A while ago, I did a list of my favorite books featuring female vampires for Shepherd, the book discovery site. They’ve just published a new featured called “Favorite Reads in 2023”, featuring the selections of almost 900 authors. We were asked to choose our three favorite books from our reading over the last year, with […]

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I didn’t keep a close record of cottage reading, but did get through a few books between July and the end of the September. Here are some of my favourites. FICTION The Poppy War and The Dragon Republic, R.F. Kuang. I motored through the first two parts of this trilogy and finished the final book […]

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As usual, I dove into the annual cottage getaway with plans for writing, editing, flamenco practice, etc. But the weather was fabulous, the mornings misty, the afternoons glorious, and so I mostly dove into the the lake (ok, I went down the later), went for walks, and read books. Je ne regrette rien.

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*once a business manager, always a business manager! Another period heavy on the non-fiction, so we’ll start with that. Fire Weather, John Vaillant. Valliant’s previous book, The Tiger, is one of my favorites so I jumped on this one. It’s a vivid and dramatic recounting of the Fort McMurray fire, a science lesson on the […]

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With the husband no longer required to spend most of his days face down in a special “retina recovery” chair (for which he was extremely grateful), I was cleared to go off to Nova Scotia with various family members to see the new great-grandson (again, not mine, I must point out). We had a lovely […]

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Where we left our heroine, she was recovering from Covid and a bad fall. May was promising, with a visit from a sibling, a road trip, and a long-delayed trip to Nova Scotia coming up in June. Work on the witch novel was proceeding, flamenco class had been resumed, I’d had my first writing date […]

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Yes, I know it’s overused, but April has not been kind to me. First up, COVID. I paid the price for sitting in a coffee shop for two hours by testing positive at the end of March. Gestures were made towards isolating from my husband but he inevitably came down with it as well. His […]

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Finished off the first review of the novel. Conclusions: Next steps: Onward!

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For whatever reason, the first 3 months of 2023 have been the months of reading non-fiction, though a couple of memorable novels did end up on my ereader. NON-FICTION Below the Edge of Darkness, Edith Widder. Another fascinating book about life in the ocean, this one focusing on creatures that inhabit the zone between light […]

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I’ve now ignored the shitty first draft for about 2 months so it’s time to start the less shitty (let’s hope) second draft. I’m starting with some suggestions from Matt Bell’s book REFUSE TO BE DONE for my revision process – but I’m quite sure I’m going to draw the line at writing the book […]

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