Shelloquent

For today's Working Wednesday, I'm going to be promoting the heck out of a book I'm super proud of, and I'm just as proud of the author. Lynn Cahoon's A STORY TO KILL was released yesterday. It's the first in a brand-new print cozy mystery series, which is a first for her. Lynn is well known for her digital Tourist Trap mysteries with Lyrical Press, but she's going to be publishing but in print and digitally with these two separate series. I did a featured staff recommended read which will be live on Kensington's website tomorrow but you get a sneak peek here! I may be a bit biased where it comes to Lynn Cahoon, but it’s for good reason. She always writes a clever, fun mystery with a good hook. But she’s outdone herself with the first book in her brand-new print series, A Story to Kill. Cahoon cleverly blends the right about of mystery, intrigue, and whodunit with a rekindling romance with a hot handyman. What more could you want? A Story to K

It's been a bit since my last book review. I'd been in a reading slump and decided to read a quick queer novella to jump-start me. I made the right choice.  THE COBBLER'S SOLELESS SON by Meredith Katz Blurb:  Everyone expects Renart Walker to follow in his mother's footsteps and become the cobbler for their little demon-ruled town. That'd be the proper thing to do: keep his head down, live his quiet human life, and try not to get too involved with demons. But Renart has never been terribly concerned with proper, and he isn't interested in a quiet life. His interests are a little more ambitious: he's aiming to catch himself a demon prince. As a human, he'd never be allowed to even get close to Prince Hrahez. The only solution is to make a bargain with a demon, and everyone knows what they want. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and he's got a plan—but it involves tricking a demon. If it doesn't work, nobody in town would want

If you've been paying attention on Publishing Twitter today, you might have seen people in all walks - agents, editors, publicists, authors - weighing in on one particular topic: David Benjamin. I won't go into a lot of detail here about what exactly he said because it's already been covered (and I'll link to that), but I did want to say how he is the epitome of the best practices on how not to land yourself an agent, I get it. Rejection can hurt. But a  lot of writers who go on to write some beloved stories have been rejected over and over. JK Rowling is a prime example. And it's fine to blog about your disappointment at yet another rejection. What's not fine is a mean-spirited, belittling, straight-up misogynistic rant about agents who didn't like your ill-prepared pitch. This is what he sounded like to me underneath the gross misogyny. I'll let In the Inbox take it from here. This literary agent intern screencapped the post and some

Time for another book review! I'll be trying to do these on weekends, especially when I've finished a book that I really want to talk about. And I really want to talk about Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire. EVERY HEART A DOORWAY by Seanan McGuire I have been a Seanan Fan for a few years now. I picked up the first in her October Daye series when I got sick of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files (for many reasons I chose to stop reading it), and found that Seanan's series delivered exactly what I'd wanted from Butcher's. I picked up more and more of her work, increasingly please by what I read. I have a lot of Feels about Seanan's work, and was super excited to pick up Every Heart a Doorway. Blurb: Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children No Solicitations No Visitors No Quests Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes

Sup everyone? Enjoying your holiday weekend if you're in the States and/or work someplace that observes Memorial Day? Don't forget to take some time to reflect on why we have a day off for Memorial Day while we kick off the unofficial start to the summer! This is the first in what's going to be a series called Monday Me-Time where I'll blog about something personal: my likes, travels, something that means something to me. But before I get into that I want to talk about what I did over the weekend: ta-dah ! I have a website! I thought it'd be good to put myself out there professionally, partly to improve my online footprint (I barely have one!) and partly to make sure I keep my professional achievements chronicled. Still more to come obviously: the "Work" page needs to be updated with some press releases, achievements, and articles I've been featured or quoted in. But I'm really excited about how it came out! Now, moving onto my Me

Hello again folks! As I said in my previous entry, I wanted to diversify the blog a bit, so that it's not just book reviews and so that posts come more frequently. While I do read a lot, I don't always have time to sit and write a proper review. So I'll be saving that for books I'm really excited about reading, while I also impart some knowledge about publishing, as well as some insight into me, myself and I. Today's topic falls under the umbrella of the former: publishing industry info. "Working Wednesday" is going to be a once a month thing where I discuss what's going on in publishing from industry events that I've attended to knowledge I've gained on the job that could help aspiring writers or just excite readers. For my first Working Wednesday I want to talk about the question I get asked most in some way: how do I get published?

Oh wow have I been slacking here or what? I did however come up with a plan to get myself more organized around here, and keep my updates coming more regularly. Hopefully it it will work out. They won't just be book reviews; I'll be diversifying a bit with some more personal things, as well as monthly posts on the publishing industry. I'm getting back in the writing grove with a book review for the last book in the Raven Cycle series by Maggie Stiefvater. I read these as they came out so it was a long ling coming waiting for book four. Let's get right into it. THE RAVEN KING by Maggie Stiefvater Blurb : Nothing living is safe. Nothing dead is to be trusted. For years, Gansey has been on a quest to find a lost king. One by one, he’s drawn others into this quest: Ronan, who steals from dreams; Adam, whose life is no longer his own; Noah, whose life is no longer a lie; and Blue, who loves Gansey… and is certain she is destined to kill him. Now

Ok, I know. It's been too long since my last review. There were holidays, a rough start to the new year, and just not a lot of time to review what books I did read. But I just read one I absolutely need to talk about. REBEL OF THE SANDS by Alwyn Hamilton Blurb: She’s more gunpowder than girl—and the fate of the desert lies in her hands. Mortals rule the desert nation of Miraji, but mystical beasts still roam the wild and barren wastes, and rumor has it that somewhere, djinni still practice their magic. But there's nothing mystical or magical about Dustwalk, the dead-end town that Amani can't wait to escape from.  Destined to wind up "wed or dead," Amani’s counting on her sharpshooting skills to get her out of Dustwalk. When she meets Jin, a mysterious and devastatingly handsome foreigner, in a shooting contest, she figures he’s the perfect escape route. But in all her years spent dreaming of leaving home, she never imagined she'd gallop