Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe by Karen S. Wiesner Note that this book is also published under the title The Lost Book of Salem. I was drawn to the cover of this book when it first came out in 2009 (see it below, though the reproduction is washed out). The cover you see below the original is a newer version. The first edition, in tones of brown, doesn't include the girl on it. The original, I feel, is such a beautiful cover and the back cover blurb on the slipcover leaves of the hardcover was equally comp ..read more

The second season of the current INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE series has begun. I'm ambivalent about this project. It has lots to admire. The series format allows far more delving into and expansion on the novel than the movie did. The TV version restores the subplot of Louis's religiously devout brother, replaced in the movie by a simplistic premise of "my wife died young, so I have nothing to live for." Presenting the interviewer, hardly more than a boy in the book, as an aging, sickly, cynical veteran journalist revisiting his youthful conversations with Louis to set the record straight impre ..read more

Working writers, and even retired writers, need insurance. For many of us, putting ones writing pursuits under the umbrella of an LLC. Legal blogger Dave Griswold of the law firm Wolters Kluwer shares helpful insights in an article explaining the ins-and-outs of Limited Liability Companies. https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/how-to-form-an-llc-what-is-an-llc-advantages-disadvantages-and-more Of course, an LLC should have its own bank account, and assets should not be co-mingled. If you co-mingle your assets, you might endanger the protections. It's called "piercing the veil".&nbs ..read more

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Diaries of the Family Dracul Series by Jeanne Kalogridis by Karen S. Wiesner The author also writes under the pseudonym J.M. Dillard, and many will be very familiar with those works, as they include novelizations of popular movies (The Fugitive, Star Trek), and many episodes of Star Trek (including the original, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Enterprise). However, it was this series with a ton of advantages that made me snatch them up when I first saw them. The first book in the trilogy, Covenant with the Vampire ..read more

Peter S. Beagle, author of THE LAST UNICORN, has just released a fantasy novel titled I'M AFRAID YOU'VE GOT DRAGONS. What if dragons weren't huge, majestic, terrifying beasts, but household pests the size of small lizards (at least as far as the characters know to start with)? The protagonist doesn't hunt dragons with armor and sword; he cleans them out of walls by the dozens or hundreds like mice or cockroaches. Of course, what he and his friends know at the beginning of the story isn't the whole truth, and things soon get much more complicated. Fairy tales, myths, and legends, having countle ..read more

When I lived in Germany, I belonged to an ex-patriate group whose name I forget, but it was nothing at all like Real Housewives of the Taunus. They had a DIY ringbound cookbook which they published among themselves and probably to a wider audience, but this was well before the internet. It was called Much More Than Mushrooms, and it was very helpful for Brits and Americans who were living in a strange land, and cooking with strange ingredients (including the morel mushroom that looks like grey, thoroughly chewed chewing gum) and an unfamiliar system of kitchen measurements. I cannot find it th ..read more

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Wendy Ward Series by John Passarella by Karen S. Wiesner A bit of an explanation: Wither, winner of a Bram Stoker Award for First Novel, was written by the authors John Passarella and Joseph Gangemi (writer of Inamorata) under the pseudonym J.G. Passarella. The rest of the books in the series were written by John Passarella alone. Wither was his very first book, and it was intended to be a standalone. Passarella might be better known for his media tie-novels from the series Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Grimm. Wit ..read more

I am not going to recommend that you wear some flowers in your hair. Such a disguise might not help at all. But you might want to read an article that has been thoughtfully shared by our sometimes copyright-unfriendly friends at the Electronic Freedom Foundation. https://www.newsobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/article286920890.html In my early days of bsp (blatant self promotion), there was a start-up company that did a very good deal on promotional postcards, and they also did car magnets. I remember embarrassing my daughter (and she was right that my behavior was inappropriate) by dri ..read more

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Hatching Series by Ezekiel Boone by Karen S. Wiesner Despite my avid fear of spiders (little bitty ones and big ones alike; monster queen ones? well, let's not even go there, except within this series), I couldn't resist something that was described as "Independence Day meets World War Z, only with spiders". In other words, apocalyptic stakes riddled with horror galore. I love horror and end-of-the-world stories. I took a chance of ensuring myself lasting months of nightmares all including the creepy-crawlies lurking around ..read more

'Tis the Season to be jolly. Not. At least, "not" in the sense of expecting a portly foreigner to come down the chimney bearing gifts. It might, however, be the season for romance writer conferences and retreats and spring flings. Many will be live and in person. Some may be over Zoom or through Microsoft Teams. If you are giving a presentation at one of these events, legal blogger Kiera Boyd of the law firm Fasken IP has some timely advice about copyright and presentations. Copyright and Presentations: How to Avoid Presentation-Related Copyright Infringement I've not seen a legal blog on th ..read more