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.
At least January is over. (Or, as I write these words on the 23rd of January, I hope that it will be over when I send this. I have faith that January cannot last forever.)
Living in the upper Midwest, never a picnic during the winter, has been especially stressful for the last couple of weeks owing to the ICE occupation of Minneapolis, a place where I have many friends and family members. I generally donate a book’s first day Amazon profits to a charity, and since I didn’t get that done in December for The Alignments, I wound up giving my money to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. If you’re interested in making a donation to a Minnesota organization but don’t have any particular org in mind, you might like to look at this website that lists a whole bunch of good ones.
(Just to be clear, I don’t do this donation thing to goad people into preordering from Amazon or anything; it’s just the most popular single site people buy my books from. Amazon is patently not a good company, but also I respect them for the way they have made self-publishing both accessible and very popular. Business, it seems to me, is often about figuring out how to work with awful people and keep hold of your soul. This is my way.)
I can usually tell when I’m stressed out, because I read a lot more. Right now I am at six novels and two academic articles for the year, and we won’t even talk about the amount of fanfiction I consumed. I realize this isn’t that many comparted to many, but I do have a novel to finish. Part of my stress came from trying to finish Renaissance before sending it out for developmental edits. Then with it off my plate I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I read a lot, and eventually started revising the first draft of book 6. And now I’m revising Renaissance again before copyedits.
Thank you to everyone who has preordered Renaissance already, by the way. In less than a month, it reached the number of preorders The Alignments had during its entire preorder period (which, to be fair, was only slightly more than a month). This is a stat that means almost nothing, but also I’m extremely buoyed by it. It is wonderful to hear how many people enjoyed the previous books enough to take a chance on this one, and how excited everyone is for it.
Upcoming Events
Madison’s new mobile romance bookstore, WanderLust Mobile Books, will be having its grand opening on Valentine’s Day, and I’ve been invited to participate. I’ll be selling and signing books at Giant Jones Brewing Company, at 931 East Main Street in Madison, from 3–7pm. The bookmobile will be outside and we will be inside, so come by and say hi! We may also have little felted chickens in honor of Lupercalia Valentine’s Day.
On March 3rd at 6pm CT/7pm ET, I’ll be doing a zoom book talk with the Ashland, MA Public Library’s Romance Book Club. It doesn’t look like you have to be a MA resident to sign up. There’s also an option to order signed copies of books 1-4 through Tropes and Trifles in Minneapolis, MN. (I will be supplying them with signed Wisconsin Gothic book plates and they will mail the books, presumably around 3/3 or slightly thereafter.)
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 an exciting local theater 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 will be at the Central Public Library from 7-8pm. I think this event is free and does not require a ticket.
Podcasts
We put out two podcasts in January—episode 98, on what the heck was wrong with Roman calendars, and episode 99, on authority! Stay tuned for episode 100 in February!
Book Reviews
I feel like I am in no way an early adopter on this, but Death in the Spires by KJ Charles was very good. It’s a mystery novel with a lot to say about bodies and liberation, about law and morality. There’s a relationship in it, but it is not a romance.
A Bloomy Head (cis F/trans M) by J. Winifred Butterworth was also delightful. It’s 1820 and the newly widowed Kate is trying to save her family farm by making cheese, her brother brought home his doctor friend who is recovering from a severely broken femur in the corner of her kitchen, and someone just found a decapitated body in the creek. You can order signed copies directly from the author if you are a lover of signed copies!
Finally, if you’re looking for something academic, I’ll recommend “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. Come for the postmodernist theorist drinking game (take one drink if he mentions Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Bakhtin, Butler…maybe we better stop there, you’re looking wobbly), stay for the weirdly (annoyingly?) prescient things he says about outsiders, categories, and desire. It’s in a lot of places; I read the copy available here: https://www.qc.cuny.edu/academics/prod4/wp-content/uploads/sites/147/2024/08/FYW-Sample-Reading-B.pdf (warning, pdf).
That’s all for this month! Stay warm and fuck ICE!
Hello! It’s the new year, somewhat inescapably. So much has happened since I wrote the draft of this newsletter, I don’t even know where to start. The month of December was kind of a disaster around these parts, for reasons I will get to later, and the global political events of the last three days are so bizarre and terrible, I don’t even know what to say about them, except possibly a long and offensive string of blasphemous/curse words.
Putting that aside, about two weeks ago, when I was putting together my announcement for the release of The Alignments, I started thinking about my relationship with music, which is highly…obsessive, I guess is the word I would use. I have the tendency to fall in love with a song and then listen to it over and over again a truly egregious number of times. The song gets tangled up with whatever I’m working on, until I can later recall the circumstances of writing the novel by listening to the song. This is the way that my books get assigned theme songs—what song became special to me when I was working on it? What song came, in some warped way, to typify what I was trying to do?
These are the theme songs of the books that have been released:
Dionysus in Wisconsin: Big God, by Florence and the Machine. (I mean…)
Old Time Religion: Old Time Religion, by Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie.
Lazarus, Home from the War: Half the World Away, by Oasis. (Although this book had a lot of good songs, and eventually it’s kind of what got me into Springsteen.)
The Alignments: This Will Be Our Year, by The Zombies. I didn’t realize at the time that it was from an album called Odyssey and Oracle, but when I found out…well, it’s appropriate.
As I work on the third draft of Renaissance, two songs have been battling it out for the position of theme song. I’m excited to see which one wins.
Speaking of which…
Here’s the news, in order of least to most important:
0/ Thank you to everyone who bought/read/left a review of The Alignments. I really appreciate you.
1/ At the end of the year, I usually do a blog post listing all the books I read in the previous year and short reviews of each. That post has gone live and can be found here.
2/ I have updated the series roadmap to include The Alignments and release info about Renaissance. I know I previously said it would be out 3/2. Because of all the stuff that happened in December and how stressed out everything was making me, I’ve moved the release to 4/13. I hope this isn’t too much of a disappointment. I hate having to change it. I was just having anxiety dreams and I needed to release some of the steam. But I’m very happy with the new schedule, which leads to…
3/ Renaissance is up for preorder here. Other sites to follow! Here is the cover and blurb:
June, 1971. As the academic year draws to a close, Sam and Ulysses are looking forward to a quiet summer. But when Ulysses’s grandmother is hospitalized, it becomes clear that relaxation is not in the cards. Unable to accept that her fall was an accident, Ulysses begins to investigate whether it may be related to a cult from their past whose mysterious and powerful leader seems to be popping up all over town.
Sam’s doing his best to hold things together and be supportive, but it’s hard when his new husband is barely listening and keeping him at arm’s length every time family is concerned. And on top of everything else, the library has something urgent to tell Sam…
As they reunite with old friends and prepare to bid farewell to others, Sam and Ulysses will see their marriage tried, their lives threatened, and meet an old enemy they thought long dead.
If you preorder it, let me know and I will send you one of these postcards for free!
I know the big issue is that some people really love paperbacks, and I can’t do paperback preorders. But you can still get one!
if you buy the paperback in the first month or so and let me know, I’ll send one to you
if you come to an in-person sale, you can get one free with purchase (and I have a special Laz postcard too if you buy his book)
that’s it I guess
4/ It’s traditional at the beginning of the year for an author to lay out what they’re hoping to accomplish. The last six months of 2025 were quite stressful, riddled with my own illness (I wound up getting diagnosed with asthma); our dog dying; moving one kid to a new daycare; the unexpected diagnosis, decline, and death of a friend; and then immediately thereafter we did two rounds of the flu. As a consequence, my list of goals is a little pared-back. Still, I think it’s not bad:
Publish Renaissance in April! I’m really excited about this.
Start work on an audiobook version of Dionysus in Wisconsin. It’s time. Doing an audiobook is a little scary, but I love audiobooks so much, and I want my work to be accessible that way.
Maybe another short story or novella, I’m not sure yet. I love writing novellas, but I have learned they don’t take less work than novels.
The next Laz novel, ideally by the end of the year. This is a book about what happens when you take someone who is already kind of stressed out and on the edge and give him one more thing. Which is currently how I feel. So that should be good.
In a lot of personal ways, 2025 was not a great year. I prefer less fascism, less strife, fewer deaths among my friends. But it was also a fun and productive year—I published Lazarus, Home from the War, a book that went on to be named to the best of 2025 list by the biggest romance podcast out there. I published “Sparking Something,” which is a moody little AU scene that I really enjoyed working on. And I published The Alignments, which came out so much more awesome than I thought it would. I edited and put out seven episodes of the podcast, which is not what we usually shoot for but considering everything? I think I’m happy.
It was a year where there was a lot going on, and I think I’m proud of myself for getting through it. I’m glad you all got through it too, even if you’re feeling bruised by what you went through. I hope you have had some time off to recover, whether that meant making cookies and going to see friends or sitting in a darkened room listening to The Mountain Goats and reading hockey romances. (I have done both of these lately.) And I hope that if you had a 2025 like mine, you have a better 2026. I don’t necessarily have any clever reasons to hope that 2026 will be better, I just think at least it’s going to be different, which can be its own type of better.
At the end of next week, I’ll be selling books at the Well-Red Damsel’s Damsels Not in Distress event (January 18), which combines sword yoga with a romantasy book sale. There are yoga classes offered at 10, 11:30, and 1pm; the book sale is 11am-3pm. If tickets are still available, they’ll be here. I do not know what sword yoga is. It sounds fun? The event will be held at the Baird Center in Milwaukee (400 W. Wisconsin Ave.). You can also check out the Well-Red Damsel’s website here. We will also have some little felt things (hopefully bookmarks!). I do not know if the print copies of The Alignments will have arrived or not. Check my social media for updates closer to the date.
More events in March, but I won’t bother you with them just now.
No book reviews this month, because I just posted my list of everything I read in 2025. See you in February!
For those who are really interested in what writers read. This year, I read a lot of somewhat random romances because I swung hard into audiobooks. My library generally has crummy waiting times for queer romances, but when I sorted by “available now,” I found a few interesting ones.
Organized by genre.
Romance
You Should Be So Lucky, by Cat Sebastian (m/m, both cis). I don’t care about baseball but this was good. (Reread.)
The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, by KJ Charles (m/m, both cis). I read the second one first, so I knew how this ended, which was good because it was very tense there for a moment.
The Sugared Game, by KJ Charles (m/m, both cis). Love Will Darling. (Reread.)
Subtle Blood, by KJ Charles (m/m, both cis) (Reread.)
True Pretenses, by Rose Lerner (m/f, both cis). I had a lot of problems with the use of some antisemitic tropes here. But the characters are compelling.
Hither, Page, by Cat Sebastian (m/m, both cis). Another reread. Very lovely and quiet.
Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover, by Sarah MacLean (m/f, both cis). Look, MacLean writes very particular stuff. I wish this one specifically had allowed the FMC to be less gender? And the implicitly gay viscount should have gotten a happy ending.
Bombshell, by Sarah MacLean (m/f, both cis). Early Victorian feminist revenge fantasy rather than actual historical romance, but not in a bad way.
Lord of Darkness, by Elizabeth Hoyt (m/f, both cis). A well-written excursion into definitely not my thing.
Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake, by Sarah MacLean (m/f, both cis). Also wish there had been a lot less gender in this one.
Sailor’s Delight, by Rose Lerner (m/m, both cis). Another Jewish character, and it’s really well done! Closed door, I wish it wasn’t, just for reasons of closure.
A Gentleman’s Gentleman, by TJ Alexander (m/m, both trans). There is one major historical…call it a choice that isn’t in accordance with reality, let’s say, and if you can get past that, I think you will enjoy it. More than that, I think it is worth trying to suspend your disbelief and getting to know this book, because there’s a lot of interesting stuff here (philosophically) and there’s a lot of fun stuff (the actual plot).
The Queer Principles of Kit Webb, by Cat Sebastian (m/m, both cis, one of them is bi). The rare reread where I think I liked parts of it better and parts of it worse on the second go-round. It doesn’t really work on its own as well as I initially thought.
The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes, by Cat Sebastian (m/ bi f, both cis). A reread where I came out loving it. Let Marian do crimes! She’s good at it. And she could use a treat.
Wilde in Love, by Eloisa James (m/f, both cis). James doesn’t really care about historical accuracy, and no one has a problem that can’t be solved by having a lot of money and smiling winningly at people. This series would be better with a couple of queer characters in the mix to up the camp levels, but it’s already so silly and fluffy, I don’t know what to do.
Too Wilde to Wed, by Eloisa James (m/f, both cis)
Born to be Wilde, by Eloisa James (m/f, both cis)
A Caribbean Heiress in Paris, by Adriana Herrera (m/f, both cis). I wish she had subverted some of the more problematic tropes she’s playing with (like protective man/weak lady in need of protection–girl never even got to shoot anyone despite carrying a pistol the whole time!), but the way it addressed race, class, and colonialism was tremendous.
Mr. Collins in Love, by Lee Welch (m/m, both cis). Remember Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice? Remember hating him for proposing to Lizzy badly and being kind of a doofus? Turns out he’s an anxious wet cat. This is a really daring little novella, and Welch totally pulls it off.
Seducing the Sorcerer, by Lee Welch (m/m, both cis). Um…does what it says on the tin. Read it while I was sick and up nights, and it was great. There was a magic horse made of an old burlap sack. In the way that horses aren’t just a mode of transportation for a historical story but a character, it really becomes a character, and I loved it so much.
The Barkeep and the Bro, by AJ Truman (m/m, both cis). A contemporary romcom, which was always going to be a hard sell, and indeed it didn’t work for me. This is an age gap, forbidden boss/employee, daughter’s ex-boyfriend, gay-or-possibly-bi-for-you book, and the tropes kind of took over. But because I read it and mentioned it to a friend, I was given a felted zucchini. (There is a scene in the novel in which a zucchini figures prominently.) So. Take that as you will.
Paladin’s Grace, by T. Kingfisher (m/f, both cis). These books (yeah, I read all four) are all so fun and funny. The world reminds me a bit of Terry Pratchett.
Paladin’s Strength, by T. Kingfisher (m/f, both cis). I liked this one the best.
Paladin’s Hope, by T. Kingfisher (m/m, both cis). I was disappointed that this is the shortest of the books.
Paladin’s Faith, by T. Kingfisher (m/f, both cis). Probably the best plot of the four books in the series but my least favorite romance. Honestly I’m not sure these actually qualify as romances? They might be fantasy novels with romantic elements.
Husband of the Year, by MA Wardell (m/m, both cis). I still don’t really read contemporary, but this was nice–Jewish guy in interracial relationship gets married and adopts his husband’s nephew. More serious stuff than I expected from a romcom, but it tends to flinch away from any kind of real conflict; either you will like that or you won’t.
Breakout Year, by KD Casey (m/m, both cis). A sweet Jew4Jew sports romance that was somewhat oddly shaped, story-wise. A little squishy in the middle, but Casey writes a delicious sentence, and ultimately it was enjoyable.
Home Ice Advantage, by Ari Baran (m/m, both cis). A former NHL star becomes the head coach of his hometown team and winds up falling for the (Jewish) assistant coach who got overlooked for the job. I know even less about hockey than I do about baseball, but the emotional arc here was delicious and subtle.
Scifi/Fantasy/Horror
Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir. Lesbian space Jesus saves the planet with swords.
Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir. Ten thousand years is exactly the amount of time needed to develop the most toxic workplace in the universe.
Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir. What if instead of gender, we had swords, ghosts, and spaceships?
System Collapse, by Martha Wells. I think this is the one I got hit by a car while I was listening to the audiobook. So, uh. Distracting.
All Systems Red, by Martha Wells. Reread. If I had Kevin R. Free dollars, I’d hire him to do my audiobooks. I also read this aloud to my 8yo. I read this book probably too many times in a short period. It impressed me more after having read through all the other books.
Artificial Condition, by Martha Wells. Reread.
Fugitive Telemetry, by Martha Wells. Reread.
“Home, Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory,” by Martha Wells. Technically a short story. Also a reread?
The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson. Masterful. More queer than I remembered. Technically this was a reread but I read it the first time when I was maybe 20.
The Masquerades of Spring, by Ben Aaronovich. I want to recommend this to everyone. Delightful and funny. Like Wodehouse but add Americans, race, queerness, magic, and jazz.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson. Look, Merricat should be allowed to murder all those dreadful people. As a treat.
Plays
The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite, by Wole Soyinka. He really gets Dionysus and creates a great, very dark, comedy.
The Bakkhai, by Euripides, trans. by Anne Carson. Not as good as Soyinka’s. Sorry, tumblr. Get your “not for me…not if it’s you” out of here, Anne Carson.
Father Comes Home from the War, by Suzan-Lori Parks. She’s one of the top playwrights of our modern times and this is a banger.
We Bombed in New Haven, by Joseph Heller. Not famous for a reason.
Mysteries
No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith. Is it a mystery? There’s a detective. But it’s a wonderful portrait of a time and place he clearly loved.
Fer-de-lance, by Rex Stout. Very clever, a little racist and sexist.
Fadeout, by Joseph Hansen. When I was getting sick in August, I spent a lovely rainy morning reading this in my brother’s sunroom while the kids ran around playing. Also it’s a nice California noir.
Lavender House, by Lev AC Rosen. Rosen is way more about vibes than about creating a mystery that wraps up well. And the vibes are good! I was just left with a lot of questions.
Nonfiction
Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, by Colin Dickey. Very interesting.
Hi Honey, I’m Homo: Sitcoms, Specials, and the Queering of American Culture, by Matt Baume. I had a lot of thoughts about how you get to see what they want you to see. But mostly I was left imagining showing Bewitched to Ulysses, and I couldn’t stop laughing.
No, okay, I guess I am going to talk about this. When you watch TV (and this is still true even with streaming), what you see is the shows they decided to make. Obviously. But why do they decide to make a show? It’s because they (they being network executives) do a complex calculation that boils down to “what will catch the public’s imagination such that we can make a boatload of dollars from this?”
And a lot of this is predicated on this idea of what “middle America” wants. (What is “middle America”? I feel like I live there? But also where I live, I have a lesbian mayor, a lesbian senator, and a gay congressperson.)
Anyway, whenever you’re asking, “Why weren’t there any gay main characters on TV before Will and Grace?” the answer is basically an exec thought that “middle America” wouldn’t like it. Even getting queer recurring characters or story lines that painted queer guest stars as sympathetic could be a stretch during some periods.
And now we have had a mainstream sitcom with a married gay couple who adopts a child and they’re main characters in the show, yay progress.
But if you think about this, and think about the world, and the vastness of the stories that are never being told because someone thinks they won’t be profitable stories, it gets very sad. I feel very tinfoil hat-y when I talk about it, but the censorship freaks me out. Not the “pulling your book out of a library” censorship, which is devastating, but the “we are going to ignore your ideas and not give you a chance” censorship.
Anyway, yay, self-publishing?
“Appropriating the Golem, Possessing the Dybbuk: Female Retellings of Jewish Tales,” by Ruth Bienstock Anolik. Modern Language Studies, vol. 31, no. 2 (Autumn 2001): pp. 39-55.
Alone, Unarmed, and Unafraid: Tales of Unarmed Reconnaissance During Vietnam, by Taylor Eubank. Engaging, but I don’t know if I recommend it.
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), by Jerome K. Jerome. Is this nonfiction? I don’t know. I had an abridged audiobook narrated by Hugh Laurie. I wish he’d done the whole thing.
Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself, by Alan Alda. I’m not big on celebrity memoirs but this was good. Alda is an old school, fought-for-the-ERA liberal, and I love him.
You Could Make This Place Beautiful, by Maggie Smith. A divorce memoir. I…wish she’d just hate him. Or talk more about craft, because she obviously wants to. But as it stands, it was good but felt a little like Swiss cheese?
An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I cried, even though I knew who died and when. For example, her husband Dick Goodwin was at the White House getting the East Room ready when they brought Kennedy’s body back from Dallas to lie in state. Everyone was so young and idealistic and they worked so hard. The audiobook has clips of the original deliveries of many of the speeches she talks about (including RFK [original recipe] talking about the death of MLK Jr. on the campaign trail in Indiana the night King died), which was amazing.
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, by George Saunders. Ultimately I disagree with him about the interpretations of the stories that he offers, and I only sort of like his ideas about how to write a story, but I liked the book. Make of that what you will.
Manhood for Amateurs, by Michael Chabon. An older volume of essays, but one I really enjoyed. Made me laugh aloud at times.
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, & Shape Our Futures, by Merlin Sheldrake. Mushrooms are terrifying, and I’m 20 million microbes walking around in a human suit.
Reading Selfishly: A Craft Journal for Writers, by KD Casey. I don’t think this is officially out yet, but she dropped a link to the first public version on Bluesky, and I think I’m officially a fan.
Crochet Monsters: With more than 35 body patterns and options…, by Megan Lapp. I made four monsters out of this. All in all they were the biggest crochet projects I’ve finished to date. Even with a smallish hook (3.75-4mm), the monsters are all about 8″ tall or more. The book is well laid out, the instructions it offers are easy to parse even for a beginner-to-intermediate crocheter, and there are loads of photos. My kids liked flipping through it and coming up with new monsters, and I didn’t hate making them.
YA Novels I Read Aloud to My Children
Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett. It was good. I have no notes except that it felt like the main character has out-aged the kid I was reading this to a bit and I want to wait before I read him the next one.
Over Sea, Under Stone, by Susan Cooper. Not as good as The Dark Is Rising. The child still really liked it.
Greenwitch, by Susan Cooper. Very good.
The Grey King, by Susan Cooper. Cooper is a powerhouse. I don’t know what to say. More creepy poems in fantasy novels! (Content warning! There’s a dog that gets shot in this one. I was a little shocked.)
The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkien. Reads aloud well. (Not only was this a reread, this wasn’t even the first time I’d read this aloud.)
The Halloween Moon, by Joseph Fink. If you want a middle-grade YA novel about a Jewish kid, you could do worse.
I want to thank everyone who helped me out on this–there’s a ton of people listed in the Acknowledgments section–and everyone who has voiced support over the last year. It means a lot to hear that my writing has made you happy, or made you think, or that you were so moved you got a friend to read the book too. Special thanks to Eliot, who was not just line/copy editor but developmental editor as well.
For a bunch of reasons, including that this is a novella, so the spine is pretty thin and won’t match the other books, and because I wanted to publish a collection of all the shorter stuff down the line, I hadn’t been planning to do a print version. However, a bunch of my family members are very ride-or-die with print, so here is the deal: I am planning to do a small print run of novellas. I don’t quite know what the costs will be yet–probably about $8-10 if I have to ship them, maybe less if you find me at an event. If you are really excited about this prospect, let me know and I’ll make sure to count you when I figure out how many to order.
Finally, at the Big Gay Market yesterday, in addition to meeting some really cool people (including friends of a friend, which is always awesome), I found out that at least two bookstores in the Madison area are carrying my stuff–Garden Wall Bookshop in Verona and Lake City Books downtown on the Square. So if you’re in the area and want to support a local bookstore with your purchase, you should check those places out!
Happy Solstice/Happy Yalda, Happy (last night of) Hanukkah, Happy Birthday to my (several) relatives who have birthdays between now and Christmas, Happy Christmas, and Happy Boxing Day to those who celebrate! I’ll be back with more updates, including some January events (hint: I’m going back to a Well-Red Damsel thing!) and info about Renaissance just after New Years. (Happy New Years, too.)
I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving, if you celebrate it. We did. And then we got 9.3″ of snow (that’s 23.6 cm for the rest of the world). It’s not exactly common for this to happen in Wisconsin in November (and unlike the snowstorm I wrote about in Lazarus, Home from the War, it wasn’t melted the next day, which is something that happens a lot more). So we shoveled a lot. Come, winter, and welcome.
The big news this month is that I have put the top secret project (a novella about Sam and Ulysses’s honeymoon) up for preorder! It’s called The Alignments. You can get it here (Amazon), or here (itch.io). It will also be available on Kobo, Smashwords, Apple Books, etc., on launch day. (Not all these sites do pre-orders.)
I have answers to your frequently unasked questions, but first, let’s look at the cover!
All right, questions!
-Why was this top secret for so long? I had originally planned to just release it without a preorder period, as though I were Beyoncé dropping an album. Just email you all on 12/21 and say “Bon appetit!” But the podcast Fated Mates named Lazarus, Home from the War one of their best books of 2025, so I decided I would try to capitalize on that and do a preorder.
Oh, that happened. Did I mention that? Laz is on the Fated Mates best books of 2025 list. I don’t really know what to say! I’m thrilled. And a little confused about why their affiliated bookstore decided not to carry my book. But whatever, you can order a paperback of Lazhere, or here, or from your local bookstore (give them the ISBN: 979-8988394433), or email me if you want a signed copy ($17, including shipping).
-What is The Alignments about? Sam and Ulysses arrive in Carnac, France for their honeymoon. They’re thousands of miles from Madison and hoping for a little rest and relaxation. But when an academic rival of Ulysses’s reveals herself during Sam’s birthday dinner, they find themselves pulled into the investigation of an unexplained death that seems to be tied to the ancient, mysterious stones that litter the town.
-Is this another AU or missing scene? No, this is canon. It’s on the series roadmap. It’s generally pretty silly, though. Except for the parts where…uh, spoilers. Suffice to say there is a plot, they do various investigatory things and have fun. And it’s set in France!
-Is there a sample? You can hear me reading an (unedited) version of ch 6 here! I think it really gives the vibes of the whole thing—funny and a little creepy.
-Will it be published in paperback? Eventually. I wanted to collect all the short fiction and publish them all together. But there’s at least one short thing in progress I haven’t released yet.
I know this is a little disappointing for everyone who would prefer a paperback! The problem is that the cover doesn’t match the other covers, and the book itself wouldn’t be long enough to print anything on the spine. People who like paperbacks tend to want the whole series to match. I have been working hard on the cover for Renaissance, and I will start on a black and ochre cover for all the shorts when I’m done with that book. But it’s taking a while. The cover of The Alignments (which I love) is an actual oil painting (done with water-miscible oils, which I just started using). None of this happens quickly.
In the meantime, if you absolutely don’t like ebooks, you can either get the book from itch, where there will be a pdf version available, and then print it out yourself, or send me an email and I’ll send you an ARC copy of the pdf.
-Any trigger warnings to be aware of? (Skip this if you don’t want any spoilers.) There’s some light bondage in The Alignments (bondage in pursuit of a good time, I mean). Separately, there’s a demon and a death.
-Anything else? It’s always extremely helpful to tell your friends about indie authors, because advertising is hard and attention spans are short, but I did zero advanced marketing for this, so please spread the word! I actually estimate that most of my sales come via word of mouth (either in person or on social media), so you can make a big difference with relatively little effort.
Book Sale My books are currently on sale on itch for 70% off. You can find those here. Starting next week, they will also be in the Smashwords semi-annual sale. I don’t have a link for that yet, but you can find them all on Smashwords here.
Upcoming Appearances In December, we’ll be at the Big Gay Market on December 20th (note that this is only the second day of the market) from 10am-5pm. It’s being held at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison! We will have the usual assortment of cool stuff: books; poetry tarot cards; felted earrings, crows, and nazars; stickers and postcards. Come by and pick up last-minute holiday presents! Get a tarot reading for $5! Enjoy lots of other vendors! Details here.
For those who are also writers and are looking for a chance to meet other writers, maybe hear some informative presentations about different aspects of the writing process, maybe have a little retreat from the comfort of your homes, I will be presenting at Wholehearted Writers Week in January. This is sure to be a really great conference, and no matter where you are in your writing process I encourage you to come. Find all the details here.
Podcast We released one episode in November: Non-Roman Calendars (ep. 97). We also announced that we are joining the Nerd and Tie podcast network. Nerd and Tie is a Wisconsin-based collective of independent creators making podcasts on a variety of topics, from true crime to witchcraft to (now) medieval history! This is a great move that we hope will bring us a bigger audience while allowing us to maintain our ownership and creative control of the show.
We made this move because I got to be a fan of the BS Free Witchcraft podcast and then met its host, Trae Dorn, at Booked Eau Claire back in September. And they knew who I was because their sister read my books! So hello, Trae’s sister, if you’re out there! BS Free Witchcraft is a podcast of the genre “guy [gender nondenominational] who knows a lot about a topic ranting into a microphone,” and I honestly really enjoy it. Trae is funny and they know a lot about their subject and have interesting things to say.
Book Reviews This is the time of year when many people start to search around for gifts for children. Especially books, because it’s fun to give children something that’s going to stick in their head for the rest of their lives. In general I am skeptical of “best of” lists (excluding the Fated Mates one above–that’s 100% gold), so I asked my 8yo what his favorite books he read this year were, and what he would recommend for kids 8-12 years old. He said:
Lightfall, by Tim Probert. It’s a graphic novel series (3 books at present, with the fourth due out in 2026) about a young girl, whose grandfather is a pig(?), who along with a friend tries to save the sun.
Wings of Fire, by Tui T. Sutherland. Described to me as “Game of Thrones but with dragons.” Also Sutherland is a lot more prolific than George R.R. Martin–there are sixteen of these now. (Sorry not sorry, George; finish your book.) The 8yo prefers the novels over the graphic novels, which is an achievement.
The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper. It’s a classic for a reason. 5 volumes.
There’s a lot going on this month. Probably the biggest news is I have a planned release date for Renaissance (March 2nd). Hopefully I’ll have things ready to put it up for preorder next month, just around the solstice (in honor of Sam’s birthday). There’s also a secret project you’ll find out about then—be ready! I am hard at work to finish the covers for everything.
I went out and volunteered with the local Dems the other day, partly because they called and asked if I was free during a moment when I was feeling particularly helpless, and I want to recommend this to everyone. It’s everything I hate (leaving the house, talking to people), and yet the people who came to the door to talk to us were almost universally excited and had ideas and things to say. I hope the exercise of talking to someone about their hopes and fears was as fruitful for them as it was for me—something about meeting someone I have never met and nevertheless finding out we have a lot in common was very heartening. In Wisconsin, many elections turn on very small margins—Harris lost by less than 1% of the vote—so even knocking on a few doors can make a big difference. Wisconsin people can get involved here. People in other states might have luck with this, or look up your local groups.
(I wrote this before the Tuesday victory of so many amazing candidates in NYC, New Jersey, and Virginia among them. Following that victory, I think I believe in the power of volunteering like this more than I did before.)
Upcoming Appearances
I will be moderating a conversation with MA Wardell in honor of the release of his new book, Husband of the Year, at Tropes and Trifles in Minneapolis, MN, from 7–9pm on November 18th. I will also be signing books afterward if you like, and I promise to bring cool free stickers, so come by and say hello. Details and preorders for both of us are on the Tropes and Trifles website here: https://tropesandtrifles.com/events/3751820251118.
I created the following Venn diagram to explain how our works are similar enough to be read against each other for this event! Hope you all find it informative.
I will be selling books at the Scorpio Market in Madison, WI on November 23. It will be at the Tinsmith from 1pm-6pm. “Masks required, misfits welcome.” We will have the usual assortment of cool stuff: books, poetry tarot cards, felted crows and nazars, stickers and postcards. More info here.
In December, I’ll be at the Big Gay Market on December 20th from 10am-5pm. It’s being held at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison! Come by and pick up last-minute holiday presents! Get a tarot reading for $5! Enjoy lots of other vendors! I went to the Big Gay Halloween Market and had a great time—I bought some quartz skulls for , some ginger tea, and a print that my 8yo immediately took from me.
For those in the audience who are also writers and are looking for a chance to meet other writers, maybe hear some informative presentations about different aspects of the writing process, maybe have a little retreat from the comfort of your homes, I will be presenting at Wholehearted Writers Week in January. My topic is revision, which is really the heart of writing! This is sure to be a really great conference, and no matter where you are in your writing process I encourage you to come. Applications and additional information here.
Other Stuff
We put out a podcast episode in October! Episode 96, on Pope Joan. Hoping we will have more regular episodes in November as our schedules calm down.
Dionysus in Wisconsin will be 40% off on Kobo from November 7–17, so tell your friends.
Books I’ve Read Lately
Paladin’s Strength (cis M/F) and Paladin’s Hope (cis M/M), by T. Kingfisher. Both of these were delightful entries in the series that began with Paladin’s Grace. I think I liked Paladin’s Strength a little better—it chronicles the meeting of a paladin, who is investigating some of the murders that happened in the previous book, with a nun whose sisters were kidnapped. Their two investigations draw them in similar directions. In Paladin’s Hope, a paladin with really bad night terrors meets a pathologist (a lich doctor, in fantasy novel parlance), and they work together to solve a deadly puzzle.
An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the Sixties, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It’s hard not to hear about the way the Kennedy administration inspired people to get involved in public service and not also want to do something. It’s hard to hear clips of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech, or Johnson’s “We Shall Overcome” speech and not feel moved. The audiobook had actual archival recordings sprinkled in, which was great. I cried a little, even though I knew what was going to happen. To be clear, DKG is a presidential historian, and keeps her focus squarely on the events she or her husband were part of in that decade. If you’re looking for a history that includes the Beatles, Woodstock, Stonewall…none of that is here. The moonshot is, because LBJ was involved. But it’s a great history nevertheless.
Husband of the Year (cis M/M), by MA Wardell. Wardell wrote Mistletoe and Mishigas, which was up for the Lammy last year against Dionysus in Wisconsin. I tried to read it at the time and wasn’t all that into it, probably because I’m not a Christmas book person. But I was asked to participate in an event for this book, and honestly, I liked it a lot more. It was more like a book-length epilogue for the two characters (who were introduced in a book I haven’t read). It’s very sweet with almost no angst. I honestly don’t think Wardell and I have a lot of overlap in terms of audience, but if you really want to see contemporary queer romances with Jewish characters, mental health rep, and elementary school teachers, you might enjoy this series.
It feels very aggressive and unkind to go around being October. I’m not ready for it. It’s time to reread that famous McSweeney’s article, It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers.
It has been a really long, rough week around here. We had to say goodbye to our older dog yesterday. Although I don’t think anyone can own a dog that is approaching her fifteenth birthday and not feel the relentless march of time, her decline at the last was very precipitous and distressing. So I’m going to keep this email short. Here is a portrait I painted of Maya almost ten years ago. She liked cheese and peanut butter, loved her people and no one else, and tolerated cats. In addition to various tricks she consented to do, she was constantly in the kitchen when the cheese drawer opened or a bag of popcorn crinkled, even well past the point when she seemed fairly deaf otherwise.
Dr. Maya Angelou the Dog (DFA–Dog of Fine Arts)
Some bad news: I am turning off the TeeSpring shop where formerly you could buy T-shirts with the book covers on them. TeeSpring (now just “Spring” after a merger) seems to have stopped fulfilling orders—I ordered some shirts in August that had not been printed more than a month later, and an online search turned up people who had been waiting for much longer than six weeks. I don’t imagine this will affect anyone too much, but if you decide you want one, contact me directly.
Upcoming Appearances
I will be sitting on a panel at Rainbow Space Magic Con! This year, we’re talking about Writing About the Past to Talk About the Present, because once upon a time I read the in-book introduction to The Name of the Rose and thought, oh, this isn’t really about the 1100s. Or not entirely. I’ll also be doing a reading! What will I be reading? I don’t know yet. Maybe something from Lazarus, Home from the War. Maybe something new!
The panel will be Sunday at 11am CT, and the reading will be three hours later, at 2pm CT. Rainbow Space Magic Con is a queer-friendly scifi/fantasy convention that is online and free to attend. It’s a one-stream con, so you never have to make decisions about which panels to attend and which to skip. You can see the whole schedule and register here.
Finally, I will be giving a talk on finding joy and fellowship in revision at Wholehearted Writers Week in January (the 12-16)! It is tentatively entitled, “Oh no, you accidentally finished your manuscript! Now what?” Because I think we can all agree that just having a manuscript you endlessly tinker with and add to is, if not the best possible way to live, certainly the most relaxing. No publishing deadlines, no problem. If you are interested in a week-long chance to talk to other writers about your projects and problems, you should definitely check it out. Details here.
Books I’ve Read Lately
I picked up Paladin’s Grace by T. Kingfisher (M/F, cis) knowing that Kingfisher writes a lot of fantasy/horror. I was prepared for that—ready to watch some poor sucker walk down the wrong alley and get eaten by a monster. Instead, it was a very sweet romance set in an interesting world, and it was also very funny. It lacked some of the pointed political commentary of Terry Pratchett, but I think it would appeal to people who liked Discworld and don’t mind a little romance. It was also a very comforting read, despite the fact that there are a couple of decapitations and a poisoning or two (including, actually, a poor sucker who walks down an alley and gets eaten by a monster).
I don’t have a ton of news this month, although I hope August has been good for all of you and the back-to-school time hasn’t been too stressful for those who are back-to-schooling. I’ve spent most of the month dealing with a lung ailment—nothing bad enough to get me sent to the seaside to take the air, but I’ve been on some medication that made me pretty tired, so I didn’t accomplish much other than some editorial stuff and I don’t have much news. The good news is I’m doing much better!
The biggest announcement is that I’ve rolled both shorts (“Dous” and “Sparking Something”) into a single file, which will eventually be published as a short story collection. It’s called Toward a Consolidated Philosophy of Ghosts, and it’s on the website on the extras page here. The cover is somewhat temporary. I also updated the annotated bibliography to contain references to the plays mentioned in “Sparking Something.” This required me to realize I don’t have a good way to summarize the events of Waiting for Godot, although I’ve seen it performed at least two or three times and read it in both French and English. It’s, you know. Two guys waiting. I feel like saying anything more than that would be frowned upon by the ghost of Samuel Beckett.
Tant pis.
I also added an AI Policy to the website. You can find it here. I am guessing it says about what you’d expect it to say, though.
I also want to show off some new Wisconsin Gothic stickers. These were the idea of my book doula, Rowan, and they helped me edit the files, too–the art is drawn from the cover of Dionysus in Wisconsin. And they came out so pretty–shiny and gold! They were originally intended as book plates/consolation prizes in case we run out of copies on-hand at Booked Eau Claire, but I ordered a ton. If anyone wants one, I’m happy to ship wherever (signed or not). Just send me your address!
Upcoming Events
I’ll be at Booked Eau Claire! on 12/13 September! I’ll be appearing on two panels (one on indie publishing, which I believe runs 9-9:50am on Saturday, and one on open vs close door romance, which runs 10-10:50am, but check the website for schedule changes and the like). I’ll also be selling/signing books from 12pm-5pm on Friday and 11am-5pm on Saturday. We will have free stickers, a limited supply of tarot card decks available, and tarot readings too! This will probably be the biggest event I’ve ever been to, and I’m both nervous and excited. For more information, click here.
Later in the month, I’ll be at the Waunakee Author Showcase from 10–12pm on September 27th at the Waunakee Public Library. More info here.
Also, for Madison-area Shakespeare nerds looking for entertainment, check out Mercury Players Theater’s production of Hamlet at the Bartell from September 21–October 4th. It stars my (hella yoked) husband/alpha reader Bryan as Claudius! It’s going to be a good time and worth checking out. More info here.
Podcast
This month we released one podcast episode, number 95, on the Avignon Papacy. Not to showcase my own terrible jokes too much, but it is titled “Sur le Pontife d’Avignon.”
Books I’ve Read
This has been a month of mystery novels as I read both Fadeout, by Joseph Hansen, and Lavender House, by Lev AC Rosen, two California noirs featuring gay detectives. They make an interesting set of books to contrast, because Fadeout is set in—and was written right around—1970, while Lavender House is set in 1952 but was written in 2023. Hansen’s detective, Dave, is pretty open about being gay (for a detective, anyway, meaning he’s close-lipped but not ashamed). He runs into his share of bigots, but because of the PI/suspect relationship, he retains a lot of power in these situations, and their commentary doesn’t seem to bother him too much. Meanwhile, Rosen’s detective, Andy, has recently lost his job as a police inspector after being caught in a nightclub raid and is a raw nerve marinating in homophobia and paranoia; at one point he gets beat up by the police for reasons unrelated to the case he’s working, and it was very tough to read (skip to the end of ch 10 if you want to miss the specifics). Both detectives investigate cases related to queer people. I think Hansen knows and uses his setting a little better than Rosen—the 1970s fashions and weirdos are top notch; meanwhile we don’t even get a single baby beatnik in the Bay area. (If Rosen ever writes anything heading into 1955 or so, I’d love to see Andy react to Howl.) But I thought they were both good books, and a nice change of pace for me. Also, if you want more California noir, there’s always The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler (or any of his books, really!), which is set in the early 1950s (and was written contemporaneously), and Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon, which is set in 1970 (but was written in the 2000s). Both works are incredibly exemplary of their respective authors and wonderful as books go.
I also read Seducing the Sorcerer, by Lee Welsh (cis M/M). I went in knowing very little about the book, although I love Welsh’s work, and it kept me company through some late nights when I couldn’t sleep because of my ailment. It’s about a down-on-his-luck middle-aged guy who discovers a magical horse made of old sacks and because of this meets a sorcerer. And honestly it was lovely. Lee Welch is a delight.
Big news month, guys, but make sure you keep reading—there’s a short story in here for you down after the first photo.
I had a great time at the Middleton Book Fair, which coincided with the National Mustard Museum’s celebration of National Mustard Day. It was exciting to see people walking around in costume; I did not realize there was such fandom for mustard. Also, welcome to all the new subscribers!
I’m writing this early on a rainy morning in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where I have come for a vacation. There’s a hint of autumn in the air that feels out of step with the bright bleached yellow-white of August. But the mornings are getting darker, and I’m excited that someday soon, it will be fall.
Itch Dot Io
If you’re chronically online, or just follow a lot of writers, you may have heard there was a kerfuffle with itch.io that led to the website de-listing a lot of books and other media that had been marked “adult,” as well as other stuff that was marked “LGBTQ,” even when that content was not marked as adult. This is related to decisions by credit card companies—primarily MasterCard, I think, although Stripe is also a big problem—about what they were and weren’t going to pay for, itself the result of a surprisingly small number of calls by a conservative Australian group that objected to a (fairly heinous) video game. As it stands, my work, which is marked as LGBTQ but not adult, was not de-listed (although a lot of writers with the same tags were!). Nevertheless as someone who believes in freedom of speech, I have been disturbed by this turn of events.
I appreciate that in order for itch to remain as a platform, it needs people to use the site for buying and selling, and it needs to be able to collect payments. Those feel like very basic things a platform that facilitates transactions should be able to do. But I also resent the fact that so many works were rapidly deplatformed simply because they were marked LGBTQ. I don’t trust anyone that automatically assumes anything under that tag must be in some way pornographic. I also find it both fascinating and frustrating that payment processing companies like Stripe and MasterCard have so much power—they are able to say they refuse to pay for things that fall into an extremely broad category, and suddenly that market is no longer viable.
As of right now, itch has announced they are reindexing adult content and looking for a new payment processor. As far as I have heard, the deindexed LGBTQ works are also available again. For the time being, my work is still up on itch, but I have changed the cut of sales the site gets to 0%. This will not prevent them from making money on me, I don’t think—there’s a period after someone buys a story that itch holds the payment (ostensibly in case of returns), and my suspicion is that they receive interest on that which is not then paid out to the writer. But I also didn’t want to just take the stories down, since I think there are people who bought my ebooks but haven’t yet download them. For now, if you want a signed paperback, I suggest emailing me directly rather than going through there.
To read more about this issue and find a script for calling major payment processors with your displeasure, click here. MasterCard’s updated statement disclaiming any responsibility (i.e., bullshit) is here.
The Short Story
This month is Pride in Madison, and thus as teased last month, I have a new short for you all: “Sparking Something.” It’s an AU scene from chapter 2 of Dionysus in Wisconsin. In the original novel, we get this bit:
(p. 26)
I want to stress that this chapter was always written this way! This short is not an outtake, it is something new that I wrote some time after I’d written the original chapter (after I’d published the entire book, in fact) because I was a bad combination of bored and stuck. A few warnings: first, it is basically an excuse to have a relatively long sex scene, so if you read my works only for the plot, it may not be for you. It isn’t queernorm—there’s a couple brief acknowledgements that homophobia exists, although no one’s day gets ruined by it. And it does spoil a lot of the plot revelations that happen in chapter 8, so if you haven’t gotten that far, you might want to wait.
It is available at my website (epub and pdf). Circumstances being what they are, I haven’t put either up on itch yet. Eventually I will put it together with “Dous” and various other shorts and make a whole print book, but for now you will have to do things the old fashioned way, by printing this out on a printer if you want a print copy.
Bookstores!
I visited the excellent Tropes and Trifles in Minneapolis, MN, a romance-only independent bookstore that stocks all of the Wisconsin Gothic series. I signed everything they have in stock and drew hedgehogs on them, and left a bunch of Wisconsin Gothic stickers too. If you’re in the Cities, go over there and pick something cool up!
Yolo with Kobo
Finally, I’m again participating in the Yolo with Kobo promotion. If you have Kobo+, or if you have Kindle Unlimited but are looking for a change, you may be excited to know that all of my books are available on Kobo+! For those not in the know, Kobo+ is a service that allows you to pay a monthly fee and check out as many participating books as you can; writers get paid a certain slice of the subscription fees based on what you read. Find all the participating authors on Kobo’s website here, with a few additional ones (plus translations and audiobooks) here.
Upcoming Appearances
I’ll be at Booked Eau Claire on 12/13 September! I’ll be appearing on two panels (one on open vs close door romance and one on indie publishing), and selling/signing books from 12-5pm Friday and 10am-5pm Saturday. We will have free postcards and stickers, a limited supply of tarot card decks available, and tarot readings too! It should be a good time, with over sixty authors present and Abby Jimenez speaking. Check out the details here.
I’ll be at the Waunakee Public Library’s Local Author Showcase from 10-12pm on September 27th! Check it out here.
Books I’ve Read
I have been through a lot of books this year in a bunch of disparate subjects, which is as much a reflection of what my local public library has to offer (especially in the audiobook section) as it is my own variegated tastes. To date, I’ve read forty-four books (more than I read all of last year!), including 18 romances (8 M/M, 1 trans M/trans M, 9 M/F), 8 scifi, 1 horror, 4 YA (read aloud to one or both of my kids), 6 non-fiction/memoir, 2 mysteries, 4 plays (including two versions of The Bacchae), and 1 humorous travelogue (abridged). Some July favorites:
All Systems Red, by Martha Wells. I have reentered the world of Murderbot, partly because of the excitement around the TV series getting released (haven’t watched it yet), and partly because the audiobook was available with no wait and read by the inimitable Kevin R. Free. The books are so good. Also I accidentally played the audiobook of Artificial Condition in the car while driving my kids somewhere and now I am stuck reading All Systems Red aloud to my 7yo, so I am getting a very close look at how Murderbot’s narrative is constructed. I thought it was pretty flat the first time I read this. It is definitely not flat; I was wrong. Also it is very good and you should go read it.
A Caribbean Heiress in Paris, by Adriana Herrera (cis M/F). A strong, driven, intelligent woman from Hispaniola meets a Scottish earl (courtesy title) at the 1889 World’s Fair. He’s immediately smitten, she’s interested but too busy until he proposes a marriage of convenience for plot reasons. I love a romance that uses actual history instead of making stuff up for the purposes of feminism, and 1889 is an excellent time for the nascent women’s liberation movement! The book also features at least five explicitly LGBTQ side characters and an excellent deconstruction of the slavery and related economies that made all those British lords so wealthy in the first place. Said would be proud.
Mr. Collins in Love, by Lee Welch (cis M/M, maybe one character is demi). I had an ARC of this one! Under Welch’s ministrations, a somewhat sanctimonious side character becomes a tightly wound, anxious guy under a lot of pressure to make right and take care of those he loves. The language is perfect, and the love story is nontraditional and functions entirely within the bounds of regency society (as opposed to some other queer regency romances I’ve read that tend to chuck the rules in the last ten yards or so). Delightful!
