that users double-check some of the baseless, absurd, and dangerous propaganda the right cranked out on the platform by the minute.

It is here I would like to point out the irony of people so invested in free speech not understanding what the First Amendment actually says. And I would like to reiterate that Facebook didn’t remove anyone’s content or prevent them from sharing it. They simply put a little note at the bottom of articles, memes, and lengthy diatribes that stated some of the information included wasn’t the truth when it was, in fact, not the truth. It wasn’t freedom of speech that these people had an issue with. It was the fact that they weren’t being allowed to spread hate, disinformation, wild conspiracy theories, and absurdly transparent calls to violent insurrection or the assassination of political figures as irrefutable truth that made them take their toys and run off to their hate circle.

Again: these are people so invested in destroying any non-white, non-straight, non-Protestant person in the country that they feel any attempt to correct or question their deliberate lies and destructive conspiracy theories was an attack on their personal liberty. By not tacitly accepting that what they are fighting for–genocide, eugenics, torture, tyranny, religious persecution, martial law, the list goes on and sinks lower–is righteous and unimpeachable, the word is ripping away their freedom.

They do not consider themselves free if they are not allowed to harm anyone who doesn’t look, act, and believe exactly as they do.

They do not consider themselves free if they are not allowed to kill, see killing, threaten to kill, or celebrate killing.

But these are the people that I, a queer, disabled person, should treat with the grace of anonymity. The people I should work alongside, potentially meet at industry functions. The people who should be celebrated by readers, who should have an easy path to success because…

Why?

Why should we not name the names of people who will happily show up to a book convention and sit beside a marginalized author, smile sweetly, take pictures, then immerse themself in the comforting embrace of free speech like:

“For everything that is wrong with this world there is a j** behind it.”
“I love laying in bed and rubbing my wet pussy to officers killing n***** men.”
“N***** lives don’t matter.”
“AIDS kills f*** dead.”
“THIS ISN’T OVER YET – NEVER BET AGAINST PRESIDENT TRUMP! WE ARE MANY – WE ARE MIGHTY WE ARE ARMED – WE ARE UNITED WE ARE TRUMP PATRIOTS – AND WE ARE PISSED! #SayYourPrayersDemocrats #MayGodHaveMercyOnYourSoulBecauseWeWont”
“Let’s see them try to enter the people house and attempt to remove our President, a National Treasure!!! Death will become them!”
“This woman is Evil Incarnate. We Cannot Allow This Satanic Shill To Enter Office. (Kamala Harris’ eyes turn completely black several times during this interview, she is full of unclean spirits ECHO THIS PLEASE)”
“Voting will not remove them. The only things n****** understand are pain and fear”
“IN WAR, IT’S KILL OR BE KILLED. WE NEED 50 MILLION ARMED AMERICAN PATRIOTS TO STORM DC AND KILL ALL THE SWAMP CRIMINALS NOW!!!!!!!!!!”

What was that, people who were horrified at the idea of naming names? Oh, you thought Parler was just the garden variety dog whistles you’re comfortable ignoring?

And this is the stuff in public posts made by users of the site. One can only imagine what kind of horror show goes on behind the locked accounts.

Marginalized people should not, will not, and cannot take a stance of non-involvement and polite tolerance toward people whose sole motivation is our total eradication. Asking us to do so is actively protecting the goals of these people. If your first thought upon seeing this list is, “That’s not nice,” then congratulations: you’re complicit.

But I know the perfect social media site for you to join.

Criteria for inclusion:

Because authors make their money off the internet and building a reader following, when a new platform pops up, we generally see them flock there. You never know when the next mega-platform will pop up, and being an early adopter comes with an initial lack of competition for views. Plus, other platforms have a habit of applying advertising and content rules haphazardly, often punishing authors for sharing excerpts or covers that are too racy. It made sense for many erotic romance authors to try out Parler two years ago; for them to still be there, they must have a damn good reason.

For an author’s name to be included on this list, their Parler account must include one or more of the following:

Posts or “echoes” of hate speech
Posts or “echoes” of election disinformation
A “following” list featuring at least two right-wing provocateurs, i.e., accounts following Donald Trump, InfoWars, or any QAnon accounts are automatically included regardless of original content posted by the user
A post-election “joined” date
A locked account
An announcement on other platforms directing readers to the author’s Parler account for reasons described in the introduction to this post

What are some reasons an author might have a Parler account and not be included in the list?

The account is an early adopt that hasn’t been updated frequently
The account doesn’t follow anyone
There are no posts/”echoes”
The author’s body of work is self-explanatory

The authors in question must also be published (either indie or traditional) or in the process of querying; we’re not gonna wait for these people to get book deals.

I came up with these criteria based on things I saw on the site itself, as well as from defenses used by authors and readers. Here are some examples:

Jamie Mcguire has a locked account with a verified badge. One of her readers argued that because Facebook removes ad content it deems inappropriate, McGuire was forced to switch platforms in order to advertise her books and publicize herself. This would be more believable if the account wasn’t behind a lock on a website that doesn’t allow access to anyone who doesn’t have a user account. Because that rationale makes absolutely no sense at all, she is on the list.
Jim Butcher has a Parler account. It is not verified. He joined in August of 2020. He follows no one. The only post on his account is the default post the site makes to get you started. He is not on the list.
Laura Loomer has a book coming out in 2021. She doesn’t need to be on the list because she calls herself a “proud Islamaphobe” and has built her entire brand on her profound hatred. Including her would be redundant. Yes, she’s a bigot and an author; no, she is not on the list.
A handful of authors on Parler really do seem to be there just to talk about writing and promote their books. They don’t follow any red-flag accounts, they don’t post weird stuff about killing their fellow citizens in an orgy of patriotism and finally getting to use all those bullets they’ve invested in. They’re just there. Maybe they’re there for nefarious purposes, but there’s no way to prove it. They’re not on the list.
Some authors expressed dismay at the fact that they’d joined the site in its early days and didn’t realize what it was for. Usually, their accounts were barely used or completely scrubbed of posts. If I can’t prove a person is there with malicious intent, they’re not on the list.

After nearly a month of combing hashtags and search terms, these are the names on the list. They are not in alphabetical order because for some reason, after reading about how I should die, how my friends should die, how half the country should be murdered, etc.? It just seemed like the straw of work that would break my back.

Please also note: it’s become something of a trend to use initials or close spellings to game search engine and retailer algorithms. Please be absolutely certain that you’ve done your own due diligence. This isn’t a list of hot gossip; this is a list of people who pose a danger to their fellow authors.

Click read more for the list.

Nicole Morgan
Samantha McCann
Tammy Tate
Jennifer Bray-Webber
Barbara Jo Johnson
Jo Hallett
Mandy Stephens
Paula Milhouse
Jamie McGuire
Ditter Kellen
C.S. Wade
Ava Armstrong
Becky McGraw
Mimi Jean Pamfiloff
Nancie Neal
Jordyn Kross
K.M. Ryan
Linda R.W. Lee
Melinda Valentine
Tiffany Snow
Elyssia Fields
J.L. Pattison
Ginger McCreedy
Mark Piggott
Jeanette Lewis
Matt Waterhouse
Alisha Vincent
A.K. Meek
Brad McCormick
H.M. Wilson
A.L. Vincent
Sophie Leigh Fox
Daniel J. Cline
Linda Odell
E.A. Maynard
Robert Van Dussen
Austin Brooks
Meredith Loughran
Jill Kemerer
A.E. Presson
C. Taylor Eason
Kate Morris
Jennifer Hotes
Patricia Bellomo
Elisa Kurt
Jill Yoder
C.J. Anderson
Kim Terry
John Delaughter
B.L. Blankenship
Teyla/Rachel Branton
D.J. Cooper
Celeste Prater
Savannah McCann
Mike Fuller
R.H. Snow
Molly Neely
K.J. Waters
Patrick D. Kaiser
Lucien Bane
Ann Margaret Lewis
Vicki Hinze
Andrea Smith
Shari T. Mitchell
Angela Breidenback
Teelie Turner
R.J. Castiglione
Cori Lynn
Jessika Klide
David Burton
Leonardo Ramirez
Savannah Hendricks
Adair Sanders
Lisa Moore
Jeanette Lewis
Gray Dixon
D.T. Burgess
Rebecca Lange
Carrie Walker
Theresa Keefer
Dana Armstrong
M.K. Stabley
Casey Tennyson
Denise Tobin
Mark Sowers
Kat Rocha
Letha Judge
Cody Flores
Brad McCormick
C. DeWitt Noble
Lori Aisling
Lisa Sorbe
T.L. Davidson
A.K. Meek
K.J. Simpson
Susi P. Jensen
Lauren Carr
B.L. Mute
Kit Gulick
Katelyn Buxton
Emily Morgan
Meredith Loughran
L.A. Kuehlke
Cricket Ellison
Laura Taylor

If you find your name on this list and you feel you do not belong on it, comment below, provide proof of your identity, and the @ of the Parler account impersonating you.

If you are a reader with knowledge of other names that should be on this list, feel free to leave the name in the comment. Screenshots or a link would be appreciated; if I can’t independently verify their @ on Parler itself, I can’t in good conscience add it to the list.

Jealous Haters Book Club: Crave chapter four, “Shining Armor Is So Last Century”

Begin the endless parade of super hot boys!

Chapter four begins immediately after the last scene in chapter three. And I mean immediately, because when Grace hears her Uncle Finn call to her:

I turn back to confront Mr. Tall, Dark, and Surly, to figure out exactly what it is he thinks I need to be so afraid of—but he’s gone.

I’m including that just to establish a sense of time. This book moves at a refreshingly fast clip, introducing characters one after the other, bam, bam, bam. It might not feel that way if you’re following along just with my sporadic recaps but trust me, over on Patreon I’m reading one that is dragging ass and expecting the reader to pick up the slack.

I glance around, determined to figure out where he went, but before I can spot him, Uncle Finn is wrapping me in a huge bear hug and lifting me off my feet. I hang on for dear life, letting the comforting scent of him—the same woodsy scent my dad used to have—wash over me.

This is a great detail. He’s a loving guy who is comforting because he smells like her dad. This establishes a connection right away and anchors Grace as a character to the family she has left.

That doesn’t stop me from constantly imagining Uncle Finn as Dr. Orpheus from The Venture Brothers,  despite the fact that he has never once been described as such. Part of the problem, I think, is that Uncle Finn hasn’t been described for us.

Uncle Finn apologizes for not being at the airport. He was detained due to an accident caused by boys being boys.

I start to tell him that I have no idea how boys are—my last encounter is proof of that—but some weird instinct I don’t understand warns me not to bring up the guy I was just talking to.

That’s called a red flag, my dear.

As adults in YA books go, Uncle Finn seems pretty okay. He apologizes for not staying with Grace after the funeral and worries about how she’s doing. When she says she’s okay, he doesn’t really push back, either:

It’s obvious that he wants to say more but just as obvious that he doesn’t want to get into anything too deep in the middle of the hallway. So in the end, he just nods and says, “Okay, then. I’ll leave you to settle in with Macy. But come see me tomorrow morning, and we’ll talk about your schedule. Plus, I’ll introduce you to our counselor, Dr. Wainwright. I think you’ll like her.”

I’m so fucking pleased with this. So pleased. This kid has been orphaned and she’s actually going to get mental health care?

And then, I was like, oh no:

My therapist, apparently, since she and my uncle both think I need one.

But then!

I would argue, but since I’ve had to work really hard not to cry in the shower every morning for the last month, I figure they might be on to something. “Okay, sure.”

Oh my gosh! You mean she’s not going to be a Strong Female Character who’ll neglect her mental health to make a point? IN A BOOK?! A REAL BOOK?!

This is such an incredibly rare thing to read and you know what? I trust Tracy Wolff. Right now, I’m reading her book Royal Treatment and although I just started it, I’m 100% on board with the hero, who has PTSD from being kidnapped and held for ransom. It’s not treated like, oh, you’re so sexy because you’re broken, you can treat me any way you want. I’m enjoying it and I promised I would keep people updated, but from what I’ve seen so far from that book, chapter three of this one has to be an anomaly.

There was a really weird spate of books in the 10s wherein it seemed like every single main character had PTSD or some other trauma-related disorder, and the story was almost always like, “It wasn’t medication or therapy this person needed, it was [whatever the author had planned, usually a romance with someone even more screwed up than them]!” Or, as in Apolonia, the main character’s trauma is used as an excuse for her at times downright abusive behavior, as if traumatic events are some kind of get out of jail free card. I shouldn’t be so bowled over by a simple line about a character accepting they could benefit from some kind of mental health intervention. That speaks volumes about the lack of constructive representation out there.

Speaking of health, the altitude is not being kind to Grace. Uncle Finn tells Macy to get Grace some Advil and lots of water, advice I wish someone would have given me when I went to freaking Colorado for that sales conference thing and got desperately sick and tired during an important dinner.

“I’m glad you’re here, Grace. And I promise, things will get easier.”

I nod, because what else am I going to do? I’m not glad I’m here—Alaska feels like the moon right now—but I’m all for things getting easier. I just want to go one day without feeling like shit.

Again, I should not be so delighted to read a YA heroine go, you know, it is what it is and there’s no point in me being rude about it and also let me take something positive away from the thing this person just said to me, rather than finding any reason possible to make his words into some kind of malicious slight just for the drama of it all.

There’s a paragraph about how she can’t stop thinking about “Tall, Dark, and Surly” and I’m just like, please no. Let’s not stay married to that nickname.

Uncle Finn calls for a guy named Flint to help carry Grace’s bags up to her room and Macy freaks out because Finn is “super hot” and she doesn’t want him to see her and Grace while they look terrible. And then:

I can see how she could think he doesn’t need to see me like this, since I’m pretty sure I look half dead. But, “You look great.”

My god, am I truly so hungry for a likable main character in this book club that not calling her a disgusting name and thinking about how slutty she looks is really all it takes to make me #TeamGrace forever and ever?

Anyway, here’s Flint:

He’s tall—like, nearly as tall as Tall, Dark, and Surly—and just as muscular. But that’s where the resemblance ends, because everywhere that other guy was dark and cold, this one is light and fire.

Bright-amber eyes that seem to burn from within.

Warm brown skin.

Black afro that looks amazing on him.

I really need more details on this afro, my friend. Because there are many different kinds of afros and I’m imagining a big, round, fluffy afro from the 1970s, which I’m hoping is not the look we’re supposed to be getting here. Like, I need to hear that this is a more modern style. In my head, he’s gonna have like, a medium-length afro with a blended fade and he can wear it in a man-bun.

Look, if you’re not gonna give me anything, I’m gonna make stuff up. That’s how Uncle Finn is Dr. Orpheus now.

And perhaps most interesting of all, there’s a smile in his eyes that is as different from the other guy’s iciness as the stars just outside the windows are from the endless midnight blue of the sky.

You wanna know how I know she’s not gonna be remotely romantically interested in Flint?

Whoa, hey now. Wait.

I’m not super cool with the Black guy being named Flint. That was an unfortunate choice. And so as not to be obtuse, Flint, MI, is the predominately Black working-class city that was knowingly lead-poisoned by the state government just a few years ago (and where many residents still struggle for access to reliable, clean water sources). Probably not intentional, but definitely a tone-deaf coincidence.

Anyway, Macy tells Flint they don’t need help, but Uncle Finn tells him that Grace is sick from the altitude.

“Well, come on then, New Girl. Climb on my back. I’ll give you a ride up the stairs.”

Yeah, get on his back, spider-monkey.

Just kidding. This is nothing like Twilight. There’s a Black person in it.

Grace turns him down, and he points out that there are three flights of stairs she’s going to have to struggle up.

They are a long three flights, and still I would seriously rather die than climb on a random stranger’s back. “Pretty sure they’ll be longer for you if you’re carrying me.”

“Nah. You’re so little, I won’t even notice. Now, are you going to get on or am I going to pick you up and toss you over my shoulder?”

Just let it go. You’re not a fireman.

Grace firmly shuts him down again.

Flint shakes his head. “Stubborn much?” But he doesn’t push the issue the way I’m afraid he will.

Well, I mean. Yes, he did push the issue. Grace said no, he said yes then threatened to pick her up and move her even when she didn’t want him to. But “less pushy than the character who is the obvious main love interest in this YA novel” is a pretty low bar to clear, so good for Flint.

He does ask her if he can support her on the walk up the stairs, just in case the altitude sickness makes her too weak. Which happens and which I love because it’s an obvious reason to get the heroine (and the reader) all flutter-pants over him:

I know he’s strong—all those muscles under his shirt definitely aren’t for show—but I can’t believe he’s this strong. I mean, he’s carrying two heavy bags and me up the stairs, and he isn’t even breathing hard.

but it’s also done in an actually realistic way. Altitude sickness does make you fatigued, it does fuck with your breathing, so she’s not some wilting damsel here. She’s just winded. I can live with that. And it’s not like he dramatically cradles her; he’s basically dragging her up the stairs with an arm around her waist. If this were a different book, he would be carrying her because she’d have already fallen down like fourteen times and is a hazard to herself and others.

Grace and Flint have a back-and-forth about how she’s fine and he doesn’t need to help her anymore but this is a YA novel so:

“Yeah, until you pass out and pitch over the railing. Nope, Headmaster Foster put me in charge of getting you to your room safely and that is what I’m going to do.”

This is the part where a YA heroine is supposed to go, oh, I hate him so much, how pushy, how terrible, but I have no other choice than to go along with it. Grace, however, thinks, you know, I do feel like crap and accepting help is no big deal.

While I’m not thrilled by the lack of boundaries exhibited by hot guys in this book so far, I’m impressed that there’s more to this interaction than the heroine stubbornly insisting she’s fine when she’s not but giving in because gosh, it’s just so much easier to roll over and do whatever a boy says even if you don’t want to.

After a brief argument between Macy and Finn regarding the transport of the luggage, we get a description of where they’ve arrived.

There are four sets of double doors surrounding the landing—all heavy, carved wood—and Macy stops at the set marked North. But before she can reach for the handle, the door flies open so fast that she barely manages to jump back before it hits her.

Guess what’s behind door number North.

“Hey, what was that ab—” She breaks off when four guys walk through the door like she’s not even there. All four are brooding and sexy as all get out, but I’ve only got eyes for one of them.

Bet you know which one.

The one from downstairs.

Of course, the only guy you have eyes for is that guy. He’s a total dick!

To be fair, out of the five hot guys we’ve met so far, one of them has been friendly, if overbearing, one has been outright threatening, and the other three, well, how can she be attracted to them if she doesn’t know how fucking awful they’re probably going to treat her in the rest of the book.

I know I sound harsh there, but the fact is that this is a book trying to catch lightning in a bottle from a shelf that hasn’t been dusted since 2010. There’s no way that trope isn’t going to be present here, even if it’s softened for the purposes of marketing it as “feminist.”

He doesn’t have eyes for me, though. Instead, he walks right by—face blank and gaze glacier cold—like I’m not even here.

Like he doesn’t even see me, even though he has to skirt me to get by.

Like he didn’t just spend fifteen minutes talking to me earlier.

Except…except, as he passes, his shoulder brushes against the side of my arm. Even after everything we said to each other, heat sizzles through me at the contact. And though logic tells me the touch was accidental, I can’t shake the idea that he did it on purpose. Any more than I can stop myself from turning to watch him walk away.

Back it up, girl, because you sound desperate. Everything you said to each other in fifteen minutes. Now, I distinctly remember him telling her to leave the school; why would he be friendly and welcoming now, just because she walked up the stairs? And why does she feel that a fifteen-minute conversation is some kind of social contract?

Flint tightens his warm arm around my waist, and I can’t help but wonder why the guy with ice in his veins makes my skin tingle and the one literally lending me his warmth leaves me cold.

I wish I could call Grace up and be like, babe, I’m at location 601 and I have an answer to your question.

The answer is that girls like bad boys and somewhere along the line “bad boy” became “outright abuser.” No wonder he seems like prince charming.

Grace decides not to obsess over the dude and they go into the North hallway. Grace describes how the dorm room doors are all decorated, one with a giant X of roses on it, one with bat stickers all over it, and I’m like, yo, Grace. This is vampire shit.

Yet smack in the middle of the vampire shit is Macy’s rainbow-splosion decor:

A garland of fresh flowers winds its way around the doorframe, and lines of threaded, multicolored crystals fall from the top of the door to the bottom in a fancy kind of beaded curtain.

Hang on now. Fresh flowers? She’s getting garlands of fresh flowers delivered, what, every couple of days? What if a roommate has allergies? Where are these flowers growing in the middle of Nowhere Ass, AK? But really, the part that charms me the most is that it’s a fancy beaded curtain. You know, the tasteful kind of beaded curtain you find at the higher-end adult bookstore backrooms.

We don’t get to see the room in this chapter because:

Before I can take a step over the threshold, another hot guy dressed entirely in black passes by. And though he pays us no more attention than any of the others did at the North hallway door, the hair on the back of my neck stands up. Because even though I’m sure I’m imagining things, it suddenly feels an awful lot like I’m being watched.

One, two, three, four, five, six! Six hot guys! Ah ah ah.

We leave Grace at the end of this chapter, in a spooky fortress surrounded by howling terrors of the night and filled with preternaturally strong and gorgeous young men prone to Heathcliffism.

It’s the altitude sickness that’s making it difficult for her to see how vampire these vampires are vampiring right now. She’s gonna pick up on it.

Any minute, now.

So…anything happening in the news? And other updates.

CW: This is an overall positive post but the word “suicide” does come up and IDK where everyone is around here, mentally. It’s not super heavy, just the grim, passing reflections of someone who’s been suicidal before. It’s not like, about suicide.

As you know by now, President-Elect Joe Biden is a thing. I partied over the weekend, woke up this morning and was like, wow. This is what it feels like to not wake up disappointed that I didn’t die in my sleep. Wild.

I was more or less holding off on making any, you know, plans or whatnot until after the election. It just didn’t make sense to me to be like, “Yeah, good news, I’ve got all this stuff happening and good content coming just as soon as I know that I’m not going to be sent to a re-education camp.”

Since it seems safe (for now) to make future plans, I am tentatively announcing a soft release date for the final book in the Sophie Scaife series. The Daughter will, by all accounts, unless I’m crushed by something heavy or there is a military coup that seizes control of the country, be out on January 21st, 2021.

Because I’m going to be damned if I say goodbye to my imaginary friends and strand them in a Trump presidency. No way, no how.

My first Jennifer Morningstar title, In The Blood, will re-release in February 2021.

Damn, it feels so good to be able to actually write again. You guys. seriously.

Please don’t assume that it was just the election that made me regret waking up in the mornings. Nay, nay! as my good friend Kris Norris is fond of saying. Nay, nay, I have had all sorts of other bullshit going on totally unrelated to politics, white supremacy, and all that other fun MAGA jazz. I have more health bullshit!

As you may know, since I feel like I complain about it constantly, in 2009, I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. Shortly after the birth of my daughter, I injured my neck while nearly missing a head-on collision with another car. Within weeks, I was calling my doctor complaining of fatigue, the pain from my moderate whiplash turned severe. I was in pain all over, a pain I could hear like a low buzzing in my ears. It took months of insisting that this was not normal childbirth recovery, that I’d had a baby before and never felt so run down and in so much pain in so many non-birth related body parts. Finally, someone listened and sent me to a specialist, and I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia.

Cut to September of last year, when I slipped and fell in the shower and broke my foot. I was prepared for my body to take a long time to stop hurting. In the years since my diagnosis, I’ve racked up a rather impressive number of accidents that have caused pain that never went away. And I don’t mean “aches and pains when the weather changes,” although I have those, too. Surgery to remove a tumor resulted in a scar that burns even when the evil wizard who put it there isn’t thinking of me. Sometimes, it feels like it’s coming open. The whiplash has never gone away; it, too, has morphed into constant burning.

I thought this was all Fibromyalgia and continued with my life.

Until one day back in September when I posted on Facebook asking if anyone else still had pain in their foot after breaking it. “It aches every time it rains,” seemed to be the most popular answer. When I tried to explain that it wasn’t an ache, that it hurts exactly the way it did the day after I broke it, someone suggested I look up Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome or CRPS. And I laughed. Because it’s a rare condition and I know someone who has it. What are the odds of that happening?

I went to my friend, whom some of you know as St. Petra of Getting Peter Capaldi to Wish Jenny a Happy Birthday, who also has CRPS. I told her how funny it was that someone would coincidentally suggest I have the same rare condition she has. And since she and I had bonded over our mutual chronic pain and she knows my symptoms, she finally told me something she’d apparently thought for a while: that my symptoms are symptoms of CRPS.

After my diagnosis, I stopped researching Fibromyalgia. What was the point? It’s incurable, I’m treating it the way that works for me, I don’t really need to obsess over it, right? I’d just been noodling along, thinking everything I was experiencing was Fibro. And then I compared and contrasted the symptoms of both and called my doctor because while I have a few symptoms of Fibro, they’re all symptoms in common with CRPS, which I check every single box on.

I am not yet diagnosed, as it is a diagnosis of exclusion. There isn’t a test for it, you just have to test for everything around it. Just like with Fibro. And that process, dear readers, is exhausting. On the heels of a year where I had two mental breakdowns, it’s really been a lot.

However, I’m positive and happy and cautiously optimistic about the future. It’s way, way better to worry about health issues when I know healthcare access will improve and that we’re not as close to plunging into full, unfettered fascism as we were last year.

I don’t really have a way to end this post, so to recap: The Daughter releases January 21, 2021, In The Blood releases in February, it’s likely I have what’s known as the “suicide disease” (which is a stupid name for it because not only is that grim as fuck for people who have it but also there’s already a disease that causes suicide and that’s called mental illness), but I’m still chugging away and things are looking the fuck up.

NIGHTMARE BORN RELEASE DAY

It’s me again! Here to tell you about a book I wrote on Radish and is now available as an e-book and a paperback. That’s right. TODAY! IT’S OUT TODAY!

Thank you to everyone who has preordered the book and/or spread the good word. I’m so excited about this series and actually seeing this one on my Kindle with its gorgeous new cover by Kris at Covers By Kris has reinvigorated me. I’ll be leaning hard into more fantastical stuff in the future and this feels like the biggest, most fun first step possible. Scroll down for an excerpt and buy links. And if you read Nightmare Born and want to leave a review for it somewhere, that would be cool as Arthur Fonzarelli.

Smashwords   

*currently available on Amazon. Further retailers to come.