marycatelli (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
marycatelli) wrote2025-11-05 07:12 pm
marycatelli) wrote2025-11-05 07:12 pm
Entry tags:
duskpeterson (duskpeterson) wrote2025-11-04 02:54 pm
duskpeterson) wrote2025-11-04 02:54 pmUPDATE: Loyal Revenge (Empty Dagger Hand side story) + Thousand Nations early access fiction
ONLINE E-BOOK (html, epub, mobi, pdf, and xhtml)
Free at my website.
Empty Dagger Hand (The Three Lands). Dolan is a quiet young man who spends his days working as a scribe. So why does he carry a hidden dagger?
New installment:
Side story | Loyal Revenge. His loyalty and his wickedness have come into conflict with each other.
EARLY ACCESS
My readers at Patreon and Ream get the first look at Flight Through the Forest (The Thousand Nations: The Motley Crew #2). That novella will go into general release next month.
BLOG FICTION
Tempestuous Tours (Crossing Worlds: A Visitor's Guide to the Three Lands #2). A whirlwind tour of the sites in the Three Lands that are most steeped in history, culture, and the occasional pickpocket.
New installment:
NEWS & UPCOMING FICTION
I'm sorry for posting so little online fiction last month; I spent all month struggling to transfer computers, so that I could retain/regain laptop access to the web, which I managed to achieve at the beginning of this month. Fortunately, I was able to edit and lay out "Flight Through the Forest" on my old laptop in the meantime.
The novella Heir (The Three Lands: Blood Vow side story) is up next on my release schedule. If you started reading Chronicles of the Great Peninsula during the last few years, here's your chance to meet several of Dolan's kinfolk, back when they were young. If you've been reading Chronicles of the Great Peninsula for a while now, here's the return of the characters from The Fire Before, fourteen years later. If you're a careful reader of Chronicles of the Great Peninsula, you know what's about to happen to the town of Valouse.
marycatelli (marycatelli) wrote2025-11-02 11:25 am
marycatelli) wrote2025-11-02 11:25 amEntry tags:
vignettes
This week's prompt is:
look 🏞️
Anyone can join, with a 50-word creative fiction vignette in the comments. Your vignette does not have to include the prompt term. Any (G or PG) definition of the word can be used.
look 🏞️
Anyone can join, with a 50-word creative fiction vignette in the comments. Your vignette does not have to include the prompt term. Any (G or PG) definition of the word can be used.
marycatelli (marycatelli) wrote2025-11-01 11:41 am
marycatelli) wrote2025-11-01 11:41 amEntry tags:
For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
who thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
( Read more... )
who thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
( Read more... )
cornerofmadness (cornerofmadness) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
booknook2025-10-30 03:57 pm
cornerofmadness) wrote in booknook2025-10-30 03:57 pm
Book Review Mirage City
I absolutely missed my day to post but I doubted anyone would mind now that I actually remembered I said I'd do something...
Mirage City by Lev A.C. Rosen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Somehow I missed there were two books between this and Lavender House because what is time even and that it's been 3 years since I read LH (no wonder I was slightly confused. I just thought I had forgotten stuff). Andy is back with a new case and one of the things I like about Rosen's work is that it's steeped in the real LGBT history and not some pretty fantasy land of it. (Which takes us to the Content Warnings, era typical homophobia and an early version of conversion camps inside mental hospitals which amount to torture).
A woman from the Mattachine Society, an actual early gay rights group, has approached Andy to find three members who have disappeared, one woman and a gay couple Hank and Edward. It's obvious she wants to find the woman more but honestly she's nearly forgotten for much of the narrative as Andy heads south to Hollywood after the two guys who might have been taken by a motorcycle gang.
Worse, this is where Andy grew up and his mother, a nurse, still lives. Their entire interactions any more are a few phone calls per year, basically birthdays and Christmas. This is post-war America so no one is exactly out, even to family (Most of Andy's friends, including his lover, Gene, back at The Ruby have lost their family due to their sexual orientation).
I figured out much faster than Andy some of the clues but I have the advantage of being seventy years down the line and I know the unfortunate, ugly history of how gay people were treated. That said, it did nothing to take away from my enjoyment of this. Andy is in a bad spot of course because naturally he runs into his mother and can't say no to her when she insists he comes home with her.
But will the case come between them forever? Read and find out. This was very good. Andy is a great character and now I need to go back and find the other two books I missed.
View all my reviews
Mirage City by Lev A.C. RosenMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Somehow I missed there were two books between this and Lavender House because what is time even and that it's been 3 years since I read LH (no wonder I was slightly confused. I just thought I had forgotten stuff). Andy is back with a new case and one of the things I like about Rosen's work is that it's steeped in the real LGBT history and not some pretty fantasy land of it. (Which takes us to the Content Warnings, era typical homophobia and an early version of conversion camps inside mental hospitals which amount to torture).
A woman from the Mattachine Society, an actual early gay rights group, has approached Andy to find three members who have disappeared, one woman and a gay couple Hank and Edward. It's obvious she wants to find the woman more but honestly she's nearly forgotten for much of the narrative as Andy heads south to Hollywood after the two guys who might have been taken by a motorcycle gang.
Worse, this is where Andy grew up and his mother, a nurse, still lives. Their entire interactions any more are a few phone calls per year, basically birthdays and Christmas. This is post-war America so no one is exactly out, even to family (Most of Andy's friends, including his lover, Gene, back at The Ruby have lost their family due to their sexual orientation).
I figured out much faster than Andy some of the clues but I have the advantage of being seventy years down the line and I know the unfortunate, ugly history of how gay people were treated. That said, it did nothing to take away from my enjoyment of this. Andy is in a bad spot of course because naturally he runs into his mother and can't say no to her when she insists he comes home with her.
But will the case come between them forever? Read and find out. This was very good. Andy is a great character and now I need to go back and find the other two books I missed.
View all my reviews
[book review] A Village Lost and Found
Earlier this month I read Flashes of Brilliance, a history of the earliest development of photography and that reminded me that I had another photography book near the bottom of my TBR pile. A big slipcased book by Brian May and Elena Vidal: A Village Lost and Found on a series of sterographic slides from the 185os by T. R. Williams.
May begins by looking back on his childhood fascination on how each eye sees the world slightly differently. This lead to an interest in stereoscopic cards. When a student at Imperial College London he would visit Christies's auction viewing room. "As a poor undergraduate, I had no chance of actually buying any of these treasures . . . But. . . I accumulated a wealth of experience looking at stereoscopic photographs, which was to influence my life for ever."
Once he'd made financial success with his day job (guitarist in Queen) he began collecting. This led him to the 59-card set, Scenes in Our Village, (SIOV) by T. R. Williams. The cards were first published in 1856 and showed life in a rural English village.
May set out to acquire all the cards, then all the variant sets that were published. He researched the possible location of the village, eventually finding it to be Hinton Waldrist. He hired a curator, co-author Elena Vidal, to help him catalog his collection. They visited the village, took contemporary images of some of the buildings in the SIOV slides.
A Village Lost and found reproduces the complete set of slides and includes a folding stereoscopic viewer. The three-dimensional detail of these 175-year old images is stunning. When possible individuals in the photos are identified using census and other local records. Williams was a successful portrait photographer of upper classes, but through his SIOV set you get a glimpse into the lives of the ordinary working class people in rural villages.
May begins by looking back on his childhood fascination on how each eye sees the world slightly differently. This lead to an interest in stereoscopic cards. When a student at Imperial College London he would visit Christies's auction viewing room. "As a poor undergraduate, I had no chance of actually buying any of these treasures . . . But. . . I accumulated a wealth of experience looking at stereoscopic photographs, which was to influence my life for ever."
Once he'd made financial success with his day job (guitarist in Queen) he began collecting. This led him to the 59-card set, Scenes in Our Village, (SIOV) by T. R. Williams. The cards were first published in 1856 and showed life in a rural English village.
May set out to acquire all the cards, then all the variant sets that were published. He researched the possible location of the village, eventually finding it to be Hinton Waldrist. He hired a curator, co-author Elena Vidal, to help him catalog his collection. They visited the village, took contemporary images of some of the buildings in the SIOV slides.
A Village Lost and found reproduces the complete set of slides and includes a folding stereoscopic viewer. The three-dimensional detail of these 175-year old images is stunning. When possible individuals in the photos are identified using census and other local records. Williams was a successful portrait photographer of upper classes, but through his SIOV set you get a glimpse into the lives of the ordinary working class people in rural villages.
reviews_and_ramblings (reviews_and_ramblings) wrote2025-10-30 05:58 pm
reviews_and_ramblings) wrote2025-10-30 05:58 pmEntry tags:
You Are My Omega by Mariko Nekono
”Primal instincts easily overtake rationality”
Handsome， well-built， and brilliant: Himuro is the picture-perfect Alpha. After suffering at the hands of an obsessed Omega， he vowed to never let his secondary-gender instincts control him again and to stay away from Omegas forever. But it seems that destiny has other plans when a chance meeting one day turns his whole world upside down...
My Rate: 7 (amzn.to/43rIA6b)
While You Are My Omega certainly plays within the bounds of the Alpha/Omega dynamic, it manages to feel surprisingly fresh and original. It's a sweet story that subverts expectations in a number of delightful ways. Our Alpha, Himuro, is a final-year high school student with a serious bias against the Alpha/Omega pairing concept, thanks to being stalked by a fellow Omega student. This sets a fantastic stage for conflict when he discovers his destined Omega is none other than his soft-spoken homeroom teacher, Mr. Itsuki! It’s genuinely hilarious to watch this scenario unfold. The only person who seems truly stressed about Himuro being Mr. Itsuki's student is Itsuki himself! Everyone else—Himuro's parents, Itsuki's colleagues—seems more or less resigned to the idea that these two are destined for a relationship. This collective, knowing acceptance is a running gag that adds a fun, lighthearted element to the whole affair. Despite the potentially sexy nature of an Omegaverse story, You Are My Omega takes a refreshing step back from the explicit. Their intimate time together is often quickly summarized, giving you the high-level details without lingering. This avoidance of drawn-out smut actually makes the story feel more cute than sexy, prioritizing the emotional connection and relationship development. The graphic style is also quite nice. It becomes especially endearing when Mr. Itsuki is forced to adopt the role of the responsible adult, given that Himuro is an underage teenager when they meet. Crucially, the story maintains a respectful boundary—there is no inappropriate behavior from Mr. Itsuki, which is a wonderfully refreshing and responsible choice for a high school-set yaoi manga. If you’re looking for a heartwarming, surprisingly wholesome Omegaverse story that challenges a few tropes and focuses on genuine emotional growth, this is a fantastic read!