E.M. Epps's Blog
August 18, 2017
“Cold Sandwiches and All” Book Trailer
The ever-magnificent Nina Post made this book trailer for my latest novel, Cold Sandwiches and All. I’m simply floored by how well it turned out. She must have spent hours and hours finding just the right pictures–not only are they perfect, but they’re quite witty, too! It is just utterly charming and well worth a watch.
June 15, 2017
Article: Why Patreon? Or, the economics of being a writer
I recently wrote a longish article about the economics of being a writer and why I use Patreon. You can read it here. Warning: contains math. Or, if you want the quick math-less explanation, it’s here.
June 3, 2017
New review of “Cold Sandwiches and All”
A quick brag: Christine at Love Serially blog has written a lovely review of Cold Sandwiches and All! Here’s a snippet:
The characters in this novel are well developed and wonderful. Rosemary is ridiculous in the best possible way and Lucien is somehow both insecure and an alpha male, making the pair of them intriguing, loveable and funny as all get out. This is billed as a romantic comedy, and it definitely should be considered one, but it doesn’t follow all of the typical tropes of the genre. There is a bit of magic, a modern sensibility, and yet a historical edge to the whole thing that I find delightful.
If you want to read Cold Sandwiches and haven’t already, you can get it here (UK link). Or contribute to my Patreon.
Also, Christine’s blog is well worth investigating, especially if you like romance. Her reviews are very thoughtful!
April 13, 2017
NEW RELEASE: “Cold Sandwiches and All”
A big announcement – my newest novel, Cold Sandwiches and All, is now available!
To say the least: YAY! I’ve been working on this book for….a long, long time. But now it’s done and I feel that it was worth the effort, because I really think it’s quite fun. Think The West Wing meets classic screwball romantic comedies plus pianos and magic. 
March 10, 2017
New short story available
I get the best story ideas when I have to solve a problem. In this case, the problem was: I need the motto of the House of Autransi, and right away. And that suggested a story. Because when does a royal house come up with its motto? Well:
When her mother and her uncle had decided to take over the world, they’d changed their family name to Autransi. Her mother, Veddha, said a god had given the name to her in a dream, but Astin thought that was the kind of thing people had to say when they took over the world. This was similar to the way that her mother said the gods had given her a commission to see that all the people were united and organized in a pleasing manner that for some reason exactly aligned with Veddha’s inclinations.
At the moment, this story is currently available only to my patrons on Patreon. Please support the arts! It’s quite like joining the Dark Side, except our cookies are imaginary and therefore not at all fattening!
February 17, 2017
Update for 2017!
A little update for 2017, and a friendly request! I now have a shiny new Patreon page! Patreon is a website that allows you to make a small monthly donation to support an artist or writer like myself. If you enjoy my writing—either my fiction or book reviews—would you please consider supporting me on Patreon? I don’t expect to get rich off writing (though, let’s get real, I wouldn’t say no to it, haha!) but more than anything, I’d love to cover my costs and time.
There are a couple of benefits to you. The first is that you prove you are an awesome person who believes in supporting the arts! 
January 3, 2016
Review: "Grave Mercy" by Robin LaFevers
Thumbs up for Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers. Young adult fantasy.
A teenage assassin nun kicks ass in medieval Brittany. Yes, you read that right. Enormous good fun—lots of assassining, some romance, a surprising amount of politics that sounded entirely believable. Also, I think there were some very witty bits; but I read this in one evening after just discovering martinis (thanks, Eunice!), so I may not be the best judge. If you liked Graceling and want more, here you go.
I stare at him coldly. “I do not care for needlework.” I pause. “Unless it involves the base of the skull.”
Review: "Babayaga" by Toby Barlow
Thumbs up for Babayaga: A Novel of Witches in Paris by Toby Barlow. Fantasy.
I loved, loved, loved this book. It is possible, to be fair, that you will hate it. It is hateable, for many of the reasons that made me love it, as well as for some flaws that are just, well, flaws, which I was able to overlook because the rest of it was making me so happy. There is no way I can describe what it is about, except that it is definitely not about Baba Yaga; there are witches here—my favorite kind of witches: the kind who survive—and they are indeed Russian, but if you expect Baba Yaga you are going to be disappointed. So ignore the main title and focus on the subtitle instead. We are in Paris in the 1970’s, vividly, on the side (mostly kinda) of the younger of the two agelesss witches, and a good-hearted if rather bland (sorry, there’s the main flaw) American ad-man who has inadvertently stumbled into a spy ring, and a detective who has been turned into a flea by the other, even less-nice witch. It’s not the story, it’s how it’s told: it’s juicy and melodic and even the poems (poems!) are mesmerizing. Man’s got a way with words, that’s what I’m saying.
For the rest of their journey, Zoya could sense the three lost women following their trail, one bloodied and blind, one soaked, spitting fishscales, and one invisible, a ghost in a ghost. She could feel them at her heels, haunting and hovering over as she and Elga pressed on, bearing down side roads, hiding from passing armies, and digging out forgotten root crops and semispoiled cabbages from the hard soil. Finally, in the warrens and maze of old Krakow, she and the old woman slipped free from the noose of their past, finding a rich bounty in the classical warming comfort of wealthy men’s laps and thick bankbooks. Pianos gaily played while she laughed and giggled, bouncing down into the deep plush divans and soft velvet lounge chairs, eating goose pate, mushroom pierogi, and hot naleśniki topped with Finnish cloudberries while sipping bottomless crystal glasses of sparkling Perlwein and foamy steins of cold winter ale. The world was new once more. She remembered Elga laughing too, peering out from behind curtains and fogging service windows, staying back in the shadows of the kitchens and coatrooms while chuckling and clapping with relief as Zoya’s snares caught their prey, watching her kiss, swoon, and giggle for the magistrates’ fathers, the costermongers’ sons, and every furrier’s drunk uncle. Drowned out by the musical, mirthful tambourine jingle and bass drum din, Zoya’s three ghosts finally receded; like water seeping away into the soil, though she sensed they were merely settling below the sediment, always close, constant in their waiting.
January 1, 2016
Review: "The Art of Language Invention" by David J. Peterson
The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves, the Words Behind World-Building by David J. Peterson.
I know the author, so I can’t review this. That said, if you write fantasy or science fiction, please do all your readers a favor and get a copy before you name your main characters X’in’ia and John.
When I get an email from someone who’s eager to create their own language and wants to know where to begin, I have a tough time explaining what it is they should do. I think my conlang education was goos, for what it was, but what exactly did it entail? I joined the Conlang Listserv and spent a decade there sharing my work, learning from others, and learning more about language. Should everyone have to do the same? Where is the collected wisdom of the early conlang community? Why is it not written down somewhere that if you’re creating a naturalistic ergative language, it will most likely be split ergative, and that those splits will happen in one of a small number of likely places in the grammar? This is something that every conlanger knows or eventually learns, but the information is only passed via word of mouth—it’s like we’re living in the 1300s, but we also have the internet and indoor plumbing!
Review: "Dataclysm" by Christian Rudder
Thumbs up for Dataclysm: Love, Sex, Race, and Identity--What Our Online Lives Tell Us about Our Offline Selves by Christian Rudder. Sociology.
The funny thing here is that Modern Romance (my review) was written by a comedian and Dataclysm was written by a numbers dweeb, and Dataclysm is way funnier. The topic is not quite the same—MR is about dating, and Dataclysm is more generally about how big data can be used to study many facets of sociology—but since the author of Dataclysm was one of the founding partners of OkCupid, he draws a lot of his data from online dating, making the two books feel very similar. My reading was not goal-oriented beyond “learn interesting things and be entertained”—by which I mean I wasn’t seeking information on how to best date online—so from that perspective, Dataclysm is a better value for both “interesting things” and “entertainment.” But if you’re looking for advice, YMMV.
I have led OkCupid’s analytics team since 2009, and my job is to make sense of the data our users create. While my three founding partners have done almost all the hard work of actually building the site, I’ve spent years just playing with the numbers. Some of what I work on helps us run the business: for example, understanding how men and women view sex and beauty differently is essential for a dating site. But a lot of my results aren’t directly useful—just interesting. There’s not much you can do with the fact that, statistically, the least black band on Earth is Belle & Sebastian, or that the flash in a snapshot makes a person look seven years older, except to say huh, and maybe repeat it at a dinner party. That’s basically all we did with this stuff for a while; the insights we gleaned went no further than an occasional lame press release. But eventually we were analyzing enough information that larger trends became apparent, big patterns in the small ones, and even better, I realized I could use the data to examine taboos like race by direct inspection. That is, instead of asking people survey questions or contriving small-scale experiments, which was how social science was often done in the past, I could go and look at what actually happens when, say, 100,000 white men and 100,000 black women interact in private. The data was sitting right there on our servers. It was an irresistible sociological opportunity.
