Sarah Chorn's Blog, page 14

Review | Chasing Graves – Ben Galley

About the Book

Welcome to Araxes, where getting murdered is just the start of your problems.

Meet Caltro Basalt. He’s a master locksmith, a selfish bastard, and as of his first night in Araxes, stone cold dead.

They call it the City of Countless Souls, the colossal jewel of the Arctian Empire, and all it takes to be its ruler is to own more ghosts than any other. For in Araxes, the dead do not rest in peace in the afterlife, but live on as slaves for the rich.

While Caltro struggles to survive, those around him strive for the emperor’s throne in Araxes’ cutthroat game of power. The dead gods whisper from corpses, a soulstealer seeks to make a name for himself with the help of an ancient cult, a princess plots to purge the emperor from his armoured Sanctuary, and a murderer drags a body across the desert, intent on reaching Araxes no matter the cost.

Only one thing is certain in Araxes: death is just the beginning.

391 pages (paperback)
Published on December 7, 2018
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This book was sent by the author in exchange for an honest review.

You know, I’ve been meaning to read and review this book forever, and I just keep not having time. I don’t actually have time right now (I seriously have so much going on right now I feel like I’m constantly on the edge of having a panic attack. It’s great.), but I’m making time because there’s only so long I can not do a thing before I start feeling really bad about it. 

Anyway, Chasing Graves. It’s time you and I, dear reader, had a bit of a chat about this book, and all the many reasons I loved it. 

Ben Galley is an author I ran across umpteen million years ago (not really, he was in my first batch of SPFBO entries when I was judging that contest and I put him forward as a finalist). Since then, he’s been on my radar, but I’ve always been a bit intimidated to read and review his books. Not because they are overly-whatever, but because Galley is a well-known author with a strong following and for some reason and I always worry, in situations like that, “What if I’m the only person on the planet who does not like this person’s books?” 

Well, I shouldn’t have worried. Honestly, I’ve read most of Galley’s books and I’ve loved all of them. 

Chasing Graves is, however, probably one of my favorites of his, and the reason why is because it’s just so damn unique. This is going to be the thread that ties this entire review together. If you don’t want to read anything else, read this: This book is one of the most unique books I’ve read in a very, very long time.

One thing I love about all of Galley’s books, is he works on multiple levels. So, on the surface you have the story, and the story is always perfectly paced and constantly entertaining. There is always something happening. Always some driving force moving things relentlessly forward. Never a dull moment in every sense of the word. However, under all that excitement is some of the most interesting worldbuilding and thought-provoking themes you’ll come across in fantasy. 

I loved, for example, how Chasing Graves was not only pulse-pounding and exciting, full of twists and turns and a dollop of mystery, but also how it also really dealt with themes of ownership and individual power and free will. Life and death as well. Those are not light topics, and they lurk just beneath the surface (and sometimes right on the surface) absolutely everything that happens in this book. With these powerful, thoughtful themes underpinning such an exciting plot, you really can’t go wrong. 

Araxes is a city of ghosts. Ripped from their lives, often due to violent acts such as brutal murder, these ghosts roam the city, and are forced into servitude to whichever master pays the highest price for their services. The city itself becomes a living, breathing entity, and through numerous perspectives, readers get not just a good view of this vibrant, dynamic place, but also the social structure of both the living and the dead in this world that Galley has created. 

And, as luck would have it, the characters shine just as bright as the world itself. All of them are just as layered and flawed, just as complex. Galley has a way with holding on to revelations until the exact right moment, which often serves to up the tension, but it makes that revelatory moment in the character’s arc (or the story’s) that much more powerful. There is a good deal of personal evolution going on in this book, which I truly enjoyed, because I genuinely felt like I was getting to know the characters as they were getting to know themselves. There was a certain bit of magic there. 

In Araxes, nothing is as it seems on the surface, and slowly Galley peels back everything you think you know, to reveal a city not just steeped in life and death but mired in change and the unknown. Power struggles, ancient cults, mysterious ghost armies abound. It’s a place where murder buys power, and the dead don’t stay dead. And yet, things are happening that cause this ordered, if uncomfortable, society to start feeling the tug and pull of change and the unknown on the horizon. There’s a bit of a simmering unrest throughout the book, that builds just as masterfully as everything else.

The ending of Chasing Graves is nothing short of amazing, and it got me to move on to book two in this series right away, which is honestly something I absolutely never do. I am more the kind of reader that needs a bit of time away from a series before I keep moving through it. However, I just couldn’t get enough of this one. From the fascinating world building, to all the different layers of literally everything, to just the story itself and the characters that fill it, I couldn’t stop reading. I devoured this book. 

Honestly, I sat down to read a chapter or two, and I’m pretty sure I blazed through the entire thing in about two days and ended up putting off some editing in favor of reading (I shouldn’t admit that, but here we are.). That’s how into this book I got. I was just completely and absolutely hooked. Absorbed. Subsumed. 

Chasing Graves is amazing, full stop. It’s a delicious mix of grimdark, horror, mystery, and mythology, and what can only be considered Ben Galley. It all mixes together to make this read truly one of a kind. Fantastic writing, superb characters, and—seriously, I cannot hammer this hard enough—one of the most unique books I have read in a very, very long time. 

What a strong start to an absolutely incredibly series. 

5/5 stars

News | Oh, That Shotgun Sky & Other Goodies

As you may or may not have noticed, I’ve been a bit uh… busy recently. Not only am I working through an incredible stack of editing gigs, but I’m also launching a novella, and writing a novel and another novella and… the list goes on. My sanity is currently in question, but what’s the fun of being sane?

Last week, over on Fantasy Book Critic, the cover art reveal for Oh, That Shotgun Sky dropped. You can go check it out here, and read the first chapter of the book as well.

As always, pre-orders are love, so pre-order the book here.

Now, I want to tell you a bit about this novella.

This is book takes place between Of Honey and Wildfires and Glass Rhapsody (coming soon). Actually, the events that transpire here are RIGHT AFTER the ending of Of Honey and Wildfires, and while this isn’t necessary to read before you read Glass Rhapsody, it will absolutely give you some depth and understanding for what happens in that book. Also, I just really love this novella and I think, if you liked Of Honey and Wildfires, you’ve got a good chance of liking this one as well.

As an added bonus, I’ve talked a bit about my fan artist on this website. As you also probably know, said fan artist has a ridiculous amount of talent. I mean, just oozing it from everywhere. I am beyond pleased to announce that Sen Qin has done some character sketches which will also appear in this novella and I absolutely love them. I’ll show you one here, to sort of get you hungry for more.

I am super excited for you to see the rest of the art that’s in this book. It is absolutely STUNNING. I am honestly blown away by these character sketches.

Now, as for what I’ve got going this year… I have a lot juggling going on right now. I’ve told you about Glass Rhapsody, and I have a novel called Daughter of the Bright Earth coming in the summer, but more on those later. Right now, I want to talk to you a bit about these novellas.

I have three planned novellas right now, each of them taking place in different parts of the world which Of Honey and Wildfires takes place in: Sefate. Oh, That Shotgun Sky is set in the Wild West that I created with Of Honey and Wildfires. Another novella, (working title) called The Roses of Perdition will take place out in the Union, following a story thread that is very subtly woven into Oh, That Shotgun Sky. And Butterfly Falling, which will take place in a completely different part of the world, a jungle empire called Dawnland and will, for now, stand completely apart from the Union/Shine Territory stories.

Each of these novellas will precede a planned novel.

So:

Oh, That Shotgun Sky –> Glass Rhapsody (coming in April…)
Butterfly Falling –> Daughter of the Bright Earth
The Roses of Perdition –> The Reason for Stars

Yeah. A lot going on. I’m having an absolute blast. I’ve started writing Butterfly Falling. I’m expecting to have all three novellas written and released by June. The novels, obviously, will take a bit more time. I’m projecting Glass Rhapsody for late April/early May. I hope Daughter of the Bright Earth will be ready by late summer, and The Reason for Stars, sometime in the winter, but we shall see. I have rough ideas for other books, set in other parts in Sefate as well. Some of these will tie together, some will stand alone…

Anyway, what matters here is the plan for the novellas. Currently, I will be releasing individual novellas as ebooks only. Then, in summer (I’m expecting July), I will have an omnibus release which will be both ebook and paperback, with artwork and a professionally done cover and the whole nine yards.

So, ebooks only, for now. The novellas are both stand alone, and precede upcoming novels. In late summer, you’ll be able to buy a paperback omnibus of all the novellas, though individual releases will be ebooks only.

And uh… yeah it think that’s about it.

Review | The Shadows of Dust – Alec Hutson

About the book

The Streams bind together the vast reaches of the stellar tributary, plied by brave streamsurfers and their telepathic starbeasts. Some of these adventurers are heroes. Some are rogues. And some just want to return from the void with their bodies and minds unbroken . . .

Kerin thon Talisien is the heir to a legendary name. When he was a young boy, his grandfather swooped down from the stars and rescued him from the slums of his homeworld. But with the death of the infamous old streamsurfer, Kerin and his crew have fallen on hard times, exiled from the Starfarers Guild and forced to take on risky contracts in the shadowy margins of the stellar tributary. A strange encounter in a glimmer den offers a chance at redemption and glory . . . but the stakes are high, with the fate of the Known potentially hanging in the balance.

469 pages (kindle)
Published on January 3, 2021
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I edited this novel.

First of all, LOOK AT THAT COVER.

LOOK AT IT.

Isn’t it great?

Okay, now that that’s out of the way…

Alec Hutson’s email seeing if I was available for an edit came through at the exact moment I was buying all his books off Amazon. Talk about timing. 

I’m a big fan of Hutson. He has a knack for worldbuilding that I’ve always really admired, but it wasn’t until I was editing this book that I realized just how good at worldbuilding he really is. The Shadows of Dust continually blew my mind. I can absolutely say there is literally nothing else in the fantasy genre that is like this book, and that is the best possible compliment. In fact, I don’t even think this is fantasy. Or, it is, but it’s not. It’s not SciFi either. It’s its very own genre and boy howdy, do I feel some kinship with authors that create their own genres (*glares meaningfully at her own books*). 

I’ve read a bajillion books, and I’ve never read another like this. Considering how much I read and how much I edit, that’s really saying something quite meaningful. Do not take that lightly.

And here’s the beauty of it. You can prepare yourself for different all you want, but I guarantee that you won’t prepare yourself enough for just how different and wonderful this book actually is. There’s just no girding yourself for what you’ll get in The Shadows of Dust. I mean, what genre does space surfing dudes on the backs of gigantic telepathic turtles and squid belong in? Have you ever heard of such a thing? Because I sure haven’t. 

If that doesn’t sound awesome enough, you’ve got anthropomorphic characters here, space pirates, ancient magic and feuds that span eons, empires clashing, and so much more. 

I mean, I don’t know what genre this book is, but it’s absolutely fantastic from bottom to top. 

Kerin thon Talisien is an out-for himself mercenary who plies the stellar tributaries on the back of his gigantic, telepathically linked turtle, Drifter. Things happen, and he ends up with an unexpected companion who makes him question everything. Plus, now he’s the target of a lich (which, trust me, is as FREAKING AWESOME as that sounds. This lich became my book boyfriend. I professed my undying love of him in my editorial comments.). Together, they end up on a planet called Dust, while they attempt to regroup and learn about some ancient artifacts that have suddenly become bound up in their story. On Dust, everything kind of explodes. The book changes from being a story about a guy in this situation, and moves to being about a clash of empires, ancient civilizations, religion, ghosts, armies, and so much more. 

I mean, this book is EPIC.

But more than that, what I loved so much here, was that Hutson didn’t really sacrifice anything for anything else. What I mean by this is, he didn’t sacrifice worldbuilding for characters, and he didn’t sacrifice characters for his magic system and the like. (And the fact that he managed all this without infodumps still blows my mind.) Every element was perfectly balanced, and due to this, the reader is left with this really interesting book that is both one of the most epic stories I’ve ever read, and also one of the most intimate. Kerin is a character that grows as the novel progresses, and I truly enjoyed seeing his more personal journey, the transformation of the relationships that are core to this book. The way his past impacts who he is in this novel, and who he ends up being by the novel’s end. 

Furthermore, there are nuances to each of the characters, even the secondary ones, that I just dug. There is no laughing, maniacal evil guy here. Hutson does a great job at showing how each side feels justified in their aims, and while you will inevitably sympathize with some more than others, he does an amazing job at humanizing everyone’s stories, even those who seem a bit beyond humanization. 

Hutson has a knack for plot and pacing. There’s never a moment in this book that drags. There were quite a few times when I was saying, “just one more chapter…” as I was editing and before I knew it, the entire day had slid right past me, and I still couldn’t pull myself away from the book. No, I’ll go even further. There were vast stretches of this book I got so completely absorbed in, I literally forgot to edit. So in all reality, I think I’ve probably read The Shadows of Dust at least three times due to that. I mean, this sucker starts going and it just does not quit until the end. And then… that ending! I was left reeling, and I instantly sent an email to Hutson, “Please, for the love of god, tell me THERE IS MORE.” 

If you’ve read Hutson’s previous work, expect the same high quality, but that is just about where similarities end. There’s nothing about The Shadows of Dust that is like anything else on the market, and that’s only part of what makes it such a strong work. There’s vision here, scope, fantastic writing, a shocking amount of depth, and a relentless plot that grabs you by the throat and refuses to let go. The Shadows of Dust was one of the best books I have ever edited. It really knocked my socks off. I spent most of my time working on this book reeling, because the entire thing is just so POWERFULLY UNIQUE. 

I am always looking for a book that is truly in a class of its own. I long for the stories that are different in just about every respect. Give me space mercinaries on flying telepathic turtles. Give me lich armies. Give me ancient magic and long, lost civilizations. Give me ghosts, and clashing empires on some oddball planet. Give me a plot that refuses to let go. Give me dynamic, nuanced characters. 

Give me The Shadows of Dust. 

5/5 stars

Review | Dragon Mage – M.L. Spencer

About the Book

Aram Raythe has the power to challenge the gods. He just doesn’t know it yet.

Aram thinks he’s nothing but a misfit from a small fishing village in a dark corner of the world. As far as Aram knows, he has nothing, with hardly a possession to his name other than a desire to make friends and be accepted by those around him, which is something he’s never known.

But Aram is more. Much, much more.

Unknown to him, Aram bears within him a gift so old and rare that many people would kill him for it, and there are others who would twist him to use for their own sinister purposes. These magics are so potent that Aram earns a place at an academy for warrior mages training to earn for themselves the greatest place of honor among the armies of men: dragon riders.

Aram will have to fight for respect by becoming not just a dragon rider, but a Champion, the caliber of mage that hasn’t existed in the world for hundreds of years. And the land needs a Champion. Because when a dark god out of ancient myth arises to threaten the world of magic, it is Aram the world will turn to in its hour of need.

986 pages 
Publishing on January 8, 2021
Buy the book 

I edited this novel.

I never really know what to do with the books I edit. On the one hand, I feel like since I edited them, I’m a bit too invested to be able to really review them. On the other hand, I feel like I want the world to know how amazing these books are, and if I can’t yell about them, then what’s the point. 

When Spencer messaged me about editing this book, I’ll admit, I was a bit nervous. She’s got a lot of books under her belt. She’s a very successful author, and while I knew her, I wouldn’t say we were terribly close. She’s always been one of those self-published authors I’ve admired a lot but been a little too intimidated by her success to get too close to. When she asked me to edit this book, I knew it would be an amazing opportunity, but I also had a whole lot of inferiority complex going on. In fact, when she sent the book to me, it took me over a week to gather up the courage to actually start on it. This isn’t her fault; it was just me getting over my fan issues. “Oh my hell, M.L. Spencer wants ME to edit one of HER books??” 

Anyway, once I decided to get over myself and sink into it, I had a really hard time not thinking about this book or wanting read it. It was, quite frankly, dear reader, one of the most immersive editing experiences I’ve ever had in my four-ish years of doing this. And the thing is, this is not a short book. That’s part of what scared me about taking this one. It’s an investment on both our parts. It’s not cheap to get a book edited, even less so if it’s a really long one. On my end, that’s a lot of time and I need to get really, really into a book to edit it. So yeah, the length made me a bit nervous. 

Now, I’m not telling you all this so you can be all, “but Sarah, sounds like you’re doing a lot of complaining right now” because I’m not. I swear, I’m really not. I’m telling you all this, so you know what my considerations were up front, and how absolutely none of them ended up weighing down this project at all. For example, yes, this book is a long one, but I never once felt like I was reading a long book. And honestly, when I finished reading the last page, I had a book hangover the likes of which I have not experienced in years, and I immediately opened the first section of the book up again and started reading it a second time because I just did not want it to end. 

“Cool, Sarah. What’s the book about?” 

Well, that’s really where the magic is, because there’s something about Dragon Mage that worked for me on literally every level. I mean, I’ve read probably around 150 books this year between ones I’ve listed on Goodreads and stuff I’ve edited that hasn’t been published yet, and this book is, hands down, my favorite one out of the lot. If I make a Best Books of 2020 list, it’s going to be real awkward to have a book winning the entire thing that isn’t dropping until 2021.

Dragon Mage tells the story of one Aram, a young boy in a small seaside town, and readers follow his progression from a bullied outcast to a man who is strong enough to save everyone and everything he loves. It is not a smooth journey. There are a lot of points in the book where he and Markus (his loyal friend) get into situations that I just couldn’t see a way out of. Spencer keeps the tension going until the moment the scene culminates, and suddenly you understand why this particular hardship was important to Aram’s personal growth and the story overall. 

The thing is, I think a lot in my life about some of the things I’ve been through that suck. Cancer, for example, sucked really, really hard. But I also know I wouldn’t be who I am today without the experience of that, and I saw a lot of that in Aram’s story. A whole lot of things happen to him, and yet none of it is wasted. Every last bit of his story goes toward making him who he ended up being, and it is rare in fantasy that I see such narratives used as deftly, as powerfully as Spencer used it in Aram’s story–all of the small events that work together to create the whole. It was so stunningly human, while being completely fantasy, and I related to it on a level that I haven’t experienced in a very long time. Reader, Aram’s story moved me profoundly.

Furthermore, I really do need to mention the fact that Aram is on the autism spectrum, and I don’t know about you, but I haven’t read a whole lot of epic fantasy stories featuring an autistic protagonist. In fact, that Aram is autistic moved me to tears not a few times in the story. Representation matters. People deserve, and need, to see themselves in the stories they read, and bravo for Spencer bringing that to life in Aram. She shows that not only do autistic people deserve to be in the stories we read, but they can save the day just like anyone else and that is POWERFUL and NECESSARY. I truly believe there are a bunch of fantasy readers out there who are eager and excited to read about Aram, and maybe see a bit of themselves in a story for once. To root for the protagonist as an act of also rooting for themselves.

This book basically follows the hero’s journey as told through the life and times of Aram, with a few chapters from some other points of view, namely Markus, though some other perspectives are sprinkled throughout the novel here and there. None of these are ever wasted. There’s a surgical precision with which Spencer utilizes her points of view, always for the maximum impact not only for the reader, but for the scene itself. 

The battles are likewise precise and perfectly executed. In fact, there’s this bit of the book where the making of a sword is detailed, and I realized after I’d read that entire section, that usually I’d skim this. Usually, I’d think, “who cares about making a sword” and move on, but I was so completely gripped by how well Spencer explained the process, and why this and that is done, and how it’s done, and why it matters that I was absolutely captivated. It might be the first time in the history of me reading books where I thought the art of making a sword was something I was actually excited to read about. 

And this goes into the battles as well. I’m not a big battle person. I don’t really get excited about formations and armor and how things happen on the field. In fact, a lot of it goes over my head. Again, Spencer shines. Instead of getting lost in the weeds of these battles, she has this ability to bring intensity and clarity to scenes that I usually would not feel invested in. Never too long, nor too short, nor too hard to understand, the battles as depicted in this book are, in my opinion, the gold standard of how battles should be portrayed in fantasy. 

More than that, though, is the fact that everything in Dragon Mage serves numerous purposes. Not only are the battles interesting and show this wider, sprawling conflict that is consuming this parallel world that Spencer has crafted, but they are also symbols of Aram himself. His personal growth. The fight against his destiny. The difficulty overcoming the echoes of his past, which are both brutal and haunting, and his eventual fate. He does not win all the time, and that’s another bonus. Aram makes some bad decisions. He struggles, he falls, and he also succeeds, but readers are taken along, every step of the way.

The world building is also something I feel I need to touch on, because I’ve never really come across anything like this before. With vivid, almost poetic prose, Spencer brings her world to vibrant life. There was a scene in specific near the start of the book, where she’s describing the moonlight on water, and I remember editing this and thinking, “I feel like I could take a picture of this right now, it’s so vivid.” And that’s not just with descriptions, but with social and political systems, societies, cultures and the like. It’s all thought out so well, and crafted with an eye for detail, I felt like it was more real than real. While it probably took her a long time to get the book to that point, on my end, as the reader and editor, Spencer made flawless worldbuilding look absolutely effortless. 

Furthermore, it’s not your regular world. There’s the World Above and the World Below, and one impacts the other. Nothing is left untouched. This is a use of portal fantasy that I’ve never encountered before, and the depth of it, the scope, the brevity seriously deserves a standing ovation. I’ve never seen the like, and like I’ve said earlier in this review, I feel like I have to re-read the book to fully appreciate the scope of it, and it’s superb execution. 

Dragon Mage is a lot of things, but ultimately it left me feeling like, after nearly ten years in the genre world, and four years full-time editing, I’ve finally come across a book that I’ve never, ever read before. Yes, there are some familiar storylines there. The hero’s journey is not new, but the way Spencer twists it absolutely is. I’ve never encountered world building like this before, nor perspective and voice so cunningly. I’ve never cared about how a sword was made, nor felt invested in pitched battles before. I’ve never read a book featuring an autistic protagonist. And to highlight why that specific point touches me so profoundly (reader, writing about Aram’s autism has literally made me cry twice during the crafting of this review), my older brother is autistic. Due to some seizures, he’s stopped being able to read. I told him about Aram in Dragon Mage, and he started crying. He said, “Everyone thinks we’re too stupid to save the day but we’re not.” And now he is trying to learn how to read again and using this book to do so. 

It. Matters.

I don’t really know how else to sell this book to you other than to tell you to read it. It’s a perfect blend of everything. Familiar and new. Passion and adventure. Pitched battles, and quiet moments so vividly described you can’t help but feel like you are right there, in the book alongside Aram and Markus while they grapple with fate, the world, and themselves. 

The book drops on January 8. Do yourself a favor, and pre-order it. 

5/5 stars

Review | Tower of Mud and Straw – Yaroslav Barsukov

About the Book

THE QUEEN RUINED HIS LIFE. HE WOULD DO ANYTHING TO RECLAIM IT… OR SO HE THOUGHT.

Minister Shea Ashcroft refuses the queen’s order to gas a crowd of protesters. After riots cripple the capital, he’s banished to the border to oversee the construction of the biggest anti-airship tower in history. The use of otherworldly technology makes the tower volatile and dangerous; Shea has to fight the local hierarchy to ensure the construction succeeds—and to reclaim his own life.

He must survive an assassination attempt, find love, confront the place in his memory he’d rather erase, encounter an ancient legend, travel to the origin of a species—and through it all, stay true to his own principles.

Climbing back to the top is a slippery slope, and somewhere along the way, one is bound to fall.

Expected publication: February 21, 2021
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This book was provided by the author in exchange for an honest review. 

There are a few literary hills I am prepared to die on. Novellas being an under-appreciated form is absolutely one of them. I get a handful of novellas each year to edit, and I read a whole bunch of them, and I’m always blown away. A really good novella can pack a punch every bit as walloping as a full-length novel. The shorter form also means that the author has to be really clever about plot development, world building, and character development as well as everything else that goes into a story. 

When it’s all said and done, the novella really blows me away. And a really well done novella quickly veers from something fantastic, into something unforgettable. Some of my favorite authors excel at novellas. K.J. Parker, for example. One of the authors I edit for on the regular throws novellas at me constantly, and each one has me sitting back to admire what he’s managed to do in so few pages. 

So, yes. Novellas are amazing, and if you are not reading them, you really should. 

Tower of Mud and Straw is one good example as to why. 

When Barsukov reached out to me about this novella, he told me it’s based on a bit of Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empire history, and be still, my heart. I have an unhealthy obsession with Russian history, and I recently read a book about the Austro-Hungarian Empire and have discovered a healthy fascination there as well. So it really didn’t take much to get me interested in reading this novella. 

Shae, our protagonist, is set to oversee the creation of this gigantic tower which will be used as the biggest anti-airship tower in history. Perhaps this sounds like a good career for a man of his status, but he refused to gas a bunch of protestors, and thus ends up banished to this edge-of-the-empire outpost to oversee the construction of this tower. It’s a demotion.

The tower itself is pretty fascinating and will likely remind some readers of Josiah Bancroft’s series in some ways. The technology used to build it (Drakiri) is accepted and feared by those who use it in equal measure. The tower itself is an interesting linchpin that holds the book together. The queen believes it will provide her a lasting legacy. The Drakiri believe it will end their race. There’s a lot of subtext involved in it as well, which I truly enjoyed. I’ll touch on that a bit later, though. 

As one can imagine, Shae’s job isn’t straightforward. He’s a man with a spine. If he’d just done his job and didn’t question anything, he wouldn’t end up in this situation, but as it is with people who have a conscience, things go belly up pretty fast. Soon, he realizes the job isn’t what he thought it was going to be. There are secrets and mystery all around him. There’s an assassination attempt, and mixed into this is love, which is neither easily attained, nor smoothly won. And underpinning it all is a drive for vengeance, for the desire to retain some of what he’s lost and make those who hurt him pay for the pleasure of doing so. 

There’s a lot here, and it is, by and large, magnificently done.

First off, I loved the prose. Liquid and flowing, poetry with an edge. The writing of this novel is clean, crisp, and yet has a flare that allows the author to fill it with imagination, and emotion all at once. And Barsukov does not shy away from emotion. His story is full of layers of genuine moments of deep feelings, and it’s all viscerally felt, from Shae’s frustrations, fears, passions, and even his love. It truly shines bright.

The book flips between inner dialogue and external action. In this way, Barsukov keeps the plot moving forward, while cunningly developing his characters in ways that are quite awe-inspiring, when you consider the shorter form of this novella. Some of the characters might feel a little flat. I found the romance, while overly well-crafted, to be lacking in a bit of something that made it feel completely real in my mind.

Tower of Mud and Straw does tackle a lot of uncomfortable topics, like discrimination, politics, and legacy. Legacy is an interesting theme that I enjoy playing with a lot in my own writing. How decisions one person make are felt, not only immediately, but how they can potentially be felt in generations to come, spanning multiple groups of peoples and cultures. There’s a lot here to chew on, and a lot of subtext that underscores almost everything, which I absolutely loved. 

So knowing all this, you might wonder why I am giving the book four stars, rather than five, and honestly, my complaint is likely going to be one that will flatter the author rather than upset him. 

I wanted more. I wanted more depth, more introspection, more moments where we could explore all the nuances of this world fully. There’s so much here to grab hold of a reader’s attention, and yet I felt like I was truly only skimming the surface of what I wanted to know, and what was available to me. This is a good entry point, but I really hope the author explores more of what he’s written in greater depth at some future point. 

All in all, this was a great novella and I’m overjoyed I was given the chance to read and review it. It’s different, and eye-catching, with stunning prose and a shocking amount of depth and story packed in a few short pages. I think Barsukov has a great future as a writer ahead of him, and I, for one, look forward to what he writes next. 

4/5 stars

Indie Author Interview | Yaroslav Barsukov

About the Author

After leaving his ball and chain at the workplace, Yaroslav Barsukov goes on to write stories that deal with things he himself, thankfully, doesn’t have to deal with. He’s a software engineer and a connoisseur of strong alcoholic beverages—but also, surprisingly, a member of SFWA and Codex (how did that happen?). At some point in his life, he’s left one former empire only to settle in another.

Links

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Describe yourself in six words or fewer.

A machine for dreams and regrets!

Tell me about your book.

Tower of Mud and Straw has got some unique worldbuilding and characters—the novella is very eclectic in terms of culture and time periods, blending standard medieval elements with industrialization and late 19th century, and incorporating Russian and Austro-Hungarian influences. Also, when you drop a thousand foot-tall anti-airship tower into the middle of a fantasy book, all bets are off as to what will happen. Miltos Yerolemou (Syrio Forel in Game of Thrones), who’d recorded the audio version, said the novella would “surprise the readers”—I happen to totally agree.

What else? Three out of five principal characters are women, one of them the tower’s chief engineer. There’s a political émigré in the mix. Give it a try, it’s really something different.

What makes you and your books unique? Shine for me, you diamond.

Lots of introspection, lots of internal monologue, and a hard focus on human relationships—human condition fascinates me. I hope my prose accomplishes what science fiction and fantasy are there for, what Bradbury was so good at—taking real-world issues and putting them under the speculative element’s magnifying glass.

What are you working on now/any future projects you want to talk about?

I’ve got an outline for Tower’s sequel sitting on my lap, but we’ll have to see how this first one performs (sales-wise).

In parallel, I’m outlining a novel for which I’ve figured out the plot and the character arcs, but not the setting: it will either be Ancient Mesopotamia or early Imperial Russia. Quite a gymnastic split, isn’t it?

Let’s celebrate. What’s one of the best things that’s happened to you as an author? Don’t be shy.

When you accepted my book for review

Indie Author Interview | David Hambling

About the Author

David Hambling lives in darkest Norwood, South London, with his wife and cat. He is a journalist and author and his fiction, starting with the collection, The Dulwich Horror & Others, explores the Cthulhu mythos in his own locale, using local history, folklore and historical characters. He continues the theme in a number of novels including the popular Harry Stubbs adventures, set in the 1920s, and the epic fantasy War of the God Queen, and has contributed to the anthologies ‘Black Wings’ V and VI (PS publishing) and Time Loopers: Four Tales From a Time War.

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Describe yourself in six words or fewer.

South London traveler and cat lover

Tell me about your book. 

War of the God Queen, turns some of the usual portal fiction tropes upside down. Jessica, catapulted back in time three thousand years, finds that her knowledge and skills are almost useless, and the local nomads are by no means dumb savages. They are fighting a war against the seemingly unkillable Spawn of Cthulhu, who had abducted Jessica as a host-mother. Jessica engineers the escape of a group of other women from different times and places and together fight the Spawn – not by learning how to swing a sword, but by using their varied talents, soft power and fast thinking. Jessica has to deal with an entrenched patriarchy, culture clashes between the rescued women and interference from hostile neighboring states who don’t care that they are being overrun by monsters…

This is not your usual tale of brawny barbarians and slave girls, or even kick-ass swordswomen. But it is a celebration of what a group of determined women can achieve against the odds.   

The sequel ‘City of Sorcerers’ is now well into its second draft and will be released some time in 2021, with a third book (title TBR) in the trilogy planned after that.

What makes you and your books unique? Shine for me, you diamond. 

My books show a love of language beyond the purely functional, a willingness to imagine beyond the ordinary, and an interest in characters beyond their facades.

What are you working on now/any future projects you want to talk about? 

In the edit stage and hopefully coming soon: two more Harry Stubbs novellas featuring our hero tackling paranormal nasties from the Cthulhu Mythos in 1920s London. Each anthology is written with a small group of authors, with the stories linking together with a shared element.

“City of Sorcerers” : The sequel to War of the God Queen, and so Book 2 in the Age of Monsters trilogy is now well into its second draft . The original used a single viewpoint character which was limiting in some ways; this time we get to see things in different ways and I’m enjoying using several different styles. 

Further ahead: “Destroying Angels” – the fifth Harry Stubbs novel. I wanted to get the novellas in first so that by this book Harry has reached a point in his career where he is no longer a sidekick but very much running the show, and has a wide experience of the type of enemies out there

Let’s celebrate. What’s one of the best things that’s happened to you as an author? Don’t be shy. 

I was delighted when my collection of Lovecraftian short stories (The Dulwich Horror and Others) was picked up by ST Joshi, the foremost Lovecraft scholar and editor of our age; he wrote an introduction and persuaded PS Publishing to put it out as a hardback. That was the moment I started to feel like ‘a real writer’ of fiction.

Let’s talk about CRAFT

What is one thing that you’ve learned about yourself as a writer? 

I’ve learned about the limits of my brain’s capacity to process a story.

I can write a short a short story or even a novella in one pass, the whole thing assembling itself neatly in my head, but with longer works its very much a multi-stage process. The first draft is a skeleton which later drafts flesh out, refine, expand on – and sometimes completely rearrange. It is a process of discovery, because it’s impossible (for me, at least) to figure out what every character is doing and how they will react to every new development.

I have nothing but admiration for authors who can write end-to-end in one draft. For me, the first draft is just the starting point of an exceptionally long process.

This is why my writing consists mainly of rewriting and editing, editing, editing. The temptation to keep changing this is almost irresistible, and the digital age – I can change a novel after it has been published! – only makes it worse. 

What about self-publishing appeals to you? Why did you choose this particular path to publication? 

I’m very much a hybrid author with a mix of self-published and traditionally-published works 

Self-publishing is quick, easy and does not rely on anyone else to do things. You do not need to fit into a publishing schedule set a year in advance. It’s great to be able to write a book and simply put it out there as soon as you reach The End, and it’s immensely satisfying to be able to manage the whole business of book production yourself.

I have worked with several publishers on various books, and while things sometimes run smoothly it can often be an unhappy experience (euphemism alert). Staff changes mean that the person who was so enthusiastic about your work when it was commissioned may be long gone by the time it is in production. There are plenty of good people in publishing , but they are often overworked because it’s such a tough business these days, and may have little time to deal with authors, so being ignored is routine. The traditional publishing process takes a long time, with a surprising number of people getting involved and delays at every stage, so be prepared for a long wait.  And they may want a cover, or even a title, that you do not like. 

…But sometimes it helps to have a publisher with the marketing heft to shift some books. My Harry Stubbs books started out as self-published before being picked up by Crossroad Press, and it makes a difference

Let’s talk about diversity. How do you incorporate realistic diversity into your books? (Sensitivity readers, research, etc.) And why is it important to you? 

“War of the God Queen” set out as a counter to the traditional portal fiction tropes, which ever since Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” have featured white males going back and showing the ignorant locals how to do things, and being hailed as gods or wizards for their modern knowledge.  Instead we have a modern woman who has to cope with an extremely patriarchal society, and who cannot conveniently invent gunpowder. And while Jessica initially thinks the locals are backward, she soon realizes that when it comes to surviving in their environment, they know a lot more than she does. It is not just a matter of ‘educating’ the ‘ignorant’ and the interplay between different cultures is a key theme.

In the period in which WotGQ is set diversity was not recognized and roles were fairly rigid. However, the arrival of several female characters, all drawn from different historical and cultural backgrounds and with their own knowledge and skills (with white modern Europeans being the minority) , gives the chance to challenge the status quo. Everyone brings something to the party, but that does not make it a Disneyesque harmonious rainbow coalition, more of a constant wrangle. It’s more interesting when you have to fight for your values rather than just assume them.

As a man, I tread lightly when it comes to women’s issues – and plenty of female beta readers helped – but it was interesting to touch on issues like contraception and the ethics of prostitution which fantasy tends to sidestep.

What does your research process look like? 

I always waaay over-research. (Sarah’s note: Same.) Perhaps the worst offender was the first Harry Stubbs novella, The Elder Ice, for which I ended up reading several books on Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expeditions in the early 20th century, extraordinarily little of which made it into the finished work.

War of the God Queen was supposed to be a simple research-free work with the emphasis on imagination and characters rather than nits and bolts. But I re-read Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court  and some other ‘portal fiction’ for starters, and ended up reading a lot about life, religion and technology circa 1,000 BCE, plus goat husbandry, weather patterns in grasslands and invertebrate biology – specifically the issue of how a boneless octopus-like creature could walk on land. 

The challenge is to get the research in first so the flow of writing is not held up by questions like “what are the prevalent diseases in ancient cities” and “what did they eat for breakfast in Mesopotamia?” Unfortunately…

Weapons are cool. They often require research. Tell me about a cool weapon you’ve researched and used in your writing. 

My day job is freelance technology journalism, and a lot is defense-related – I was once described as an ‘exotic weapons guru’ which seemed cool.

There are so many wacky ideas out there for weapons, which fortunately have not yet proven practical, like isomer-based nuclear weapons the size of hand grenades. I have covered a lot of novel non-lethal concepts, including MEDUSA – Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio– which my editor called ‘the microwave scream in your skull’, It uses microwaves to induce sound inside the head which no ear protection can screen out. The concept was apparently never developed beyond the lab, but it matches rather closely the effects described by US diplomatic staff in Cuba and China.

And who could forget the Pentagon’s plans for a Gay Bomb which would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other, causing what the proposers called a “distasteful but completely non-lethal”  blow to morale.

Recent favorites weapons tech stories include the CIA trying to weaponize lightning (using a wire between a thundercloud and the target) and a Turkish swarm of stealthy robot stingrays with explosive warheads to sink ships. 

In fact I’m keen on all sorts of drone swarms , following my 2015 nonfiction book “Swarm Troopers: How small drones will conquer the world”  which is turning out alarmingly accurate. Recently I wrote about a Chinese barrage drone launcher which fires a swarm of 48 kamikaze drones; this sort of thing is already reshaping warfare.

Sarah’s note: this entire answer might be the coolest thing I’ve ever read in my life. I love stuff like this.

Let’s talk about BOOKS

Tell me about the most recent book you’ve read.

Jose Saramago’s “Blindness”, which was recommended to me as a book about a modern pandemic, in this case a mysterious form of infectious blindness. Unfortunately, the translation is clunky, full of dialogue like “those rogues ought to be whipped!” which I can’t imagine being spoken by anyone outside a 19th-century novel. This made it a difficult read, where you keep tripping over lines and having to re-read them.

Also, the author did not appear to have done much research on sudden blindness and how people react to it, and the sexual politics were painfully antiquated even for something written in the 90s.  The characters were ciphers and the plot implausible. While Blindness is essentially meant as a fable and not meant to be taken literally, I was distinctly underwhelmed.

But what do I know?  Saramago won the Nobel Prize for literature.

One of my takeaways from this book was that you can get away with a lot in literary fiction which would never make it in SF or Fantasy. When you have the halo of literature dazzling your readers, they do not notice the lack of elements the SF crowd would take as basic foundations. In our genre you have to work a lot harder, because readers expect decent, imaginative, well-researched world-building. ‘Blindness’ may be a great book – 87,000 people gave it five stars on Goodreads — but is not, in my humble, even half-way decent SF. 

What book would you like to see turned into a movie, and who should play the leading roles? 

At the risk of being controversial (and sounding grouchy), I don’t want to see any book turned into a movie. Books and movies are two quite different media, and the overlap between them is smaller than people realize. Great movies are distinguished by brilliant acting, impressive cinematography and directorial vision, things which do not exist on the page. A great novel has a distinct writing style, a turn of phrase, an authorial voice: nobody is ever going to capture the essence of Raymond Chandler, Jane Austen, or HP Lovecraft on screen, let along PG Wodehouse. 

Hollywood is a ruthless machine which stamps everything into a pre-determined pattern; PK Dick is one of my favorite authors, but movies like Blade Runner, Minority Report and Total Recall are travesties of the stories they are based on. Blade Runner is of course great in its way, it just doesn’t have much to do with the original “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”

Hollywood cuts out anything which is not commercial, abridges, simplifies, and loses the subtlety. It mangles novels as badly as it does history. Because doing so plays better with audiences and gives a better bottom line, and that’s showbusiness, baby! On the screen you get Peter Jackson’s LotR, not JRR Tolkein’s.

Actors are great at interpreting character; it’s what they do. It’s an incredible talent, but in a novel each reader gets their own unique and personal version. Ian McKellen gives a great Gandalf, but he’s never going to be my Gandalf.  Also, in the movie he’s just a wizard, with no deeper suggestion of an immortal, angelic being 2,000 years old sent by the gods.  

Also…I worry how cinema is affecting the current generation of fantasy novelists. Back when I was growing up there were basically no fantasy movies and it was an entirely written genre. Now I get the feeling that many writers get their ideas and outlook from the screen not the page, so they are familiar with story arcs, snappy dialog, and sudden reveals, but not extended metaphor or a well-turned sentence. The writer’s art, which ought to be all about words, is in danger of turning into something else. Our imagination is becoming visual at the expense of all the other senses, and everything is strangely weightless, odorless, historyless. A character’s inner life may be replaced with handy visual cues that will look good on screen.

That said, it would be entertaining to see a few different movie versions of any of my work. A Christopher Nolan version of ‘The Elder Ice’ vs a Guillermo del Toro version. Tom Hardy as Harry Stubbs vs Jason Statham?  One day there will be software that will turn any novel into a movie with a director, style and cast of your choice…

Hobbies and All Things WEIRD

When you aren’t writing, what can you typically be found doing?

Favorite activities include birding, photography, walking and travel. So frequent trips to interesting countries to photograph birds are usually a big part of my life. Except that this year has been a little different…still, there are some amazing birding sites within driving distance of London. 

We recently went to see a ‘Snettisham Spectacular,’  a place in Norfolk where  thousands of waders are driven inland by the tide rising over shallow mudflats, which is quite a sight.  When the birds rise into the air they carry out incredible, coordinated aerobatic maneuvers – then settle on the mud in a perfectly choreographed landing pattern. 

Birding does sometimes interrupt the writing; my desk looks out on to the back garden, and I sometimes leap up to get a closer look (and a photo) if something interesting is flitting around. Or just the parakeets, which have invaded South London and are the commonest birds on our feeders: I watch them, and they watch me back. 

Image mined from Google.

Tell me about something in your life that brings you joy. What is it, and why? 

Cookery is an enduring pleasure. It’s probably the closest thing to alchemy, taking a few  ingredients and transforming them into something delicious by following a set of instructions from ancient grimoires.  I enjoy exploring new recipes and tinkering with familiar ones, right from the very simplest up to the most complicated. Like produce from your own garden, home cooking satisfies like nothing else can.

What’s your favorite holiday and why? 

My wife and I have traveled a fair amount across several continents. One stand out was the West African country of Benin, which we visited after reading Bruce Chatwin’s The Viceroy of Ouidah. 

Benin is a land of red earth, where men sit with beers outside bars with hand-painted signs, and women swathed in amazing fabrics glide past with baskets of produce balanced effortlessly on their heads (women working, men lazing is a common pattern…).  In rural areas, everyone has tribal scars on their cheeks – lines, crosses, circles – showing their background.

As usual, we traveled independently; much of the transport was in ancient Peugeot 504 taxis, the only vehicles robust enough for the bumpy dirt roads. Getting around was not easy, and even finding the hotels we had booked could be a challenge. Like much of West Africa, Benin’s national language is French , and luckily schoolboy French (which is useless in France), worked brilliantly.

Being white in Benin gives you an idea of what it feels like to be a celebrity. People look at you with curiosity wherever you go to see what you are doing; small children point and delightedly shout ‘Yovo, yovo!’ when they see you, as though they have just spotted a strange animal (which they have). 

The national religion is Voudou (voodoo), and there are occasional reminders – religious processions, the remains of blood sacrifices by the side of the road. The serpent temple in Ouidah stands opposite a Catholic basilica; a guide showed us round, and insisted we posed for pictures with the pythons….because that’s what they expect tourists to do. He joked that the snakes go and eat the Catholic rats in the basilica….

Benin was a great example of how mind-expanding it can be to see places and cultures that are totally different and realize that everything you think of as ‘normal’ is relative. And, as a fantasy writer, to see how people live in an essentially pre-modern agricultural society without modern conveniences.

What’s your favorite food from a country you do not live in?  

I’m very fond of South Indian cuisine – there’s cluster of great South Indian restaurants near us in Tooting which are terrific for dosas (like savory stuffed crepes), uttapam (somewhere between pizza and pancake), hoppers (between pancake and crumpet) and thali (a selection of dishes served on a platter). All quite spicy….we will definitely be celebrating with a meal when we can eat out safely again.

Tell me a strange, random fact. 

‘Dark flight’ is the term for a meteorite’s path through the atmosphere after it burns out and stops glowing but before it hits the ground. It’s a great metaphor for something. 

Any final thoughts? 

Thanks for having me, it’s been fun!

Thanks for stopping by, David! Make sure you check out his website and buy his books!

Indie Author Interview | Nancy O’Toole Meservier

Dearest reader, I must apologize not only to the author, but to you. We had a massive wave of very intense sickness flow through my house this week and it derailed literally everything. I had to delay due dates with my editing, and push back content on my blog. It was really A Thing That Happened.

This interview was supposed to drop on Monday. Thankfully, the author is incredibly understanding, but I am late with publishing it, and that’s not fair to her. Please make sure you spread this far and wide so she can get the eyes she deserves, despite me missing the drop date due to life chaos.

Thank you.

About the Author

Hello! My name is Nancy O’Toole Meservier. By day, I work as a librarian in central Maine. By night, I write about superheroes. The results are the Red and Black series.

Looking for regular updates? Then head over to the blog where I post about twice a week. Topics of interest include my books, writing, publishing, and the awesome things I’ve been reading. You can also find me on twitter, and Instagram. I am also the cohost of the One for All: A My Hero Academia Podcast.

Want updates to go straight to your inbox? Then sign up for my mailing list. Don’t worry, I won’t inundate you with spam. I typically send an update about once a month.

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First things first, tell me about your books.

I currently have two offerings. First off, there’s the Red and Black series, an ongoing series of superhero novels about a nerdy fangirl who gets superpowers and accidentally falls for her nemesis. So far, the series has three books: Red and Black, Black and Blue, and Silver and Gold. They’re a mixture of superhero action and secrets with a side of romance. I’ve technically been writing these characters for years now, so they’ve gotten very dear to me.

If that sounds interesting to you, you can pick up book one, Red and Black, for free until December 4th. Books two and three are also discounted for a limited time.

In addition, I’ve recently released a collection of fantasy short stories. The idea behind this is kinda funny. One day, I was listening to a podcast, and one of the hosts mentioned that he happened to have a bunch of short stories lying around, so he decided to collect them into one volume. I remember grumbling at how lucky he was just to have a bunch of stuff sitting around just waiting to be published, and then I remembered that I was in the same boat! The results are The Lady of the Watchtower: Six Stories of Magic and Transformation.

The Lady of the Watchtower contains six stories. We have A Beauty and the Beast retelling where the heroine is both beauty and beast. A story about a pair of sister witches who embrace their birthright in vastly different ways. And a tale about a sorceress haunted by the magic of her past. I tried to pick stories that covered a nice variety of tones and topics while still focusing on the themes of magic and transformation.

What makes you and your books unique? Shine for me, you diamond.

This is a fascinating question because I feel like a lot of conversation in the indie space is about writing to market and fitting into genre conventions. And while folks are creating some great fiction from that, at the end of the day, I’m just a write from my heart kinda gal. When given the option of choosing to go the well-worn path versus doing what I think is best for my story, I’m always going to go with the latter.

At the same time, this doesn’t excuse ignorance. If you’re going to write genre fiction, it’s important to educate yourself on tropes and be aware of reader expectations. I’m a big fan of the idea that you need to learn the rules before breaking them. Tropes aren’t bad. In fact, they’re often what drives a reader to become a fan in the first place. So the decision to break from them should always be a conscious choice.

What are you working on now/any future projects you want to talk about?

If you’re looking for something to read right now, I just published a free e-serial on my blog called King of Hearts. I wanted to do something dark and twisted for Halloween, so I wrote a steampunk retelling of the fairy tale Bluebeard. It’s a story that I’ve actually tried to tackle multiple times in the past and finally managed to succeed just in time for the spookiest season.

Beyond that, I have many things planned for 2021, including the fourth Red and Black book and those fairy tale novellas I mentioned before. The best way to keep up with my releases would be to join my mailing list. I send out a newsletter every month, which an occasional special update here and there.

Let’s celebrate. What’s one of the best things that’s happened to you as an author? Don’t be shy.

Some authors don’t like it when people message them or tag them on social media with either positive reviews or otherwise nice things about their books, but those moments mean so much to me. To know that I was able to tell a story that made someone excited or happy makes me both excited and happy. I really treasure those interactions.

Let’s talk CRAFT

Plotter or pantser, and why?

When I first started out, I was a complete pantser. When I sat down to write, I typically knew little beyond a strong image or collection of exchanges between unnamed characters. Since then, a lot has changed, likely tied to the fact that I got sick of living in revision hell. With my second novel, Black and Blue, I had to throw out the entire second half of the book, and then the final quarter before I got things right. Since then, I’ve gotten a lot better about planning ahead. It’s still a messy process. I don’t use an outlining method or anything, just a whole bunch of notes. But there’s no arguing with the results. The writing process is so much smoother all around.

If you had to start over with writing and publishing, what would you do differently and why?

I would start smaller. Deciding you’re going to enter the self-publishing world with a seven-book series is a tall order. Despite having written several unpublished books previously and doing plenty of research on self-publishing before spending a dime, I still ended up making mistakes. Now that I’m three years and four books into it, my editing costs are down, I’m learning about ads, and am more knowledgeable about the publishing process all around. Testing the waters with something smaller, like a trilogy, or a series of shorter works, like novellas, would have saved me some money. 

What does your research process look like? 

Research is actually a shortcoming of mine. I don’t always have the patience to sit down and do in-depth research, and that’s one of the reasons why I’ll never write in genres like hard sci-fi or historical fantasy. But even when you focus on books that are relatively research-lite, you still have work to do.

I find what works best for me is using research as the spark of inspiration for a project. For example, I’m currently working on a series of fairy tale novellas, which involve getting read a lot of fairy tales in their original form. Beyond that, I end up spot researching when necessary. Recently this included looking up youtube videos on how to load Revolutionary War-era muskets.

What research tips or tricks would you give another writer?  

Don’t forget about people! Frequently, when we’re looking something up, we might spend hours fumbling with google searches. Sometimes it’s a lot easier to ask someone in your life that has lived experience with the topic at hand.

Let’s talk about BOOKS

Tell me about the most recent book you’ve read.

I just finished The Original by Brandon Sanderson and Mary Robinette Kowal, this cool sci-fi novella where people can elect to be cloned after they die. But if you commit an unforgivable crime, such as murder, the government can choose to create a clone to track you down. The Original is told from the perspective of one of these clones who must locate and execute her original who, she has just learned, has murdered her husband.

I’m a big fan of both authors behind The Original, and I was curious to see how they would tackle this project. Both Brandon and Mary Robinette have written sci-fi, but they’re very different writers! The results are fascinating. Some moments felt like Brandon, others felt like Mary Robinette and parts that felt completely original (pun not intended). I really enjoyed The Original’s sci-fi concepts and action sequences. Based on some of the fight scenes alone, I think it would actually work nicely as a movie or a police procedural-style TV show.

Tell me about your To Be Read pile. What’s on it? What should be on mine?

My To Be Read pile is so embarrassing right now! In case you haven’t noticed, 2020 hasn’t been good for the mental health of pretty much everyone, and it’s had a significant impact on my reading habits. I’m more likely to find myself reaching for old favorites, shorter works, or books that are on the gentle side. For example, a series about a bed and breakfast-owning witch who solves cozy mysteries with the help of a cat and a magical lighthouse.

As a result, a lot of books that came out this year that I was totally psyched about but haven’t actually read yet. This includes NK Jemisin’s The City We Became, Hank Green’s A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, and S.A. Chakraborty’s The Empire of Gold.

As for what should be on your TBR, I highly recommend Rachel Aarons’s Heartstriker series. It’s the story about a nice dragon, trying to get by in a magic-filled post-apocalyptic Detroit. This fast-paced series has the perfect mixture of sci-fi and fantasy elements, and a really engaging romance subplot. The series also argues for being kind instead of selfish, which I think the world really needs right now. Start with book one, Nice Dragons Finish Last.

Oh, and if you want to check out those books about the witch who solves mysteries with the help of her cat and a magical lighthouse, you’re looking for Emma Belmont’s Pixie Point Bay series. Quick, gentle, fun reads.

Hobbies & All Things Weird

When you aren’t writing, what can you typically be found doing?

I only write part-time, so for 40 hours a week, I work as a cataloger in a local library. So between that and writing, I don’t get to indulge in hobbies as much as I would like, but I still find ways to make time for myself.

My biggest hobby is reading. While I can’t fly through books like I used to, I try and read at least a chapter or two each day, with more time set aside on the weekends. Gaming is something I also enjoy when I can. With the release of Super Mario 3D All-Stars, I’ve been able to dig into one of my favorite N64 games, Mario 64. It’s been a ton of fun.

Another thing I like to do as often as I can is go for walks. I’m fortunate enough to be located next to a river that has a wide variety of wildlife. Over the past few months, I’ve seen eagles, snapping turtles, mallard ducks, foxes, woodpeckers, deer, turkey vultures, partridges, and roughly several hundred chipmunks. It’s good to get outside of your head (not to mention your house!) every once and a while.

Best comic book character ever. Why? 

Clearly, you wouldn’t have to ask this question if you knew about The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl! Squirrel Girl has it all. Not only is she a great fighter, but that’s far from the only tool in her arsenal. She also knows when it’s time to beat a bad guy with her brains, and that the best course of action is often empathy. As a result, she’s taken down pretty much all the biggest bads in Marvel Universe, including Galactus, Doctor Doom, and Ultron. I highly recommend picking up Ryan North’s run on the character. The joke density is intense, and there are so many lovable characters.

If you had to pick a superpower, what would you pick and why?

As someone who writes superhero fiction, this is a question that I’ve thought about a lot. One thing I’ve determined is even though a lot of superpowers (like super strength and flight) sound really cool, those are usually the types of heroes that need to continually throw themselves into the fray. And that totally isn’t me!

Instead, I would have to go with healing powers. I’ve come across many individuals in my life that suffer from pain and illness, from chronic migraines to Parkinson’s disease. If I could have the ability to alleviate that suffering, even for a little bit, then that would be incredible.

If you were an animal, what would you be and why?

I relate to my cats way too much. They’re such creatures of habit! They love routine and react poorly to sudden surprises, and I can relate to that. The one time people tried to throw me a surprise party, my reaction was bewilderment. Also, they love being cozy. Who doesn’t love being cozy!?

Any final thoughts?

I’d just like to remind you of the fact that you can get Red and Black for free on kindle until December. I hope people will consider giving it a chance if they love stories about nerdy women becoming heroes.

Thank you so much for this opportunity, Sarah!

Sarah’s note: I think I missed the deadline for this deal because of Ye Olde Plague sweeping through my house. Please check out her books anyway. Support this author. It’s not her fault my life imploded and delayed the posting of this interview.

Thanks for stopping by, Nancy! Please remember to visit her website and buy her books!

Announcement | Songs of Sefate

When I wrote Of Honey and Wildfires, I wanted it to be a standalone. It’s own story, in its own package. However, as I wrote the book and then ended it, I realized I was not okay with that being… it. These characters needed their own conclusion. We had the trial. Now we need the redemption. Plus, I just love the world, and there are soooooooooo many awesome ways for me to play with shine.

Basically, I typed “the end” and realized I was not ready for this to be a one-and-done thing.

There’s a point near the end of Of Honey and Wildfires when Arlen is telling Elroy a story he was told as a child.

“Do you want to hear the story, Elroy?”

“Anything,” the man replied. “Please. Give me something to hold on to.”

The naked desperation in those words filled Arlen with ice.

“There’s a land,” he said. “Far, far away, across an ocean with a whirlpool for a heart. This is where the world starts, and the world ends. It’s called Sefate.” Elroy had calmed down, his hands crossed over his breast, rocking himself back and forth gently, head bowed and eyes closed as he listened. “Sefate is not a place you or I would recognize, for it is not as much a land, as it is a tree.”

“A tree?” Elroy asked.

“Yes,” Arlen replied. “A tree, shooting out from the middle of the world, so large, so sprawling, entire civilizations exist on but one of its branches. Can you imagine such a thing? There is nothing but ocean around its base, and people, like you or I, living their lives on its limbs. As a boy, I used to vow I would run away and find Sefate. I wanted to live there, with nothing but the beating heart of the world under my feet.”

“Sefate,” Elroy said. “I should like to find a place like that. It sounds very peaceful.”

I wrote that story with nothing really in mind but a fable you tell someone when they are in pain and you want to distract them, but the idea of Sefate really burrowed in my brain.

So basically, what I realized by the end of Of Honey and Wildfires was that I was not done telling Arlen, Cassandra, Ianthe, Elroy, and Chris’s stories yet. And I also wanted to explore this world I’ve created, and the shine that fills it, and tell more stories about the lives it touches.

The story of Glass Rhapsody, the book following Of Honey and Wildfires came to me in about ten minutes flat. It was basically there as soon as I typed “the end” after that epilogue in Of Honey and Wildfires. The story for Daughter of the Bright Earth was also there, but it took a bit longer for me to flesh out.

Sefate and shine is what ties it all together.

So, I’ve made a few decisions recently, and I want to share them with you.

Glass Rhapsody is going to be published early in 2021. Daughter of the Bright Earth will follow in the summer. Songs of Sefate is going to be the series title that serves as the umbrella for a conglomeration of stories that all take place in different parts of the same world. For example, Of Honey and Wildfires and Glass Rhapsody will essentially be a duology. Daughter of the Bright Earth will, as of right now, be a complete standalone set in a (very, very, very, very, VERY–seriously, prepare yourselves) different part of the same world. I have the rough outline of a book I’m tentatively calling The Reason for Stars, which will come sometime after that. Binding this together under one series, Songs of Sefate, will both will bind my stories together, thematically speaking, while giving me the freedom to play around with diverse settings and themes the way I really, really want to. Stay tuned, and hopefully you’ll gain a new understanding of shine, and the world, and how it’s all interconnected as I keep telling stories in it. I’ve updated the goodreads page (and I’m working on Amazon right now) to reflect this.

And because you have all stuck with me this far, here is a teaser from Glass Rhapsody. Please keep in mind, this is unedited so it will likely change before you read it in the book.

Thanks for sticking with me, readers! I hope you’ll enjoy this as much as I am.

Review | Nazi Wives: The Women at the Top of Hitler’s Germany – James Wyllie

About the Book

Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Hess, Bormann–names synonymous with power and influence in the Third Reich. Perhaps less familiar are Carin, Emmy, Magda, Margarete, Lina, Ilse and Gerda…

These are the women behind the infamous men–complex individuals with distinctive personalities who were captivated by Hitler and whose everyday lives were governed by Nazi ideology. Throughout the rise and fall of Nazism these women loved and lost, raised families and quarreled with their husbands and each other, all the while jostling for position with the Fuhrer himself. Until now, they have been treated as minor characters, their significance ignored, as if they were unaware of their husbands’ murderous acts, despite the evidence that was all around them: the stolen art on their walls, the slave labor in their homes, and the produce grown in concentration camps on their tables.

James Wyllie’s Nazi Wives explores these women in detail for the first time, skillfully interweaving their stories through years of struggle, power, decline and destruction into the post-war twilight of denial and delusion. 

288 pages (hardcover)
Published on November 3, 2020
Buy the book

A while ago, I read a book about Ravensbruck, a female concentration camp a bit outside of Berlin. It is, hands down, one of the best books about concentration camps I’ve read yet, being more a biography of the camp itself, and its many changes, than any specific people inside it (though it does follow specific people). Anyway, as part of this book, the author was talking about this little tiny town, situated on a lake, outside of the camp. 

Now, a whole lot of the people who worked in this camp lived in that town, but more than that, Himmler, the guy who orchestrated the “Final Solution” had a mistress in that town. They ended up having two kids together. Whenever he would go tour Ravensbruck, he’d stay at her house for a while and for some reason, that fact kind of blew my mind. I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me until that point that these people had families, and children, and wives, and friends, and people they loved, but that book really got my mind churning on that fact. The idea of Himmler going home and eating a nice dinner with his mistress and their son and daughter after seeing all those people in the concentration camp really boggled my mind. 

What kind of woman would be married to someone like that? 

And yes, I know most of them claimed to not know much, but I really find that a bit hard to believe, especially after reading this book. Perhaps they didn’t know everything, but they knew enough. I mean, Lina Heydrich had people from concentration camps work in the gardens around her house, and when she couldn’t beat them hard enough, she’d have her SS guards do it for her. So yeah, they knew. They knew enough. 

Margaret had seen press coverage about the death camps and knew her husband would be blamed; facing the prospect of having to account for his actions, she chose to plead ignorance, and told Stringer that she was ‘just a woman’ who ‘did not understand politics’

Anyway, so the whole idea of these women married to the men at the top of the Nazi food chain really burrowed under my skin and when I saw this book was coming out, I knew I had to read it. I wanted to sort of see into the minds of the people closest to those monsters at the top.

Nazi Wives covers the lives of a handful of women at the top of the government, starting with how they met their husbands, and the life from there. What surprised me, perhaps, is how little these women really had in common. Some of them were friends with each other, some of them really kept themselves on the periphery. Himmler’s wife was probably the most removed, her and her daughter living elsewhere, while her husband spent most of his time with his mistress, Hedwig. Their marriage, early on, didn’t work, but instead of getting a divorce, they decided to stay together for the sake of their kid, and their friendship seems to be quite firm, despite their failing romantic relationship. 

Magda Goebbles was probably the wife I was most wanting to read about. I didn’t know, for example, that she was basically selected to be the Nazi Party’s “first woman” as it were, nor that her relationship with her womanizing husband was so miserable she was constantly threatening divorce, but Hitler refused to allow them to divorce and so they stayed together, always fighting, always circling the same issue. Goebbles had a long and evolved relationship with an actress at one point. He’d also bring his mistresses home, and Magda would change the locks on the house, or call them pretending to be someone else and tell them to meet her husband in some weird location, and the leave them waiting there, sometimes for hours, until she told her husband what she’d done. 

For me there is no alternative. Our beautiful idea is being destroyed, and with it goes everything in life I knew to be fine, worthy of admiration, noble and good. Life will not be worth living in the world that will come after Hitler and National Socialism. Therefore, I have brought the children with me. They are too precious for the life that will come after us.

(Magda’s letter to her son from her first marriage telling him she was planning on suicide)

Eva Braun gets touched on a few times, though not much. She, when compared to the rest of the book, is probably the least interesting figure and I think highlighting her life so infrequently, kept her from overshadowing everyone else in the book. Out of everyone detailed here, I think Eva Braun might have known the least about what was going on than anyone. Kept in her bubble, I think she rarely had contact with the wider world and was rather happy to keep it that way. Her days were full of swimming in lakes and tea time and the like. Hitler was seldom there, and when he spoke to her, I got the idea that they spoke of things that were very unrelated to WWII. Furthermore, when everyone else was having things rationed, Eva Braun never had an issue getting hold of things like makeup, and new clothes (she wore three dresses a day), so I wonder, honestly, if she even realized rationing was happening to the average person. When she finally went into the bunker in Berlin with Hitler, she was absolutely shocked by what she had seen. 

Nazi Wives isn’t just about their lives, though. There is a wider picture being painted regarding things that were happening in the broader world around them. When Heydrich is assassinated, for example, the author does a great job at painting just why he was where he was, and what was happening in the area at the time that led to his assassination, and how said death resulted in the horrible medical tests I read about in Ravensbruck (the book I cite at the start of this review).

I learned a lot about just what kind of iron control Hitler and his cronies had over the average person is surreal. Himmler had to research each person entering a marriage to make sure their genetic line was aryan enough. If divorce was requested, he had to approve it. If divorce was requested between people in the upper echelons of the government, Hitler had to directly approve it (which became the bane of the Goebbles’ relationship). 

77 per cent of the SS leadership cadre were married, as opposed to around 44 per cent of fthe general population, and any SS man who wanted to leave his wife had to get Himmler’s permission; if they defied him, they were expelled from the SS.

Perhaps one small aside in this book that stuck to my bones was when Himmler took his wife and daughter to Dachau to see the garden, and both of them talked about how beautiful it is, and that really threw me through a loop. They went to a death camp, where people were literally dying all around them, but golly gee, wasn’t the garden beautiful. My cognitive dissonance when reading this aside was truly something to behold.

Gudrun wrote to her father after their visit and told him she’d seen ‘the large nursery, the mill, the bees’ and ‘how all the herbs were processed’, gushing about how ‘magnificent’ and ‘lovely’ it all was. For Margaret, the plantation was the end result of the plans she and her husband had nurtured in the early days of their relationship, the homeopathic nurse and the agriculture student who wanted their own small herb garden. To see their dream realised on such a grand scale must have been deeply gratifying. Not once did she stop to consider what it cost in human suffering: the back-breaking work, long hours, poor food rations, severe cold and outbreaks of deadly diseases.

Furthermore, the author discusses how each woman deals with the war a bit differently. Goering and his wife, for example, lived in a sort of fantasy world, which helped them escape from the realities of the war happening around them. A few of them tried to get Jewish friends out of the country, to safer locations. There were even instances were Himmler was called to make sure some of their Jewish friends went to “good camps” rather than the death camps (Himmler lied, but I’m sure none of us are shocked about that). 

For Emmy, all the roleplaying in which she indulged served to conceal the ugly truth of what Goering actually did for a living: his turbocharged Luftwaffe saw its first action in the Spanish Civil War fighting alongside Franco’s right-wing armies and was responsible for the flattening of the small town of Guernica. Henriette Hoffmann – who married Baldur von Schirach, the Hitler Youth leader, in 1932 – made a psychologically acute observation about Emmy’s flight into a fantasy world: ‘She would have been content if … the uniforms had been stage costumes, her palace the scenery, the noise of war the sound effects behind the scenes and her magnificent presents only props. She never wanted reality.’ 

I highlighted a ton of this book. A lot of information that I just didn’t know before. Small details that help paint a portrait of these women and the times they lived in. I don’t know what I went into this expecting, but none of them were innocent, and I think (again, this is just my personal opinion) the claims of ignorance after it was all over were lies. Himmler’s wife and daughter Gudrun, for example, remained loyal to his memory for the rest of their lives and when she saw the media reports after the war, she knew what would fall on her husband. Magda Goebbles murder of her children and subsequent suicide was detailed, as was Hitler’s and Eva’s. Then the Nuremburg trials after, and life after that was touched on, too. 

There are two things to note that keep this book from getting five stars. 

First, occasionally this book felt a bit scattered, and while I don’t think there was really any other way to go about it, I would have enjoyed a bit more depth in places and perhaps a bit more of a coherent narrative. I do think the book would have had to have been longer to accomplish that, but I also feel like it needed it to get the depth I was really looking for.

Secondly, there was a story in the book about how someone went to visit Hedwig (Himmler’s mistress outside of Ravensbruck) and she brought them inside to see a copy of Mein Kampf bound with human skin taken from the back of a Jew in Dachau, and a chair made out of human bones. 

After tea, Hedwig invited them all to the attic to see something special: furniture made from human body parts. Gerda’s eldest son, Martin Adolf Bormann – who was home from school for the holidays – remembered how Hedwig ‘clinically and medically’ explained the process behind the construction of a chair ‘whose seat was a human pelvis and the legs were human legs – on human feet’. Hedwig also had copies of Mein Kampf bound with human skin that had been peeled off the backs of Dachau inmates. ‘Shocked and petrified’, Martin Adolf and his siblings went outside with their mother, who was ‘equally stricken’. Gerda told them that when Himmler tried to give Bormann a similarly unique edition of Mein Kampf he refused to take it; Gerda said it was ‘too much for him’.

Now, I read this and thought, “That’s something I’d like to research and read more about” and so I did, and I found absolutely no corroborating evidence anywhere that any of these things actually existed. It was one story, told by one person (and widely told, at that. The story is known.), and while his story never changed, arguments were presented in the things I read that if something like that had actually existed, more than one person would have known about it. So perhaps it did exist, and perhaps it didn’t. I found it rather questionable that something without firm evidence being portrayed as truth was rather… well, it should be noted. Perhaps that actually happened, and that chair and book actually existed, but if so, I found no evidence of it in my various searches, and it makes me wonder what other hearsay tidbits are in this book, presented as fact. 

All in all, this was a very illuminating, disturbing read.

Recommended, especially if this sort of thing interests you. 

4/5 stars