What’s Up?
My house looks like Christmas threw up on it, and that’s how I like it!
If it isn’t covered with tinsel, it has a wreath on it. Both options come with fairy lights to add EXTRA FREAKING SPARKLE. I even have my Yule Logs set up for that extra-special Christmas touch. I’ve hooked it all up to Alexa so when I tell her to ‘MAKE CHRISTMAS HAPPEN!’ all the lights come on and she starts to play Little Drummer Boy by King and Country.
In between aggressive Christmas I also interviewed fellow author and awesome person Bru Baker about her upcoming novella, Downward Facing Dreamboat from Dreamspinner Press. Check it out! Then go buy her book, it looks awesome.
Later on this week I’m also doing a VERY EXCITING INSTAGRAM EVENT with Bru! Friday afternoon (her time, evening here so expect the full fairy lights spectacle!) we’ll be on her instagram to chat about books, our Christmas plans, whether or not I could get to her house and smuggle her puppy back to Northern Ireland, and any questions that you guys might have!
After that it won’t be long until the blog tour for SWIPE by TA Moore starts. Check out all the stops to find out more about the novel, what I have planned for Plenty in future, and get a chance to win prizes!
A Novel of Plenty, California
As one of the top trauma surgeons in Plenty’s ER, Dr. Taggart Hayes knows how to fix broken things—fractured legs, ruptured spleens, allergies, and traumatic brain injuries. He can put them back together good as new.
A broken heart, though? That’s a bit trickier. Especially when it’s his own.
When Tag swipes on the photo of the hot man in the dating app, he just wants a distraction from the wreck that used to be his life. A one-night stand with a safely inappropriate stranger, no names, no feelings, and no complications.
But the headless photo on the app belongs to a man who isn’t so easy to forget the next day... or the next week. And it becomes increasingly clear that Bass is neither safe nor uncomplicated. Drawn into the dark, criminal underworld his lover inhabits, Tag has to decide if the cure for his broken heart is worse than the disease.
FINALLY! In honor of the holidays I’m going to give away a $35 Holiday Box of romance from Love’s Sweet Arrow. So follow the link to enter!
Book Rec of the Week
Check out Love in 24 Frames by C.S Poe. It brings three of the loves in her life (New York, writing, and film-making) and as always she does them justice in this Advent Short. Check it out!
Declan Groves is a CPA in New York City. His adult life is dictated by routine and borderline monotony. The need to express himself, in ways his career and crippling shyness have never allowed, leads Declan to becoming an amateur stop-motion filmmaker.
The one problem is that Declan is also in love with the Wandering Artist Studios receptionist Shota Watanabe. Shota has always had a smile and engaging comment ready for Declan, but even if it is more than casual politeness, Declan hasn’t been able to get out more than a tongue-tied sentence at a time. And a man like Shota surely has no intention of waiting forever.
So when an unexpected change to Declan’s daily schedule throws the two together outside of the studio, it might be the catalyst needed to explore what’s unspoken between them. But if they’re to have a future, Declan needs to find a way to tell Shota how he truly feels.
A story from the Dreamspinner Press 2019 Advent Calendar "Homemade for the Holidays."
Deal of the Day
Get the Honeymoon Cottage by Matt Brooks ebook for $1.50. Sale ends December 9, 2019 at 11:59 PM ET.
It’s 1962, and Dale Parker has been on his own for two years, ever since his small-town family disowned him on the suspicion of homosexuality. He works as a waiter in a Southern California coastal restaurant, but his life is going nowhere fast: he has no real education and has never had a real relationship. So when he finds himself falling in love with Rey Durán, one of his customers, he knows he’s in over his head.
Rey is nearly twice Dale’s age and a descendant of one of the original Spanish land grant families in California. He’s had plenty of disappointments in love, and that’s what he’s come to expect. He loves Dale, but Dale is a young, poor, uneducated Anglo—how can their differences be anything but insurmountable?
Determined to overcome the obstacles and prove himself to Rey, Dale sets out to finish his education and settle down. He wins over Rey’s family, starts learning Spanish, and adopts a culture vastly different from his own. But as Dale matures, Rey becomes less sure of his own commitment—which could lead to the heartbreak he’s been expecting all along.
Must Read of the Week
This is fascinating. I am always fascinated by the idea that how we perceive the world is inextricably shaped by how we talk about that perception. If you don’t have a word for a color, is that just a linguistic gap or does the color just not exist for you?
Maybe it’s because I’m a little bit colourblind? I only realized earlier this year that my friends lived in a much pinker world than mine. It was oddly…discombobulating to realize that my world view was quite off.
The Greeks would have understood.
The Sea Was Never Blue
The Greek color experience was made of movement and shimmer. Can we ever glimpse what they saw when gazing out to sea?
Homer used two adjectives to describe aspects of the colour blue: kuaneos, to denote a dark shade of blue merging into black; and glaukos, to describe a sort of ‘blue-grey’, notably used in Athena’s epithet glaukopis, her ‘grey-gleaming eyes’. He describes the sky as big, starry, or of iron or bronze (because of its solid fixity). The tints of a rough sea range from ‘whitish’ (polios) and ‘blue-grey’ (glaukos) to deep blue and almost black (kuaneos, melas). The sea in its calm expanse is said to be ‘pansy-like’ (ioeides), ‘wine-like’ (oinops), or purple (porphureos). But whether sea or sky, it is never just ‘blue’. In fact, within the entirety of Ancient Greek literature you cannot find a single pure blue sea or sky.
Oh, I wish! I have GF Christmas pudding for Christmas day, but I would nom this entire wee cake!
