Right now, three of my four children are driving across America, taking ten days to go from the East Coast to the West. One of them is moving to take a new job and his siblings decided to accompany him and see the nation. Thus far, they’ve visited the Civil Rights Museum in Alabama, hiked in the Atchafalaya Basin in Louisiana, slept on the banks of the Mississippi, and sat in the sand dunes of New Mexico. […]
I just finished reading two books, Maria Vale’s Season of the Wolf and Carl Hiaasen’s Squeeze Me. Both made me think about the role of politics in fiction.
In Vale’s The Legend of All Wolves series, the reader sees human incursion into nature and man’s love of sport hunting from the perspective of wolves. Vale doesn’t use phrases like climate change and habitat loss, but her point is inescapable: Humanity is wreaking havoc on the wild. […]
Romance readers have long known the power of the erotic to awaken desire—but for the uninitiated it can be a shock. Imagine reading, or listening to, Sierra Simone’s Priest for the first time on the bus home from work, and being just a little bit overcome with a compelling attack of WOWEEEEEE. […]
I’m not drawn usually to shapeshifter stories but the rave reviews at AAR for Maria Vale’s series, The Legend of All Wolves, convinced me to read book one, The Last Wolf. Hooked, I binged on the next three and enjoyed them all. The series is uniquely complex and, as I read the books, I had questions. Maria, thankfully, was happy to answer them. She’s also–woo hoo!–giving away a free ebook set of the series–make a comment below and you’ll be entered into a drawing for them! […]
There’s a group on Facebook for self-published authors that I follow, and recently there was a discussion about a crowd of Amazon reviewers who piled on to criticize an author for not accounting for the coronavirus pandemic in her book, which was set (at least in part) in 2020. The book in question was published in 2019. […]
Yesterday was my–gasp–32nd anniversary and to celebrate Dr. Feelgood and I ordered takeout pizza from a place that specializes in Roman inspired thin, crunchy crust pizza. I made us each a ginger martini, and we sat on our patio and talked about A Place to Call Home. It was lovely–any meal I don’t have to make is a good one–but not especially romantic. Which was fine. […]
I’ve been reading romance novels for a long time. A long time. Now, it’s true that for the first twenty-five years or so of my personal romance reading, there wasn’t any place for discussion of what I liked and disliked as there is now on the Internet. I simply read what was available to me and accepted the stories for what they were. […]
Earlier this week, we asked you what you’d read and loved this year. Over 50 of you filled out our survey–thank you!–and the results were varied. And while it’s a little early yet to declare the Best of 2020, there are several books that are clearly in contention. […]
We’re, we hate to say it, getting a little bored. We really miss going out and doing stuff. Like you, we keep sane, in part, with reading. And we could use a challenge and are wondering if you could to. […]
I’ve always been an audiobook listener and, wow, has that market exploded. There are so many great choices now–I find myself overwhelmed when I go to Audible and try and choose a new one.
If you were to recommend just one truly great listen, what would it be? And why?