I have been very lucky this month to have an intern working with me through our school’s career development program. His name is Bruce, and he’s learning to be an author — not just the writing part, which he already knows, but also all the other parts of the job. Writing, critique group, editing. Sending work out on submission. Professional development about the publishing industry. Research on marketing and also for a novel set in a historical setting. Networking with other authors and industry professionals. Writing on spec. And next week, we’ll be adding zine production, accounting, and the behind-the-scenes of how bookstores work. It’s a lot to pack into three weeks, and he’s doing great! It’s going well. And tomorrow, we have an author event!
Sci-fi author Adam Holt and I will be out at the Sawyer Yards Arts Market tomorrow, as we sometimes are, and of course Han and their art will be with us. Bruce is going to be out there, too, learning how to do an author event, so come by our booth and talk to him about his recent publications.
And just to show off some of the work he’s been doing lately, here’s one of the promotional graphics he made for the event.
created by Bruce Hurley
Adam and I will both be signing books, Han will be selling their art, and we’ll also have our available, including coveted back issues. You’ll also see my handmade poetry art cards and journals and perhaps some jewelry there, too, for as long as I can keep it in stock. (Those cards and journals always go fast!)
The Art Market at Sawyer Yards happens from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The address is 1502 Sawyer St. in Houston 77007. Here’s the link for more information. We hope to see you there!
Once again, because it is a popular follow-up to my annual Books I Read lists, I’m including a list of the category romance titles I read this past year and ranking them by heat level. For those who might be unfamiliar with that term, it essentially refers to the sensuality level or raciness of the story. There are several different technical, helpful guides and explanations for how to rate such things if you go looking for them online, but I’ll summarize the widely accepted definitions below.
Something to remember here: I’m not including any titles that could easily or more appropriately fit into a different genre, such as fantasy, even if those stories contain strong romantic subplots. This ranking list is strictly for titles that don’t really fit anywhere else.
Also, once again, I’m including an explanation of the usually accepted five heat levels within the romance genre. Again, these categories of romance have been well established for a while now, and these are the ranking guidelines I use. You can no doubt find other ways of ranking them or other descriptions of them, but these are the descriptions I go by, so please bear that in mind.
Here are the five levels of heat, in order, with very brief descriptions:
* MILD — Sweet like a Hallmark Christmas movie, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend these titles to my adolescent children or even mature middle schoolers who were genuinely interested in the genre. In many examples of this heat level, the most titillating thing that happens might be kissing and the occasional cute innuendo.
* MEDIUM — Generally equivalent to a PG-13 movie in that intimate situations or scenes are there, but they aren’t graphically described and won’t likely make people (who like the concept of kissing books) uncomfortable. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend books like these to high school students who genuinely liked YA romance. (Please note that not all titles in this heat level will be YA.)
* HOT — Sometimes called steamy, sexy, or spicy, this level includes most category romance books and offers a wide range of description of intimate activity and the language used to describe it; the titles I’ve included here also represent a wide range within this heat level.
* NUCLEAR — Expect graphic descriptions and possible forays beyond vanilla.
* EROTIC (ROMANCE) — This heat level pushes boundaries, most definitely; the characters’ emotional journeys are lived through explicit sexual activity, but (unlike in erotica) the emotional journey and the external story still retain primacy — as does the all-important happy story ending.
And here are the titles I read this past year, ranked by me:
MILD: None this past year, although if I were including other books from my reading list that didn’t fit exclusively into category romance, some of them would probably be here.
MEDIUM: Cinder-Nanny by Sariah Wilson Roommaid by Sariah Wilson Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall
HOT: Sleeper by Kayley Loring Charmer by Kayley Loring Trouble Maker by Kayley Loring Romancing Mister Bridgerton by Julia Quinn All the Feels by Olivia Dade The Love Interest by Kayley Loring Munro by Kresley Cole * One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston Good Vibrations by Kayley Loring A Very Bossy Christmas by Kayley Loring A Not So Meet Cute by Meghan Quinn A Very Friendly Valentines Day by Kayley Loring So Not Meant to Be by Meghan Quinn Hello Darling by Kayley Loring It Takes a Villa by Kilby Blades The Reunion by Meghan Quinn The One Night by Meghan Quinn Ship Wrecked by Olivia Dade
NUCLEAR: Get Off Easy by Sara Brookes ** Switch It Up by Sara Brookes ** In the Rough by Sara Brookes **
EROTIC (ROMANCE): Get Off Easy by Sara Brookes ** Switch It Up by Sara Brookes ** In the Rough by Sara Brookes **
* Munro by Kresley Cole is the latest installment in her Immortals After Dark series, which overall is most definitely in the nuclear category. However, Munro was published after quite a long hiatus from the rest of the series, and I don’t recall it having the same timbre as the previous books. Proceed with caution in case my memory is faulty.
** I suspect that with this trilogy by Sara Brookes, how a reader perceives the heat level is going to be largely determined by the individual reader’s experience and taste. All three books could fit into either or both heat levels.
This year’s Books I Read list is the longest it has been since I started keeping track of it, by far. For instance, I came down with an illness at the start of the summer that had me unable to get out of bed for a solid week, and in that week I read ten books, which had been my previous goal for how many books to read over the summer. I plowed through them — I tend to read at a fairly quick pace — and then kept right on going.
This is a partial grouping of the books I read this past year. My Kindle is on the top of one of the piles because a lot of the books I read were on that. Also, some books aren’t pictured because I accidentally left them at school over the holidays. Oops.
This year, I found myself reading voraciously anything that put me in a good mood, because reasons. Therefore you will find a lot of books on this year’s list that are just really fun, including — but not limited to — laugh-out-loud romantic comedies (which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite genres).
I also dove into a bunch of series this year, so you’ll see a lot fewer individual authors on the list than book titles. The breadth of my reading diet was also, therefore, not as wide as I normally strive for. (I’ll do better next year.) One thing I found interesting is that some series were excellent all the way through, and some were…less consistent.
One thing I’m always curious about is how an author maintains a contiguous storyline over multiple books, especially since I’m working on a series like that myself. But I’m also interested to see how series set within the same “world” (whether it’s the real one or not) work when each book is a separate storyline but shares characters. (We see things like this quite often in category romance, where different characters play supporting roles in their friends’ stories and then get to have their own protagonistic moment in their own book. And yes, I’m working on a series like that, too, though not in the romance genre.)
Also, because I am sometimes a completist, if there’s a book I want to read that’s in the middle of a series, I will read the books that came before it first. (See also the note above about the two types of series I’m studying the mechanics of.)
As always, I’m leaving off my list the titles of any books I did not finish reading. Likewise the titles of any manuscripts I read which are not yet published. This year I am including, however, books I read which I had read before in a previous year. There are some titles I revisit, either because I love them or because I’m studying them for craft/genre reasons or because I’m teaching them.
See below the list for a partial breakdown of genres.
Sleeper by Kayley Loring Charmer by Kayley Loring The Night She Went Missing by Kristen Bird Trouble Maker by Kayley Loring Bloodwarm by Taylor Byas Romancing Mister Bridgerton by Julia Quinn All the Feels by Olivia Dade The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik Still Mine by Jayne Pillemer Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl The Love Interest by Kayley Loring Munro by Kresley Cole Payback’s A Witch by Lana Harper The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern Binti by Nnedi Okorafor Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi Binti: Sacred Fire by Nnedi Okorafor Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor Boogie Knights by Lisa Wheeler Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor Uncertain Resident by Tova Hinda Siegel Tethered to Stars by Fady Joudah Unbroken edited by Marieke Nijkamp One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston Blood Countess by Lana Popović Good Vibrations by Kayley Loring A Very Bossy Christmas by Kayley Loring The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi A Not So Meet Cute by Meghan Quinn Shutter by Taylor Byas The Author Wheel Quick Guide to Productive Writing Habits by G.C. Boris and M. Haskell Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson From Bad to Cursed by Lana Harper A Very Friendly Valentines Day by Kayley Loring Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King The Vine Witch by Luanne G. Smith So Not Meant to Be by Meghan Quinn Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson Hello Darling by Kayley Loring Cinder-Nanny by Sariah Wilson Get Off Easy by Sara Brookes The Round House by Louise Erdrich Spellbreaker by Charlie N. Holmberg Lady Mechanika Volume 1 by Joe Benitez It Takes a Villa by Kilby Blades Roommaid by Sariah Wilson The Reunion by Meghan Quinn Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik Switch It Up by Sara Brookes The One Night by Meghan Quinn In the Rough by Sara Brookes The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India Holton The League of Gentlewomen Witches by India Holton Ship Wrecked by Olivia Dade The Two Rabbits and the Great Texas Freeze by Anna and Sophia Nguyen Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas Sh*t My President Says by Shannon Wheeler Original Love by Molly Peacock
And here is the promised, but brief, breakdown by genre — only broad strokes this year, though.
At some point in the next week-ish, I will do my annual Romance Titles Ranked By Heat Level list as well, since that seems to be very popular here on the blog.
So. What have you been reading? Anything you’d like to recommend? Have at it in the comments!
Hello! Here in the U.S. (and perhaps other places too?) today is Small Business Saturday, one of a series of themed commerce days that launch us from Thanksgiving into the full brunt of the Christmas Shopping Season. It is what it is.
That said, did you know that authors are, in and of themselves, small businesses? Small business owners, I suppose would be more grammatically accurate (if not practically so), but the point is that we are entrepreneurs as well as artists. That is a big part of the job of being an author. Not everyone likes it. It’s not the art form we signed up for. But again, it is what it is.
If you are looking for a delightful stocking stuffer (“Take two, they’re small!”) or gift for someone who enjoys reading, you might consider one of my books. As of now, we have no supply chain problems. (Yay!) You can order directly from me (send an email to forest.of.diamonds@gmail.com) and I can ship it to you usually within 1-2 days, or you can order from any bookseller (online or brick-and-mortar).
I’m happy to sign books and get them to you ASAP. (You will pay shipping.) If you order them before December 15th, there’s a much better chance you’ll have them in time for Christmas, if that’s your thing.
Leave a comment here on this blog post or email me at forest.of.diamonds@gmail.com to order them from me directly, but again, you can get all three of my own titles just about anywhere. (If a bookstore is out of stock, have them order it from Ingram.) The Milk of Female Kindness is available through me directly or through Amazon.
For those of you who didn’t know of him, he was a celebrated author with a list of accolades as long as a swan’s stretched neck. I did not know him well — and in fact spent only one afternoon with him several years ago — but he made a distinct impression on me, enough that learning of his unexpected passing gobsmacked my day.
Many of you are aware I teach Creative Writing at a prestigious high school. One benefit of my program is that we bring in a lot of excellent authors to work with our students, and I met Marcus when he was touring in the US to promote his novel Saint Death and visited my school. We had a lunch and book signing, and then he came in to work specifically with just my high school students. The lunch and signing were pleasant and lovely, and he was pleasant and lovely, but the real impression he made on me happened afterward, in the brief open time between the lunch and my class arriving.
Our librarian and the local bookseller who was sponsoring his visit and one of the parent volunteers escorted him to my classroom, where I was alone and preparing for the next session. He was a youngish man, I thought — in fact only a few years older than I am — but he was walking slowly, with a cane. Our librarian had alluded to some “health concerns,” but I didn’t know what they were. But Marcus was cheerful with a charming British cadence in his voice, gentle and kind in the way that everyone who has mentioned him over the last two days has said. As he sat in a desk at the front of the room, the ladies escorting him said, “It was nice to meet you today. Angélique, he’s all yours!” Then they disappeared from my doorway, and I realized we had almost twenty minutes to fill before my students came in. The small talk lasted about two minutes.
Then I asked if he would like a cup of tea. His face brightened. “You have tea? I would love one, thank you.” I brought over the box of teas I keep in my classroom (several varieties, all high quality brands, because I love tea and don’t see how anyone makes it through a work day without it) so he could select the kind he wanted. (He chose a mint/tarragon blend with no cream or sugar.) Then I left briefly to make the tea while he pulled his presentation up on his computer.
Even after making sure all the technology worked and everything was in order, we still had some time left before my students arrived. That’s when he turned to me and said, “I understand you’re an author, too. What do you write?”
Reader, I was stunned.
It would be a logical assumption to believe that at a school like mine, the person teaching Creative Writing would be an author. In fact, quite a few of our English teachers are also authors. In fact, quite a few of our faculty in other departments are also authors. And by most metrics outside of the school where I teach, I am considered a successful author.
But among all of the dozens upon dozens of authors I’ve had visit my students over the years, he is almost the only one ever to ask me if and what I write. I felt seen in a way I didn’t realize I hadn’t been before. There are countless ways in which I am sometimes invisible to the people around me, but on that day, I was not, and the comfort of that feeling, like a sliver of light, has never left me.
So seeing the news yesterday was kind of tough. I wish the warmest feelings of comfort to his family and friends, whose loss is no doubt immense. May their memories of Marcus bring them peace.
So today the new issue of Literary Mama came out, and it includes a review I wrote for Kristen Bird’s debut novel, The Night She Went Missing.
Literary Mama is one of the oldest literary journals featuring the work of writer-mothers in existence. Every issue features poetry, reviews, profiles, fiction, and non-fiction.
Hello! I have some very exciting news! Two of my poems, “Magdalen” and “Epiphany,” have just been published in A Fire to Light Our Tongues: Texas Writers on Spirituality. This anthology had a long road to publication.
It began before covid times and one of the women fiercely behind the project actually passed away before she could see the book in print. But it is out now, and filled with poetry on the ever-shifting nature of spirituality and how we interact with it, and I cannot recommend it enough.
Other poets featured in this book include Naomi Shihab Nye, Rich Levy, Robin Davidson, Robert Okaji, and Kevin Prufer, just to name a few. The anthology contains two parts, “Pandemic Time” and “Contraries,” and within “Contraries” are the following themed sections: Belief and Doubt Good and Evil Love and Hope Known and Unknown Truth and Beauty Joy and Gratitude
This is a beautiful book, and I hope you’ll give it a look. You can even get it, at least for a time, at a 20% discount with the code “TCU20” at this link to TAMU Press. (Don’t use the quotation marks when you put the code in.)
I’m seriously excited about this. We’ve waited a few years for this book to finally come out, and it has definitely been worth the wait!
Hey there! I want to show you something excellent:
These are the tickets so far for the raffle I’m doing this week in support of Charlie’s Angels, my family’s campaign to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Get your donations in before tomorrow (Wednesday) night so be included in the raffle. Each $25 donated gets a ticket — which means if you donate $100 you get four tickets, and if you donate $250 you get ten, and so on. I’ll be doing a livestream Thursday evening to pick the winner of this raffle, who will receive a signed and personalized copy of Jayne Pillemer’s gorgeous children’s book Still Mine.
Readers to this blog will remember that I often like to feature Book Spine Poetry here as a fun activity, and now I’m challenging all of you to do it too!
The idea is to stack books on top of each other so that their titles form the lines of a found poem. For example, here is one I cooked up to put on my Hallowe’en-decorated mantel last year.
The tale of Murasaki: Cleopatra’s daughter, witches of east end, the lust lizard of Melancholy Cove, tea, Arabian nights. Spoiler alert: any rogue will do.
And now it’s your turn! Spend a little time with your library (or at one) and send me an image of your best book spine poem for a chance to be featured here on the blog later this month. You can email it to forest [dot] of [dot] diamonds [at] gmail [dot] com, and be sure to put “BOOK SPINE POEM” in the subject line so it’s easier for me to find in my overflowing inbox. (I’m also happy to take any helpful suggestions on how to peaceably achieve Inbox Zero — without metaphorically burning it to the ground, that is.)
One of my friends and colleagues, Kristen Bird, has just launched her debut novel, The Night She Went Missing, and dear reader, it is wonderful. If you like suspenseful mysteries with strong female characters and a compelling plot set in the otherworldly bubble of elite private schools, then this one is for you.
You’ll hear more from me later about this book, but for today, I’m turning the metaphorical microphone over to Kristen so she can drop some immense wisdom about the writing process. Enjoy.
***
Keep Writing by Kristen Bird
I wrote my first full-length novel as a creative writing thesis for the final project for my master’s in literature, and I queried it in the days when some literary agents still only wanted mailed submissions. That was almost fifteen years ago. After numerous rejections, I didn’t write much. Instead, I did the kinds of things many adults do: I got a real job (teaching high-school English), I paid bills, I went grocery shopping, I endured infertility treatments, and I had three babies in three years—the last two, twins.
But after all that adulting, I found myself returning to write as a therapeutic outlet. Having an hour to myself to drink coffee and enter another world—one that didn’t ask anything of me—became my escape. From the times my twins were two until they were five, I worked on a historical novel, one that involved tedious—and thrilling, to me—research about the early 1900s in New York City. I would later fall in love with the novel The Golem & The Jinni by Helene Wecker because the setting felt so familiar.
Though it took me years to complete this novel, I wasn’t in a hurry. My kids let me sleep (sometimes), and about once every other week, I would scribble away for an hour or two. I knew I was writing that book for me, though I secretly hoped someone would someday read it. That didn’t keep me from becoming fully invested in the querying process when I finally decided I’d revised the book as much as I knew how. When I started querying this second full-length manuscript, I finally began to understand the slow pace of the publishing industry. I would do equations like this: if I send this query to an agent and that agent takes 6-8 weeks to respond before I send it to another agent who takes 3-6 months to respond, how long before I give up in despair?
With that second full-length manuscript, I had a few bites, a few partial requests, a couple full requests. Some agents told me the writing was good. I didn’t believe them because they also rejected me. Some told me that the whole process of querying is subjective. I didn’t believe that either. One night after receiving a rejection from an agent I idolized, I ended up in my bed sobbing, proclaiming that I was giving up. No more writing. No more querying. I couldn’t face rejection anymore.
That lasted a week because, as writers know, we must write.
For my third full-length manuscript, I decided I would be the person who would keep writing and keep querying until something happened. I hadn’t yet listened to writing podcasts in which published authors often talk about not getting published until their second, third, or ninth novel. I didn’t know that could be normal.
If I was going to keep writing and querying, I knew I would have to write a lot faster than one novel every four or five years. I switched to a contemporary setting and voice, the benefit being that I had a lot less to research, and I decided I would write quickly and revise quickly. My daughters were turning six and nine, which was a game-changer in so many ways. I was finally getting consistent sleep, I was eating full meals without a child throwing a tantrum on the floor, and I was getting to have actual conversations with other grown-ups. I was determined to finish this new project, a contemporary suspense novel, in a few months.
The Night She Went Missing is the book that finally landed me an agent and a publisher, and though the process may look fast to some, it’s been a rather slow but event-filled fifteen years in the making. In the middle of waiting to be published, I’ve had three daughters, taught hundreds of students, and built a life with a great guy. Publishing—along with any other dreams—doesn’t come fast or easy for most writers, including myself, so I’ve learned it’s important to enjoy the life that happens in midst of the waiting—and to keep writing, no matter what.
***
The Night She Went Missing by Kristen Bird, 2022 from Mira Books. ISBN-10 : 0778332101 ISBN-13 : 978-0778332107
photo by Bess Garison
Kristen Bird lives outside of Houston, Texas with her husband and three daughters. She earned her bachelor’s degree in music and mass media before completing a master’s in literature. She teaches high school English and writes with a cup of coffee in hand. In her free time, she likes to visit parks with her three daughters, watch quirky films with her husband, and attempt to keep pace with her rescue lab-mixes. The Night She Went Missing is her debut novel.
Sappho's Torque 