PostSecret on CBS Sunday Morning
Jun. 8th, 2025 12:03 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
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Just Stab Me Now
Jun. 7th, 2025 05:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelli posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
booksJust Stab Me Now by Jill Bearup
A comic tale of a writer taking off into fantasy romance for a break. And to escape her frustrating job.
Her notion of a heroine hits the actual heroine, who is middle-aged, a widow, and the mother of two children trying desperately to protect them.
( Read more... )
A comic tale of a writer taking off into fantasy romance for a break. And to escape her frustrating job.
Her notion of a heroine hits the actual heroine, who is middle-aged, a widow, and the mother of two children trying desperately to protect them.
( Read more... )
Seasons of Fandom- Now Open To New Members!
Jun. 6th, 2025 02:32 pmlaurapalmer posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_community_promo
Introducing
seasons_of_fandom, an interactive fandom challenge community/landcomm that allows you to create work for any fandom you can think of! We were previously lands_of_magic, a name we ran under for over 10 years, but we figured we needed a facelift and a name change since it has been a long time since we had only focused on fantasy fandoms. We welcome TV, movies, books, games, music, anime, celebrities... almost anything goes! We have all kinds of challenges- writing, graphics, games, and some challenges that are miscellaneous fanworks! This round we'll also be trying out monthly drabble and icon contests.We have four wonderful teams- The Spring Court, The Summer Court, The Autumn Court, and The Winter Court.
Sign-ups for new members start today, and though our first round under our new name doesn't start until August, we will have two challenges open before the round officially starts. To sign up, all you have to do is read the rules and fill out the survey here.
We look forward to seeing you there!
2025 52 Card Project: Week 22: Tree Planting
Jun. 6th, 2025 12:54 pmpegkerrMy cousin Jill's Year of Adventure suggestion for me was to take a couple of hours volunteering together to plant some trees with Great River Greening. So, we signed up for a shift, and last Saturday on a beautiful sunny day, the two of us, along with her partner Jack, met in a park in Brooklyn Center.
The volunteer coordinators had the process down to a well-rehearsed presentation, and we three ended up planting three trees in all in the two-hour time slot. The first two were straightforward enough, and third, a Catalpa, had evidently been in the pot too long. The tap root had pushed through the hole in the bottom and grown large enough to embed itself into the plastic. It took a twenty minutes struggle to get it out of the pot.
It was hot by the time we finished up, and I'd exerted myself enough during the struggle with the stubborn tree to be glad to drink down the water I'd brought and sit in the shade a bit. But we enjoyed ourselves, and there are now three new trees in a park in Brooklyn Center, thanks to our efforts. Afterward, we drove to Jack and Jill's house for lunch, where I admired their extensive gardens and patio under the beautiful spreading oak tree.
A day well spent in the outdoors.
Image description: Lower center: head and shoulders of two women and a man, wearing hats, smiling at the camera. Center: The same three people are planting a tree. Overlaid over the tree are the words "Great River Greening."
Tree Planting
Click on the links to see the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.
The volunteer coordinators had the process down to a well-rehearsed presentation, and we three ended up planting three trees in all in the two-hour time slot. The first two were straightforward enough, and third, a Catalpa, had evidently been in the pot too long. The tap root had pushed through the hole in the bottom and grown large enough to embed itself into the plastic. It took a twenty minutes struggle to get it out of the pot.
It was hot by the time we finished up, and I'd exerted myself enough during the struggle with the stubborn tree to be glad to drink down the water I'd brought and sit in the shade a bit. But we enjoyed ourselves, and there are now three new trees in a park in Brooklyn Center, thanks to our efforts. Afterward, we drove to Jack and Jill's house for lunch, where I admired their extensive gardens and patio under the beautiful spreading oak tree.
A day well spent in the outdoors.
Image description: Lower center: head and shoulders of two women and a man, wearing hats, smiling at the camera. Center: The same three people are planting a tree. Overlaid over the tree are the words "Great River Greening."
Click on the links to see the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.
"Luck in the Shadows" by Lynn Flewelling
Jun. 4th, 2025 06:24 pmrocky41_7 posting in booksI really hate to give up on a book, but sometimes, there are too many other tempting things on the horizon to keep ploughing through an active read in the hopes it gets better. Today I put aside Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewelling. While I would have liked to have gone all the way to the end before making a judgement, there just over 9 hours still to go on the audiobook and the book has simply not given me enough to power through that.
At nearly 9 hours in (about halfway) my overall feeling towards this book is indifference. Towards the plot, towards the characters, towards the setting. It's very generic fantasy and just doesn't give much to bite onto outside of that. The first half of the plot has some fun adventure elements, but when the mentor-figure, Seregil, becomes incapacitated partway through, the youthful protagonist Alec is simply not enough to carry the story. The second half of the story is more political intrigue, and I can't help but compare it to The Traitor Baru Cormorant which I'm also currently reading, and that comparison does Luck in the Shadows no favors.
Seregil and Alec's escapades are fun, and it's interesting to see the creative ways they go about their tasks, but for me it's not enough to make up for the lackluster plot and detailed but unremarkable worldbuilding.
Seregil and Alec's escapades are fun, and it's interesting to see the creative ways they go about their tasks, but for me it's not enough to make up for the lackluster plot and detailed but unremarkable worldbuilding.
There's a disappointing dearth of women in the story, although one of the fantasy kingdoms in which the second half of the story takes place has been ruled by a succession of queens for centuries. There is some casual queerness in the story which I liked, but when I looked for more reviews on this to help me decide if it was worth pressing on, I learned (SPOILER) that Alec and Seregil become a couple later on. Given that Alec is barely sixteen at the start of this book, and Seregil is a middle-aged man, I'm just not here for it.
This is the first book of a series (the Nightrunner series), but my general feeling on series is that it's a cop-out to rely on later books to make up for weaknesses in earlier books. Particularly here, where each book gets longer, the author is asking for me to take a lot on trust that this story will get better with time.
I really wanted to like this book, as I really want to like all fantasy novels, but it's just not worth the amount of time investment needed. Also, in general, not looking for stories about adults falling in love with teenagers. Disappointing, but there are other things to move on to.
Catburglar of the Constellations
Jun. 2nd, 2025 10:55 pmmarycatelli posting in booksCatburglar of the Constellations by John C. Wright
Starquest book 3. Spoilers for the earlier books ahead.
( Read more... )
Starquest book 3. Spoilers for the earlier books ahead.
( Read more... )
"The Twilight Zone" by Nona Fernandez
Jun. 2nd, 2025 05:53 pmrocky41_7 posting in booksLast night I finished The Twilight Zone by Nona Fernandez, book #9 from the "Women in Translation" rec list. This book was translated from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer.
The Twilight Zone is a nonfiction book, part memoir, part investigative journalism piece by Fernandez, first published in 2016. It concerns Fernandez's study of and memories of growing up under the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. The author is haunted by the traumas of the regime, both those she experienced firsthand and those she heard about from others, and the book in some ways feels like an exercise in simply trying to reconcile those feelings.
Fernandez's book is of course very specific to the Chilean experience, and yet core parts of her incisive commentary about both the absurdity and the cruelty of autocracies rings true around the world. The exercises the regime goes through in its constant quest for self-preservation are both ridiculous and brutal, feelings Fernandez captures in her title. The surrealist sci-fi hit show of the 70s fits very well as a metaphor for the often-flailing yet eminently dangerous police state.
Fernandez does an excellent job of using her prose to say things not neatly spelled out in words. I was reminded of reading The Things They Carried in high school, and how revelatory it seemed to me at the time how the author could use the style of prose to suggest a character's mental disarrangement without simply saying he was deranged. Fernandez's prose stood out to me in a similar way—how she uses the structure of her words to capture the feelings at play.
Equally compelling is the obviously copious amounts of research Fernandez put into her work. She portrays herself as a woman consumed by a quest to find answers about this regime, and it comes across in her work. Names, dates, places, timelines — Fernandez has clearly put in the leg work to piece together the final days of the highlighted victims of the regime as much as can be done.
However, the book never comes across like a textbook. Fernandez ably weaves her research into a compelling narrative. Neither does she ever seek to blur the line between the facts and her imagination—she keeps a clean line between what she knows and what she wonders, or imagines. Nevertheless, the questions and suppositions that populate Fernandez's mind feel regrettably natural for anyone in the aggravating circumstances of a mendacious autocracy. She does an excellent job of showing how crazy-making it is to live under such a government, where you are constantly being lied to in direct contradiction of visible facts, and yet there seems to be nothing you can do but either accept the truth or taste the knuckles of the regime.
I really enjoyed this read. It breezed by and I can absolutely see what a national treasure Fernandez is as a writer! I would love to see if more of her work has been translated into English; she has a wonderful voice.
Well, this is mortifying
Jun. 2nd, 2025 10:21 ampegkerrAs I posted last Saturday, I have been working to assemble an anthology to submit to a contest with the Minnesota Authors Project (among others). I hadn't assembled as many authors as I had hoped, but we put together a nice little ebook, and I was proud of it and excited to enter the contest. We finished pulling it all together by 6 pm the day before the final deadline, and I went to the contest portal to submit it.
And at the last minute, after I had spent a good 40 minutes working my way through the portal and was just about to push the 'Submit' button, a Terms and Agreement page popped up that turned all my hopes to ashes.
The book had to be already published.
Now, I had inquired about that. The person I'd gotten the flyer from wasn't sure, and the website didn't mention anything about that requirement.
I had arranged with a letter of agreement with my authors specifically stating my understanding that this WASN'T a promise of publication, but that if we won the contest, we could make decisions about publishing at that time.
So, extremely mortified, I had to go back to the authors and explain. I'd done my due diligence, I had wondered about that very question, checked the website and the flyer, and I'd still gotten it wrong.
Some of the contributors wondered whether we could quickly self-publish, throwing it up on Amazon, of course the very reasonable expectation requested was that I would then promote and distribute it. I had very little time to make the decision, and I never heard back from one of my contributors, and I was badly rattled by making such a mistake. Maybe it was a lack of courage, but I just couldn't make the promise. I don't have my own website or any kind of mailing list. I didn't think I could (after letting my contributors down so badly) volunteer to do something that would let them down even further.
So we missed the contest deadline.
I am going to try to find more contributors and figure out a way to publish it. And hope that we can enter it in the contest next year.
I feel so very mortified and foolish. At least two of the contributors wrote new material for this project, and I feel keenly that I let them down. Professional embarrassment is the WORST.
But! This is the year of adventure, and that means trying new things. And sometimes, when you try new things, you fail. And that (I am telling myself firmly) is okay.
Here is the beautiful cover that Bruce Bethke designed for the book we had planned, and I hope eventually it will come to fruition.
And at the last minute, after I had spent a good 40 minutes working my way through the portal and was just about to push the 'Submit' button, a Terms and Agreement page popped up that turned all my hopes to ashes.
The book had to be already published.
Now, I had inquired about that. The person I'd gotten the flyer from wasn't sure, and the website didn't mention anything about that requirement.
I had arranged with a letter of agreement with my authors specifically stating my understanding that this WASN'T a promise of publication, but that if we won the contest, we could make decisions about publishing at that time.
So, extremely mortified, I had to go back to the authors and explain. I'd done my due diligence, I had wondered about that very question, checked the website and the flyer, and I'd still gotten it wrong.
Some of the contributors wondered whether we could quickly self-publish, throwing it up on Amazon, of course the very reasonable expectation requested was that I would then promote and distribute it. I had very little time to make the decision, and I never heard back from one of my contributors, and I was badly rattled by making such a mistake. Maybe it was a lack of courage, but I just couldn't make the promise. I don't have my own website or any kind of mailing list. I didn't think I could (after letting my contributors down so badly) volunteer to do something that would let them down even further.
So we missed the contest deadline.
I am going to try to find more contributors and figure out a way to publish it. And hope that we can enter it in the contest next year.
I feel so very mortified and foolish. At least two of the contributors wrote new material for this project, and I feel keenly that I let them down. Professional embarrassment is the WORST.
But! This is the year of adventure, and that means trying new things. And sometimes, when you try new things, you fail. And that (I am telling myself firmly) is okay.
Here is the beautiful cover that Bruce Bethke designed for the book we had planned, and I hope eventually it will come to fruition.
