Happy Wednesday! If you haven’t seen, we’re celebrating SBTB’s thirteenth birthday, which is both mind-blowing and wonderful. I’ve seen the site evolve in a bunch of different ways and I’m so excited to see what else we’ll do in the future. Thanks for sticking around!
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There’s a webcomic in the works that I’m incredibly excited for. Meet the Crew of Cuties! Right now, the two artists have finished up character bios and you can totally see the love they put into each character. The webcomic is about a team of witch detectives and their non-witchy co-workers. There doesn’t seem to be an estimated start date yet, but I’m willing to wait!
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If you’re going through a reading slump or want to try something outside of your comfort zone, Tor has five recommendations for weird books to read:
I’m assuming you’re here because you like to read. But how much do you like to read, really? Have you read so many books that you’ve actually become jaded with all the typical archetypes? Hopefully not! There’s still plenty of magic to be had from a traditional story, executed well. But if the worst has happened, and you just can’t get excited anymore unless somebody is doing something seriously weird, possibly illegal, and certainly wrong to the stories we all know and love, I’ve got a brief list for you. One that will hopefully burn out the entire “bizarre” center of your brain, leaving you both happy and grateful to return to the safe harbor of relatively normal fiction.
I’m so happy to see John Dies at the End on the list, as it’s one of my top five books!
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If you’re in the Los Angeles area, The Ripped Bodice has a FREE event on Sunday, February 18th at 12pm with author and sex educator, Dr. Emily Nagoski. We’ve had Emily on the podcast and it was awesome.
ATTENTION LOS ANGELES:
Please help us get the word out about our FREE class on Feb. 18 for teens about healthy relationships, communication and pleasure with @emilynagoski pic.twitter.com/aKMnRIr8fN— The Ripped Bodice (@TheRippedBodice) January 24, 2018
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Author Jennifer Weiner wrote a piece for The New York Times about receiving sexual education from romance novels:
The books not only covered blissful sex but also described a whole range of intimate moments, from the awkward to the funny to the very bad, including rape of both the stranger and intimate-partner variety. Beyond the dirty bits, the books I read described the moments before and after the main event, the stuff you don’t see in mainstream movies, where zippers don’t get stuck and teeth don’t bump when you’re kissing; the stuff you don’t see in porn, where almost no time elapses between the repair guy’s arrival and the start of activities that do not involve the clogged kitchen sink.
I think we’ve all learned a thing or two about sex from romances.
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Lastly, I want to end on something sweet. Cosplay photographer, Alexandra Lee wanted to create fantasy portraits of important people in her life. She started with her grandmother.
Today is my Grandma's birthday & with that the first day of my personal project.This project is to create fantasy portraits of my loved ones starting with my Grandma. This was her very first photo shoot, thanks to patreon. You can see the full set here: https://t.co/R06rcUl0ny pic.twitter.com/8iTzw0fViK
— Alexandra@Katsu (@ALeeStudios) January 23, 2018
It’s also spawned some pretty cute fanart!
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Don’t forget to share what super cool things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!
What beautiful photos, and what a marvelous idea! Kudos to Alexandra and her fabulous grandma! Makes me want to go back through our family photos and draw portraits of everyone as who they would have liked to be. (I can already see my mom as a superhero — she always loved them.)
Hey, link for you! How to Fight in a Ballgown: https://twitter.com/melisscaru/status/958709767395950593
I love the art style and the diversity in Cuties! I don’t read many web comics, I usually cross my fingers for them to become graphic novels so I can more thoroughly enjoy them, but I’ll have to check out this one. Thanks for the link!
The audio version of Wylding Hall (on the Tor list) is so good!
Romance novels have taught me a lot about sex AND relationships, not to mention emotional intelligence stuff.
@Siobhan, me too! My parents got divorced when I was sixteen, about eleven years after they’d really stopped liking each other. The only relationship role models I had were the ones I read about.
Just saw this at Buzzfeed:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jaimegreen/who-gets-a-happily-ever-after-in-2018-romance-novels?utm_term=.panaZABEn#.mbdyWD5Ma
@DiscoDollyDeb – what an amazing article. Thank you so much for sharing it!
The Mary Sue is celebrating Black History Month by posting a story about a little known Black woman and her effect on society every day, starting here: https://www.themarysue.com/frances-harper/
Jeans-shaped silicone muffin cups, so when the literal muffin top oozes over the waistband, it becomes a figurative muffin top.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EIFXCA8/
(My stress level can be measured by how many hours I spend looking at ridiculous kitchen stuff I will never buy because I run a practical kitchen despite my strong sense of whimsy.)