Welcome to Wednesday Links! This is where we link pretty neat things we’ve seen around the internet recently. This is the last Wednesday I’ll be spending in my old apartment. Next week, I will officially be in my new place and all I’ll say is that we’re turning the dining room into a reading room.
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Author Rebekah Weatherspoon has finally revealed her cover for Rafe, an upcoming romance with a “buff male nanny.” The heroine is a doctor who needs help with her kids. Check it out here!I will also say that I love following Rebekah on Twitter because you really get to see a book go from an idea to a finished product.
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Love horses? What about fantasy? Tor has an ode to the wonderful horses of epic fantasy:
Tolkien was not a horseman that I know of; he certainly wasn’t noted for his real-world interactions with the species. And yet he paid attention to them. He gave them names and personalities. He populated his world with different breeds and types. They were more than mechanisms to move people and armies from place to place; they were characters in their own right.
The big blazing star of the epic of course is Shadowfax, the King of the Mearas, which essentially makes him the ruler of the horses of the West. He’s a classic fantasy horse: pure white, royal, exceedingly intelligent, with endless stamina and world-beating speed. And of course, no mere mortal may touch him. He’s a one-Wizard horse, and he and Gandalf are partners through the War of the Ring.
I’m just going to pour one out for my boy, Atreyu Artax, from The Neverending Story.
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When Carrie reviewed Roomies by Christina Lauren, she noted that an Irish immigrant marrying to stay in the U.S. was insulting to other immigrants fighting to stay with their children and families.
Well Christina Lauren took that criticism to heart and has made changes to their upcoming movie adaption of Roomies. The hero is no longer an Irishman, but is a Latinx hero. Hopefully, it’ll do more to address the current political climate.
This news, I believe, is in the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, but you can read a statement on CLo’s Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BmUAEO0FV-F/?taken-by=christinalauren
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A trio of great romance bloggers and readers have launched a Diversity Press List! This list will be released to those who sign up and will contain an editorial calendar of upcoming diverse titles.
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Lastly, watch these rock climbers try to keep with a pole dancing exercise!
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!
Just an FYI in case you don’t hover over links before you click (or like me you are clicking through from a reader) the link to the diversity list signup is through Bawdy Bookworms. I only note this for folks linking through at work. Not strictly NSFW, but there is still sidebar content (ads) to be aware of.
I am seriously so impressed with that Christina Lauren statement. Good for her! GOOD for her! How great is it when an author really listens to valid criticism and responds in a way which will make their work stronger?!
I’m also really impressed with that change to Roomies! However, I didn’t realise Christina Lauren is a pen name for two women, and thought she was really going to town with the royal ‘we’ in that Instagram post.
Fascinating about that Christina Lauren book adaptation change. And that Diversity book listing. I’d love to find books with characters that had challenges. Like coolitus. No, but seriously, I wouldn’t mind more disabled romance leads. I like to think about my main character leads.
I’ve been finding editing histories rather interesting for books. I weirded out a person on a different website who had confidence issues about self-publishing their fantasy novel digitally by going, “If it doensn’t work, you can edit it out in post! I learned that a romance novel had a triple XXX scene removed due to it being awkward!”
I learned later that the person is a dude and his book history involved stuff like David Foster Wallace and Tao Lin. And I weirded out that guy.
I liked that horse article, except that it was supposed to be about fantasy NOVELS and then the writer went on about Game of Thrones, and admitted to never having read even one entire ASOIAF book. Is there really so little fantasy novel/horse person xover that they couldn’t find someone else? Or left GoT out, I guess…
And no mention of Elizabeth Bear’s work! Her fantasy-Mongolia series has some of the best horsemanship in fiction I’ve seen, even with it featuring a very fantastical horse. (Sadly, I got super bored of the series before reading the final one, but oh well. Her writing isn’t, to me, generally very…accessible, shall we say. Her Karen Memory book is the only one I’ve found easy to read (and I quite recommend it for a fun f/f romance.))
Not book-related at all, but I’ve been listening to Getting Curious With Jonathan Van Ness. Aside from being the fabulous Queer Eye grooming guy, he has an inquiring mind & interviews interesting people about a vast range of topics.
Okay people, I clicked through the Rebekah Weatherspoon and must read that male nanny book, yum. But I’ve never read anything by her before. Where should I start?
@Crysta: Rebekah’s books are often on the more erotic side. Carrie gave her book Sated a B+ and I enjoyed Haven, but that one deals a lot with trauma and grief.
I am here for Buff Nannies. Yum. (I mean, the cover is all right, but much more generally, as a concept… catnip I didn’t even realize I had.)
And yes on Elizabeth Bear’s Eternal Sky books – she put so much into the horses there, too. Of course, culturally it only makes sense in that case 🙂 (I like her dense writing style, but agree that Karen Memory is much more of a romp. I consulted in a very minor way on both, so it’s fun to hear them brought up.)
Since the TOR article mentioned horses specifically in fantasy novels, I’ll nominate my favorite horse in a romance-oriented novel here. It’s got to be Greatheart in BEAUTY by Robin McKinley.
The horse in the Neverending Story is Artax! Atreyu is the boy (but I’m assuming you’re pouring one out for the horse?)
If I misread, nothing to see here…
@Meljean Brook: That is exactly what I meant, haha. Thank you!
Just gonna throw this one in: Maximus from Tangled
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