(be sure to wear some flowers in your hair………I couldn’t help it. *grin*)

28th ANNUAL ROMANCE WRITERS OF AMERICA NATIONAL CONFERENCE

Romancing San Francisco

The lovely ladies at Rambling on Romance, Kristie and Katie, have announced their plans to journey to the center of the universe San Francisco for the RWA Conference, along with fellow booklover bloggers Little Alys, Jane from Dear Author, Wendy the Super Librarian, Tracy, Sula, LisaBea, Rosie, and Amy.

I’ll be there Monday, July 28 through Sunday, August 3.

SCHEDULE:

Monday: Arrive in the evening. Check into hotel.

Tuesday: Sight-see? Network? Spend the day psyching myself up in front of the bathroom mirror in my hotel room?

Wednesday: First Annual Historical Romance Writers Conference presented by the Beau Monde and Hearts Through History RWA chapters. Looking forward to seeing fellow aspiring author Keira Soleore there!

A Full Day of Workshops spanning Ancient Rome to Victorian England, Breakfast, Luncheon, High Tea, Souvenirs and Silent Auction.

Dancing, Gaming and Fine Food at our Evening Soiree, at which the winners of the Royal Ascot will be announced.

Keynote Speaker: Jo Ann Ferguson (aka Jocelyn Kelley) On “The Quest for the Holy Sale.”

I’ll be stealing away from the conference for lunch with regency author Jenna Petersen.

In the evening is the fundraiser “Readers for Life” LITERARY BOOKSIGNING, the event I’m most looking forward to, with 450 romance authors. Mr. Wonderful has been warned that I plan to spend a lot of his money in order to drool on meet my favorite authors. I’m especially looking forward to meeting, should they attend, Nalini Singh, Loretta Chase, Linda Winstead Jones, Candice Hern, Lori Handeland, Eloisa James, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Jessica Andersen, J.R. Ward, Kresley Cole, Joanna Bourne, Meredith Duran, and… well really everyone. Meljean Brook (who I HEART) will be at the Berkley signing on Friday (details???) and Marta Acosta is planning to hang out in the bar.

Thursday: Keynote Luncheon, featuring Regency author Victoria Alexander and workshops

Friday: Workshops. Awards Luncheon, featuring Connie Brockway.

Saturday: Workshops. 2008 RITA and Golden Heart Awards Ceremony (WHAT DO I WEAR????).

Sunday: Networking? Fly home in the evening.

ARE YOU GOING?

Title: Kushiel’s Dart
Author: Jacqueline Carey
Series: Kushiel’s Legacy, Book 1
Publication Info: Doherty, Tom Associates, LLC
Genre: Fantasy

Packed with Machiavellian intrigue and BDSM, Jacqueline Carey creates a fascinating adventure unlike anything I’ve read before. The world building is complex and layered: set in a world resembling Renaissance Europe, with detailed religious beliefs, an impressive cast of characters, and political and sexual machinations that will make your head spin. Her lyrical writing style is smooth and authoritative, like a storyteller spinning her craft before the fire.

Ms. Carey came to visit us here in Sea-town for a reading and book signing of Kushiel’s Mercy, book 6 in the Kushiel’s Legacy series, which you can read about here.

A brief overview of a complex plot that spans 912 pages:

Part I: Training to Spy and Whore

As a child the heroine Phedre is sold into indentured servitude by her parents to the Night Court of the Blooming Flowers. She is raised in Cereus House, one of the thirteen courtesan houses of the Night Court, and at age ten the courtier and spy-master Anafiel Delaunay buys her mark. He recognizes that the red dot in her eye is not a defect, but a mark of the god Kushiel. She is the only living Anguisette, cursed to feel pleasure in pain. Delaunay trains her to be a spy and a courtesan, along with her fellow pupil Alcuin. At age 16 her virgin price is sold to an enemy of Delaunay’s, and she begins her career of pain and pleasure, using her Talents to procure information for Delaunay. After each assignation she is awarded a patron gift, which she uses to complete a tattoo from her tail bone to the top of her spine. When the tattoo is finished her indentured servitude will be over.

Part II: Slavery in Skaldia

After a huge betrayal, Phedre and her soldier-bodyguard Joscelin are sold as slaves to the Skaldi tribes of the north. Phedre uses her Talents to survive and spy, first on the small tribe and then on the new leader of the Skaldi, where she uncovers a plot for the Skaldi armies to overtake her homeland. She and Joscelin escape to warn the queen of treason and war.

Part III: Mission to Alba

Phedre, Joscelin, and Phedre’s childhood friend Hyacinth travel west to Alba to carry a message to the exiled king. On the way they are waylaid by a noble, and Phedre uses her Talents to persuade him to let them pass. In Alba, Phedre uses her Talents to persuade the twin rulers of the Dalriada to help the exiled king to reclaim his throne. Then they all sail back to Terre D’Ange to fight back the Skaldi.

Mythology: Love As Thou Wilt

Religion is very important to the citizens of Terre D’Ange and courtesans are an integral part of worshiping. The prophet Elua wandered the land with his Companions, making friends with nature and loving as he willed. Each of the Companions are worshiped for the way in which they followed Elua, with Namaah (a Mary Magdelene-like figure) ruling sensual love, Kushiel ruling pain, and Cassiel serving and protecting. At age 16, Phedre dedicates her life to serving Namaah. This means that when she has sex, paid or not, she is worshiping her gods. This takes love out of the equation and replaces it with religious zeal; a move I am personally uncomfortable with, but intellectually I accept it as an important part of her belief structure. Phedre sleeps with anyone and everyone: man, woman, slave lord, king. Only twice in her life does she ever choose her partner of her own free will. Though she singles out these choices as important events, she ultimately decides to continue to honor her vows to Namaah with multiple partners. The romantic in me was dissatisfied with this decision, even though I understand that she would be betraying herself to choose otherwise.

I personally wanted her to give up her whoring ways and live happily ever after with Joscelin. But this isn’t a romance novel.

Kushiel’s Dart pushed me out of my comfort zone, which is good for me. I grow too set in my ways. My reaction to the book was very similar to Ana of Book Smugglers, as opposed to Thea who chose it for her Desert Island Keeper. How are you, dear reader, to know what your reaction will be? Only by trying it for yourself. Those who like it, LOVE it. Ms. Carey is a new standard in the fantasy genre. Aspiring writers should take notes on the unique style of storytelling. Readers should challenge themselves to try something new.

Who knows? Maybe the next tattoo on Ms. Carey’s fan photo gallery will be yours.

My birthday is in less than two weeks. (JULY 15th!!!)

1. Mr. Wonderful in a kilt.
2. ARC of CRY WOLF by Patricia Briggs
3. ARC of BONE CROSSED by Patricia Briggs
4. ARC of HOSTAGE TO PLEASURE by Nalini Singh
5. ARC of DEMON BOUND by Meljean Brook
6. ARC of MAGIC STRIKES by Ilona Andrews
7. Complete collection of ELF QUEST graphic novels
8. To attend a costume ball.
9. Someone else to clean my apartment.
10. To go on the Pike Place Market Ghost Tour and the Seattle Underground Tour.
11. Help designing my next tattoo.
12. Shopping spree at Powell’s City of Books.
13. A baby. (Y’all saw that one coming!)

Where do you shop for the majority of your books? Small independent bookstores? Or the behemoths: Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon? Are you an online shopper or an in-person browser?

Not only do I love browsing, but I love shopping locally. Mr. Wonderful and I live in a neighborhood of Seattle that is stubbornly independent. Residents sport “FREE BALLARD” bumper stickers and we like to say “If you can’t find it in Ballard, you don’t need it.” There are three small independently-owned bookstores, and not a single behemoth. At least three times a week you can find me walking from a bookstore, bag jam-packed full of goodies.

Recently two of the bookstores have put up large posters in their windows from IndieBound, a non-profit group that supports buying local and supporting small businesses. The poster proclaims: “EAT. SLEEP. READ. Support Independents in Your Community.” This is the IndieBound declaration of intent:

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for individuals to denounce the corporate bands which threaten to homogenize our cities and our souls, we must celebrate the powers that make us unique and declare the causes which compel us to remain independent.

As a former city planner, Smart Growth devotee, and lover of small urban town centers, I support the idea behind this declaration. Here’s the BUT: I declare I’ll support the small bookstores when they support me. This is slightly ridiculous statement on my part given the amount of money I spend at these small bookstores each week. But the intent behind the statement is genuine. My genre is ROMANCE. My love is ROMANCE. My career is ROMANCE. Do these small bookstores support romance? NO! Do they carry the latest releases in the romance genre? NO! Do they know anything about the genre when I ask for help? NO!

How my local Indy supports the romance genre

Thus does the IndieBound movement lose my vote, and I vote with my pocketbook. According to the Romance Writers of America, 26.4% of all books sold are romance. So why don’t independent bookstores stock new ones? To be fair, two of the bookstores in question sell used romance novels, but they stock new books in other genres. Authors only get $0.50 of each NEW book sold, and I’d like to support them as much as I am able. (I hope someday fans will support me by buying my new books!) I’m forced to go to Fred Meyer or the drugstore to find new releases in my neighborhood. (On a side note, Fred Meyer recently has stocked the entire back list for Katie MacAlister, Julia Quinn and one or two others, rather than the newest releases from a variety of authors. I love Katie and Julia, but I’ve read their backlists already!)

One of the bookstores treats their used romances nicely, even if the owners who work there know nothing about what’s on the shelves in the romance section. The other bookstore doesn’t even give romance novels their own shelves (see photo). Books spill out of the bookcase, across the floor. An unalphabatized mess. Their loss. If they knew what they had, I wouldn’t have found THE WINDFLOWER for $1.50. The out-of-print classic is going for over $20 on Amazon.

So Indies, I heart you, I want to support you, but our relationship isn’t working out. You force me to get my needs met elsewhere. I don’t know if we can continue like this, and I can say, unequivicolly: it’s not me. It’s YOU.

Dorchester Publishing is running a contest that’s right up my alley: For the LIVE THE ROMANCE contest, fans are asked to create costumes of one of their favorite characters from a Dorchester novel, snap a photo, and email it to cnelson@dorchesterpub.com. Costumes will be judged in four categories: Best Historical, Best Paranormal, Most Romantic and Most Creative.

Man, woman, child—it doesn’t matter. You could be Egan MacDonald from HIGHLANDER EVER AFTER fighting in his plaid and paint or Rain Tarien Soul from KING OF SWORD AND SKY, shape-shifting and brandishing your deadly blade. Perhaps you’d like to go shoe shopping and mystery solving like the indomitable Maddie Springer from ALIBI IN HIGH HEELS. If the future is your bag, dash across the Northern Waste as Raina Bowen in DRIVEN. The sky is the limit!

How frekin’ awesome is that??? Authors Liz Maverick and Marianne Mancusi made a video of their most infamous famous costumes from conventions and book signings to introduce the contest. Winners receive cash prizes and copies of authors books. Unfortunately I didn’t see a deadline on the website. Help?

My mind is churning out ideas. What character would you impersonate?

Just for fun, courtship humor from the Web. Our romance heroes are much more in touch with their feelings, aren’t they?

1. HER DIARY

Saturday night I thought he was acting weird. We had made plans to meet at a bar to have a drink. I was shopping with my friends all day long, so I thought he was upset at the fact that I was a bit late, but he made no comment.

Conversation wasn’t flowing so I suggested that we go somewhere quiet so we could talk, he agreed but he kept quiet and absent. I asked him what was wrong he said nothing. I asked him if it was my fault that he was upset. He said it had nothing to do with me and not to worry.

On the way home I told him that I loved him, he simply smiled and kept driving. I can’t explain his behavior; I don’t know why he didn’t say I love you too.

When we got home I felt as if had lost him, as if he wanted nothing to do with me anymore. He just sat there and watched T.V. he seemed distant and absent.

Finally I decided to go to bed, about 10 minutes later he came to bed and to my surprise he responded to my caress and we made love, but I still felt that he was distracted and his thoughts where somewhere else. I decided that I could not take it anymore so I decided to confront him with the situation but he had fallen asleep. I started crying and cried until I too fell asleep. I don’t know what to do, I’m almost sure that his thoughts are with someone else. My life is a disaster.

2 - HIS DIARY

Today the Lakers lost, but at least I got laid.

I’m copying Kristie (J), cuz I’m procrastinating like mad.

Here is the Top 100 Most Popular Books list on LibraryThing.

• Bold what you own.
• italicize what you’ve read.
• Star what you liked. *
• Star multiple times what you loved! ***

1. Harry Potter and the sorcerer’s stone by J.K. Rowling ***
2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) by J.K. Rowling ***
3. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book 5) by J.K. Rowling ***
4. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Book 2) by J.K. Rowling ***
5. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) by J.K. Rowling ***
6. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4) by J.K. Rowling ***
7. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown *
8. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien *
9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) by J.K. Rowling ***
10. 1984 by George Orwell
11. Pride and Prejudice (Bantam Classics) by Jane Austen (I saw the movie. Does that count?)
12. The catcher in the rye by J.D. Salinger
13. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
14. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
15. The lord of the rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
16. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini *
17. Jane Eyre (Penguin Classics) by Charlotte Bronte
18. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
19. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
20. Animal Farm by George Orwell
21. Angels & demons by Dan Brown *
22. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
23. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
24. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Oprah’s Book Club) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
25. The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, Part 1) by J.R.R. Tolkien
26. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden *
27. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
28. The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, Part 2) by J.R.R. Tolkien
29. The Odyssey by Homer
30. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
31. Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut
32. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
33. The return of the king : being the third part of The lord of the rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
34. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
35. American Gods: A Novel by Neil Gaiman
36. The chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis *
37. The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy by Douglas Adams *
38. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
39. The lovely bones: a novel by Alice Sebold
40. Ender’s Game (Ender, Book 1) by Orson Scott Card
41. The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, Book 1) by Philip Pullman ***
42. Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman
43. Dune by Frank Herbert (The Little Bro just finished and gave it to me for my TBR pile)
44. Emma by Jane Austen
45. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
46. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Bantam Classics) by Mark Twain
47. Anna Karenina (Oprah’s Book Club) by Leo Tolstoy
48. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
49. Middlesex: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides
50. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
51. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
52. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
53. The Iliad by Homer
54. The Stranger by Albert Camus (I despise this book. And I had to read it in FRENCH.)
55. Sense and Sensibility (Penguin Classics) by Jane Austen
56. Great Expectations (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens
57. The Handmaid’s Tale: A Novel by Margaret Atwood
58. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
59. Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt
60. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery *
61. The lion, the witch and the wardrobe by C. S. Lewis *
62. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle ***
63. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
64. The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition) by John Steinbeck
65. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
66. The Name of the Rose: including Postscript to the Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
67. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
68. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
69. The complete works by William Shakespeare
70. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
71. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
72. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
73. Hamlet (Folger Shakespeare Library) by William Shakespeare
74. Of Mice and Men (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) by John Steinbeck
75. A Tale of Two Cities (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens
76. The Alchemist (Plus) by Paulo Coelho *
77. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
78. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
79. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition by William Strunk ***
80. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
81. The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2) by Philip Pullman *
82. Atonement: A Novel by Ian McEwan
83. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
84. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd ***
85. Dracula by Bram Stoker *
86. Heart of Darkness (Dover Thrift Editions) by Joseph Conrad
87. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
88. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
89. The amber spyglass by Philip Pullman
90. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Penguin Classics) by James Joyce
91. The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel (Perennial Classics) by Milan Kundera
92. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
93. Neuromancer by William Gibson
94. The Canterbury Tales (Penguin Classics) by Geoffrey Chaucer
95. Persuasion (Penguin Classics) by Jane Austen
96. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
97. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
98. Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt
99. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
100. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

I’ve read only 41 out of 100 on this list. So much for a well-read Ivy League education, huh? Looks like I need to read some more classics and some NEIL GAIMEN. Think I’ll skip the former and do the latter. I’ve seen Jane Austen on film - does that count???

Hawt heroes, fruity drinks, fabulous books. What more could you ask for when stranded on a desert island? We’ve come up with one more perk: AUTHORS. Come check out the DESERT ISLAND KEEPER LADIES RULE! blog to chat with your favorite authors, dish about your favorite books, and fight over your favorite heroes. It is, in the words of Jeri Smith-Ready, the “hottest new blog for readers.”

What six authors would you bring if you were stranded on a desert island?

Up now through wednesday: Jeri Smith-Ready chats about her latest Urban Fantasy release, Wicked Game, and will be giving away a free copy to one lucky commenter.

July 3 thru. July 5 : Evangeline Anderson
August 4 thru. August 6: Colleen Gleason
August 7 thru. August 9: Jacquelyn Frank
August 25 thru. August 27: Roxanne St. Claire
September 1 thru. September 3: Ann Aguirre
September 4 thru. September 6: Nalini Singh
September 8 thru 10: J.L. Langley
September Surprise: Josh Lanyon
September 29 thru. October 4: M/M Romance writers including: Ally Blue, Jet Mykles, J.L. Langley, and James Buchanan
November 3 thru. November 5: Michele Lang
November 6 thru. November 8: Meljean Brook
December 1 thru. December 3: Carrie Lofty
December 6: Shiloh Walker

Also Samantha Kane will be joining us in November and author/DIK member Katie Reus will be joining us soon!

Title: The Iron Hunt
Author: Marjorie M. Liu
Series: Hunter Kiss, Book 1 (BUT Prequel novella “Hunter Kiss” in Wild Thing anthology)
Publication Info: Ace, July 2008
Genre: Urban Fantasy

Marjorie M. Liu is a brilliant word smith. A master in the art of language. Delightful to read. Deep and pregnant with meaning. Touching the heart of the human condition. Anyone with an inkling to write should read her work and take notes. I marked so many passages that were beautiful or striking, and still there were more. Every page is filled with brushstrokes of magic, words and phrases that sparkle and bleed. Here are just a few examples:

The demon tilted his head, just so, and his body twisted, flowing like the skim of a shark through water. he danced when he moved; on the city street, wrapped in shadows: a kiss on the eyes, a devil’s ballet, and only his feet moved, only his cloak had arms; and his hair, rising and flowing as though lost in a storm. I heard thunder, and when his toes sliced spirals in the concrete, I listened to the wind bury winter; and when I tasted his grace, his grace had no name; only, night became something else in his presence, as though darkness had a soul, here, swaying to heartbeats roaring, (p70-1).

I dreamed of a valley cast in moonlight, spread beneath me like round cheeks, and there were wing tips against my feet, like the cloak of a dragon, and a taste in my throat that was cinnamon and spice, and something worse, awful and metallic-creamy like butter made from blood, (114).

Her gaze was black as a shark, black as a doll, black as oil rich from rock, slick and hot, and the ageless intelligence of her gaze coated me in a miasma filled with such forebodings I could hardly think straight, (p169).

Purple velvet clouds streaked the sky east, humming with a wink of gold. Dawn soon, punched by the sun, (p269).

The set-up and plot are terribly complex, but here’s my best shot:

Thousands of years ago there was a huge war between demons and humans and the demons were imprisoned behind the Veil. The Wardens were charged with hunting down the ones that manage to escape the prison, but only one Warden is left on earth: Maxine Kiss. Maxine is The Hunter. Passed from mother to daughter for centuries, the role of Hunter is to slay demons who prey on humans through demonic possession. The Hunter role comes with five demon tattoos that cover the Hunter’s body, providing body armor stronger than metal by day and peeling off her skin to fight at night. These “good” demons are referred to as “the boys”, only one of which can communicate with words.

Now the Veil is weakening and is about to fall. Something bad gets out and begins to hunt Maxine, who is living in Seattle at a homeless shelter run by her boyfriend Grant. A private investigator is murdered and in his pocket is a newspaper with Maxine Kiss written on it. The police question Maxine, and she decides to find her own answers. She runs into zombies sent by the demon queen Blood Mama and she learns that the Veil imprisons worse things than just the zombie-demons. Then she finds a picture of her grandmother, who she never met, with an archeologist who she thinks just might be her grandfather. Surprise, he is the speaker at a gala event that night at the Seattle Art Museum. She finds him, and it turns out he knows Things, but isn’t allowed to tell her. This is the theme of the book. Everyone but Maxine knows things, but isn’t allowed to share them. Then this other demon shows up, with knives for feet (see first quote above) and she doesn’t trust him and he talks in riddles and her “boys” can’t tell her what’s up. And then this other dude pushes her under a bus, but then it turns out he is supposed to protect her. And he can’t tell her anything either. She’s confused. I’m confused. Anyways…

And then there is this kid who Maxine is trying to protect, but the zombies beat him up. And then Maxine blacks out and goes to the Labyrinth, this between worlds place perhaps inspired by Borges, and she gets lost in something called the wasteland and gets this sword that turns into a ring. And there is something inside her that wakes up and helps her battle the Big Evil something that escaped from the Veil at the beginning of the book. But we never find out what the thing inside her is. It reminded me of Rhage’s Beast.

Was that confusing enough?

THE IRON HUNT is Ms. Liu’s first work of Urban Fantasy. She wrote a prequel which sets up the world of the book. Unfortunately I did not know this. Dear reader, please read the Prequel first (or this brief review). I enjoyed The Iron Hunt, but I admit I was confused through most of it. My usual reaction to Urban Fantasy novels is to think there is too much back story. This book left the opposite impression: not enough. I would have liked more explanations. Fewer sentence fragments. The heroine dreams of unicorns and dragons and wolves and blood. Are these memories of the distant past? Avatars intermingling with her predecessors? More questions than answers.

Setting

One of the coolest things (to me) about this book is that it is set in SEATTLE. Ms. Liu passed the test: referring to Pike Place Market instead of Pike’s Market. It’s the biggest way to differentiate a tourist from someone who knows. You can say “Pike Place” or “The Market” or “Pike Place Market” but never, ever, “Pike’s Market.” Ms. Liu has some great passages about my fair city:

Seattle in winter was an awful place to be. Always wet, hardly a glimpse of the sun except on rare days when it burned briefly free and rained down rays of precious ghostly light; or at night, when clouds slivered and stars glittered, adn the moon, when it rose, glowed, (p26).

Isn’t that beautiful? I didn’t like this one so much:

Yuppie, a little too preoccupied with what other people thought, and only superficially friendly, (p29).

We’re very friendly, thank you very much.

Good weather brought folks out in droves, all of them stripped down to shorts and T-shirts and those odd, clunky sandals that seemed to be a fad in this part of North America. The temperature was only fifty degrees, but it might have been Arizona in the summer for all the skin I saw. Poor sun-starved bastards, (p152).

Sad, but true.

One of the other interesting things about the book is Ms. Liu’s portrayal of homelessness and street kids. I just read a fascinating blog post on the subject of what Urban Fantasy authors get wrong when romanticizing growing up on the streets written by an author who actually grew up on the streets, to which UF author Lilith Saintcrow pointed me. Lilith, author of the Dante Valentine series, writes:

I can’t count how many books I’ve read, YA and others, that make homelessness “romantic”. Or that gloss over the danger of it. Or the fact that when you are on the fringe, everything has a price and nothing is free. I get a little buggy when I read something that to my mind glorifies street life. The streets are hard. Nobody ends up there because they’re well-adjusted or special. If you’re going to write about street life, please don’t think it’s glamorous or fun or “edgy”.

I believe, and this is my own sheltered opinion, that Ms. Liu does a good job of realistically portraying homelessness and street life. If you read UF or are writing UF and thinking of giving your character a hard-knock childhood, I strongly recommend the article.

Recommendation

I recommend The Iron Hunt, but I liked her paranormal romance better thus far. Ms. Liu’s writing style has changed for this book, at least compared to the beginning of her Dirke & Steele series. Her style was much smoother in Shadow Touch, and I loved it. She still had the elegant descriptions, but many more complete sentences that helped communicate the ideas better. I will continue to read through all of Ms. Liu’s backlist and intend to read her future releases. The sequels to The Iron Hunt will most likely answer many of the questions I have about it. Even if they don’t, I learn so much about the craft of writing from her novels that it makes up for my confusion about parts of her world building. Perhaps that is what they teach in law school: to be facund but not necessarily perspicuous. Jk.

I heart Nalini Singh. Her Psy/Changeling series has detailed world building and scrumptious characters. I particularly like the idea of “skin privileges.” If I could be in one book/series/world which would I pick? I’d be a leopard in Nalini’s Changeling world. I want to be Tamsyn and live in a tree house in the jungle and have cuddly baby leopards and a hot hubby and bake cookies for my pack. YUM! As I’m writing this, looking up links, I discovered that Tamsyn and Nate actually have their own story in the anthology An Enchanted Season. How did I miss this???

Nalini created a quiz: Which Psy/Changeling Hero is for you?

Your Psy/Changeling Hero: Lucas

Tough, dangerous and highly intelligent, the alpha of the DarkRiver leopard pack is a man who will demand everything from his mate. But he will give the same in return. And he will never let go.

Find out more about Lucas and the series at www.nalinisingh.com

Oh yeah, baby! Lucus is definitely my hero of choice.

Which hero is for you? Which book is your favorite?

Psy/Changeling series by Nalini Singh

Book 1: Slave to Sensation
Book 2: Visions of Heat
Book 3: Caressed by Ice
Book 4: Mine to Possess
Book 5: Hostage to Pleasure (September 200

If you have yet to discover the deliciousness that is the Psy/Changelings, hie thee to a bookstore!!!