#everyone should read the shivadhverse!

[copperbadge]

Hi Sam, hope you are having a fine day. Not sure if this is a weird comment to leave you with, but when I saw the trailer for “Red, White and Royal Blue” I immediately got excited because it felt like maybe one day Shivadhverse could get its own cinematic universe, and I would really and definitely enjoy that. Thank you very much for writing and sharing your stories, they have been a comfort to me for a decade now and going.

I've seen the trailer! It looks fun, I'm going to try and catch it. (And if folks reading this haven't read my books but are into Red White and Royal Blue, I think you may enjoy them. They're available free as PDFs!)

This particular film is being made and distributed by Amazon, but I think it's a good opportunity to discuss the genre and the way it's shifting, which means circling back around to Hallmark Channel for a minute. The OG "light-romance" channel as a whole is beginning to lean just slightly more liberal, and a lot of actors left en masse to join a more right-wing channel, and I'm hoping Hallmark...hasn't really missed them. And I think everyone in that orbit -- not just Hallmark, but the production companies that make Hallmark movies and also off-brand "Hallmark" movies that show on Netflix and Amazon and Paramount and such -- have realized that a) the permanent loss of viewership over simply having a gay romance is either minimal or has already happened, and b) if you make it gay, THE GAYS MIGHT WATCH. And anyway it's not like Amazon has the same viewer base, so there's less risk regardless.

Fete For A King was originally written as a Hallmark script, full-on. It had two versions -- the original "Eddie" version and a halllmarkified "Edie" version where Eddie was a woman (pretty much nothing but her pronouns changed). That didn't go anywhere, which is fine, the odds of something like that going anywhere are quite small, but it meant I could develop it into the books, which are a satisfaction on their own. If Hallmark (or any other film distributor) came knocking, sure, I'd love to see the Shivadh novels as films and I think they're pretty cinematic in the specific way Hallmark movies are.

There's a Hallmark movie director who gave an interview once where he said, "You don't find Hallmark. Hallmark finds you, if you're lucky," and I think that's pretty true -- you can't like, submit your novel to a production company and be all "Hey here's a movie idea". But you know, the more these novels circulate, the more word of mouth the readers give them, the better odds that someone'll see them and think, "Hm."

Anyway, I stand and wait. There's enough material in what's published to make four to six movies or at least twelve bingeable episodes of streaming TV, should anyone want it.

(I would hope it goes without saying but to say it anyway, I'm not volunteering this to happen while the writer's strike is ongoing; my mother didn't raise a scab.)

[bookgeekgrrl]

My media this week (19-25 Jun 2022)

ᶦⁿ ᵗʰᵉ ᶦᵐᵐᵒʳᵗᵃˡ ʷᵒʳᵈˢ ᵒᶠ ᵈᵒᵒʳ 'ᵇᵃᵇʸᵍᶦʳˡ ʸᵒᵘ ᵃʳᵉ ˢᵒ ʰᵒᵗ ᵃⁿᵈ ʸᵒᵘʳ ᶦⁿˢᵗᶦⁿᶜᵗˢ ᵃʳᵉ ˢᵒ ᵇᵃᵈ'

📚 STUFF I READ 📚

😍 Fete For A King (Shivadhverse #1) (Sam Starbuck) - cannot express how much I love this entire universe!!!! This book started as a 'what if there was a hallmark movie where a guy-fieri-like celebrity chef fell for the crown-prince-soon-to-be-king?' - it's sweet and fucking hilarious and very low angst and all the characters are amazing

😍 Infinite Jes (Shivadhverse #2) (Sam Starbuck) - 2nd book in the same universe; a recently retired ex-king at loose ends decides to start a podcast and ends up acquiring more loved ones in the form of a nonbinary producer and their 15-yr-old apprentice/son/disaster magnet

😍 👂‍ The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (The Queer Principles of Kit Webb #2) (Cat Sebastian, author; Joel Leslie, narrator) - fuck, I knew I was going to fucking love Marian Hayes and I wasn't disappointed; give me a prickly, angry romance heroine every day and someone who loves her because their jagged edges fit together

😍 Ain't No Grave (Can Keep My Body Down) (spitandvinegar) - reread, absolute five-star forever fave; always enamoured of the idea that a broken, junkie recovering-from-hydra former asset would find enough of bucky barnes left to adopt two queer homeless kids; all the characterizations in this are incredible

😊 👂‍ Death in the Clouds (Hercule Poirot #13) (Agatha Christie, author; Hugh Fraser, narrator)

😊 Sweet Berries (Cambric Creek #2) (C.M. Nascosta) - mothman monsterfucking romance, very enjoyable

😊 👂‍ Enter the Saint (Simon Templar 'The Saint' #3) (Leslie Charteris, author; John Telfer, narrator) - surprisingly fun action adventure story; what little I knew of The Saint was from the solo hero he would later develop into - I enjoyed this early stuff where he's the leader of a vigilante gang of Bright Young Things

🙂 Dear Mona Lisa… (Claire Davis & Al Stewart) - short novella about a middle-aged synesthete trying to find the right way to come out to his daughter before his impending wedding

💖💖 +311K of shorter fic so shout out to these I really loved 💖💖

Me and the Lavender Moon (emchant3d) - MCU: shrunkyclunks, 10K - another fantastic part of this series about nonbinary kitchen witch bucky & cap!Steve - really love this entire series so much

📺 STUFF I WATCHED 📺

Fire Island - just as amazing and wonderful on the rewatch; nothing but pure serotonin

Legends of Tomorrow - s6, e8-13

🎧 PODCASTS 🎧

99% Invisible #496 - The Rights of Rice and Future of Nature

Twenty Thousand Hertz+ - Breathe

Shedunnit - Bonus: Ask Me Anything Part Two

Strong Songs Bonus Episodes - "Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)" by Kate Bush

Hit Parade - These Are the Good Times

🎶 MUSIC 🎶

Fire Island Movie Soundtrack playlist

Presenting Janet Jackson

Women Who Owned '99

Gotta Get Away!

Pride Anthems

Summer Ska Celebration

Lazy Summer

Presenting Reba McEntire

Up All Night with Nile Rodgers

[copperbadge]

The Cannabis Amnesty Box also inspired what is either going to be a short story or yet another Shivadhverse novel, about the last of the true Davzda distillers and Gregory III re-legalizing psychedelic mushrooms. :D 

Also I named Gregory II’s wayward son that Jason had to oust in order to establish the ben Jason dynasty. I named him Nathan, just ‘cause. 

(I’m titling it “Where The Oleander Grows” because I was listening to one of the four or so Mountain Goats songs I actually like when I came up with the idea, and everyone should name a story after Mountain Goats lyrics sooner or later.)

Davzda, traditionally, was moonshine liquor distilled and poured into sterile bottles, into which a handful of salt-dried psychedelic fungus would be added. Potent and incredibly distasteful, it was consumed in shots or with heavily-flavored cocktail mixers. Caught up in the anti-drug frenzy of the 1950s, Nathan IV ordered that the mushrooms which gave Davzda its...unique flavor, and psychedelic properties, be destroyed. At the time, the country still had a standing military, and they marched through the highlands (really just the one highland) on his orders, uprooting and burning Panaeolis shivadh wherever they found it. 

In some ways it was just as well -- eventually psychedelic mushrooms would be banned in Europe in any case, and true Davzda became illegal to possess or consume. An imitation Davzda flourished, made with salt-dried mushrooms that contained only the usual deliciousness of the white button variety. The flavor, still akin to that of vodka-wetted beach sand, was considered a feature, not a bug. 

This did not stop the dedicated from cultivating P. shivadh or distilling true Davzda. What it did do was make true Davzda slightly more dangerous to keep and sell -- and thus much more lucrative.

There were two Shivadh families who grew the mushrooms that were required for true Davzda, and only one that actually distilled the vodka-like liquor in which the mushrooms were suspended. This was bottled in a distinctive grey-green glass and sold both in Askazer-Shivadlakia and across Europe on the black market. 

It took television chef and social media influencer Eddie Rambler, Duke of the Orange and King Consort, roughly two weeks in the country to discover where he could acquire true Davzda. He'd had some experience of black markets, being raised in California. It took another week to charm the Lansky family (no relation to Meyer, so they claimed) into selling him some. 

He kept his mouth admirably shut about his source, did not even mention them in his imitation Davzda cocktail recipes on Photogram, and only bought four bottles total across the year. True, he did give one of them to the King Emeritus, who in theory had the power to instigate an investigation and have them all arrested and imprisoned, but as Bill Lansky, head of the family, was heard to remark, Michaelis ben Jason simply wasn't a narc. 

(There was a lot of speculation about what the King Emeritus did with a bottle of Davzda. The truth was really rather tame; aside from an occasional shot when feeling festive, he and his partner Jes mainly kept it in a high cupboard out of reach of the inquisitive teenagers who frequently came over to visit Jes's son Noah.) 

Michaelis ben Jason also hadn't raised a narc; his son, the current king Gregory III, presumably had access to the other three bottles, but hadn't bothered the Lansky family and it was possible didn't know of their existence. Rambler was a man who could keep a secret, they all decided.

And then one morning Nomi Lansky, youngest daughter of the clan and its most brilliant botanist and brewmaster, arrived at the growing shed, far up in the highland and deep in its wilderness, to find a man sitting outside, chair tipped back against the wall of the shed, reading. He was wearing black, with the gold filigree trim of the royal uniform, and his face was on the newest currency. 

She stopped, considering matters. He looked up at her and smiled. 

"Good morning, Ms. Lansky," King Gregory III said, closing his book. She considered running, and could tell he saw it. "If you like, go ahead. I'm here alone; I might be able to catch up to you if you run, but I doubt I could hold you."

[copperbadge]

All right, friends and readers, tomorrow Fete For A King and Infinite Jes go up for sale around 10am central (paperback and epub, with free PDFs available) and I’m declaring it Shivadh Saturday. 

I’ve got a bunch of asks and posts about the books that I’ll be posting tomorrow, so as always if you’re not interested the tag to blacklist is “shivadhverse”. There’s a pretty big spoiler for Lady And the Tiger I’ll also be talking about so if you haven’t read it and want to go into reading it without the spoiler, you can blacklist “LATT spoilers”. 

Lady And The Tiger was not intended to go up with the first two books, but it should be going up for sale in late July or in August. (I wasn’t willing to work that fast and also as a straight romance I didn’t want to put it up with two queer romances during Pride.) 

And before we kick off tomorrow I also wanted to say thanks to everyone who read the books, offered comment and critique, and has since been asking questions and offering opinions to inspire me to write more. I know some of my readers are probably like “Sam please be over this soon” but I can’t help it, it’s just such fun. :)