#literary book club box

[buckymorelikefuckme]

my first book box arrived!!!!! everything is so so lovely 😭♥️

[quirkycatsfatstacks]

Review: Whoever You Are, Honey by Olivia Gatwood

Author: Olivia GatwoodPublisher: The Dial PressReleased: July 9, 2024Received: Own (Aardvark)Find it on Goodreads | Aardvark | More Thrillers Book Summary: Mitty has turned a small little town into her refuge. It isn’t a glamorous life, but she can hide from her past here. Sure, she felt abandoned for a while, but she’s since made peace with her lot in life. That is until a new neighbor comes…

[allylikethecat]

i’ve been in a reading slump as of late but a couple books that i can think of off the top of my head that have left an impact are

the secret history (my fav of all time it’s heavily annotated cause i’m a nerd💀)

crime and punishment (a doozy but worth it)

jane eyre (best book to start w to get into classics imo)

a little life (read it in three days cause i needed to finish it and get rid of it -10/10 i bc old write a whole rant ab this damn book it has some really good parts/quotes but not enough to make it worth it)

on earth were briefly gorgeous (ocean vuong is a poet so this novel read like poetry but in the best way)

OOOO I've read Crime and Punishment, and Jane Eyre! Excellent choice in classics!

I have A Little Life on my TBR and a physical copy in my very large pile already! People seem to either love it or hate it, I'm curious as to where I will fall on that spectrum lol. I'll have to check out The Secret History and On Earth Were Briefly Gorgeous! I will admit I sometimes have a love hate relationship with the New England based dark academia books seeing as how I em grew up in that lol I'm also the worst, I have so many annotation tabs but never end up using them and then get annoyed when I try and go back and reread parts.

So far this year I've read:

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Stars In Your Eyes by Kacen Callender ⭐️⭐️ ⭐️

Sanctuary of the Shadow by Aurora Ascher ⭐️

Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Rhythm, Chord & Malykhin by Mariana Zapata ⭐️⭐️

The Idea of You by Robinne Lee ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Even If It Breaks Your Heart by Erin Hahn ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Strung Along by Hannah Cowan ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A Fate Inked in Blood by Danielle L. Jensen ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you so much for indulging me in this book chatter! Books are truly like the best thing ever. I love fanfic SO MUCH obviously, but there is also something so special about like holding a physical book in your hands! I hope you are having a wonderful Monday and a great rest of your week!

❤️Ally

[scotianostra]

On November 4th 1774 poet and song writer Robert Allan was born in Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire.

Just as Paisley had Tannahill, Kilbarchan had its own weaver poet, Robert Allan. The son of a flax dresser, Robert Allan was born in Kilbarchan in 1774. For most of his life he lived and worked as a silk weaver in the old part of the village known as Tounfoot. In the eighteenth century Tounfoot was a thriving community occupied by weavers and other tradesmen. It had a female school, a poor house and a Baptist meeting house.

In his forties Robert Allan was an active Radical and played a significant part in political meetings and demonstrations. He presided over an important Radical meeting in the Relief Church and with other Kilbarchan weavers played a prominent part in the Radical demonstrations in Paisley in 1819 and 1820.

The two poets, Robert Tannahill and Robert Allan, were close friends and literary associates. Both were admirers of Robert Burns. Robert Allan was an active member in Kilbarchan Burns Anniversary Society, founded in 1806, and was much respected as a poet by the members of Paisley Burns Club who greatly admired his work. On 5th February, 1818, they elected him as an honorary member of Paisley Burns Club in appreciation of the quality of poems he had sent to them.

Although Robert Allan had been writing poems since the early eighteen hundreds, none of his poems had been published. In 1819, the year after he received his honorary membership of Paisley Burns Club, several of Robert Allan’s songs were published in the Harp of Renfrewshire and received special mention by the book’s editor, William Motherwell.

In 1836 Robert published a book of his own poems entitled Evening Hours: Poems and Songs. As was common at the time, the book was published by subscription. Despite his previous acclaim as a poet and the support of the subscribers, the book was not so well received as he had hoped and was not a financial success. He was disappointed and felt his merit as a poet had not been recognised. He is said to have become ‘irritable in his temper and gloomy in appearance’. According to David Semple his disappointment influenced his later decision to leave Scotland and emigrate to America.

Two other factors however may have influenced this decision. In the 1830s Robert Allan was engaged as an agent for a weaving manufacturer. From around 1840 the weaving manufacturers in Paisley, on whom the skilled Kilbarchan weavers depended for work, were entering a period of financial difficulties. The poor state of trade may have influenced his decision to emigrate.

Also in the past, some of Robert Allan’s friends had emigrated to America where they prospered. It is likely that James Scouler was one of these old friends. James Scouler, a calico printer at Locher, had fled to America after involvement in a secret Radical meeting which he attended in Kilbarchan in 1816. He subsequently established a large, successful printworks at Arlington in West Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was a wealthy man. In 1838 he left his business in the capable hands of his sons and made a return visit to Scotland where Robert Allan may well have met him in Kilbarchan.

Whatever the reason for his decision, Robert Allan, then in his mid-sixties, emigrated to America with his son Robert in 1841, but six days after his arrival in America he unfortunately died of a chill caught at sea.

At the bottom of Church Street near the spot where his house once stood, a commemorative well was erected to his memory by Kilbarchan General Society in 1935. He is the only Kilbarchan weaver to have a commemorative monument in the village.

World of Dreams

I'm living in a world of dreams, but this I know.

Red numbered doors and window sills...

Dust busters and mail boxes... ...

Imaginary things, dreaming things.

This I know.

A frightening thought,

Of what lay awake beneath those sheets of concrete and glass;

A virgin forest in the late summer sun.

A million birds. You've never seen so many birds.

Where mankind sleeps in the cold.

[thisisjamaica]

The acclaimed writer and poet died aged 65. Here, leading contemporaries pay tribute.

Michael Rosen (British author and poet): ‘He nudged people into seeing the world through the eyes of the oppressed.’

Benjamin was a hero to millions of people all over the world. His mix of poetry, novels, wisdom, humour and sheer presence grabbed us and delighted us. I first saw him when he was starting out in the poetry clubs, dancing a poem about his mother, voicing his poetry in a voice I hadn’t heard before: Brummie-Caribbean. It was an honour and treat to work with him many times over the years, on videos, radio programmes, and when he MC’d an award ceremony run by the British Council for the best examples of English teaching. Then and often elsewhere, he loved reflecting on his journey from being a semi-literate teenager, getting into trouble, to someone feted at the highest levels for his literary achievements and force of personality.

His poetry is full of power, humanity and belief. He was a Rastafarian in belief and practice and loved talking about what that meant to him. I hope he won’t mind me saying that his love of all things living reminded me of William Blake. People will remember him, I’m sure, appearing on Question Time gently and wittily batting experienced politicians to one side with his comments. I once asked him how he did it, how did he encapsulate “big” stuff in such pithy, seemingly simple ways. He said that he imagined himself talking with his mother: how would they talk about it, he said?

He wrote novels for teenagers. Refugee Boy – as it sounds – takes the point of view of a refugee and the struggle that people in his area have of winning him asylum. One of the great moments in the book is when the boy reflects on what “problems” the local British boys seem to have compared with the problems he is going through.

That’s what Benjamin did over and over again, nudge people into seeing the world through the eyes of the oppressed.

Some of his wonderful performances are up online. Please look at them as your way of paying tribute to him. My own personal favourite is Rong Radio. I once asked him where he wrote his poems. He said, “I don’t write them. I make them up in my head when I go running.”

I am devastated by this news. I admired, respected and loved Benjamin and I learned so much from him.

Colin Grant (British author and historian): ‘He was the people’s poet.’

It was raining heavily at the Hay festival 20 years ago when I first saw and was mesmerised by Benjamin Zephaniah. The marquee was filled to the rafters with hundreds of people who it seemed were attending not a literary or racial sacrament but a spiritual one. Rain outside; eternal sunshine within.

Benjamin was the trailblazing epitome not of the reductive “ethnic writer” but of the global majority writer who refused to be categorised. In any event, though kind of ordinary, his uniqueness – a karate, yoga and dominoes-loving Rastafarian poet and storyteller – made it impossible to box him in.

For young black writers, he was the answer to literary gatekeepers who claimed there were no commercial prospects for writing that spoke to social deprivation, marginalisation and racism with a plain-speaking honesty and humour.

There was also the realisation that here was a brotherman who’d been a rascal in his youth but had reinvented himself and been saved by literature; that writing could transform the self as well as readers and listeners.

Benjamin was a one-love Rasta, not guided by any kind of separatism. Today, as some default to silos of separation, his porous writing showed how you could speak to an unimagined cohort with poetry and prose. He was, in essence, what Jamaicans call a “simple sense man”; he spoke to youngsters and elders with the same intensity.

The seeming guilelessness of his writing made some wince and claim he was not a real, learned poet. But when you stopped to listen, or clean your glasses, or dry your eyes, you’d find yourself in the presence of a fierce and fearless emotional intelligence. Benjamin’s spoken and written voice was the expression of a writer who was extraordinary in his ordinariness. He was the people’s poet; a groundbreaker who broke bread with everyone.

[littlechaoticwitch]

Winx Club Rewrite: Season 5/Final Season

I understand this is me being very late to the party, but that's pretty on-brand for me at this point lol

A few years ago, I started to work on a possible rewrite for Fate: The Winx Saga but it soon became this monstrous project of rewriting the entire franchise. Because while this series is one of my beloved childhood series, it is also very messy with its world-building and plotlines, as well being done dirty over and over again by its countless reboots. As much as I would have loved to create a full-on alternative universe like the ones I've seen on tumblr for years, it just took up so much of my time that could have been spent on other projects and it was starting to feel more like a chore than anything else. Eventually, I did create some fashion boards for how to translate their outfits from the show into real life, and wrote up some concept ideas for their live-action costumes, which led to me just writing up the notes I had for the rewrite to share them with y'all.

Some of these ideas were inspired by other people's rewrite of the series, some of these ideas came to me while writing this up, and a lot of these are my attempt to make sense of Winx Club's fucked-up lore. While these were originally written with a live-action reboot in mind, these could also work for an animated reboot targeted for teens/young adults.

This is probably the extent I'll do for any sort of Winx Club rewrite, but it was still fun!

-The Shadow Phoenix is an ancient creature, born the same time as the Dragon Flame to act as its natural opposite. One cannot exist without the other, and even when the Shadow Phoenix fled during their last battle, its presence lingers with the creation of the Ancestral Witch. In the end, despite being released from the box to possess a suit of armor, the heroes are able to defeat it by using a convergence spell which destroys the armor, before using a spell of holy magic to burn the Shadow Phoenix's essence away. Even after being defeated by the Winx Club, it is mentioned by Daphne how it can never truly be destroyed, only disappearing for a long time and letting its essence roam the galaxy once more. She also mentions how they are lucky he used an empty suit of armor for his "body", as a vessel made of flesh and blood would have been impossible to defeat….

-Beatrice returns, with the mysterious box from two seasons prior, which contains the essence of the Shadow Phoenix. After killing Eldora and stealing the Legendarium, she uses the book as a way to distract the Winx Club long enough while she finds the pieces of Lord Andreas' armor for the Shadow Phoenix to possess. In the end, she is killed by Bloom but shows no remorse for her crimes.

-Instead of being a villain, Selina is an anti-hero who wishes to get the Legendarium back. Her and Roxy were close friends growing up, to the point they even had the same babysitter whenever their parents were at work. But the two had a falling out before high school, so Selina further isolated herself into studying witchcraft. When the Winx came to Earth to find the last fairy, the two old friends briefly run into each other, but Selina ran away before anything could be said. In that moment, she learned Eldora had been found dead and the Legendarium had been stolen, so Selina vowed to find the murderer. At first, she refuses the Winx's help and acts cold, often preferring to work by herself; over time, the Winx are able to convince her to let them help out, where she decides to repair her friendship with Roxy.

-Fun Facts about Selina: Her mother was the last guardian before disappearing, so she resents the book for being forced into this role. She is a follower of Loki, and like most witches (both on Earth and in the Magical Dimension), her magical abilities are not easily defined (she is technically a Green Witch who dabbles in shadow and literary magic, but she is open to all forms of witchcraft). Her family is from Ireland, she is three years younger than Bloom, and she has naturally blonde hair, but it becomes green when she transforms.

-Eldora was a witch who babysat both Roxy and Selina when they were younger, but since Roxy's magical core had been hidden by her mother, she sensed the magical potential in Selina instead. The two had a close bond, with Eldora filling in the space left by Selina's mother, but she was murdered when trying to keep the Legendarium from falling into the wrong hands.

-The Legendarium is a powerful artifact, one from Earth's past life as a realm full of magical beings and mystical creatures. Created by a family full of witches, the tomb was meant to capture and seal away all the evil creatures which threatened humanity. Despite going into hiding when the Hunters began their attack on all magi-users, the family was able to keep the Legendarium out of their hands, passing the book down through the generations.

-Bloomix's new name is Mythix, which is a reference to the fairy-tale theme of the final season, the mythical power of the Dragon Flame, and how each girl performs an act of mythical standards. For the most part, each girl keeps their canon design but there are a few changes: Aisha's form has more a green hue with silver accents (with her having long, dark brown loc'd ponytail somewhat similar to her canon Mythix hairstyle), Tecna's form is purple with powder blue accents, Musa's form is a deep red with gold accents, Flora's form is pink with green accents, and Stella gains the high, wavy pigtails Aisha has in her canon Bloomix design. Each girl earns Mythix in a way that is befitting of a mythical story, though Bloom is an exception, since she was not hit with the attack that cause the others to lose their magic. But she did give up a piece of the Dragon Flame to her friends, causing her to slowly lose the ability to transform, and she soon becomes weak, as the Dragon Flame was a part of her soul; she earns her Mythix by saving Icy when she is thrown into the Vortex of Flames, which was seen as the greatest punishment on Domino. Musa earns her form by stopping the Fossegrim from taking over the Golden Auditorium, Stella earns her form by embracing her moon powers to fight off the Children of the Night, Aisha earns her form by stopping the Dark Sirens from corrupting her mother, Flora earns her form by keeping back the frozen curse sent by the Ice Queen, and Tecna earns her form by stopping Frankenstein's Monster from shutting down Zenith's power core.

-The girls do not go into the Legendarium World, but they can defeat the Shadow Phoenix by repairing the Ancestral Wand (which once belonged to the Ancestral Witch before she was corrupted by dark magic)

-Icy returns, with her dreams of possessing the Dragon Flame being a thing of the past. She has one last conversation with Bloom, admitting she only sought power to undo the pain she felt at seeing Aster Dell fall before her eyes, and she apologizes for causing Bloom so much pain back during her first year. With Jade once again the crowned heir, the two have finally entered a relationship (despite Jade's parents being against the union) and the two plan on turning Eraklyon into a safe, warm kingdom in honor of Domino's memory.

-Darcy and Stormy also have returned, with the former starting a healing practice back on Melody, while the latter is helping out with dance classes on Andros.

[o-uncle-newt]

Thank you for adding all that wonderful context to my post about The Nine Tailors! And I look forward to your separate post about Agatha Christie being good at romance, because I've read a lot of her books and...well, I'm curious to hear your argument, we'll put it that way ;D

Thank YOU for posting the thing about The Nine Tailors, which I'd never heard of before and is so delightfully Sayers!

And... ok I need to clarify lol

One definite thing- and I don't think this is something I actually NEED to be saying outright- Sayers is MUCH better at writing romance than Christie, as such. I think she's also better at portraying the intricacies of human emotion and reaction and all those delicious things that make her books so vivid.

Where I think Christie is better is the synthesis, and at assembling pieces to synthesize.

Sayers does an absolutely beautiful job of CREATING characters- much of this is helped by, say, putting a lot of herself in both Peter and Harriet, as so many of the best writers do with their creations, and I'm sure putting plenty of other people into her other characters and basing settings on real environments (see John Cournos/Philip Boyes and Benson's/Pym's). She manages to make EVERYONE vividly human, which is a) a big job and b) often difficult to fit in around all of the machinations of a detective story, as Sayers so eloquently describes in Gaudy Night as Harriet Vane.

A lot of people criticize Christie for writing "archetypes." The thing is, though, that shouldn't be a criticism at all! She had a really brilliant gift for understanding stories, understanding the kinds of people who appear in stories, and manipulating the genre such that she's able to fit the right kinds of people around the right kinds of stories. That's actually why I tried to make the point that her strength isn't romance, because I think that's actually a weakness in her mysteries, when she decides she has to randomly pair people off. The thing that's great though is that she's able to customize the archetypes into entertaining and very readable people, these people do things for psychologically plausible reasons, and the motivations that they have and the mystery stories that they find themselves in end up syncing up incredibly well- and the whole built-up story ends up flowing absolutely seamlessly in a way that I think Sayers found a lot harder.

It's like Christie's playing in a Lego set and using a box of assorted pieces to put together in new configurations and make masterpieces- and Sayers is trying to combine the Lego bricks with more realistic-looking... Idunno, Barbies. Something that doesn't fit. The metaphor may be over-extended.

That's what's so fascinating about reading both the introduction to The Omnibus of Crime and then the later mystery novels that Sayers wrote, as I was saying. Sayers so clearly LOVES the genre, but she is also so clearly a literary stylist, an Intellectual (who had something of a sense of humor about it- but not entirely), and someone who had an incredible skill at characterization. She also understood the puzzle mystery and the detective genre in a way that few did, as one of the first real experts on it as a genre in the first place and as someone who not only researched its history (she traces it all the way back to the Bible and the ancient Greeks) but reviewed mystery novels and co-created the Detection Club. And it's precisely her deep understanding of the genre that made her realize, as she describes in Gaudy Night, how difficult it is to integrate deep character portraits into a relatively formulaic genre. I've seen it said that her books presage the modern crime thriller more than they reflect contemporaneous puzzle mysteries, and I think there's a lot of truth to that. She was learning the limitations of the genre she'd come to love.

In my opinion, Sayers's novel that does the best job of integrating the puzzle plot and the character work is Bellona Club, which I actually have a draft post about how incredibly underrated it is. She integrates both seamlessly, but you can also see how difficult it was, if only because she was rarely so successful tonally again. Probably the closest she comes are, weirdly, The Nine Tailors and Gaudy Night, but only because there she chooses whether she wants to foreground the novel or the crime (as I mention in my original post that started this whole tirade) and sticks to that. In books like Clouds of Witness, Have His Carcase, and Unnatural Death, to pick a random few, there are plenty of occasions where a chapter of exquisite literary character development is suddenly ground to a halt by an extremely technical disquisition about an extremely convoluted murder/coverup plot. (Something like Murder Must Advertise does this a bit less, but there the tonal issue is that, and I acknowledge this is arbitrary of me, the whole drug subplot does not work and that's where most of the detection is.)

Back to Christie, which is where all this started! What she has and Sayers doesn't isn't the ability to build complex characters (though honestly I don't doubt that she could if she wanted to- it's just not what she wants to do- and one of these days I'll read a Mary Westmacott and see if I'm right about that). It's the ability to build a complex story full of just-complex-enough people that feels authentic. The reason why her romances are among the weaker elements of her books is, in my opinion, because their actualization is generally the LEAST integral to the careful structures that she's building- however, the people who are part of the romances are often very strong, when the feelings that they have as part of those romances end up motivating something that they do. Take, for example, Death on the Nile- is the central romance the important part? No, the way that the characters in it act based on that romance is, because that directly influences the plot. And there she shines and it is all beautifully compelling.

In my opinion, Sayers was a brilliant writer and novelist who happened to enjoy detective fiction and so forced herself into the genre. Christie somehow magically managed to waltz her way into the exact right genre to suit her talents, right when the genre was exploding in popularity. Sayers is a more versatile and talented writer as a writer, but nobody ever owned the genre of detective stories, in all the ways that they could be written, like Christie did. With Sayers, we say "oh look she's getting experimental" with a book like The Nine Tailors or Gaudy Night or even, in a certain light, Five Red Herrings- we see her books in a pattern and context of the way her mind works and her life goes and her tastes change. With Christie, no matter how fertile and creative her mind and no matter how different the results are from each other, we're like "oh, that's classic Christie." Her versatility, and the way that she can change on a dime and be consistently great (for most of her career...) in so many different modes.

[unhingedwomandiaries]

I'm sitting here, flipping through this vegan manifesto called "How to Argue With a Meat Eater (And Win Every Time)" by Ed Winters, and I can't help but feel like I've stumbled into some bizarro-world PETA fever dream. It's like watching a documentary about the Amish directed by Michael Bay.

I'm only 84 pages deep, and already my brain is doing mental gymnastics that would make Simone Biles dizzy. There's this story about an eight-year-old kid named Dalton, caught in the crossfire of some twisted American farming scheme where children raise animals for slaughter. Picture this: It's D-Day for Dalton's lamb, and the kid's bawling his eyes out. What does his mother do? She whips out her iPhone, snaps a pic of her sobbing son, and broadcasts it to the world like she just won the Terrible Parenting Olympics.

Now, I'm not saying this woman deserves a "Mother of the Year" award, but calling her a Nazi seems like a bit of a stretch. It's more like she's auditioning for a particularly dark episode of "Black Mirror" where social media likes are used as currency.

But here's where it gets really wild. The author, in his infinite wisdom, decides to drop this truth bomb: "The reality is, the people who most often seem to bring up indigenous culture as a defence for animal consumption are white people who are not vegan themselves." It's like he's trying to win Woke Bingo while simultaneously pissing off every anthropologist on the planet.

As a white-passing Native American, I feel like I'm trapped in some sort of cultural Schrödinger's box. Am I appropriating my own culture? Is my DNA having an identity crisis? Maybe I need to consult the spirits of my ancestors... or just order a pizza and call it a day.

At this point, I'm seriously considering using this book as kindling for my next barbecue. But then again, that might release some sort of vegan curse upon my household. So instead, I'll probably just shelve it next to my collection of Chuck Palahniuk novels and hope it doesn't start a literary fight club in the middle of the night.

[buckymorelikefuckme]

i have been desperately wanting to read more—real life books, specifically—and i have come across a subscription box that i am sooooo getting into holy moly 😭♥️ it looks so exciting and fun brb crying

[quirkycatsfatstacks]

Review: I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

Author: Stephen Graham JonesPublisher: S&S Saga PressReleased: July 16, 2024Received: Own (Aardvark)Find it on Goodreads | Aardvark | More Horror Book Summary: The year is 1989 in a rural part of Texas. Tolly Driver is that kid everybody knows – because every year, the nurse marches out and warns his classmates of the severity of his peanut allergy. Okay, it’s not a great reason to be known by…

[folxlorepod]

Meet the cast!

We were so lucky to add more VA's to our cast than ever before for our upcoming season 2! It was a real honour to get these marvellous voice-actors in to do justice to some of our most challenging scripts to date. You'll hear them alongside the core cast of voices in season 2 of Folxlore, launching on March 5th 2023!

Want to meet them?! 🥳👀

Nigel is a poet, podcaster, author, and professional hot chocolate reviewer from Ireland. She co-hosts the Hyperfixations, Archive Admirers, Nanny Ogg's Book Club, and Les-bi-honest podcasts, and has voiced Seán on Cordial Summonings, Verity on The Night Post, Achilles on Seven of Hearts, Mrs Beach on The Pasithea Powder and Addi on Spirit Box Radio. She has written for The Night Post, and her writing has appeared in Icarus, The Attic, Iris Magazine, and The Edinburgh Student Literary Journal. She has just finished her undergrad degree in English Studies in Trinity College Dublin, and intends to fill her time with getting tattoos, travelling, and making an inordinate amount of podcasts. Among the Stacks is her first audio fiction production.

We are also joined by Katalina Watt! Katalina’s writing was Longlisted for Penguin WriteNow 2020 and is represented by Underline Literary. They received a 2021 Ladies of Horror Fiction Writers Grant and were 2022 Ignyte award-winning founding Audio Director for speculative magazine khōréō. We were so happy to recruit Katalina for a very specific role that I (Bibi) wrote. Katalina has the honour of being the only voice on Folxlore that only voices one character! (And you'll find out why in season 2 ����)

Also joining us is Michelle Kelly! Michelle Kelly is an actor and voice actor based in Yorkshire. You can hear her as Niyathi in The Secret of St Kilda @thekilda and Charlotte in @TwoFlatEarthers. Follow her on Twitter @Michellicopter and see more of her work at michellekellyperformance.carrd.co Michelle was tasked with giving a voice to a character that's been with us since the pilots, and

And a season 1 reprise: @ChallahOutLoud! Hannah is a: voice actor (Big Finish/The Economist), narrative designer (Attensi/Epic Games), poet (Southbank Centre/Burning Eye Books), and enjoyer of things that come in pairs (socks, boobs). You can find her on Spotlight. We were so happy Hannah could return to voice some roles for us this season after her amazing performance in season 1!

[quoteablebooks]

Genre: Fiction, Adult, Contemporary Romance

Rating: 5 out of 5

Content Warning: Death of a parent, Grief, Sexual content, Cancer, Infidelity, Child abuse  

Summary:

A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters. Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast. They’re polar opposites. In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they’re living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer’s block. Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no-one will fall in love. Really.

*Opinions*

I know I say this at the start of almost every review, but this read was influenced by social media. However, I do think that almost everyone heard of Beach Read when it came out in 2020 so I can’t blame Tiktok and Youtube for this one too much. Beach Read follows January Andrews and Augustus Everett, two writers that are suffering from a number of crises in their lives as well as writer's block. There is also the added issue that January has always seen Gus, as he went by in college, as her writing rival because he dismissed her writing of women’s fiction and romance for his high-brow literature. One ill-fated book club meeting later and a deal is struck, they will both attempt to write a novel in the other’s genre. Whichever book sells first gets the bragging rights. However, living next door to her college rival, whom she spent one steamy frat party dance with while dealing with digging up all the secrets of her father’s past might be too much for even disillusioned January Andrews to handle. 

This was a five-star read for me and there were only a couple of hiccups in the story that I found. However, because I read this book three years after it was released, I had also been warned that there were some heavier topics in the novel that had such a light-hearted title. I can see how some people would have been taken off guard when they thought they were going into a light-hearted romance and were hit with a lot of not light-hearted issues. In the Author’s Note, Henry stated that she didn’t write a romance novel, so perhaps it was the marketing team that got it wrong. That being said, I really enjoyed that there was a lot going on in both January and Gus’s lives aside from their jobs and their evolving feelings for one another. It made them feel real and well-rounded. It also made some of their miscommunication make more sense than just ‘they won’t talk to each other’. 

I related to January a lot more than I thought I would. While I don’t have a box of gin and an agent breathing down my neck for a new novel, the way her thought process played out was very familiar. While my outlook on the world might not be as happy and optimistic as January’s, I think I still try to find the happy ending, or at least the satisfying ending, in all the stories I tell myself in my head. Gus, at times, was a little too brooding, but understandable once you learn more about his background and past relationships. He also had some great romantic lines in this novel. 

The one gripe I had was that there were numerous miscommunications that, while cleared up usually pretty quickly, seemed to fall into a predictable rhythm. Gus would grow distant, January would blow it out of proportion (relatable) and then she would get emotional and he would comfort her. As someone with anxiety, my mind is constantly telling me that everyone hates me and will never talk to me again, but reading about it multiple times in a novel does get a little old. Luckily, I liked the characters enough and cared about their arcs enough that it didn’t really dampen my enjoyment of the novel. One more time and it probably would have knocked the novel down a star rating. 

Overall, I think that this is an interesting novel that takes a look at love and how our perception of our loved ones can change over time. How relationships don’t have to be perfect to be right for you. This isn’t a perfect novel, but it was perfect for me at the time I was reading it so it is a five-star read. I would suggest checking out the content warnings before going in though, so you aren’t caught off guard. 

[toptshirt]

Birthday Gifts for Mom

Birthdays are a time to celebrate your mom and show her how much she means to you. To help make her day special, it’s essential to find a thoughtful and unique present that she will love. Here are some birthday gift ideas for mom that cater to her interests and lifestyle:

A. Hobby-Related Gifts – Birthday Gift Ideas for Mom Focusing on your mom’s hobbies and interests is a great way to find the perfect birthday present. By choosing a gift that aligns with her passions, you can show her that you truly understand and appreciate her.

Craft supplies: If your mom enjoys crafting, consider getting her high-quality supplies that she might not splurge on herself. This could include a deluxe set of paints, a new sewing machine, or a beautiful set of knitting needles.

Gardening tools: For a mom who loves spending time in her garden, gift her with durable and ergonomic gardening tools. Look for items like a well-crafted garden trowel, pruning shears, or even a stylish and functional gardening apron.

B. Subscription Boxes

Book clubs: If your mom is an avid reader, consider gifting her with a subscription to a book club. This will provide her with a new and exciting book to read each month, catering to her literary interests.

Beauty boxes: For the mom who loves to pamper herself, a beauty subscription box can be a great gift. Each month, she’ll receive a curated selection of skincare, makeup, or haircare products to try and enjoy.

C. Tech Gadgets – Birthday Gifts for Mom from Daughter Giving your mom a tech gadget as a birthday gift can be both practical and fun. As a daughter, it’s important to choose a gift that she will find useful and easy to use.

Smart speakers: Help your mom enjoy her favorite music or podcasts by gifting her a smart speaker. This device can also provide her with easy access to weather updates, news, and other useful information through voice commands.

Fitness trackers: Encourage your mom to maintain a healthy lifestyle with a fitness tracker. This device can monitor her daily activity levels, sleep patterns, and even heart rate, helping her stay on top of her fitness goals.

D. Tips for Choosing a Memorable Birthday Gift To choose the perfect birthday gift for your mom, keep her interests and preferences in mind. Think about her daily routine and how the gift could enrich her life. Don’t forget that a heartfelt, handwritten note or card can make any gift even more meaningful and special.

[darkmarkets]

The Horrors of Dark Marketing, part 5: The End?

So, an unforgiving publishing wasteland stretches out before us. The only tools we have to survive are a busted hammer and a damp chocolate biscuit. And, we're being mobbed by mutant duck salesmen. Wait, what? I think part one through four are starting to pile up on each other.

Anyway, we have a book published, and now we need to do the marketing to gather an audience for it. Why an audience? Because an audience buys books. The more books we sell the more we get to eat. And more eating means more writing. But an audience is not an easy thing to gather—especially not with the hollow promises of social media, reviews and book signings.

Where does that leave us? Shining Jonathan Franzen's shoes until our bloody knuckles win us a spot in the NY Times Book Review? Hunger striking in front Locus Magazine's corporate offices? Forking out gazillions of dollars for pastel-flavored banners on CuteOverload? Facebook ads?!

Relax. Writing is a lot like getting stabbed with thousands of tiny needles; it just hurts more if you tense up.

There are lots great ways out there for writer to build an audience for their work. Online forums, book clubs, reader sites like Goodreads are all fantastic places to connect with people who like to read what people like us like to write. But this takes time and patience. There is no oasis pool of willing readers sitting out there in the desert, waiting for us to drop our book on them. A good audience is built one reader at a time.

And the best way to do that is to read. In this way. an audience is a lot like a friend; the best way to get one is to be one.

This may seem overly simplistic and pollyanna, but break it down into steps and you'll see that it works. If there's no mega-millions marketing campaign involved, then active reading is the next best thing. Active readers are people who hang out on forums and sites populated by other people who read similar stuff. If there isn't a book club in their town that showcases their favorite genre, they start one. Active readers post reviews of books they like, join newsgroups and mailing lists, and comment on blogs. Because of all of this jumping around and being involved, active readers meet a lot of people who read what they like to write. 

Eventually, when that active reader's book finally comes out—kaboosh! Instant audience. And they didn't even need to use any death threats or blackmail! (Although, blackmail is pretty effective...)

Anyway, the point is, an audience is not bought. It's built. Maybe if we manage to sign a contract for a hyper mega advance at a major publishing house through our shiny high-profile agent, then cash spent will be proportional to readers gained—but at that point, a writer certainly doesn't have to worry about doing any of the work themselves, do they? Or at least, they damn well shouldn't. Big box publishers should provide some service to writers aside from guarding the gates of literary taste. Let them have their advertising Thunderdome of mass market paperbacks battling it out for readers' wallets.

The rest of us will just have to be happy rebuilding a new horror fiction civilization in this apocalyptic wasteland. One duck at a time.

Lorna D Keach

[whoslaurapalmer]

Tell me anything about Kit in college au

-she's a senior and a lit major, with a focus in literary studies

-her classmates think she keeps the most organized and neat notes of all time and they are half-right -- her notes are relatively in order (although she puts in a lot of additions with a lot of arrows pointing to things, and sometimes crosses things out because she only writes in pen, but she titles everything) and her handwriting is very nice but when she goes to study or work. everything gets everywhere. she can be found sitting at a table in a hallway corner surrounded by dozens of open books and notebooks and little pieces of paper from analysis ideas she didn't want to forget and wrote down on the most available surface (she always forgets she can write things down in the notes app on her phone. in fact she just forgets her phone in her dorm a lot) and her hair pulled back by a big claw clip that's missing like. four teeth and only still working through kit's sheer force of will because she's had the clip since she was 12 and likes it

bertrand, passing by: can i.....help you with anything kit: no. kit: but if you're going by the coffee shop, i could use a muffin, thank you.

-her favorite snack from the campus convenience store is a frighteningly cheap box of white and milk chocolates shaped like little dogs; expensive and dark chocolate gives her headaches

-she's in the radio club with haruki and bertrand. i have the feeling i can do something very exciting with this decision but i have not yet figured out just what

-she once fell asleep during class and found out she'd somehow still taken notes. she can't read them, but she took the notes.

[mjgauthor]

“Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!”

-David Farragut

Anger is a negative emotion, but it’s also a raw emotion that can be harnessed. Used. Maybe I sound a bit like Emperor Palpatine, trying to lure Luke Skywalker to the dark side, but I think sometimes in order to get a literary agent, you need more than some Jedi in you. You need a little bit of Sith, too.

Okay, so…what is a literary agent?

A literary agent, much like a sports agent, gets you or your work in front of the right people. If I was a basketball player trying to go pro, I’d want a sports agent who could get me into the gyms of teams where I might be successful. I’d want them to setup interviews for me. Give me advice to help my career.

The Utah Jazz are not going to invite regular people to shoot around in their gym. They’re certainly not going to sign random people off the street, either. The same is true of book publishers. Many of them will not consider any work sent to them unless it has been sent by a literary agent first.

For most people, you need a literary agent to have a chance to succeed.

Problem is, getting a literary agent is like trying to shoot a basketball through a hoop, but while you’re shooting, a man-eating lion is chasing you, your pants are on fire, and little gremlins keep untying your shoes. Some literary agencies get 30,000-50,000 pitches from writers a year. Some of those same agencies only take on a handful of new clients a year. And by a handful, I mean maybe four or five.

Do you see what I mean when I said you need a little Sith in you?

“Damn the torpedoes” indeed!

The Beginning

On December 18, 2011, I sent my first batch of query letters to literary agents. A query letter is essentially a pitch of your book. It includes a short, enticing message about the work (think the back of a book cover) and about 5-10 pages of your book. When I finally hit SEND on those first letters, my hands were shaking. My chest was tight. It was hard to breathe. But I felt an odd sense of accomplishment because I’d just joined the club. I was a real writer and I was sending my work to industry professionals.

Soon after, I got into the car to pick up lunch and I was thinking that I had a long wait ahead of me. Remember how some agencies get 30,000 queries a year? Well, less than an hour later, after eating a cheeseburger, I got a rejection and it was a form—a copy and paste rejection. I sat in the car thinking, “Well, that felt terrible. I hope I don’t get many more of these.”

Well, I got more. A lot more.

How many? About 500.

As the years went on, I wrote more books. I shelved more books. There were several nights when I decided it was time to give up on a book and it felt like someone died. My house was quiet. My wife didn’t know what to say and I didn’t either. People who aren’t writers, who aren’t artists, may not understand. For each book I wrote, I spent at least six months making it the best I could. I had revised them. Looked at them through every angle. Cut characters. Added scenes. Removed backstory. Focused on syntax, or diction, or my use of metaphors. I made them the absolute best I could.

Problem was, no literary agency wanted them.

“You are a Good Writer”

On November 8, 2012, almost a year after my first query letter, I received an email. It was from a literary agent. At that point, I’d had about 30 rejections, so I was braced for the worst. However, I froze when I read the agent’s words. “You are a good writer. Want to send along the book?”

The food in my mouth almost fell out. I gasped and stumbled out of my chair. I shouted and ran around the room. My dog started chasing me, barking, thinking I’d gone insane.

At that moment in my writing career, just being told I was a “good writer” was enough to make me smile and hug random strangers. I seriously felt like a million bucks. I had dollar bills in my bloodstream.

In professional boxing, there is a term called “puncher’s chance.” It means that anyone at any time has a shot in the ring. One punch and they can be victorious. Well, if I was truly “a good writer,” then one of my haymakers would surely drop this agent. And man, this agent was good. He’d sold books to all the major publishers. Made big deals. The books he represented were all amazing. His clients on Twitter raved about him.

I sent the full book to him and waited anxiously for him to reply.

I waited.

And I waited.

And really, that’s all I did, because this agent never replied, not even after I nudged him twice. It was legitimately one of the worst feelings of my life. I felt like someone close to me had died but I wasn’t even invited to the funeral.

The Switch

For the first five years of querying agents, I’d been writing middle grade fantasy. Some of the more popular middle grade projects include Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Fablehaven, and Wonder.

In that time, I’d received a grand total of five requests for material from literary agencies. That’s when an agent asks for more material, it could be a full (whole book) or a partial (first 50 pages). Well, three of those five requests never bothered responding to me. One was a rejection where the agent kept calling me “March.” But the fifth request was different. On January 26th, 2016, an agent that had the first 50 pages of my latest middle grade fantasy enjoyed what she’d seen and asked for the rest.

When that happened, I was thrilled.

I sent it on, hoping for the best. More than a month later, she replied, sending me paragraphs of things she liked and a couple telling me where it didn’t work. She rejected it, but she was open to me revising the project and sending it back. So, I spent three months revising it. I sent it to my readers to ensure it was quality. I read the whole book aloud to my wife, twice, to ensure every sentence was perfect. Then, once I felt it was the best I could make it, I sent it back to her.

Less than a month later, I got an email. Turns out, this agent had left the literary agency and now someone else had my book. A couple weeks after that, this new person sent me a rejection. Her reasons for rejecting were completely different from the prior agent and she hadn’t even read past page 20.

I remember leaving my college class and reading her email as I was walking to my car. And for the first time since I’d started querying, a rejection didn’t make me sad. No, it made me MAD.

As I was driving home, my jaw clenched, I decided to take all the frustration I felt and stuff it into my characters. When I got home, I was fuming. I immediately went into my office and started writing a powerful opening chapter to a new young adult project called DOWNFALL. As the words came out of me, something was different. This project had energy. Voice. Emotion. Not too much later, I sent off the chapter to my test readers to get their thoughts.

Their response? “Holy crap!”

“So good.”

“I can’t wait to read more!”

Their comments invigorated me. The switch to young adult from middle grade was so incredibly freeing. I could tell a longer story with more complex themes, a darker, bitter tone, and create my own swears (“birdshit” anyone?). I went all in on world-building. Spent more time devising this world than I ever had with any prior project.

I’m an emotional writer—every scene I write, I write to convey an emotion. I used my anger and stuffed it into Conrad—a boy desperate to rise above the Lows.

Then I started querying his story.

And literary agents took notice. At one point, I had almost 10 agents considering the full at the same time. I was ecstatic. Finally, I thought, it would happen. Then, one-by-one, the rejections came. Most were complimentary, many enjoyed the voice and characters, but all passed on DOWNFALL for various reasons.

I was in the gutter.

I tried reworking the opening pages. And for a bit, I was getting more bites. But those different pages ending up being a mistake—the request rate was MUCH lower than my first version. For some damn reason, the industry didn’t want this book, either. So, I stopped querying it. Stopped thinking about it.

I threw my hands in the air and walked away.

Finally, one day, as I was working on my newest project, SICO, I noticed I hadn’t moved DOWNFALL into my “Shelved Projects” folder. I move all the books I give up on into this folder. Once it goes in there, it never comes out. Well, as I was dragging DOWNFALL to the shelved folder, I got a feeling. Some of you aren’t religious, but I am. And something told me not to do it.

So, I opened my DOWNFALL folder and looked over the version I sent out originally that had garnered so much interest from agents. It was far superior to the newer version that had little luck. The voice was powerful, angry, bitter.

I decided to give DOWNFALL a second chance.

I did some research on literary agents, sent out a batch of query letters, then went back to working on SICO.

“I really loved Conrad and DOWNFALL”

On May 30th, 2019, I got an email requesting to see the full of DOWNFALL. At that point, I was used to getting requests for the book. I knew the drill. I sent off the requested materials and went back to work on SICO.

While I waited, I had a pretty good distraction, too. I was proud of how SICO was developing. It was even angrier than DOWNFALL and it had fuzz on the peaches, so to speak. While Malcolm was burning his heatblade into the hearts of his enemies, an agent was reading Conrad’s antics in DOWNFALL.

A few months later, this agent emailed me and I kind of stared at the words on my phone. I was in the middle of a call with my wife when I got the email, and I remember saying, “Oh.”

Then I proceeded to read the email to my wife. This agent said she “really loved Conrad and DOWNFALL” and wanted to see samples of my other projects. I was excited, it wasn’t an offer yet, but I knew I was close. I needed to seal the deal.

Soon after, once I had pitched this agent SICO, she asked me to send that whole project over to her.

Then, I waited.

“I’d love to see what publishing doors we can burn down together”

On March 27, 2020, I woke up to an email on my phone. An email that I had to rub the sleep from my eyes to believe.

The literary agent wanted to talk.

I hurriedly sent her off an email and we setup a time for a call. A few days later, we had an awesome conversation. This agent loved my work, was incredibly knowledgeable, and had multiple ideas on how to proceed with editors. She offered me representation, then recommended I take two weeks to decide and let other agents know.

After the call, I stepped into my backyard and stared at the trees, thinking how weird it was that life was going on as normal. I’d romanticized this moment of getting an offer so much, that I almost half-expected to have a Prince Ali moment, where I got to be in a big parade, and everyone would think I was awesome. Instead, I heard my neighbor’s dog bark, and I went back inside because it was a little chilly.

A few minutes later, I took this agent’s advice and let all the other agents with my material know.

The next two weeks were a blur. Agents who I’d been waiting months to hear back from were replying within the hour. They said they’d speed read. Others who only had my pitch were requesting. In an industry full of silence, suddenly someone invited the whole band into my living room. Despite all the interest, I really connected with the first agent.

And she really sealed the deal a few nights before the deadline when she sent me a sample of her editorial notes. I’d already contacted her references (i.e. clients) and they loved her, but the depth of her editorial prowess was incredible.

The next morning, even though I was still waiting to hear back from several agents, I told my family that my mind was made up. I was going to sign with Heather Cashman at Storm Literary.

Heather, before we setup the call, told me she wanted to “see what publishing doors we can burn down together.” Well, as far as I’m concerned, if Heather brings the matches, I’ll bring the gasoline.

Let’s light it up!

Note: This was posted on my website in 2020. My agent and I have since burned down a publishing door. My book, called DOWNFALL in this post, is now called SKY'S END. And it is getting published in Spring 2024 by Peachtree Teen. 😀