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Obrigada!

On August 6th, 39 days after our Boston Consulate appointment in June… Dear Sir/Madam,   We hereby inform you that your Visa application was approved.  We kindly request that you bring your Passport to our Boston office as we need to issue and stamp the Visa vignette onto it. As an alternative option, we would like to inform you that you have the possibility to send your document by mail. If…

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Down (and up) This Road

(pixabay) Prep and rush, prep and rush. When preparing to emigrate to Portugal or anywhere, the process can’t be rushed, but staying a step ahead has helped. Between Facebook ex pat groups, Portugal based newsletters, and our relocators, we know pretty much what to expect. The wrench in everything, the sale of the house (it’s under contract—unbelievably we had a bid in less than a few hours…

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June 13th, a Friday

Swept along in the current of days and nights, I finally return to you. I did beta read a couple of novels in between all the packing post the VFS appointment— Well, shoot, I didn’t write about that, did I? It wasn’t the smoothest two days spent trying to accomplish anything to do with this process of relocating to Portugal, but it all worked out. The night before we were to leave for Boston…

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#BookReview #StoneWitchofFlorence #AnnaRasche #NetGalley

Description “A twisty, historical witchy escape.” —Entertainment Weekly A woman’s secret. A deadly Plague. Unleash the hidden magic… 1348. As the Black Plague ravages Italy, Ginevra di Gasparo is summoned to Florence after nearly a decade of lonely exile. Ginevra has a gift—harnessing the hidden powers of gemstones, she can heal the sick. But when word spread of her unusual abilities, she was…

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#BookReview #DaughtersofBronze #ADRhine #NetGalley

NetGalley Description Song of great sorrow. Even greater love.Lost between the timeless lines of Homer’s epic, the women of Troy finally stand to be counted. Their story is one you’ve never encountered, and it will change the fate of Troy forever. Andromache has proven herself a capable leader, but can she maintain that hard-won status now that she is the mother to the city’s long-awaited heir?…

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#BookReview #ASlashofEmerald #PatriceMcDonough #NetGalley

NetGalley Description A trailblazing female medical examiner in 1867 London and a skeptical Scotland Yard detective investigate a string of art world murders in this dark, atmospheric, historically rich mystery for readers of Andrea Penrose and Deanna Raynourn. London, 1867: Among the genteel young ladies of London society, painting is a perfectly acceptable pastime—but a woman who dares to…

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#BookReview #The SignareofGoree #LauraRahme #NetGalley

NetGalley Description An Agatha Christie style mystery meets Isabel Allende. 1846. In the heat of West Africa, the French navy uncovers the corpses of two French soldiers. Inspector Maurice Leroux arrives at the island of Gorée. It seems death has come to this small colonial outpost off the Senegal coast, home to the prosperous mixed-blood women known as the signares. The navy suspects that…

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#BookReview #TheResurrectionist #A. Rae Dunlap #Netgalley

NetGalley Description: In the tradition of The Alienist and Anatomy: A Love Story, a decadently macabre, dark and twisty gothic debut set in 19th century Scotland – when real-life serial killers Burke and Hare terrorized the streets of Edinburgh – as a young medical student is lured into the illicit underworld of body snatching.Historical fiction, true crime, and dark academia intertwine in a…

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Retiring in the Sun

(Almedina) Warm and cloudy, hoping for clearer skies so we can barbeque tonight. Well, if feels like a sprint since that first appointment for fingerprinting back in the beginning of April. Which failed. We went to Staples and had them done on fingerprinting cards we sent to the FBI. My fingerprints were not usable and so a background check for the D7 appointment in June was not done. David’s…

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#BookReview #TheSwimming Group #Bella Elwood-Clayton

Publication Day: April 22, 2025 Amazon Summary: My name is Emma Brennan, and I never thought I’d find myself in this position — standing on a Cape Cod beach at sunrise, wondering which of my friends is a killer.I came to the idyllic seaside town of Provincetown, to raise my young niece and figure out what to do next with my life. Eleven months ago my sister vanished off the coast of Ocracoke…

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Sunday, still winter

We’re moving forward pretty quickly now in some ways. We have an appointment to get our fingerprints done for an FBI background check. On the same day, we’re getting EU passport pictures taken. We got a copy of our passport pictures notarized last week, and we need to get a copy of our declaration of domestic partnership apostilled, as we do the results of the background check. More boxes of…

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The Beat Goes On

How did I let two Sundays go by without posting? I am at least consistent in my inconsistency. Today we spoke with a relocator about their services and costs. Considering the wealth of information we’ve been swimming in since we started this journey, and the anxiety this has wrought, and on top of all the other anxieties visited on us on a daily basis, we think it’s worth the price. The first…

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Winter Reflections: Intentions

It’s 22 degrees, snowing since last night I see many writers looking for writers and fiction on Substack, which makes me happy. This is a whole new world, after the old new world of Tumblr, Twitter, and WordPress. I’m cross posting to my WordPress blog, which I’m very fond of. I haven’t posted to bluesky because we haven’t made it public to many of our friends and family that we’re contemplating…

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The Ones Who Walk Away...

This blog is taking a sharp turn away from writing book reviews, perhaps for now, perhaps for good. Sunny, 22 degrees, a foot of snow fell during the night… I don’t know why I fell for it, but I did. My initial reaction when they announced her candidacy, however, was (and still is) “they’ll never elect a woman president.” But I caught the joy Kamala Harris was manifesting in 2024 and got swept…

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#BookReview #InTheTimeOfTheSpirits by Beth Ford #NetGalley

NetGalley Summary: An epic adventure through the world of the nineteenth-century spiritualist movement. In 1890, Addy Cohart is determined to defy convention and remain unmarried-until she meets William Fairley, a psychic medium who gives her hope as she grieves the sudden death of her parents. Addy becomes a devotee of the spiritualist movement, but as she takes on a larger role as William’s…

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#BookReview #DeathAndTheVisitors by Heather Redmond #NetGalley #historicalmystery

NetGalley Summary: The ties between a young Mary Shelley, her stepsister Jane “Claire” Clairmont, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the already-infamous Lord Byron grow increasingly tangled as they’re drawn into a dangerous investigation in this vivid historical mystery exploring the birth of teenaged Mary’s creative genius and the roots of a real-life trio who would later scandalize 19th century…

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#BookReview #GirlFalling by Hayley Scrivenor #NetGalley

NetGalley Summary: Why would my best friend want to destroy my life? Finn and her best friend, Daphne, have grown up together in a small town in the Blue Mountains, NSW. Bonded by both having lost a younger sister to suicide, they’ve always had a close – sometimes too close – friendship. Now in their twenties, their lives have finally started to Daphne is at university and Finn is working in…