Color-blind love exposes the sins of flesh and violence.
Past and present embattle Vietnam veteran Wade Conyers’s life. The scars of war and his past relationship with an African-American soldier threaten his marriage to a Southern socialite. Wade’s views of racial equality have already caused a rift with his father. What will happen when his sister’s relationship with a half-Native American unravels the camouflage disguising secret lives, adultery and ultimately murder?
Today is a day when I would love to be in command of a hundred gun line of battle warship. Why is it that on LJ, a site that will take down fanfiction communities without warning because they might contain adult content, a site like x_arigatou_x is allowed to continue to operate? This is a pirate site, sharing illegal downloads of novels and manga it’s taken struggling, small press authors years to write.
This is not victimless ‘sharing’ of stuff that nobody will miss. This is stealing of an author’s life’s work and giving them nothing in return. Here’s a post from Kirby Crow, who’s just found all her novels on the community
Saying basically that she is going to stop writing ebooks at all because of this. Small press authors are not making millions – we’re lucky if we make $1,000 a year out of a single novel. So 3000 members of a community downloading the novel for free is like watching three years of work go down the drain. Many of us who are supporting ourselves through writing simply won’t be able to afford to do it any more if people like the members of this community steal our stuff.
And the worst thing is that the maintainers of that community have answered her request to take the book down by telling her that there is nothing she can do to stop them, and uploading all her other books too! When is LJ going to put a stop to what is clearly a community dedicated to doing something completely illegal?
I’ve tried to report the community, but the rules say that only the copyright holder can do so. If you are a writer of ebooks or manga, it might be worth joining the community under an assumed name and checking to see if they have your books too. If all the copyright holders of their material get together and file complaints we might yet be able to blow them out of the water.
Like Transgressions, False Colors lives and breathes history. Beecroft, who dedicated the book in part to Patrick O’Brian, makes you feel like you’re on a wooden ship visiting a sweltering exotic port or surviving the perilous arctic. History isn’t pretty, and the violence isn’t “PG-13” – men are blown apart or tortured by pirates, and men die grisly deaths from yellow fever. At the same time, beyond the blood, there are lots of great little details that bring the ships to life. As a lover of classical music, I was also pleasantly surprised when John joined Alfie in song and turned out to be a counter-tenor, not something I ever expected from a romance hero.
Of course, m/m romances aren’t your typical romance novel. When two men are bound in both love and conflict, the stories can go different ways. In some stories, the men come together in violence. Rest assured that this isn’t one of them.
Rated B+
Hee! Oddly enough I am over the moon at her surprise and pleasure at finding that John was a counter-tenor! If that’s not likely to happen again then I’m all the more glad I did it. I think the counter tenor voice is probably the most beautiful in creation, but I agree that it’s possibly not what you think of when you think of a heroic voice 🙂
Another day has passed and I’ve barely written 300 words. I don’t know what’s going on with Blessed Isle – maybe it’s because I’ve got to the grimmest part and even Garnet’s flippancy has deserted him – but it’s been such a struggle this week. Today I think I deleted more than I wrote.
I suppose I should be reassured that it’s nearly at 10,000 words and therefore nearly half way through, so soon it should reach that point where it tips over the edge of the long up-slope and starts racing down towards the end. I just hope it will happen soon.
Partly I’m just tired and discouraged because my husband has had to suddenly go off to America and won’t be back for ten days. He’ll be phoning at 2am-ish once he gets to his hotel. My family seems to be conspiring to rob me of sleep these days!
I think I should do a couple of posts about cover art and why it has the limitations it has. Such as ‘the ubiquitous torso – why?’ and ‘but you used to do photomanips all the time, so why not now?’
But it’ll have to be tomorrow. I’m going to go and try to finish reading the first ever m/f romance I’ve ever read while waiting until I can go to sleep without worrying.
Oh, but on the subject of Garnet, it occurs to me that I already have a hero called Jasper. Is one red semi-precious stone enough, or can I get away with two? (Both are real names of the period, but I worry about it being too much of a theme.)
There once was a writer who said
My muse might as well be quite dead
I’ve done the magic dance
waved my bells, sung my chants
But there isn’t a word in my head.
Ann Herendeen sent me a link to this article about the power of love, and the good political reasons why society should stop despising Romance as a genre.
I wanted my boys in “Blessed Isle” to be discussing their undoubted attraction for each other in a little smoky club in Rio de Janeiro while being captivated by watching Flamenco dancing. (Because I find Flamenco dancing extremely sexy – all that arrogance and power, and that’s just the women.)
Unfortunately there are some drawbacks to that idea. 1. Flamenco is Spanish, not Portuguese. And 2. it wasn’t invented until the 19th Century anyway. Damn and blast it!
So, back to the drawing board and it turns out that there is actually a much better home-grown Brazilian candidate for the position of ‘dance most likely to get a hapless, half drunk sailor hopelessly horny,’ and that is Lundu
Can anyone help me with research into 18th Century Rio de Janeiro? Specifically things like a map of the city with actual names on, and anything about the culture/food of the place. Or the names of good books on the subject? I’m getting very little useful information by Googling, but surely it must be out there somewhere!
I found this on the Whosoever Magazine egroup and thought it was interesting, and possibly appropriate for today (being Mother’s Day in the USA, I think).
A sermon about the places in the Bible where God is referred to as female;
So, I abandoned the plan, on the grounds that this was supposed to be fun, and did it really matter if I read the books on the list in the list order? I don’t think so.
Instead I read “Lessons in Discovery” by Charlie Cochrane and “Gaveston” by Chris Hunt. Read the rest of this entry »
The Boat of Small Mysteries - A cozy mystery aboard a narrowboat, in which a murder and a disappearance keep our aroace detective from fully relaxing into the idyll of country life.
