The days are getting longer, and everyone’s favorite holiday is approaching: the ides of March.
Actually, every month has an ides. It was the Roman word for the middle of the month—the fifteenth of March, May, July, and October, and the thirteenth of other months. You can see it marked on the Fasti Antiates Maiores here. Wikipedia claims that the ides originally fell on the full moon, but given how messed up the Roman calendar eventually got before Caesar’s reforms, I would not bet on this having happened a ton. (We did a whole podcast on this if you’re curious—click here. It’s recent, but I still find it fascinating.) Anyway, the ides of March is of course now best known for being the day Caesar got stabbed on.
Speaking of overthrowing tyranny (haha, what a segue!), I decided to donate a portion of the proceeds from the WanderLust book event to anti-ICE shenanigans. We raised about $100 that way, so I rounded up and donated it all to Shir Tikvah’s Yesod (mutual aid) fund—it had a donation matching thing going on the week I was looking to donate, which seemed great. I later got an email that they collected over a million dollars in February! If you’re looking for anti-ICE places to send money to, https://www.standwithminnesota.com has a good list.
Other than that, things are proceeding here. I did some work on future books while waiting for the manuscript of Renaissance to come back from the editor. Now it is back, so I am beginning the final push toward having a finished book. I’m very excited about it. It is going to be the longest book I have written—currently it’s something like 92k words (probably 400 pages for those of you who are not writers). I guess this makes sense, because I originally thought it would be two books. There’s a lot of plot to get through. I hope you’re all going to love it.
I still have nine copies of the original twenty-copy run of The Alignments, so if anyone wants a signed paperback, let me know! I’m selling them for $10 including shipping.
Upcoming Events
On March 3rd, I’ll be doing a zoom event with the Ashland, MA Public Library’s Romance Book Club. It runs 7–8pm eastern (6–7pm central), and you can find all the registration info here. This is open to anyone! Please come so I’m not stuck talking to an empty room.
On March 11th, I’m participating in a romance panel discussion hosted by Forward Theater and the Wisconsin Book Festival at the Madison Central Public Library! Forward Theater is a really exciting local professional company that does great work, and they’re presenting the world premier of Lady Disdain, by Lauren Gunderson, which led to this event. I’m so excited to be a part of this evening. It’s from 7-8pm at the library, details here. Usually on Wednesdays I go to aikido–this is the only type of thing I’d change my schedule for.
Book Reviews
Wine for Roses (cis M/M), by Emily O’Malley Liu. I blurbed this! A lovely little urban (rural?) fantasy/romance novella set in Indiana. It’s a Beauty and the Beast retelling to some extent, but really it’s just a lush little piece of writing with interesting magic and sweet relationships. Now available for preorder, comes out in March.
Rules for Ghosting (trans M/cis M), by Shelly Jay Shore. A nice Jew4Jew romance centered around Ezra, whose family owns a funeral home, and Jonathan, whose dead husband was the son of Ezra’s mother’s new girlfriend. (Yeah, there’s a lot of family drama here. And ghosts, too!)
Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovich. If you’re not into romance but you love urban fantasy, I present this for your consideration. A cop accidentally interviews a ghost who witnessed a murder and winds up as an apprentice wizard. I thought it dealt really well with the problem of is magic secret (it isn’t really, it just declined because of technology and WWII), and there are some great gods.
Post Captain (cis M/M? cis M/F? Who knows, but I ship it), by Patrick O’Brian. He really said, “You know what Jane Austen needs is more privateers,” and then he delivered. I don’t know a topsail from a topgallant, but O’Brian is so dryly funny I don’t care. I keep forgetting this was written in 1972 rather than 1812. The audiobook was very well done, too.