Interview: Elizabeth Conall and Anne B. Walsh

Hello, everyone, and welcome back. I've got a treat for us all today: an interview with the authors of the anthology A Dinner of Herbs, Elizabeth Conall and Anne B. Walsh. I've read the anthology and I loved it. It reminds me a little bit of Shannon Hale's fairy tales, a little bit of Megan Whalen Turner's pseudo-Greek myths, and a lot of Sarah Diemer's “The Witch Sea”. So I'm excited to interview the authors, below the cut.

Discussion: Women and Modern Poetry

“I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I cannot even name." --Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It's the crack cocaine of the literary world.” --Jasper Fforde, First Among Sequels

Today I am discussing modern and contemporary poetry, which I've been meaning to do for a while. And after I chosen the half dozen I wished to share, I noticed they all had one thing in common: women's agency and value.

News Post: Realism, Fantasy, and Why It Matters

So often I hear that we can't have same sex relationships in spec fic because it's unrealistic in a pseudo-medieval world (never mind that we threw "realistic" out when the dragons came in).

Or I hear that same sex relationships are "political". Yet somehow the hordes of different sex relationships, male protagonists chasing beautiful women, side characters casually mentioning their different sex spouses, flippant remarks about dating - those aren't "political", those are "normal".

Review: Ancestral Magic by Moondancer Drake

Title: Ancestral Magic

Author: Moondancer Drake

Series: stand-alone (?)

Grade: D+

Single mother Sky has always struggled to make ends meet. Since her son Drake's father left, unable to accommodate Drake's blindness, Sky has been all alone - except for her best friend Meg. When an unknown aunt dies and leaves Sky her manor estate, it's an opportunity to start over and do better. So the three of them, Sky, Drake, and Meg, all move together into the new house. But Sky is surprised to learn that she used to live there, as a young child, before her parents fled the town and cut off all contact with the relatives living there. Why did her parents leave and never tell her about her extended family? What did they fear, in her ancestral home?

Winner of Giveaway

The winner of last week's giveaway was Kaesa. Congratulations!

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