So self-obsessed recently

Ok, I suppose I get a bit of leeway, what with releasing my first book two weeks ago and changing my RL job simultaneously, but really, I've been horribly self-obsessed recently.

My online output has all been about The Lady's Secret. Hardly a murmur about anything else.

Here's 7 things that aren't about me (much).

1. L B Gregg is releasing a new novella after a year's hiatus. There's a lovely excerpt and a chance to win a copy here.

2. Jessica at Read React Review has several very interesting posts about her own and other papers at the McDaniel conference.

3. I am aware of the most recent online kerfuffle vis-a-vis the gender identity of certain M/M authors. Some very interesting posts on being gender-queer, authors' right to privacy, and lots of anger (and some contrition) all round. And I'm still not entirely sure who the original author was. Which is not a plea to be enlightened incidentally.

4. I read and loved Alex Beecroft's By Honor Betrayed. (Ok, that's a wee bit about me). Interestingly, while Carina let British authors use UK-English in their books, they have used the American spelling of "honor" in the title and blurb. However, throughout the novel, the spelling used is "honour". (This made me think of a series of radio programmes Bob Dylan did for UK radio station, BBC6 some years ago. My husband and I listened to the first one and he announced himself as "Coming to you with an extra 'U'...").

I love the way Beecroft makes the hero choose between love and the World. In this book, the World is epitomised in the person of Captain Fortescue and Conrad, the hero, finally sees that the World may not be morally superior at all in this instant:

It was not the look of integrity at all, but the cold purity of a Pharisee, the gleam of a whited sepulchre.

Wow.

5. Now I'm reading Joanna Bourne's The Black Hawk and it's just so tremendously, wonderfully, amazingly good! I can't even begin to tell you. The back and forth is rather stunningly done and, as ever with Bourne, the H/H are astoundingly appealing. Justine with her cool French practicality that hides a raw, hurt soul and Adrian - compact, lethal, ruthless - like one of his own blades. And true, like one of them. I could quote that book forever so won't even start.

6. And do you know what I picked up today? Samantha Kane's The Courage to Love. I've read a few good reviews of this over the years and for a short period, you can pick it up free here for the next few weeks I think.

7. I've also been reading lots of Jordan Castillo Price recently. Zero Hour was a great bit of Dystopian fiction with tight, satisfying world-building. I've read and enjoyed the first three in the Psycop series too and also Wishink Well (one of the Petit Morts series) which can't be categorised as romance but was a bittersweet and emotional read that stayed with me for ages after. Price has a reasonably chunky backlist so I look forward to dipping into that some more over the next few months.

So there you go - seven things that aren't about me or promoting my book.

:-)