First up, a link from Gry, our Norwegian Friday Videos Correspondent, who also sends cool links: Where Books Come From.
Wee adorableness? I need a moment.
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Thea and Ana of The Book Smugglers have formed a publishing company, Book Smugglers Publishing, and will issue quarterly stories science and speculative fiction with each set of stories fitting within a given theme:
With the goal of discovering the best voices in speculative fiction from across the world, Book Smugglers Publishing strives to publish original short fiction featuring subversive, feminist, and diverse perspectives – all core tenets valued by The Book Smugglers and its online audience. Every two weeks, beginning on October 7, 2014 and running through December 16, 2014, Book Smugglers Publishing will release a new digital-original short story.
Each short story will be made available for free in its entirety on http://www.thebooksmugglers.com and w,ill also be available for purchase as a DRM-free ebook via all major ebook retailers. Readers will also have the opportunity to purchase ebooks directly from The Book Smugglers. Each carefully crafted ebook will contain original cover art, the full short story, an exclusive interview with the author, and an author essay exploring the themes and original fairy tales in their work.
You can see the lineup of stories for fall 2014 on their site – some of them look utterly amazing.
Congrats, y'all!
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If you've been enjoying the Outlander television series, you're definitely not alone. Most of us here are loving it, and recapping/reviewing it each week.
This article by Maureen Ryan, sent to my inbox by Carrie S., takes a look at why the show is so successful, and how its depiction of women is unique:
…these women are not depicted as wrong or misguided for wanting and liking sex and pursuing all kinds of intimacy (and sometimes stopping at friendship, a la Abbie Mills on “Sleepy Hollow”). Many of these women are, if anything, quietly celebrated by the show's writers for being assertive, intelligent and unconventional. Unlike many of the mainstream shows and movies I grew up with, where the women who liked and sought sex were often punished in some way, I don't detect in this new wave of programs an unconscious or semi-conscious desire on the part of the storytellers to bring these women down a few pegs — or kill them off — for being independent and unrepentant about their desires.
This is new. This shift occurring on this many notable shows is new. But “Outlander” has taken this welcome trend a step further.
I'd wanted to make this piece about both “Masters of Sex” and “Outlander” and how they're both interested in the ways that gender norms limit both men and women. That plan has two problems: First, it sounds like the topic of a very dry term paper, and second, the Sept. 20 episode of “Outlander,” “The Wedding,” melted my brain. It was that good — and that different.
It also links to a fantastic and fascinating article about Outlander and the female gaze, written by Jenny Trout:
By now you’ve doubtless heard of Outlander, Starz’s new entrant in the race for premium channel subscribers. The surprise hit, based on the epic fantasy romance novels by author Diana Gabaldon, isn’t the first series to court a mostly straight female audience; True Blood, adapted from Charlain Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries, banked on the appeal of love triangles and quadrangles to rope in viewers who were still hungry for the romance of Twilight, with undeniable success. But unlike True Blood, which tantalized with ever more outlandish sex scenes and airbrushed-to-perfection hardbodies, Outlander presents a fantasy that doesn’t seek to appease the pornography-influenced tastes of a straight male audience.
To put it in simpler terms, Outlander is a drama crafted specifically for the straight female gaze.
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I was interviewed about the 10th anniversary of the hot pink palace for DatingAdvice.com's blog:
Even if they don't like a particular book or agree with a particular theme, Wendell said readers are still faithful to the genre, what it does, how it works and what it has created for them, which is a family.
“Simply forming communities of readers online helps dispel and soothe the insults because it's reassuring to know that there are so many other romance readers in the world, talking happily about what they read, especially for an individual who has felt isolated for loving a particular genre,” she said.
Every time I do an interview like this, I end up talking mostly about the internet and how awesome it is to be connected to people who like the same things you do.
And speaking of – here's another.
I was interviewed for The Author Biz podcast by Stephen Campbell, and it was a really fun interview. We talked about reviews, the DBSA Podcast, Kindle Unlimited, and more. If you're curious, you can listen to the episode online, or via subscription through most podcast services.
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Finally, I'm kind of obsessed with this: a collection of 1970s Gunne Sax dresses for sale on Etsy. I'm not sure if this is a problem since they were not made by the seller but by either Gunne or Sax or whomever they were employing at the time, but I can't stop looking at them.
I remember when I was growing up and started getting my own magazine subscriptions – this was back in the mid-80s and 90s – there would always be PROM issues. With pages and pages and pages of Gunne Sax and Jessica McClintock PROM DRESSES. There was lace and taffeta and pleats and more lace and every damn one looked itchy and synthetic so of course I wanted EVERY SINGLE ONE of those dresses. I was convinced the height of fashion was Gunne Sax and Jessica McClintock, and taffeta. Can't forget the taffeta.
Seeing the dresses of the generation ahead of me is just amazing. Some are clearly dresses for everyday wear, while others are probably wedding dresses. They look a bit more comfortable, though. I'm jealous.
(Also, I kept typing “Gunne Sex” and had to correct myself four different times. So there's that.)
What links have you been reading and enjoying lately? Read anything online that blew your mind?
My prom dress in 1978 was a Gunne Sax—light blue, with thin shoulder straps—and yes my boyfriend wore a matching tux. Ah, the good old days. I loved that dress!
Prom, 1980, bitches! I wore THIS GUNNE SAX DRESS. My date, the boy who lived across the ditch, who I thought had asked me AS FRIENDS, slipped me a wet tongue when the night ended.
/flappy Kermit hands/
I had a couple of long GS dresses back in the day (purchased lovingly w/after school work money), and my inner 16-year-old is dying here… I want the blue one!!! Never mind that it would look ridiculous on me now…
@Tamara Hogan, I am beyond jealous! I think I still have a picture of that dress tucked away in my “some day my prince will come” folder (long filed away in a “can’t use, but can’t seem to part with” box) because it was my dream wedding dress back in the day.
http://www.etsy.com/listing/195283840/gunne-sax-dress-vintage-wedding-gingham?ref=market
This one was mine, only it was cream and light sage. I have a great picture of myself in it while posing on a rock looking out to sea taken near San Luis Obispo in 1978. After the shutter clicked I fell off the rock and tore a goodly portion of my big toe nail off. Good times. LOVED that outfit
@Tamara Hogan, wait, that’s my prom story! 1980, boy who asked me as friends, tongue, everything! But I wore THIS Gunne Sax dress, and I thought it was the most beautiful dress EVER: https://www.etsy.com/listing/184979710/gunne-sax-dress-a-rose-is-a-rose-rare?ref=shop_home_active_20
Bought my wedding dress at the Gunne Sax outlet in SF in January 1980. Including dry cleaning, I spent $35. Prices seem to have changed. It was a two piece ivory – I wore the top with dressy slacks to many a faculty party over the next several years and the skirt with jewel tones silk tops to all my brothers’ rehearsal dinners. I did like Gunne Sax, very pretty and romantic.
Had to look to find the wedding dress – imagine this tea length in ivory satin: http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/201049761276?lpid=82
Loved that look, but could not afford to buy it. I remember sewing myself a much simplified version. Now that I see these, I realize that my wedding dress (that I also sewed) had some of the same look as the prom/bridal styles here. WOnderful dresses.
I don’t even remember what I wore to my prom, which was back in the ‘60’s. I do think these dresses y’all are showing are much more attractive than what they’re wearing now. Much more romantic. I’m so over the strapless look for everything. :p
This is funny because didn’t Claire wear a modified Jessica McClintock dress in the 3rd Outlander book? That always made me laugh. (Sorry if that was somehow spoilery.)
I love that everyone is like me – OMG GUNNE SAX!
So glad I’m not alone.
Also – those dresses are beautiful!
@RevMelinda, you are right, that IS the most beautiful dress ever. I bet you looked amazing.
OMG! Gunne Sax. I had a blue denim GS prairie skirt that buttoned up the front when I was in school.
I totally remember my two Gunne Sax dresses, though I can’t find either on eBay: navy cotton floral with white trim and fluttery semi-capped short sleeves (which I would totally wear again despite the rule about not wearing a trend if you lived through it the first time around) and a lavender floral polyester long-puffed-sleeve extravaganza with a lacy yoke and high lace collar with those tiny pearl buttons that I wore to my brother’s Bar Mitzvah. It was uncomfortable and ungapatchka and I thought it was the most ravishing thing ever.
When I got married in ‘98 I was living in SF and went to the Jessica McClintock outlet in what was not quite yet South Park—still a lot of old warehousey lofts. I thought something really retro might make a cool wedding dress. But it was all ugly modern solid-color garish prom dresses. So sad.
The “Where books come from” is so cute! *brain melting from cuteness*
Y’all have seen this wedding photo, right?
The Quintessential Boomer Wedding
I would love to know if that’s a Gunne Sax or a more expensive knockoff.
I had SO MANY GS dresses. My 9th-grade prom dress was a short one, white with little pink roses (I had 1928 earrings to match the roses)… my 10-grade prom dress (I went with a senior) was pink voile with white lace… another dress from that year was green and white calico with leg-o-mutton sleeves… and the one I bought for Christmas Eve my senior year (1984) was burgundy velvet with ivory satin ribbon and pearl buttons and a sweetheart neckline.
Oh, also: My mom made me two dresses from Gunne Sax patterns. One was insane with the tiers and the lace and the ribbon and the tiny pearl buttons, and it probably caused her to develop a deep and lasting hatred of both sewing and teenage girls, but I loved it. (Here it is.) The other was one of those ruffle-off-the-shoulder-with-spaghetti-straps numbers, and it never fit quite right. But she spent hours and hours and hours on it, so I did wear it once. (I am certain that someday I will be paid back for this by my kid. I just hope he doesn’t want me to sew any Gunne Sax dresses, because I hate dealing with little fiddly bits of lace and ribbon.)
(This is another link to the wedding photo I linked to above, which doesn’t seem to work anymore… even though it did, like, 10 minutes ago: different link)
I have a picture of me and 4 friends all in Gunne Sax for our 8th grade dance. Two of us in the same one. Both my early 90s prom dresses were also Gunne Sax; I held on to that trend until the bitter end. I was an insane Gone with the Wind fan at the time (I cringe now because argh slavery apologist).
I did have a Gunne Sax dress back in the day – wore it to my sister’s hs graduation – but for my own hs prom I wore a cocktail dress of my mother’s. 🙂 It was slinky and fuschia and tight. I had spent my senior year in college across town, and almost nobody recognized me. It was awesome.
My mom took me to the Jessica McClintock outlet for my prom dress. The one I wanted was one size to small, but I held my breath and squeezed into that sucker. I may have looked slightly constipated and may not have been able to move around too much but it was TOTALLY worth it!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh…good times.
RevMelinda- So OMG my mom had that dress, and I remember playing dress up in it when my sister and I wanted to pretend we were getting married. OMG I haven’t seen it in ages!
I googled Hilary’s wedding photos to find her dress was by Jessica McClintock.
I never heard of Gunne Sax, but the style is interesting.
Now I know why my mom had to get a perm for her wedding.
Aha! I thought so. 🙂 She just does not strike me as a Gunne Sax kind of bride. But they look so cute and flower-childy.
my favorite formal gown was my Gunne Sax. I paid for it with hard-earned babysitting money. I regret giving it to my younger cousin—she got knocked up and never wore it. I’m sure it ended up in the trash. 🙁
I saw the dress my friend wore to her bat mitzvah in that Etsy collection.
I had a favorite peach Gunne Sax two piece dress I wore to a Homecoming dance, early 80’s and my Prom dress (1983) was an ivory off the shoulder tiered confection of a Gunne Sax dress. My date wore a brown tux with ruffled shirt to match! You brought back the TBT memories with this post!
OMG I LOVED Gunne Sax!! Never could afford them but that was so my style. I wanted one for my Senior Show reception/college graduation SO BAD; found the perfect one at 5-7-9 but by the time I had saved up the money for it they were sold out. 🙁
Hey, glad you liked the article, and thanks for linking it!
I had a vintage Gunne Sax dress in high school. My bohemian English teacher expressed her jealousy over it on many occasions. Bronwyn Green is going to help me recreate it, albeit twice the size as the first one, LOL.
Loved your interview for the other podcast, Sarah!