My reading at the Avid Reader was great fun. Since the excerpt I crafted for this event is spookily appropriate for the Halloween season, I’m sharing it with you. Amazing what happened when I looked at the first chapter not as the opening for the whole book, but as a place from which to pluck a brief, spellbinding tale for an audience. I hope you enjoy it.
It’s great fun to be participating at author events around the Northern California area, including the Avid Reader Bookstore Oct 17, 6-8pm. For the details about these book events, you may read my post.
A setting in Victorian Boston and a nearby island, an endearing romance, and an intriguing magical system. I thoroughly enjoyed Charlie Holmberg’s Heir of Uncertain Magic. If that sounds fun to you also, here’s my review.
A new translation of the Iliad is causing much more of a stir than you’d think. For good reason. Do you enjoy the layers of meaning one word can have and other subtleties of translation? I took a look at what people are saying and put it together for you.
Everything you need to know about my upcoming appearances at the Elk Grove Writers Conference, the Great Valley Bookfest, and the Avid Reader Bookstore. Join me for these celebrations of books!
I noticed two unrelated articles in the recent Archaeology Magazine. Their juxtaposition got me thinking about treatments of the dead. We humans are really good at over-the-top respect on the one hand, and fear on the other. Have a look.
With atmospherically rich effect, Amiee Gibbs’s The Carnivale of Curiosities combines gothic Victorian historical with dark fantasy. She intertwines themes of constructed family, freaks, and the reality of magic. I hope you enjoy my review.
Like many of the recent Troy books, this latest, Horses of Fire, focuses on women. It consciously departs from Homeric tradition and historical accuracy in ways that may please readers or irritate them. Have a look at my review.
Join me for an interview with historical novelist Nancy Bilyeau and her latest, The Orchid Hour, set in 1923 NY during Prohibition. Our conversation even came with a cocktail.
The venerable site of Pompeii and environs keeps on surprising us. Sometimes only after a lot of creative hard work. Now we’re learning about the survivors. How’s that for a positive twist on the infamous disaster?
