What? Huh?

There was something specific I was going to post. I know it. I remember thinking, “Oh, yeah, I want to blog about that!” But I didn’t do it immediately and now, of course, it’s gone, gone, gone. Blah.

So, instead, you get a little hodge-podge update of books and pictures.

This is the last day of Sam’s “mini-vacation,” as he took off Friday and today so we could celebrate his birthday. It’s been wonderful! I know it sounds silly, but I miss him all the time when he’s gone. Yep, I see him every morning, spend every evening and night with him, but home just isn’t the same when he’s gone. Is it any wonder that I’m crappy with long-distance relationships?

I’ve been reading, and more and more frustrated that I can’t log stuff in Now Reading!¹Still waiting for a patch or something from the author. I don’t remember how recently I mentioned reading stuff.

I know I finished Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson trilogy (well, the three books that are out—there’s another coming, so I guess they aren’t really a trilogy), Moon Called, Blood Bound, and Iron Kissed. They were absolutely marvelous, and I look forward to reading the next one and anything else by Briggs. Unfortunately, the two library systems we use don’t have her other books, but I’ll try interlibrary loans.

Then I read C.E. Murphy’s Walker Papers books (again, three of them, although I’m not sure if they’re a trilogy), Urban Shaman, Thunderbird Falls, and Coyote Dreams. As soon as I started the second book, I realized that I must have missed something because there were obviously significant events that had occurred after the first book ended. I went to Murphy’s site and found that, lo!, there is a Walker Papers novella in the anthology Winter Moon. Serendipitously, I had just gotten that from the library, too! So I read “Banshee Cries,” then went back to the novels. It felt odd to read a second series about a female mechanic within a week, but Briggs’ and Murphy’s heroines are very different women living in different worlds.

Oh—the other two authors in Winter Moon are Mercedes Lackey and Tanith Lee. Lackey’s novella, “Moontide,” is set in the Five Hundred Kingdoms. Since I don’t read her novels these days, I have no idea whether or not this story has any connections to the rest of that series. Happily, the story was better than anything I’ve seen from her in years. I’m not very familiar with Tanith Lee’s work, so I don’t know if “The Heart of the Moon” connected to anything else, either, but it was a decent read (Amazon warriors and sorta-Greek soldiers on a spiritual quest).

Back to C.E. Murphy, I went on to read The Queen’s Bastard, which was deliciously sexy. Toss Dangerous Liaisons, Alias and Dangerous Beauty together and stir thoroughly with a little magic for good measure. It’s very Elizabethan, while not referring to any actual historical figures (as far as I could tell), and I had fun trying to match the fictional people and nations with their real-world equivalents. Good stuff, and I’m eager to read more in that world.

Then I got a review copy of Vampyres of Hollywood, by Adrienne Barbeau and Michael Scott, and read that. I’ll post the review here if that’s allowed—otherwise, I’ll post a pointer to it. It’s cute, but not a book I’m likely to re-read. Does anybody want it? Otherwise, I’ll freecycle it.

Earlier today, I finished Disappearing Nightly by Laura Resnick. New York, stage shows, magicians (the David Copperfield sort), sorcerors, actresses, bankers, cowboys, drag queens, tigers, and demons, oh my! It was fast and very, very funny.

So now I’m on to Staying Dead (Retrievers, Book 1), the first book in Laura Anne Gilman’s Retrievers series. Katie just finished reading Twilight by Stephanie Meyer, and I’m going to give that a look before it goes back to the library and the hundreds of people waiting for it.

Finally, a fun link from a friend’s blog: Face of the Future lets you upload a photo and transform it in the style of various famous artists, experiment with different ethnic looks, and take it back to infancy or forward to “older adult.” I liked some of them, but the age thing was creepy.