Newyness

I've got this theory. It's not about resolutions, or the tradition of breaking them. It's not about the slew of weight loss commercials on TV or all the fliers for gym memberships showing up in my mail. It's not even about our adherence to planetary rotation cycles which dictate we buy new calendars every December and hang them on our walls every January -- not directly at least. It's about the newyness.

New-y-ness. Better known as the shiny-new-toy syndrome. The great desire to take the gadget out of the box and play play play with it. Tell all our friends about it. Use it to improve our lives because we just spent ... well, actually we don't want to talk about how much we spent on it. Newyness.

Whether you make resolutions on January 1, or shun the practice, it's impossible not to stare into the dark of night after the ball's dropped and drunken people are singing and kissing and you absolutely can't take another moment of Ryan Seacrest pretending to be as cool as Dick Clark -- and as you stare into the sky you can't help but think this year will be better.

There's no box, no bag, no forgotten assembly instructions for this shiny-new-toy, but we feel it, feel it deep in our bones: this is something new. Something we should treat with great respect. Something we want to plan for and talk about. Something we want to use to improve our lives. And so we make resolutions. Even if they're not aloud. Even if we put them on the shelf and forget about them after the shiny-new has worn off. We can't help it. Newyness is born of a combination of curiosity and propensity to dream. Which makes it -- if I dare to go there -- part of the human condition.

It's comforting to know that as I make detailed goal lists for 2013 wherein I plot to lose x pounds and write x words, to return to handwriting the morning pages a la The Artist's Way which saved my sanity previously, and do a major house cleaning at the start of each month (although this last item may be more a healthy/sanitary concern than a case of newyness), that I am participating in a very human activity. Not a lost cause or an optimist's pipe dream, but by my means of celebrating this exordium I am affirming my humanity.

Whereas that nap I was contemplating this evening would have affirmed my cathood. Good thing I resisted.

The 52 Book Resolution: a year's reading, part three

A continuation of a year of reading in review. 


24. Anya's Ghost, Vera Borsgol. A great YA graphic novel which deals nicely with both being a teenage girl today and the immigrant experience in a then-and-now sort of way. Anya falls down an abandoned well and meets another girl who fell down the same well ... some eighty years prior.

25. The Demon in Me, Michelle Rowen. Did I even read this book? I have it written down on my list of "books I read" so I must have done so. However I don't recall anything about the novel at this time. Huh.

26. Dark Destiny, Christine Feehan. 2011 brought us the closing of Boarders stores across the country and a great urge for me to spend all the money I carried around in Boarders gift cards. Since this was essentially frivolous, must-spend-now money, I purchased several romance novels that I never would have bought otherwise. I'd heard about Feehan before -- namely that she was a best seller -- so I decided to see what the novels were like. It wasn't until I got home that I realized that this was something like book nine of the series. So I went to the library and tried to read book one, Dark Prince, and I absolutely could not finish it. The damn ditzy heroine doesn't realize that she's essentially been kidnapped and that her "hot vacation fling boyfriend" is manipulating her because he thinks she's dumb, sexy, and utterly incapable of doing anything from walking alone at night to feeding herself, and to this end, he keeps magically making her fall asleep anything she contradicts him. But it's luuuuuuuv. I got disgusted and returned it to the library unfinished. Dark Destiny is a little bit better in the sense that the heroine, Destiny, isn't as cowed or easily manipulated and she'd not immediately secluded from all of her friends and family inside the hero's lair upon first meeting him. Feehan's male characters take "dominating alpha male" to a level that is beyond what I can tolerate.

27. The Bride and the Beast, Tersa Medeiros. The intelligent, overly plump, hardworking if somewhat waspish Gwendolyn is the last virgin of age left in the Highland village of Ballybliss, so when a dragon moves into the old castle, the villagers offer her up as sacrifice -- and aren't the least bit sad to see her go. The dragon, however, doesn't eat her on the spot; he takes her into the castle, locks her in a comfortable tower room and plies her with fine food and as many books as she could possibly crave. This turns into a warm, witty romance that sort of breaks my rule about not liking historical romances.


28. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke. Amazing. The premise (and the ending) was so cool. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and have it turn into any of the melodramatic sci-fi blockbuster movie plots that I'm familiar with, and (blissfully) it never did. The majority of the narrative is precisely described in a manner that is realistically scientific but never dull. And the description was easy to follow -- a real feat when the author is describing reorienting the character's plane of reference in a low- or no-gravity situation. I didn't know if I'd like it -- I'm often leery when approaching things which are considered "canon" or written by the "classic" within any genre -- but I absolutely fell in love with this sci-fi adventure.


29. Accidental Demon Slayer, Angie Fox. There was such great potential here. A demon shows up in Lizzie's toilet bowl on her birthday. Her terrier starts talking. She joins a gang of biker witches against her will/better judgment. The entire novel was fun but not fun enough to get me to read the next book in the series. In premise, tone and set up, it reminded me a lot of a Katie MacAlister novel, but it lacked the storytelling elements that don't just tug on my heartstrings, they wrap themselves around my heartstrings and ensnare my soul. Accordingly, my unensared soul went out and immediately got a Katie MacAlister novel to fill the void.


30. Love in the Time of Dragons, Katie MacAlister. This novel continues on the narrative that threads that started in the Aisling Grey, Guardian series and continued in the Silver Dragon series. Most, if not all, of those series' character make return appearances in this closely tied but separate series that starts to answer the overarching crazy questions of the dragon world: what the hell happened to Baltic and Ysolde? Why'd they die five hundred years ago? Why did the black dragon weyr shatter? And how the hell are they both alive again? Katie MacAlister is an insanely witty writer and has great unique characters that clash brilliantly with each other. And the elements of her narratives, the stories she tells and the way she tells them always manage to hook me. If you find yourself interested in this novel, I highly recommend starting seven books back with the start of the Aisling Grey series,  You Slay Me, because it's a much better way to be introduced to the world.

The 52 Book Resolution: a year's reading, part two

see part one here

14. River Marked, Patricia Briggs. This is the sixth book in the Mercedes Thompson urban fantasy series. Mercedes -- or Mercy, as she's called -- is a car mechanic and coyote skinwalker. Books 1-3 of the series were awesome. Like curl-up-on-the-floor-and-cry-because-I-want-to-write-books-like-that-and-I'm-afraid-I'll-never-be-that-good awesome. Books four and five were nice, but by comparison they were a giant let down. They went off on pointless tangents and didn't include the wonderful full cast of quirky characters. Of course, when your "full cast" grows to the size that these books has, it's understandable why you don't include all of them in every novel ... understandable but not happy. Book six gets better than books four and five though not as fabulous as 1-3. Mercy finally gets married and we finally get light shed on Mercy's unique coyote skinwalker abilities. This will probably be the last book I read in this series (unless book seven has a great hook) because all my questions have been answered, Mercy's origins were the last question I had, even Stefan's ever-worsening state might not be enough to draw me back.

15. The Wierd Sisters, Eleanor Brown. Absolutely awesome. In spite of its name, this novel is not fantasy (urban or otherwise) and it has little to do with Shakespeare. The novel follows three grown sisters who come crashing back into their childhood home under less-than-ideal circumstances. The narrative was intriguing and compelling; it pulled me right along. But the use of point of view was perhaps the coolest part of this novel. Mainly told in a limited third person point of view that alternates between the three sisters, there would also occasionally be moments when the point of view switched into first person plural omniscient -- the all-knowing, unified consciousness of all three sisters. These passages functioned sort of as the novel's Greek chorus.

16. The Search, Nora Roberts. Some Nora Roberts novels are fluffy little things that you can read in a day if you've the time and read fast enough; this was one of her more meatier reads. It follows a young widow (I think she's a widow, now I can't recall) who had narrowly escaped being the next victim of her husband's serial killer murderer. The heroine now lives on the outskirts of a small island community in the Pacific Northwest training search and rescue dogs. I'm not a huge fan of crime fiction -- although I do watch a lot of NCIS and Bones on TV, and I loved Silence of the Lambs though I doubt I could ever make myself read the novel -- but this novel was fascinating for me: intriguingly touching on that world of surviving-out-the-serial-killer's-next-move without the creepypants chill factor. And besides, it's readily apparent that Nora Roberts loves, loves, loves and respects dogs.

17. A Discovery of Witches, Deborah E. Harkness. This was fascinating in the sense that it was a very familiar urban fantasy but it was approached with a very different mindset. The heroine wasn't a PI or a slayer, she was a professor of medieval history on an obscure research quest about alchemical texts. In June I wrote an entire blog post about the book here. It's a good read but beware: it's a series with absolutely no promise of when book two will be finished.

18.  Something Borrowed, Emily Griffen. The movie trailer looked so cute; the book so disappointed me. Still haven't seen the movie. Read my June blog post about why I was weirded out.

19. As You Wish,Gabi Stevens. A young woman who owns a bakery gets the delivery that will change her life: the old guard of fairy godmothers deliver her a wand -- a sure sign that she is part of the new guard of fairy godmothers of which there are only three per generation. That was cool ... beyond that I have no recollection of what happens in this novel. There was an incredibly sweet garden party though. Not that I remember what happens at the garden party but I still would love to get invited to a swankypants affair like that.

20. Warprize, Elizabeth Vaughan. Addictive. This series suffers from truly horrible covers (they seem to get worse as the series progresses) but the world/characters are fabulous. As is the culture clash conflict that Vaughan has created between what I would describe as the "traditional medieval European-based" fantasy culture that the protagonist comes from and the Other that shows up at her city's door intent on warring with them until they surrender. The "Other" is a mix of historical elements from Middle Eastern and American Plains Indians and a bunch of other twists and turns the author has thrown in to make them truly unique and interesting. I highly recommend this series if you're interested in romantic fantasy. These novels have a richness of culture that could have easily lent itself to 400 pages of narrative per novel but they're only around 200 or 250 pages each, so accordingly the pace really clips along. (I'm still rather sad that they weren't longer; I had so much fun getting lost in this world!)


21-22. Warsworn, Elizabeth Vaughan. Book two of the Warprize trilogy -- told ya the covers keep getting worse. Book two is when the three book story arc sort of mires itself down in the muck and we literally get stuck on the journey to book three but it's worth wading through the sticky part to get to the end of the trilogy which concludes with Warlord. There are other related novels in this world which I've not read. You can't get Warsworn and Warlord in paperback anymore; they're tragically out of print, but Warprize isn't. So if you're like me and get hooked on the damn series, the good news is that you can get them as Kindle or Nook editions. And I was addicted. So addicted that I was willing to read both novels, in their entirely on my iPod touch -- not an iPad, an iPod ... so basically a blindingly white little screen that may or may not be the size of your phone. It was worth it.


23. When Blood Calls, J.K. Beck. This was one of those vampy, crime fightery type books. I think there's the supernatural sister agency of the FBI and the heroine works for them and she has to at some point arrest the hero or something. The good news is that this is available as a $0.99 download right now ... the bad news is that I definitely bought it as a paperback and shelled out full price for something that felt much more like a cheap read than a full price read.

The 52 Book Resolution: a year's reading, part one

For the past few years, I've made one and only one New Year's resolution: to read (and finish) at least 52 books in the coming year. I made it in 2010 and again this year in 2011. Last year I did a round up of my reads at the end of year and I'd like to repeat that this year. Something I'd like to note is that the numbers next to the titles are not the order in which I "rank" them by any criteria, it's merely the order in which I read them.

1. The first book I read in 2011 was something from Harlequin ... but beyond that I have no clue what it was or who it was by.  Both this and last year, the first thing I read was published by Harlequin. This is quite likely because it's this time of year when Harlequin offers up a dozen or so free ebooks for anybody to download off their website (usually one from each of their lines in hopes of getting you interested in a new type of romance novel). And, hey, I'm a big fan of free.

2. Darkfever, Karen Marie Moning. I really love this series. I started reading it because I'd liked other Karen Marie Moning romances (I read her Highlander time travel series and, particularly in the later novels, found her to be great with all that reflective, internal angst which makes me love the characters without thinking of them as whiny, stupid, or unrelateable). Book one was mildly interesting, but by the end of book two I was pretty much hooked: staying up reading all night, going to my local bookstore the next day for the next book in the series and then falling asleep with the light on trying to eek out another chapter before sleep claimed me. This novel is set in the same world of Fae as her Highlander novels but starts off with a fresher take. The protagonist is a young, spoiled, somewhat ditzy blond from Georgia who rushes to Dublin, Ireland, after news of her sister's grisly murder in the Irish city. The police have given up on the investigation but the protagonist won't in spite of knowing no one in town, having no evidence, and having ... well ... no fricking clue. By virtue of stubbornness (and the fact that the people she's searching for are searching for her) she stumbles upon a world she never knew existed and teams up with assorted sexy-but-annoying males. First book in the five book Fae Fever series. And super cool, the first book's Kindle edition is only $1.99 right now.

3. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin. Quite possibly the best book I read all year and definitely the best second-world fantasy / high fantasy that I've read in many years. Jemisin gives us a world of political intrigue which turns into a war between gods -- gods that have been made almost-human against their wills. Not only is the story interesting and the characters are fabulous, but the novel is written in an intriguing literary style. Parts of the novel are in scene, parts are being narrated to some entity that is (at first) unknown, and some are a conversation between the narrator and the unknown entity.  The net effect is gorgeous. There are two more books in the series but this first book has a completely contained plot and can be read as a satisfying one-off.

4-7. Where Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning was interesting it was Bloodfever that got me addicted and made me start putting off everything else in order to read the next scene, the next chapter, the next book until I'd rapidly consumed them all. In rapid succession I finished Bloodfever (book two), Faefever (book three), and Dreamfever (book four) in rapid succession and then had to wait a whole twenty-four painful hours for the digital release of Shadowfever (book five). I'm insanely glad that I started reading this series as the publisher was wrapping up the releases not as the books were first appearing, because those few hours I had to wait until Shadowfever's mid-January release date were insanely painful.
The worlds of fae and human have always had a "wall" between them preventing humans from knowing about the fae and preventing the fae from becoming too powerful -- but all that changes irrevocably in this series and the protagonist is smack-dab in the middle of it. Just about all of Moning's interesting characters of novels past (the MacKelters) make plot-related cameos in this series.


8-9. Irish Rebel and Sullivan's Woman are part of the Irish Dreams bundle by Nora Roberts. Irish Rebel  features the next generation of race horse trainers from Nora Robert's first every novel Irish Thoroughbred  and another imported-from-Ireland horse trainer. Yay for warm fuzzy books.

10. A Hunger Like No Other, Kelsey Cole. Kelsey Cole novels constantly make the paranormal best seller list, so I thought I should check it out. The harpies of New Orleans met the vampires of Europe. No, that's not a figurative statement: that's the plot. I was not moved to read further in the world/Immortals After Dark series.

11. Angels' Blood, Nalini Singh.  I read this book on a recommendation. And the world is quite fascinating. Then again I've not read another angel-based paranormal book (unless it's fallen angels at the fringes of demon civilization, i.e. not the main characters) so I found this world to be intriguing. It's an open-fantasy, meaning that in the modern here and now, all humans know about the existence of angels -- angels are mega-business tycoons, btw -- and about the existence of vampires. But I think what's most fascinating about this world is that vampires aren't made by other vampires, vampires are made by angels. The protagonist is a young, female human who gets sucked up into the twisted world of millennia old angel grudges, corporate espionage, and hunky winged men. Part of a three or four book series yet, while I enjoyed the novel and was fascinated by the world, I found at the end of book one that I felt that the storyline I was concerned about was complete so I wasn't feeling the need to go out and read further installments.

12. How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf, Molly Harper. An utterly fun and pointless romp. The best part is the interaction with the fun and quirky characters of small town Alaska. I was a little bit upset because the intriguing part of the novel which should be a major turning point in the character's relationships -- when the naked werewolf shows up on her front porch -- isn't revealed to the audience in chronological order, it's the freaking hook. The book starts with the naked werewolf and, if that's the highlight, it can't get better from there.

13.  Seducing the Governess, Margo Maguire. I really can't recall much at all about this novel. It's a historical romance (just in case the terms seducing and governess appearing in the title didn't already alert you to that fact), and as I'm discovering, unless you're Jean Ferris writing Into the Wind, historical romances just aren't my cup of tea.

Part two of my year in reading coming tomorrow morning! If you've read any of these titles leave me a comment -- I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Grab-bag

Iconic face of Rosie the Riveter poster died recently. I really wish I'd known this story, ya know, before she passed away.  She was a Michigan factory worker and seeing as her service is being held in Lansing, I'm betting she lived in Michigan all her life.

Odyssey Workshop has a new podcast up online from editor David Hartwell's 2010 Odyssey Workshop lecture on titles, titling, and using pseudonyms (Podcast #43). It was great because I find that a lot of writers worry about how to title or when to use a pseudonym and it seems like something the knowledgeable people in the industry don't want to talk about--perhaps it is more tedious than other aspects, but here we have a guy who's been an editor in the SF/F industry for over 40 years and he's willing to talk seriously about the small stuff.

The Kenyon Review Writers Workshop is now open to applications. As is the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop (early admission deadline: Jan. 31; regular deadline: Apr. 8). Both are great workshops.

One of my Odyssey workshop classmates (or Odfellows, as the alums are called), put out a novella (40,000 words) for Kindle titled Nocturne: Son of the Night.  I haven't read the whole thing, but my understanding from the first chapter is that it's a high fantasy vampire world.  40k is an awkward length to sell to a publisher -- it's about half as long as a novel and a about 20k too long for all but a couple magazines to deal with (though as I understand it, it might be the kind of thing BlackGate would serialize).  You can read the first chapter on Smashwords or buy at amazon.com.  And maybe even buy at Samshwords if you need non-Kindle formating.

I got my cats a "cat bed" so that they would stop sleeping on top of my cloth suitcase. They seem to have mixed feeling about the bed, so I doused it in cat nip and now Rosie's all about it. Ash is currently sleeping in the old box lid on my desk. I guess they'll never be happy until they have the ultimate house for cats.

Kristen Lamb has had a great series of posts of the last week about dealing with "Crappy Excuse Trolls and Procrastination Pixies." The posts are long, but it's worth scrolling back to her Dec. 31 entry to catch the entire week's notions of how to behave better beyond the New Year's Resolution.  This awesome picture is from her blog as well.  It's a "Rare Photo of Actual Procrastination Pixie Disguised as a Hamster Cage that Needs Cleaning Instead of Doing Edits on Novel."   Love it.

Over at Third Coast, Nathan Norton posts his thoughts on Resolving to Remain Resolute with Regards to Writing Resolutions.  Nathan's post, as always, is insanely witty.

Speaking of which, my New Year's Resolutions are sorta holding. I've already finished reading one novel--another freebie download from eHarlequin. What can I say? I'm a sucker for free books that you can read quickly. And the writing 500 words a day goal? ... well I have written everyday, which is a start. Haven't really broken the 500 mark every day though and that's worthy of a demerit.

In the spirit of all of the writing is what I love posts I've read and *ahem* written myself, I bring you this from The Onion:

I guess you could say I have always had a love affair with the written word. The simple, solitary act of contemplating the white expanse of the blank page, and then putting pen to paper and seeing where the words take me, is my one constant solace in an otherwise turbulent world. Yes, I must admit it: I am only truly happy when I'm writing.


Or if I'm having dinner with family and friends, or a new and interesting acquaintance I happened to meet that week and hit it off with. I'm pretty happy then, too.


But for me, it always comes back to the writing: the discipline, the stamina required, the unrelenting determination to give voice to my innermost thoughts, thoughts that illuminate the cracks and crevices of the human condition. That is my only satisfaction. That and watching a really good movie on late-night TV, like Suddenly, Last Summer. That's a great feeling, especially when you haven't seen the film in some years, and you discover anew just what it was that you loved about it in the first place. I also enjoy canoeing and windsurfing when I get a free weekend down at the beach.


And Frisbee. I love Frisbee. (read more)

The more I read about the publishing business the more I think ahead. This is good, right? Maybe. It's hard to tell when your tell your friend, "hey I'm thinking about this and this, what's your advice?" and her advice is to stop thinking so far ahead and write the damn book. Then there's things like this very interesting guest post about author branding on Sierra Godfrey's blog. And the post says yes! think about it now!

I know, I know. Those of you out there who are plugging away at writing your book or maybe just sticking your toe in the writing waters are probably thinking...look, I just need to get this book written, find an agent, get a book deal, etc. etc. and then I'll worry about a public image. I've got time for that. Publishing is a slow business.


You're right. The book should be priority number one and publishing IS slow. I got my book deal a few months ago and my book won't hit the shelves until 2012. But let me tell you, when all the good stuff starts happening, it can happen fast. And you'll be thrust from "writer" to "Author" with a capital A in a moment's time.


That's great news. You won't really feel any different (though you'll be excited) and writing will still be just as difficult (believe me.) But the change means your blog, website, twitter, facebook, etc., you know all those things you've been doing to build your platform/presence, are now your brand.


So if you've spent your time on your blog bashing books you don't like, cursing like a sailor, or only posting pictures of cats in doll outfits (or even *gasp* not blogging/tweeting/pick your poison at all), you may have to do a major overhaul or start from scratch. You don't want this stress when you're going to be facing the new stress of being contracted, editing and writing against a deadline, and figuring out all it means to be a paid author. So why not get your brand in place NOW?

And then I'm like, aha! gotcha Roni Loren, I comprehend now. (read more of her guest post).

Lastly, I am in love with Lightspeed magazine!  All SF, all online (although they have other formatting options if you're interested).  They have a really intriguing layout/look--both clean and enticing.  And they're publishing a range of writers, lesser known folk and then, last month, Ursala Le Guin.  Though I could tell it was a Le Guin story because I finished it and went huh?

Happy New Year!

I'm rather at peace with the notion of the new year.  Not bursting at the seams with resolutions and notions and ambition, but neither am I grouchy and jaded about it.

I feel ready for this year.  I've already spent a lot of time thinking and planning about 2011--perhaps this is why when I went to write 1/1/11 today, I didn't flinch.  It took me ages to learn to write '10 instead of '09.

Then again, in early 2010 and very late 2009, I was working off anger and frustration.  I said I'd achieve various goals to "show" certain people.  All n all, a poor attitude for actually achieving anything.

In 2011, my goals are about me, not impressing (or surpassing) others.

My only New Year's resolution?  To read 52 books or more in 2011 and to write 500 words or more each and every day.  No matter what, I can always eek out 500 words (even if they're just planning words) once I get in the habit of writing.

52 Book Year: Part Three

continued from previous


44. Some Girls Bite, Chloe Something.  Wow, isn't that sad?  I couldn't recall the author's name when I wrote down the book title on my list.  This is the "chicagoland vampire series" which I only picked up because my library search brought it up when I was searching something else and kept bringing it up -- and apparently it's popular in the local library here.  It is a series, but I was not inspired to read the rest.

45.  Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins.  I got on the bandwagon.

But then 46. Blameless, Gail Carriger, came out!  This book is more interesting than the second in the series though not as good as the first one.  It'll keep me reading through the fourth and fifth books (the scheduled end of the series).

47. Destined for an Early Grave, Jeaniene Frost.  I finally got around to reading the fourth in the Cat&Bones series.  It was ... confusing.

And then I bought the Cat & Bones spin offs, 48. First Drop of Crimson and 49. Eternal Kiss of Darkness.  Where Frost's cover art had previously been amazing, it became sort of unremarkably of the paranormal romance genre in these.

50.  Happy Ever After, Nora Roberts.  The last of the Bridal Quartet, I got my hands on this as soon as it came out.  And I was disappointed.  Perhaps because I was building it up so much in my head.  It ended the series in a manner that we'd seen coming since book two.

51. Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins.  Where Hunger Games felt like a stand alone, Catching Fire absolutely needs 52. Mockingjay to finish what it starts.  I got SO into this.  I was reading until 5 AM one night and 3 AM the next.  And crying from about 1-3 AM.

54. King of Sword and Sky, C.L. Wilson began my rereading of the latter half of the Tairen Soul series so that I could know what was going on when I read 56. Crown of Crystal Flame which came out this fall.  55. Queen of Song and Souls had come out more than 18 months prior. Tairen Soul is a second world fantasy that plays with the conventions of high fantasy to give Wilson's world a feel that is both familiar and yet decidedly her own.  These end up shelved in romance instead of fantasy, and I probably wouldn't have found them if the first two books hadn't been in their own special display several years ago.

58. When Rose Wakes, Christopher Golden.  A YA novel re-envisioning of sleeping beauty.

Hommage to books I almost finished and still intend to finish in 2011:   American Salvage, Bonnie Jo Campbell; Plague of Doves, Louise Erdrich; Out of the Girls' Room and into the Night; Song of the Lark Willa Cather; Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, Rhoda Janzen; Ferryman, Christopher Golden;  Darkest Lie, Showalter; The Secret History of Fantasy, ed. Peter S. Beagle.  And several other collections and anthologies.