Reading Update

Here are the books I re-read since the beginning of May:

N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Broken Kingdoms, The Kingdom of Gods). Epic fantasy. Not earth Medieval Europe based, wonderfully developed characters. Naha is a favorite.

Lois McMaster Bujold, Sharing Knife Series (4 books: Beguilement, Legacy, Passage, Horizon). Fantasy/romance. Has a great depiction of riverboat culture.

Kate Elliott, Spiritwalker Trilogy (Cold Magic, Cold Fire, Cold Steel). Epic fantasy. I love Ms Elliott's worldbuilding. An example: an intelligent species based on troodons.

Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens. Because it's a delightfully funny apocalypse tale.

Elizabeth Bear, 2 books: Blood and Iron and Whiskey and Water. Urban fantasy. Inventive combination of classic Fairie, the Morgan/Arthur myth, mages, werewolves, and a dragon, centered in New York City. Her Morgan is my favorite Morgan ever. And Ms Bear gives the kelpie realistic horse-like behaviors when he's in human form.


Here's what I read that was new for me since the beginning of May:

C.J. Cherryh, The Morgaine Saga. A collection of three SF novels; interplanetary time travel and culture clashes.

N.K. Jemisin & Hiromi Goto, Systems Fail. A collection of short stories and essays published for WisCon38, where they were the Guests of Honor.

Ursula Vernon, Toad Words and Other Stories. Ms Vernon tells delightfully original fairy tales. She is also very good at re-imagining traditional fairy tales. If you're unfamiliar with her work, starting here would be a good choice. Then read Digger (beginning of the story)  - just sayin'.

I finished Toad Words today. I think I'm ready to tackle more new books now.

I Wrote A Post for My Blog!

The day job has been claiming an increasing amount of my time since around the middle of June, leaving me tired and with few active brain cells come the weekend. Training five people at the same time with little help will do that. If they'd started at the same time, I could have trained with easy, lecture-like sessions. So their starts were staggered. A week or two apart. I mostly get to say the same stuff five times over!

Writing has been sporadic to non-existent.

I did read many books - well, that should be re-read many books. Didn't feel up to the thinking required when reading one for the first time.

I consider re-reading as writing research. When a book is well done, I just devour the story. It takes two or three tries for me to be able to pay attention to how the author managed that magic! So during the re-reads, I flagged pages that might help me with the revisions I have looming.

My novel and a short story need revising. I'm up for critique in September. Last time it was my turn I had to pass. I will not do that again.

Also, I'll start posting here more often. I have a target of once a week.

My plans haven't been working out very well recently. I still make 'em. Maybe I'm the Overly Optimistic Poster Person.