Author: Marion Deeds

Queen of No Tomorrows: Atmospheric writing in a story of LA Noir-weird

Queen of No Tomorrows by Matt Maxwell

Matt Maxwell’s 109-page novel (I’d call it a novella), Queen of No Tomorrows (2018), mixes American tentacular-weird with LA Noir, flavoring the story with bits of pot-smoke-fueled punk imagery of the 1980s. It is a story that thrives on shadows.

Cait MacReady works as a book restorer for the Los Angeles Public Library. On the side, she locates rare, exotic occult volumes for discerning customers… or, when the books are unavailable, creates them herself. She is an expert forger,

WWWednesday: March 27, 2019

Wow, that month went by fast.

Awards:

Gabriela Damian Miravete has won the James Tiptree award for 2018 with They Will Dream in the Garden.

The Horror Writers Association awarded their Specialty Press award to Raw Dog Screaming Press. There’s an evocative name.

Conventions:

(Re)Generation Who 5, a Doctor Who convention scheduled for this upcoming weekend, has cancelled abruptly. (Thanks to File 770 for this item.)

Giveaway:

This column’s pictures are from an author event I attended.

March 27th, 2019. Marion Deeds | Giveaway!, World Wide Wednesday | 9 comments |

Charmcaster: Politics and family get more complicated in this one

Charmcaster by Sebastien de Castell

“But when an Argosi encounters something new — something that should not exist and yet could alter the course of history — we are compelled to paint a new card: a discordance.”

Charmcaster (2018) is the third book in Sebastien de Castell’s SPELLSLINGER series. In it, we see another nation in Kellen’s world, a different form of magic adopts Kellen, and the political situation convolutes in even more dangerous ways.

WWWednesday: March 20, 2019

In honor of the first day of spring, here is a video of spring thaw in Yosemite, CA. (Some may find the guitar music annoying.) It’s more of a photo album of the park and the valley, but still. Happy spring for those of us in the northern hemisphere. southern hemisphere folks, happy autumn. (Is that right?)

Awards:

Of course there is an award for best vampire fiction; did you ever doubt it? The Lord Ruthven Awards for 2019 were announced, with Theodora Goss’s European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman winning for best work of long fiction.

March 20th, 2019. Marion Deeds | Giveaway!, World Wide Wednesday | 19 comments |

Shadowblack: A solid, entertaining second book in the SPELLSLINGER series

Shadowblack by Sebastien de Castell

“You think you’ve had it bad? I’ve been on the run for ten years. Bounty hunters, hextrackers war mages…” He shook his head. “You steal one too many sacred books and all of sudden you’re an outcast.”

Shadowblack (2018), by Sebastien de Castell, picks up shortly after Book One, Spellslinger. Kellen, the exiled son of a Jan’Tep prince, is traveling with an Argosi named Ferius Parfax and a squirrel cat named Reichis,

March 19th, 2019. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Sebastien De-Castell | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

Spellslinger: A YA novel full of magic, cons, and card tricks

Spellslinger by Sebastien de Castell

Spellslinger sounded right up my street — a young adult novel full of magic, cons, card tricks and a plucky underdog. If it didn’t live up to my high hopes I blame the misleading words emblazoned on the back cover that read “Magic Is A Con” — an enticing promise that isn’t delivered because, well, magic turns out not to be a con. Nevertheless, while it wasn’t the story I expected, Spellslinger is an enjoyable romp in its own way.

The Winter of the Witch: Beautiful and powerful

The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden

Medieval Russia comes to life in Katherine Arden’s WINTERNIGHT TRILOGY, which began in Lesnaya Zemlya, a small village in northern Rus’ in The Bear and the Nightingale and continued in The Girl in the Tower. Vasilisa (Vasya) is a young woman with the rare ability to see and speak with the natural spirits or chyerti of the hearth, stables,

March 14th, 2019. Tadiana Jones, Bill Capossere and Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | Katherine Arden | SFF Reviews | 15 comments |

WWWednesday: March 13, 2019

Books and Writing:

Joshua Bilmes founded Jabberwocky Literary Agency. In this interview with the Odyssey Writing Workshop, he provides some valuable information on the role of agents and dispenses writing advice.

Nerds of a Feather spends a few minutes with writer and editor Catherine Lundoff, who shares some book recommendations.

According to the U.K. Guardian, the release of Margaret Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale will be a media event, complete with a live broadcast.

D.W. Pasulka has a new book coming out.

March 13th, 2019. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |

Unholy Land: A twisty, mentally challenging story

Unholy Land by Lavie Tidhar

I absolutely loved Lavie Tidhar’s Central Station (and was not alone in that), and while his newest, Unholy Land (2018), didn’t blow me away quite to the same extent, it kept me on the couch in “don’t talk to me I’m reading” and “uh-huh, uh-huh, ya don’t say, uh-huh” mode all afternoon while my family just rolled their eyes and gave up, as they know to do when all the signs of being engrossed in a great book are manifest (luckily,

The City in the Middle of the Night: On my “Best of 2019” list

The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders

The second novel by Charlie Jane Anders, The City in the Middle of the Night (2019), surprised me. Having read her fantastical debut novel All the Birds in the Sky, and her sociological science fiction novella Rock Manning Goes for Broke, I was not expecting a story set on an exo-planet and a society vastly distant from Earth in time and space.

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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