Author: Ruth Arnell

I have an almost three year old son.  He is very good at being almost three years old, which means I spend a lot of time telling him to get his finger out of his nose, and to stop hitting. This is the constant background to whatever else I am doing, including reading books.  My latest read featured a guy who liked to wander around on the crenelations of old castles while drunk, and a woman who was known to cut off peoples’ hands when she got angry.  Put those things together, and I start wondering: What would Conan do?

Beth asked me a question this week, so I’m going to post her email here and see if my faithful readers have an idea of how to answer this:

Have you noticed this sudden flood of books in fantasy that are classics rewritten with paranormal creatures? Like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (and now apparently Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and Mansfield Park and Mummies). Apparently it’s being done to Mark Twain’s work as well, and goodness only knows who else. Some of them are rewrites and similar,

The other night I was getting ready to go to bed and was struck by the urge to clean off my bedside table.  By the time I was done, among the five pairs of earrings (that end up on the table because I forget to take them out until I am in bed, and then don’t want to get out of bed to put them away) a tube of cortisone cream from my rather disastrous discovery last month that I am extremely allergic to lavender oil,  five pens (four of them purple, two without lids) and three notebooks for jotting down dissertation ideas as they come to me as I am drifting off to sleep,

First off, congratulations to Melanie Simmons who won our giveaway of Karen Chance’s Midnight Daughter. Contact SB Frank to claim your book!

I’ve read some reviews lately (on other sites, to which I will not drive traffic by linking) that purport that fantasy books — and genre literature in general — lack merit for adults. They are merely a form of escapism for children, and like all childish things should be put away when one enters adulthood. As almost all the people on this site that I know any demographic data about are adults,