Sunday Soup - September 27

In The Soup This Week... Roselynn Cannes, Josie Kerr, Barbara Bretton and Jeffe Kennedy.

Soup Dish:  on my mind
✽So I need to apologize for the lack of Reading Until Dawn features over the past couple of weeks.  It turns out that authors sometimes have deadlines that are more important than mine, if you can imagine that.  With the con less than 2 weeks away (!!) I'll be wrapping up the features pretty soon, and we should see the conclusion of the two amazing stories in progress.  Stay tuned!

✽September is always a busy month around here.  It's back to school, and two of our family of four have birthdays, and we have end-of-summer projects to get completed.  Seattle has had a record-breaking warm and dry summer, and I've been very glad to see the return of cooler, damper weather.  It's great for reading.

✽I've been a little off social media lately -- what's the buzz?

What I'm reading
✽Fallen, by Roselynn Cannes, was a really good read. Set in a Greco-Roman alt-history world, I loved this militant heroine and the man who is a match for her.  I will caution that the author does not class this a romance, and it doesn't not have an HEA. There is a pretty compelling set-up for another book, and we may eventually get there. In the meantime, I'd just call it alt-history fiction, without anything magical or supernatural to put it into fantasy territory. Perhaps similar to some of Guy Gavriel Kay's less mystical novels. Because I didn't know exactly which genre to peg it into, I did wonder where it was going at times.  I tried to just be open, but it turns out I rely a lot on knowing what category something is in-- which is more a commentary on me and my ways than the book.

✽A Bad Bit Nice, by Josie Kerr. Full disclosure, I've been "internet friends" with this author for a ridiculous number of years, so I was REALLY excited when she published this, her first romance.  The heroine is a 40-something, tattooed IT professional with a foul mouth and a soft heart (I relate), and the hero... oh my, the hero.  He's everything you'd want in a hero.  Tender, gorgeous, creative, protective, understanding; he's the still-waters-run-deep type.  If you like Penny Watson, I think you might like this. If I have a criticism, I'd say there's a lot going on in this story, and maybe didn't need quite as many of those extrinsic plot points.  But I liked the characters and the romance quite a lot.

✽Shore Lights, by Barbara Bretton. An angsty contemporary with a TON of women's-fiction type family drama.  Not bad at all.  There is an HEA, but there is also a second book that starts with wedding planning.  I read the first chapter or so and kind of didn't want to know the rest. Perhaps a theme with me, I think I just didn't like the break in my comfy familiar pattern.

✽I have finally, FINALLY started reading Mark of the Tala, by Jeffe Kennedy and I seriously want to call in sick tomorrow so I can hide somewhere in a cushy chair and read it all the way to the end and then download the next book and read that one too.  I have read an enjoyed Kennedy's erotica for quite a while now but hadn't nabbed this one. I'm enjoying it all the more for the wait.

Sunday Soup - September 13

In The Soup This Week... Kelly Moran, Barbara Bretton, and KJ Charles

Soup Dish:  on my mind
✽I'm not sure this actually rated as a kerfuffle, but a woman on Twitter sent around the text of an emailed review request she got, that just really made me angry.  KJ Charles had a great response. I cannot believe the author in question had the nerve to tell bloggers that including a line similar to "I received a free book from the author in exchange for an honest review" is a "turn-off" and shouldn't be done.  Although, strictly speaking, since she was only offering the book for a positive review, I guess you could say that "in exchange for an honest review" is not actually true.  Hmmph.  If there are any newbie blogger/reviewers out there reading, please never fall for bullshit like that, and please refuse any review request that is framed that way.

✽I really enjoyed this article over at Heroes and Heartbreakers by Kelly Moran, about how characters behave as therapists to other characters sometimes, or how authors and readers might also do that.  It's an interesting take on how to execute a character arc. Makes me want to pick up something that she's written.

✽I'm incredibly tempted to try to read my way through all 101 of these Best Romances.  Hmmm.  Very very tempted.

✽Also, National Book Festival happened in Washington DC, and I completely missed it.  Apparently this is the first year they've had anything about romance.  It sounds like they had a lot of interesting bookish things across the board. And Buzz Aldrin! wow!  

What I'm reading
✽Over the last two weeks, the book that consumed most of my reading attention was The Desert and the Blade, by SM Stirling. It's part of a long-running post-apocalyptic fantasy series.  The series itself kind of waxes and wanes and meanders quite a bit, but every September I look forward to a little visit to this world.  This particular book grabbed me pretty hard and I might actually do a full review.

✽I finished the Kim Harrison short story I mentioned, "Two Ghosts for Sister Rachel" from the Holidays are Hell anthology, which was quite nice.  It was interesting to see Rachel as a teenager, still struggling with the debilitating illness which informed her character and character arc throughout the series.

✽Currently reading Barbara Bretton's Shore Lights, which I picked up as an Amazon freebie (still free as of this writing).  Very emotional, and equal parts "women's fiction" to the romance: the mother-daughter relationship features as prominently as the romance, all set to the background of two close-knit, colorful, gossipy extended families. Enjoying it so far, but it's way up there on the divorcee-where-did-I-go-wrong angst scale.

That's it for today -- what are you reading? anything exceptional?