The Fantasy Hive - A U.K. Wonderland
A hub for all things fantasy (plus some SF). Book reviews, games, author interviews, features, serial fiction- you name it. The Fantasy Hive is a collaborative site formed of unique personalities who just want to celebrate fantasy. Btw, the SFF novel to the left by one of our members, Warwick Gleeson, was a "Top 150 Best Books" Kirkus pick in 2019.
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New York Write to Pitch Conference 2023 - Reviews
The conference is so much more than an opportunity to pitch your project to industry insiders. Through the process of developing a polished pitch, I found myself looking at my manuscript completely differently, and gaining valuable insight into my work. Paula, our workshop leader, gave all of us invaluable, and actionable advice on how to hone our craft, as well as how an agent/publisher evaluates the pitches delivered to them. I couldn’t recommend this conference highly enough, and the opportunity to pitch my work was just the icing on the cake to a thoroughly immersive, deep-dive into the art of writing. -
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THE MAGICIAN’S DAUGHTER by H. G. Parry (BOOK REVIEW)
Long ago bright, luminous magic poured freely through schisms around the world, in the shadows mages roamed in their numbers secretly bringing miracles to those who most needed it. Yet in 1912 magic has all but disappeared, schisms have closed and new ones have become rare to find, the world has become a darker place. However for one sixteen year old girl, magic is all she has ever known. Biddy lives on the mythical island of Hy-Brasil, just off the coast of Ireland. This is the last place where wild magic runs freely, an isolated place hidden to the outside world, where only Biddy, a mysterious magician called Rowan and his rabbit familiar Hutchincroft, live. Biddy was shipwrecked on the island when she was a year old and ever since Rowan and Hutchincroft have been her guardians, her friends, her family. It is the only place Biddy has ever known as for her own protection she isn’t supposed to leave. As her seventeenth birthday approaches Biddy longs for more, she longs to see the outside world that she’s only read about in books, the world where she sees Rowan transform into a raven and fly towards every night, always returning by dawn. Though one night Rowan doesn’t return and his absence sets off a chain of events which lead Biddy away from the safety of Hy-Brasil and onto the murky streets of London, where a powerful mage is hunting them. Biddy begins to regret ever wishing to leave, but she knows magic must be restored, Hy-Brasil must be protected, and she must gather all her courage to save all that she loves. The Magician’s Daughter by H.G. Parry beautifully captures a classic fairytale-esque tale, filled with whimsy, magic and bittersweet longings. This is a historical fantasy which will delight cosy fantasy lovers who want a nostalgic read, one that will once again make them believe in magic. “She was a half-wild thing of ink and grass and sea breezes, raised by books and rabbits and fairy lore, and that was all she cared to be. She didn’t know now when that had changed—it had done so gradually, one question at a time wearing away at her like the relentless drops of rain on the ruins by the cliffs.” At the heart of this novel is a coming of age exploration as we journey with our young protagonist Biddy on the cusp of adulthood. Biddy may be sixteen but as a consequence of being sheltered her whole life, she is understandably a rather young sixteen year old. She is dreamy, strong willed, perhaps naïve and a touch sulky but without being obnoxious. Biddy is gentle, kind, caring and worries about a lot of things. She is just the kind of young female protagonist I personally enjoy encountering and it was comforting to find a character who mirrored my own struggles with anxiety. Sometimes there is a desperate need for change, to step out of your comfort zone and take a leap into the unknown, and whilst that can be exciting there also comes an overwhelming sense of fear. Yet when Biddy does step outside the safety net of Hy-Brasil she finally experiences a sense of wonderment, she sees places she has only ever imagined before and she meets people who have lived much harder lives. Though her courage often falters at every turn she pushes herself to be braver. Parry poignantly captures that moment in adolescence where you are caught between longing for the safety of your childhood, where through your young eyes your parents or guardians were perfect, strong and healthy and held all the answers, to the realisation they too are in fact people who make mistakes, who have weaknesses, who are fundamentally flawed. As Biddy learns more about her past and more about the secrets Rowan has kept from her, she begins to see him and the world around her in a new light. Despite her growing misgivings towards Rowan, they do make such a wholesome found family, which was one of my favourite aspects of this book. Rowan and Hutchincroft try their hardest to protect Biddy at all costs, she is precious to them and in one way or another they all make sacrifices for each other. “She wanted Rowan to come in and laugh at her for having been so worried; she wanted Hutchincroft to leap into her arms and nestle his lithe, soft body against her chest. She wanted things to be back the way they had always been. But that wasn’t offered.” I love the way The Magician’s Daughter echoes many characters and elements from classic literature, setting a wonderful classic tone and atmosphere throughout. Biddy is much like Sarah Crewe from A Little Princess, the world beyond Hy-Brasil is Dickensian, and Rowan is much akin to the wizard Howl from Howl’s Moving Castle. Parry then further extends these comparisons when Biddy travels to London and comes across things for the first time she recalls how she has read about them in her beloved books. For example the workhouses in Oliver Twist, and the trains from The Railway Children. The sights she had once only been able to imagine now become reality and she grows to discover just how different they are. I have spent the majority of this review discussing Biddy as the story is centered on her journey, though she is not the only character who Parry fleshes out well. Many of these characters are hard to define as wholly heroes or villains as there is much ambiguity throughout. Rowan is someone who cares deeply and as a result he keeps secrets and makes wrong choices with the best of intentions, then there are those such as Storm and Morgraine, Rowan’s former mage companions, who just make bad decisions for their own personal gain, not really considering the bigger picture. Then there is the more clear-cut villain, Vaughan, who I found well depicted too. He is the type of character who believes magic is a monopoly he can use to secure his own sense of power and superiority, that he has the right to take ownership of magic, that he is just that privileged, makes him perfect to despise. A significant part of Parry’s worldbuilding is the notion that magic should run free, that it should be guarded but not hoarded. In this world magic is inherently good, it is when people use it to hurt or control others that it becomes bad. This is lavishly illustrated using Irish mythology, as we see the beauty and serenity of Hy-Brasil, the trickster-ish ways of the Púca and the rich history of the Tuatha Dé Danann who Biddy learns much from. I, of course, also loved the inclusion of animal familiars as Hutchincroft was the absolute best. Though this is a cosy read for the most part, there are certain characters’ lives that are at stake and many times I found myself stressed and anxiously eager to discover their fate. That is the sign of a great author though, one who has made me deeply attached to their characters. So whilst the story revels in whimsy and charm, by the end I felt it was bittersweet. There was happiness and much hope but also sadness at everything that had changed. The Magician’s Daughter is simply a magical joy to read and so achingly beautiful. “Rowan stood with his hand pressed to the oak and his eyes closed, and magic spilled from its trunk and thrummed under his skin. It didn’t matter that Biddy couldn’t see magic herself. She could see it the way she saw the wind—the ripples it created, the movement it stirred in the trees and the air. He breathed in, slowly, deeply, and the forest breathed and flexed with him. When his eyes flew open, they glittered in a flash of green and gold.” ARC provided by Nazia at Orbit in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the copy! The Magician’s Daughter is out now! The post THE MAGICIAN’S DAUGHTER by H. G. Parry (BOOK REVIEW) appeared first on The Fantasy Hive. View the full article -
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New York Write to Pitch Conference 2023 - Reviews
I’m writing on my phone to keep me from giving three pages of how this event has effected me as a writer. I felt I was given a privilege to work with so many talented people for four days and to hone my craft and geek out on this all important concept known as the pitch! The experience has transformed me by elevating my confidence, educating me about the industry, and given me concrete goals and steps to achieving them. There is no question this is as real and unique experience as it gets but you’ve got to come into it ready to play hard ball and accept the suggestions given to you-leave your pride at the door and you’ll get a ton out of it!! -
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Magic, Motherhood, and More: A Talk with Tessa Barbosa
Today I am delighted to present a conversation with our very own Tessa Barbosa, whose riveting debut novel THE MOONLIGHT BLADE came out yesterday. Tessa is a regular contributor here at Writer Unboxed, as well as a dear friend. We “met” maybe a decade ago through blogging, and bonded over our hyphenate identities and how that impacts our lives and our work. We’ve gone through many milestones in parallel over the years — from writing (and scrapping) manuscripts, to becoming mothers, to querying and being on submission… She is a gem of a person and a heck of a writer, and I’m over the moon that so many readers are about to discover her! Let’s find out more about Tessa’s book, and her journey to this point. KH: First, can you give a quick pitch of THE MOONLIGHT BLADE? TB: Of course! It’s a story about a cursed girl who enters a deadly magical competition to save her condemned mother. She doesn’t know why her mother was arrested, but she soon discovers that she is the center of a conspiracy that spans past lives. If she doesn’t solve the mystery of who she is, and who she was, her curse could destroy the whole country – again. KH: Phew, that’s a lot — in a good way! To me, THE MOONLIGHT BLADE felt like like a dash of Hunger Games (teens fighting to the death for a dubious distinction) + a spoonful of Laini Taylor (monsters, magic, past lives coming to bear) + a dozen heaping scoops of Tessa Barbosa (Filipino culture, family bonds, beautiful writing), which results in a story that’s incredibly fresh and vibrant, unlike anything I’ve read in a long long time. What was the genesis of this story? How did THE MOONLIGHT BLADE start for you, and how did it come together? TB: When I started writing it, I had a year old baby, and I’d taken a forced break from writing, because my pregnancy and newborn experience was so difficult. My daughter refused to sleep and cried constantly for 7 months straight. Every day I hoped it might get easier, but it didn’t for a long time. I was sleep deprived, and this story about complicated relationships between mothers and daughters, plus high stakes and a lot of pressure, somehow just poured out the moment I had a little free time again. It didn’t take long to draft the novel, but it took a substantial amount of time for me to revise it, because editing was a skill I didn’t have a lot of experience with yet. KH: Oof, I’ve been there… With a tough baby, I mean. Never had a book pour out of me, sadly! Your editing muscles must be incredible now, because Narra’s story is so powerful and layered. There is the mystery of her mother’s crime, the mystery of her connection to Teloh, the mystery of who is conspiring within the Fortress, and of course, the Sundo competition itself. How did you manage all these threads throughout the writing and editing processes? TB: Staying VERY VERY organized. I have lists for everything, including a “story bible” which is an Excel spreadsheet with a description of every scene in the story, along with all the characters that appear, what day it is (because the timeline for the whole novel is a little over a week!), and columns for every subplot that gets addressed in each scene. It really saved me so many times, especially during edits. KH: Wow! And in addition to juggling storylines, you also touch on a lot of important themes. Power, religion, class differences… Of course these concepts are relevant to every society, but I’m curious whether you feel THE MOONLIGHT BLADE approaches them with more of a “Western” or “Eastern” perspective? TB: Both, I think? There’s a tension between how to exist within a collectivist culture, while still being fiercely independent, and not fitting an expected role, and I played with that when I wrote Narra. It’s something that I think a lot of children of immigrants living in the West can relate to. In addition to a generational struggle, there’s a cultural tug of war as well. KH: For sure. Having an Asian immigrant mother myself, that certainly resonated with me when I was reading. In fact, although this is a YA fantasy with a killer* commercial hook, I was surprised to find that the two elements that felt most central to Narra’s story were much… quieter. First, the complex relationships between Narra and her loved ones, and second, the ties to Filipino culture. What draws you to these themes, and have they always been part of your work? TB: These two elements are actually closely related. I wanted to write a book that drew heavily on Filipino culture, because that wasn’t something I had done before. Family is one of the most important things in our culture, and it doesn’t just include blood relatives. I purposely wanted to examine family relationships with this story, and how sometimes those relationships are not easy. There was a lot to think about, including utang na loob, or the obligation we feel to the people who have raised us, and what can go wrong when you’re not allowed to question or disobey your elders — even when they are flawed or broken people. It’s no coincidence the supreme being in this world is a self-styled goddess, and there are parallels in her relationship to the country and the one Narra has with her mother. KH: Okay, I am mind-blown emoji right now. Love that. You know, it makes me wonder, who is your favorite character in THE MOONLIGHT BLADE, and why? TB: For me? Reshar. I know he won’t be the favorite of teen readers, but I personally enjoy a grumpy brooding character, and I wrote him for me. If I get to write more books, you will see him again. Maybe one day he’ll finally have reason to smile? KH: Unexpected! For me, it might be Virian, or Kuran, or Teloh, or… gah, so hard to choose. What was your favorite scene in THE MOONLIGHT BLADE? TB: Every scene with Narra and Teloh alone together, because there’s always so much tension. My favorite though, is when they sit together and talk in the in the greenhouse in the middle of the night and finally start to get to know one another. KH: I loved the greenhouse scene too! Okay, zooming out a bit, how are you feeling, now that your book is out? I suspect that for an author, there’s so much focus on the book, and promoting it, and answering questions like these, that your own humanity can feel sort of… besides the point? Or a bit swallowed up? But as your friend, I very much want to check in on you, Tessa Barbosa, the person! TB: I’m excited and happy, and exhausted all at once. This is a dream I’ve been working towards for the last 13 years, and it still doesn’t feel real. But finally being able to talk about my work feels like a gift, because I haven’t been able to until this point, since no one beyond my beta readers has read it. I was bracing for the worst reaction, but most people have been super kind and excited! However, I definitely need to step back from social media for a while, because I’ve been spending an unhealthy amount of time online. Writing is my happy place, and I’d really like to get back to that soon. KH: How DO you make time for your writing? You have kids, and a day job, and all the other normal daily obligations and pressures… TB: By not having a life? It’s very very difficult these days, and sometimes it feels like all I do is work outside of single parenting. Luckily I LOVE all stages of the writing process, but I definitely need more work life balance. KH: Don’t we all. With that, let’s give a big thanks and congratulations to Tessa! I hope you all enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. And please don’t miss out on her amazing book THE MOONLIGHT BLADE, available pretty much everywhere: USA: Barnes & Noble | Amazon US | Kobo US | Target | Apple iBooks | Indiebound | Bookshop Canada: Indigo | Amazon CA | Kobo CA | Apple iBooks Canada Indie: Black Bond | Massy | Kidsbooks | Indiebound International: Book Depository | Amazon Aus | Amazon UK — *pun retroactively intended [url={url}]View the full article[/url] -
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The Best International Fiction of March
Each month, I get to highlight crime books from across the globe, in one of my favorite tasks for CrimeReads, and March brings an exceptionally diverse host of international offerings. This month’s best crime fiction in translation features serial killers in Spain, a feminist Mafia novel from Italy, a Kafka-esque hospital dystopia set in China, a crime caper from Uruguay, and a Russian plague thriller. Juan Gómez-Jurado, Red Queen Translated by Nick Caistor (Minotaur) Red Queen feels made for multiple seasons of television with its compelling main character, a brilliant but reclusive woman who refuses to put her forensic skills to work after a personal tragedy. When a new crime thrusts an old murder back into the spotlight, she must be coaxed into solving it by a cop whose career is hanging on a thread and depends on getting her cooperation. No one does Thomas Harris-style murders like crime writers in Spain (perhaps it’s the odd-couple dynamics that also make me think of Harris), and Red Queen promises to be as bloody as it is intricate. Maria Rosa Cutrufelli, Tina, Mafia Soldier Translated by Robin Pickering-Iazzi (Soho) An extravagantly violent woman serving as the unlikely head of a Sicilian mafia outfit and a writer from Rome in search of a new subject with Sicilian roots of her own are at the center of this fast-moving, provocative novel. The story is at once a compelling mob fiction and a clear-eyed assault on gender conventions in a society awash in corruption and hypocrisy. –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Editor-in-Chief Han Song, Hospital Translated by Michael Berry (Amazon Crossing) Han Song has been described as the Philip K. Dick of China, and Hospital, his new novel set in a Kafka-esque medical dystopia, proves the comparison is deserved. Hospital is first in an acclaimed trilogy, and I can’t wait to read the rest of Song’s thrilling and disturbing cycle. Mercedes Rosende, The Hand that Feeds You Translated by Tim Gutteridge (Bitter Lemon) Set in Montevideo, Uruguay, from where Mercedes Rosende also hails, The Hand That Feeds You is the sequel to Rosende’s much-lauded Crocodile Tears. Ursula, Rosende’s heroine, is now in possession of all the loot from an armored truck, with robbers, cops, and PIs hot in pursuit. Ursula has plenty of tricks up her sleeve, and given the ineptitude of her pursuers, she’s bound to triumph in the end, but how she does it? Comedic thriller gold. Yana Vagner, To the Lake Translated by Maria Wiltshire (Deep Vellum) In this Russian survival thriller, a couple sets out from Moscow desperate to escape a deadly new pandemic (based on a late 19th century flu epidemic that may have been caused by a coronavirus). Their city-folk struggles in the wilderness may surmount whatever they faced in the city, and there’s no guarantee they’ll reach their lake-house destination, or be able to survive at all. Also, this one is soon to be a Netflix series, if you’re looking for more frozen wilderness content. View the full article -
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Bad Seed Novels: A Deeply Unsettling Literary Tradition
My debut novel, A Flaw in the Design, has at its center a character who was a terrible, violent child, who grows into an arrogant, possibly dangerous, possibly even murderous teenager. My Matthew is part of a long literary tradition of what are known as bad seeds, children who seem not just troublesome in the normal, run-of-the-mill sort of way, but who are, possibly, truly evil. There’s something irresistible about this for me as a reader, and as a writer: What if evil were innate, a person’s truest self? How would that person fit into the world, or fail to fit in? How would the people around them, especially family, who love this problematic, possibly-evil child, respond? How would you deal with evil if you found it nested in the heart of your family? Literature is rich with such stories of bad seeds and the threat they pose to their families, their communities, and, in some cases, the world. Here are some of my favorite bad seed novels, all of which I read and reread, as I wrote my debut. The Fifth Child, Doris Lessing I read this novel four times while working on my own book, mostly because it’s a masterpiece of storytelling, but also because it is the most harrowing novel of parenting I’ve ever encountered. The novel centers on a mother who has four lovely children to fill the huge, rambling house outside London she and her husband have stretched themselves to afford, but the fifth child, when it arrives, is a terror: a danger to pets and little kids, an outsider, possibly not quite a human. This fifth child, Ben, destroys the family’s happiness in an inexorable way that is riveting, and heartbreaking. Rosemary’s Baby, Ira Levin Better known for the movie adaptation directed by Roman Polanski, this novel by Ira Levin is relentlessly terrifying. The bad seed here – the worst seed, in many ways, as he is (spoiler alert!) the anti-Christ – is barely present, and yet his arrival looms like a dark hand over the novel, building up an atmosphere of almost unbearable tension as the boundary between the everyday and pure evil is broken down. King, Queen, Knave, Vladimir Nabokov The epigraph at the beginning of my novel comes from a Nabokov short story, and while I wrote my first draft I immersed myself in his work. Many of his novels are, in fact, literary crime novels. Most famous amongst them is surely Lolita, with its pedophile, murderer narrator, but there’s also the fraud-driven-murderer in Despair, the lunatic thief and possibly-homicidal narrator of Pale Fire, and the nephew in King, Queen, Knave, who falls in love with his aunt and, at her bidding, thinks perhaps he should kill his uncle and take his place. Like all of Nabokov’s fiction, this story is full of tricks, games, allusions, and layers, something I’ve always admired and hoped to emulate in my own way. Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn This is Flynn’s debut novel, and it is a master class in the building of suspense and dread. The novel is about the legacy of trauma, how one generation’s pain and evil is passed on to the next. The novel is also a savage critique of wealth and class in America. The bad seed here is unexpected and unlike any other I’ve encountered. There’s a scene at a pig farm, which involves nothing more than watching the mother pig mauled by her ravenous children, that is utterly chilling. We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson The narrator of this novel is perhaps the greatest of all time bad seed narrators, and the opening paragraph is one of the best I’ve ever read. There’s a scene of mob violence at the end that recalls Jackson’s most famous short story, “The Lottery.” I’m also interested in Jackson’s status as a Vermont writer: A transplanted New Yorker, her fiction is filled with the sense of not-belonging, of being forever an outsider. This tension runs through my own book – the main character is a transplanted New Yorker in Vermont, who, unlike most of Jackson’s narrators, loves his country life – and I looked often to her work while writing for guidance on how to navigate this dynamic. The Children of Dynmouth, William Trevor Timothy Gedge, the main character of this 1976 novel by the great Irish writer, is possibly evil, and definitely sadistic. Yet the novel suggests his malevolence is not an inborn quality, but, rather, the result of his near-abandonment – his father is dead, his mother is almost entirely absent – and the boy’s resulting loneliness. That loneliness lies, in so many instances, at the root of evil is, in some ways, a more troubling notion than the tidier, quasi-religious notion that evil is innate. This novel is deeply sad and, like everything William Trevor wrote, beautiful and humane. Pet Sematary, Stephen King Speaking of innate evil: The revenant child (and, before that, cat), in what I think is King’s scariest book, is a visceral evocation of our most primal fears of parenting. Rereading it now, I find the accident on the road as terrifying and awful as any of the supernatural terror that surrounds it. King has an unusual and unmatched ability to tap into childhood fears – an evil-tainted graveyard in the woods here, but I’m also thinking of the basement in Salem’s Lot, and the drainage tunnel in The Shining – and rework them so that childhood fears are awakened and magnified in the adult mind. This is, perhaps, at the heart of all horror, and few writers do it as well. The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith No list of bad seeds could ever leave out Tom Ripley, one of the most iconic figures in twentieth century fiction. This is my favorite of Highsmith’s novels, though she wrote many very good ones. That she manages to make me sympathize with a character who is a psychopath is something I studied and want to try to emulate. In some ways I think of the dangerous nephew in my own novel as a hybrid of Tom and his love-object/first victim, Dickie Greenleaf. A dangerous, devious boy, but also one, in my version, who is fabulously rich and entitled. Many of Highsmith’s narrators teeter on the edge of evil, and part of the pleasure of her books is watching them slip fully into their true, often terrible, selves. *** View the full article -
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The Nuclear War Scare of 1983, And The Pop Culture Soundtrack of Anxiety
Did you know that this fall will be the fortieth anniversary of the worst nuclear war crisis in world history? You may remember that 1983 was the year that Microsoft Word was introduced but are completely unaware of the nuclear war crisis. After all, American school children didn’t practice ‘duck and cover’ drills under their desks in 1983, as their predecessors had in 1962. The events in 1983 were at least as dangerous as the Cuban Missile faceoff between the Untied States and the Soviet Union in October 1962, yet they remain largely unknown. Unlike in 1962, when President John F. Kennedy’s televised speeches received blanket coverage and alarmed the world, the 1983 crisis played out mostly hidden from public view. The trigger event for the 1983 crisis was one Americans were aware of because the Ronald Reagan administration made sure of it. In the early morning hours of September 1, 1983, the Soviet Air Defense Forces shot down an unarmed civilian Korean Air Lines 747 plane off the coast of Sakhalin Island, north of Japan. The White House blamed the Kremlin for intentionally and knowingly killing 269 civilian passengers and crew. What was unknown to American citizens was the Korean tragedy nearly led to a shooting war between the United States Air Force and the Soviet Union. While the Western media covered the KAL event extensively, the press was ignorant of the immediate danger of war it created or that it was the opening chapter of a global crisis that played out over the following ten weeks. In contrast to 1962, Washington and Moscow weren’t communicating during the 1983 crisis. Misconstruing American motivations, many leaders in the Kremlin were convinced the U.S. was planning a nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union. In fact, the Soviet KGB had a massive intelligence collection effort called Operation “RYaN” that was designed to find indications of a Western first strike attack on the USSR. Each side was stumbling toward nuclear Armageddon like blindfolded boxers. The second crisis occurred mere weeks after the Korean Air Lines shootdown—just after midnight on September 27, 1983. At the Soviets’ National Missile Defense Center, some sixty miles outside of Moscow, Russian missile warning satellites reported several waves of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launches from the western United States. The watch commander that fateful night was Soviet Air Defense Forces officer Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov. He was an expert on the Soviets’ satellite systems, and he made the snap judgment, under enormous pressure, that the ICBM ‘launches’ were spurious signals—false alarms. His advice to his chain of command was to treat the reports as errors and not to initiate a general Soviet nuclear strike on the United States. Petrov was correct but his career was ended due to charges that he failed to follow establish protocol during his watch that night. The United States and its allies were unaware of the Petrov incident until the late 1990s. It could have led to a general nuclear exchange in September 1983, but for Petrov’s cool mindedness. Soviet nuclear forces were placed on heightened alert and were poised to act when the third and final crisis occurred just weeks later. In the first ten days or so of November 1983, NATO conducted a major nuclear war exercise called Able Archer 83. It was the culminating phase of a series of interlocking NATO war games that commenced in September. Boasting a highly realistic scenario, the NATO exercises progressed from conventional war in Central Europe to the massive use of chemical weapons, and finally to Able Archer’s nuclear phase. There were several elements that made Able Archer look like the real thing to Soviet Intelligence, and it took place during a period of broken relations between Moscow and the West. To the Kremlin, Able Archer 83 looked like the nightmare scenario predicted by the KGB’s Operation RYaN. Western citizens were unaware of these specific crises and the danger they posed. They had no idea that the world was on the brink of nuclear war for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Ironically, the prospect of nuclear war was very present in popular entertainment back in 1983. The top-rated motion picture of the year was the Star Wars classic, “The Return of the Jedi”. Many moviegoers saw Darth Vader’s galactic Empire as a stand-in for the Soviet Union. In fact, President Ronald Reagan gave a speech in March 1983 in which he labeled the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and the “focus of evil in the modern world.” Another huge Hollywood hit that year was “The Right Stuff”, which portrayed America’s astronauts as Cold War warriors striving to win the space race against the USSR. Lastly, there was “War Games”, a film that directly addressed the horror of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. “War Games” added a new and inventive twist—artificial intelligence and super computers run amok. Not to be outdone, television offered “The Day After”, a chilling tale of a nuclear exchange between America and the Soviet Union set in the American Midwest. Ironically, the television movie was first aired on November 20, 1983, just days after the worst real nuclear standoff in Cold War Europe began to wind down. Ronald Reagan screened “The Day After” in the White House on October 10th. He confided in his diary that the movie “left me greatly depressed”. It seems evident “The Day After”, along with a nuclear war briefing he received at the Pentagon that fall, affected Reagan’s view of nuclear weapons and the need for serious arms control. Ratings for the initial run of “The Day After” were stunning. It was seen by sixty-two percent of households in the U.S., representing at least 100 million viewers on the first night it aired. “The Day After” generated tremendous media coverage and fostered a serious national debate over nuclear weapons. In popular music, two of the most critically acclaimed albums of the year were R.E.M.’s debut collection, “Murmur” and U2’s third record, “War”. The R.E.M. album opens with the ominously mysterious song “Radio Free Europe”. U2’s “War” explores the physical and emotional toll of human conflict. Neither record explicitly examines nuclear war, but both provide an anxious soundtrack to a very dangerous year—the most dangerous year in human history, according to many observers. If the 1983 crisis was so bad, why is it still largely unknown? For starters, U.S. government security classification kept most of the critical documents in the shadows until around 2015, when some papers were finally declassified. Another factor is that the 1983 events were not concentrated in time like the thirteen days of the Cuban crisis. Rather, the events played out over a much longer time frame. In 1962, the White House publicly trumpeted its resolution of the crisis. But in 1983, the White House didn’t even realize it was dealing with an almost unimaginable nuclear crisis until after it had passed. If the events of 1983 were not well understood at the time, they were depicted in popular culture in later years. In 1986, the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh published a best-selling non-fiction book called “The Target is Destroyed” about the first of the three crises—the Soviet shoot down of Korean Airlines flight 007. Hersh’s book generated interest at the time but is largely forgotten now. Danish film makers produced a full-length docudrama called “The Man Who Saved the World” in 2013. The movie tells the story of the second crisis—the Soviet detection of an American first strike nuclear attack that turned out to be a false alarm. Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov is profiled in the film. The movie had a limited release in the United States, and it made little impression on the public. Strangely, the movie also didn’t connect the Petrov incident to the fraught geo-political situation that existed in the aftermath of the KAL shoot down, which had occurred less than four weeks prior. The Able Archer crisis was depicted in a television series, “Deutschland 83”, that aired in 2015, premiering in the United States in German with English subtitles. The series went largely overlooked in America. It was released in Germany later that year and in the United Kingdom in 2016. It was a sleeper hit in Germany but not elsewhere. In the spring of 2022, my historical novel The Able Archers was published. It tells the story of the interconnected crises of the fall of 1983 through the eyes of a young American intelligence officer and a more seasoned Soviet military intelligence official. It has been optioned by Legendary Entertainment for the rights to produce a motion picture or a television series. Perhaps this year— the fortieth anniversary of the 1983 crisis—we’ll finally see a popular treatment of a near nuclear Armageddon and how a few people prevented it. Unfortunately, Russia’s awful invasion of Ukraine and the Kremlin’s continuing threats of nuclear escalation in Ukraine make fears of World War III relevant again. *** View the full article -
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How a Team of Ambitious Crooks in 1960s Montreal Planned the Biggest Bank Heist Anyone Had Ever Seen
In the spring of 1961, Georges Lemay, a dapper thirty-six-year-old French Canadian, spent his days holed up in his cottage on a private island on a river in the Laurentian Mountains north of Montreal, devising his greatest feat yet: the perfect bank burglary. Emerging in a crowded field encompassing every kind of Montreal criminal, from competing mobs to well-organized groups of bank robbers, Lemay clawed his way to the top of the heap. Maybe claw wasn’t the right word. Lemay was from an upper-middle-class family and had never wanted for anything. Joseph Louis Georges Etienne Lemay was born in Shawinigan, Quebec, a hundred miles north of Montreal, on January 25, 1925, to Joseph Oscar Lemay and Marie-Lucie Demers, the only boy of their five children. The Lemays were an old and established family originating in the Anjou region of France but had been in Quebec since the seventeenth century. When Georges was a toddler, his father died, leaving him the only male in a family of women who doted on him. He was well educated and at one point even considered going into the priesthood. Instead, his extravagant tastes and his thirst for thrills, whether on a speedboat or in a sports car, scuba diving or flying planes, led him to crime to help finance the lavish lifestyle that was beyond his family’s means. He worked for his mother’s real estate company, Immeubles Demers, in Montreal, and the legitimate side of his business pursuits was doing well. The city was transforming. Montreal’s metropolitan population was soaring, adding almost a million residents between 1941 and 1961. Construction projects surged in both the public and private sectors. The city’s metro system was being planned, city streets were being renovated, and new skyscrapers were rising downtown. Dorchester Boulevard West, as it was then known, quickly became the financial center not just of the city, but of the entire country. All of Canada’s major banks and insurance companies had a presence there, with three massive bank buildings—the Canadian Bank of Commerce Building, CIL House, and the Royal Bank Tower—in the midst of construction. At the same time that Montreal was experiencing a surge in growth and prosperity, the city was also becoming the epicenter for Canada’s underworld. The city’s new concentration of wealth was too tempting a prize for Lemay and a host of other criminals to pass up. Besides the thriving international heroin trade that involved the Italian Mafia and a local Irish gang, the city had recently earned the disreputable moniker of the bank robbery capital of North America. In 1959 alone, there had been six hundred armed robberies, many of those involving banks and savings and loans. As Montreal entered a new decade, the crime statistics were only going up. It was estimated that one out of every fifteen chartered banks in the city was robbed a year. The various strong-arm men, desperate drug addicts, wild boys, and well-organized professionals preyed on Montreal banks that leaked like sieves thanks to antiquated security systems—a lack of cameras, enfeebled guards—and a lot of cash on hand at the counters. Then there was the added benefit of provincial and national laws that were as antiquated as the bank security systems. A bank robber was likely to get a five-to seven-year prison sentence if caught in Quebec, less than half of what they would typically end up with just across the border in the United States. Among the many Montreal criminals at work in the late 1950s and early ’60s, there was Lawrence Day, “The Gentleman Robber,” who’d pulled off a series of precisely planned bank robberies before finally getting caught in 1960 and being sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. In May of 1960, the fifteen-man-strong Red Hood Gang was busted by the nemesis of the city’s underworld, Joe Bédard, the head of the Montreal Police holdup squad. After forty-five robberies in four years, the gang’s reign was abruptly ended by a shootout with Bédard and his team. Bédard learned of the gang’s plan to rob a bank in north-central Montreal, and he and his men were waiting outside when the robbers emerged from the bank. Lemay looked down on strong-arm bank robbers. The risk was great and the payoff paltry. He preferred beautifully planned and executed bank burglaries where the scores were high and the risk minimal. He’d cut his teeth as a safecracker working with various Montreal underworld denizens before venturing out on his own, according to police. He was an artist, not a thug, who was enraptured by the planning and precise execution of his burglaries. Even so, Lemay was not squeamish about violence. In 1955, Lemay was arrested for trying to choke a police officer over a traffic ticket. Two years later, during an investigation into the July 2, 1957, disappearance of his friend Larry Petrov, a thirty-six-year-old Romanian-born welder, drug trafficker, and robber, police arrested Lemay for possessing two unregistered pistols. He was also the prime suspect in Petrov’s disappearance, but the Montreal Police couldn’t prove it. Investigators also believed Lemay was behind the January 1957 burglary of the Outremont branch of the Bank of Montreal. The branch, in a wealthy suburb north of Montreal, had netted the thieves somewhere between two and five million dollars in cash and securities (between twenty and fifty-one million dollars today), making it one of the biggest bank heists (if not the biggest) in North America up to that time. The thieves targeted the bank specifically because members of the underworld banked there, as did shady stockbrokers and other operators who straddled the line between the straight world and criminality. The victims’ reticence about what they had stored in the looted safe-deposit boxes kept the police from determining an accurate figure for the losses. Petrov had been in on the score but attempted to cash in some of the stolen bonds too soon. He paid with his life. Petrov was also facing drug charges. There was talk he was going to flip on his accomplices in the bank job to get a pass in the narcotics case. On July 25, 1957, two teenage girls boating on Lake Ouareau, nearly a hundred miles north of Montreal, discovered a leg wearing a dress shoe and sock floating in the water. It was the only part of Petrov ever found. A thorough search of the lake by police divers turned up no other evidence. The medical examiner determined someone had taken the leg off while Petrov was still alive and surmised that the body part had been deposited in the lake a few weeks after the killing, perhaps dropped in the water from a low-flying plane with the intention of it being found. The medical examiner believed it was a warning to anyone else who might be thinking of turning state’s evidence. The police interrogated Lemay about Petrov’s disappearance to no avail. He pleaded guilty to the gun charges, was fined twenty-five dollars, and was given time served for the eight days he’d sat in jail. The Petrov murder went into the cold case pile, as had another investigation involving Lemay, five years earlier and nearly two thousand miles south. * Lemay’s wife, Huguette Daoust, a blond-haired twenty-one-year-old beauty queen, went missing in January 1952 while the couple was honeymooning in the Florida Keys. Police and local citizens conducted a massive weeks-long search near Marathon in the Florida Keys, where she was last seen. Searchers, including Lemay, went on foot, by boat, and in small private planes that flew low over the mangrove-choked waterways looking for any signs of her. At the beginning, the police worked on the assumption that Huguette had either fallen into the fast-moving water and drowned or that she had been abducted. But soon their suspicions turned toward Lemay. While scant evidence connected him to the disappearance, Lemay found himself being interrogated by the lead investigator, Deputy Sheri1 James Otto Barker. Barker’s pressure, instead of breaking Lemay, sent him fleeing back across the border to Canada. Barker’s hunch that Lemay knew more than he was saying about what happened to Huguette wasn’t enough to detain Lemay. A Key West grand jury looked at the case that March. “All we lack is a confession and a body to prove a crime was committed,” Barker told the grand jury after presenting his evidence. While the grand jurors found that “Mrs. Lemay could be dead, and if dead, she died as a result of an act of violence,” they wanted to hear from Lemay in person; however, Lancelot Lester, the state’s attorney, wasn’t willing to give Lemay immunity from prosecution for whatever the witness revealed during his testimony. It was the only way Lemay would appear for the proceedings. This impasse helped derail the flimsy case. The Florida authorities made a big show in the press about Lemay’s unwillingness to tell his side of the story to the grand jury. Lemay responded that he had been in Montreal since leaving Miami, he wasn’t hiding, and under advice from his lawyers, he wouldn’t be going to Florida or making any other public statements. He didn’t appear before the grand jury, and with that, a judge released the eighteen men from jury service on April 18, 1952—less than a month after the proceedings began. The U.S. and Canadian newspapers quoted Lester as saying they would “simply have to seek new and more conclusive evidence.” They never did. When Barker was shot and killed by his son on Christmas Day during a domestic dispute, the case died with him. In the midst of all this, Lemay wrote a book, Je Suis Coupable (I Am Guilty), cowritten with the Montreal journalist André Lecompte and published in Canada in both French and English, in which he excoriated Barker and the other investigators. The title, Lemay said, meant that he was guilty of losing his wife’s love by his shabby behavior toward her. He claimed he had evidence his wife was alive and had simply run off. He never provided any such evidence, but he did file for divorce. Lemay had been lucky. His dealings with the law had been minimal considering his line of work, but then he was an adherent to the old adage, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Lemay might add money into that mix as well. Police suspected him of being involved in several bank burglaries in the late 1950s, though they never charged him. The one he was working on in the spring of 1961 would be his greatest for its boldness and perfect execution. ** Montreal’s waterworks dated from the early 1800s. The city was honeycombed with old iron pipes once used to deliver water straight from the Saint Lawrence River. Lemay learned that one such conduit, reconfigured for modern water, gas, and heating lines, connected to the Bank of Nova Scotia branch at 453 Saint-Catherine Street West. More important, it passed directly under the bank’s vault. Lemay’s plan involved slipping undetected through the tunnel from a building at 1408 Saint-Alexandre Street that adjoined the bank’s north side and then punching a hole into the vault floor, where hundreds of safe-deposit boxes, many owned by the city’s diamond dealers and by fellow criminals, waited to be looted. From there it was a matter of getting a decent team together and rounding up all the equipment—drills, dynamite, blasting caps, a gas generator, and black coveralls of the type used by Montreal city workers. He spared no expense and liked to take his time with his bank heists. The planning was part of the fun. His audacious thinking reflected the spirit of his times. The same unstoppable energy that animated the race into outer space and the creation of the new technologies needed to achieve this goal also pushed Lemay to bolder and more brilliant break-ins. He’d plugged into the zeitgeist. For Lemay, that meant pulling o1 the greatest heist of his life. He spent the spring of 1961 putting his team together. He chose Roland Primeau as his second-in-command. Lemay had worked with him on various capers over the previous seven years. Lemay trusted him implicitly. Primeau, at thirty-five, had a lengthy police record—most recently being arrested for forging checks stolen by an accomplice working in the office of the Montreal Light, Heat and Power Company, totaling close to seventy-five thousand dollars. He was out on bail but happy to participate in what looked to be a big score. Primeau was a big man with big appetites that his front as a car salesman was unable to satisfy. Although he was several inches taller than Lemay, they shared some physical characteristics: large, powerful chests and dark hair, and both were getting jowly from lives of excess. André and Yvon Lemieux were also a natural fit for the team. André, twenty-seven and just out of prison for selling stolen cars, was smart and energetic. His younger brother, Yvon, nineteen and the youngest of the crew, was also eager to get in on such a huge and adventurous heist. The Lemieux brothers, although eight years apart in age, could nearly have passed for twins. Both had hooded eyes, Roman noses, thin faces, full lips, and wavy hair. André wore his hair shorter than his younger brother, who was hipper and had a longer, greased-back hairstyle. The pair liked to dress flashy, with razor-thin ties and modish suits. Lemay was dating their sister, Lise Lemieux, a beautiful singer with dramatically arched eyebrows and pouty lips. Like Huguette, his former wife, Lise was petite and thin, standing five foot two and weighing one hundred pounds. She wore her long raven hair styled in a variety of ways but most often just kept it in a ponytail. Lemay spent lots of time with the Lemieux family, which was headed by the patriarch, Rosaire. Although Rosaire was in his sixties, he was still in the burglary game, according to police. The final member of Lemay’s crew was Jacques Lajoie, a burly man with prematurely graying hair and the oldest of the crew at thirty-nine. Lemay didn’t know him, but André Lemieux had vouched for Lajoie. The pair met in February 1961 when they were both serving time in Bordeaux Prison, Montreal’s massive jail featuring six wings that look like a broken wagon wheel. Lajoie was in for a forgery charge, one of many over the years. His criminal career stretched back to 1938, when he robbed a farmer for whom he’d been working, taking the man’s car, horse, and even his dog. After serving three years for a robbery in Baie-Saint-Paul, a small city on the shore of the Saint Lawrence River sixty miles northeast of Quebec City, Lajoie joined the Canadian army during the height of World War II. He fought in the European campaign and stormed the beach at Normandy. Wounded three times during his army stint, he was honorably discharged and returned to his life as a small-time thief and forger. The Bank of Nova Scotia job was going to be the biggest caper of his life. ___________________________________ Excerpted from Satellite Boy: The International Manhunt for a Master Thief That Launched the Modern Communication Age, copyright © 2023 by Andrew Amelinckx. Reprinted by permission of Counterpoint Press. View the full article -
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The Golden Spoon
Betsy Martin looks out at the contestants for the first time. The rows of baking tables are staggered slightly so that from the front she can see each of their faces. They wear identical half smiles to mask their nerves. Each one of them is completely distinct, but she still has trouble telling them apart. It’s always like this at the beginning of filming before their individual personalities crystallize, before the cracks and eccentricities start to shine through. Everyone starts out almost the same, all on their very best behavior for the cameras, but it won’t take long for a bit of adversity and competition to bring out their true personas. Of course, for one of them it will be too late. Betsy likes to make a little wager with herself about who will go home first. She scans the contestants. Up front there’s Hannah, from the middle-of-nowhere Minnesota. She’s very pretty and very young—there’s always at least one of those, the producers make sure of it. Likely talented as well, someone like her must be or they’ll look like they are just chosen for show. Across from her, Gerald from the Bronx looks stiff and uncomfortable in another linen suit. His fastidiousness may be his downfall in the future, but not today. In the next row is Peter, who is from nearby New Hampshire. With his plaid shirts, he reminds her of a small, handsome Paul Bunyan. His relaxed confidence makes her think he will do well with challenges and be a good baker as well. Next to him is Stella from Brooklyn, a thirtysomething former journalist who is by all accounts extremely new to baking, not having baked a single cake until this year. It will be interesting to see how she fares. The final row is Pradyumna, a stylish entrepreneur who lives in Boston, and Lottie, an older woman who lives in Rhode Island and, if experience with others like her is any indication, will likely blow her competition out of the water at the beginning and then fizzle out. The older contestants just don’t have the stamina, she thinks harshly. For the moment Betsy’s money is on Stella going home first. You do not simply teach yourself to bake and then win Bake Week all in one year. Next to her, Archie Morris rubs his palms together, bouncing back and forth on the balls of his feet as though he is waiting to start a race. It is Betsy’s first time sharing the front of the tent, ever. She doesn’t like it one bit. It had been a shock to her when the producers suggested Archie Morris as the cohost of Bake Week. For the last nine years she has been the only one behind the judging table, the sole anchor and mascot of the show. The very concept of Bake Week was hers, after all. The idea came to her over twelve years ago. She’d just finished her sixth cookbook and wanted to try something different, when her agent Francis had gotten a call from the producers of a new streaming service. The people at Flixer were looking for new programing, and they’d wondered about Betsy’s interest in repackaging her old cooking show. She’d mulled it over. Back when her husband was around, the idea of filming a show at Grafton would never have flown. He’d hated her celebrity and found the idea of televised baking to be a “supreme bore.” He may as well have been describing himself. But it had been six years since her divorce from Roland Martin. Grafton Manor needed repairs, and this could help pay for them, she told herself. The idea of making the show a competition had hit her like a bolt of lightning. Back then the concept was fairly novel. But this wouldn’t be just any competition. Betsy’s show would be gentle, with a focus on the craft, not a bunch of runaway egos forced to bake things you’d never even want to eat, as was so often the case with these things. And most importantly, it would be held at Grafton Manor, Betsy’s childhood home. Archie Morris is known for hosting a very different style of show. Betsy had watched only one episode of The Cutting Board and was not impressed. It was the polar opposite of Bake Week, a macho, cutthroat competition where the contestants rushed around in a mad panic insulting and undercutting each other along the way. If Archie was anything less than thrilled with their finished dishes, he would push their plates away in disgust and unleash a torrent of abuse. It would be ridiculous, Betsy thought, to make something like baking into a sort of martial art. She was positive that Archie did not have in him what made Bake Week so special. To be a good host in her eyes, you need to show you have the right combination of humility and nurturing—two qualities that brash Archie Morris is not known for. When the suggestion of adding him as a cohost first came up, she had set up a meeting with her producers and voiced these concerns. She had expected the idea of Archie Morris to be dropped immediately and for them to, at the very least, suggest other more suitable cohosts. But later that day she’d gotten a call from Francis. He told her that despite her position on the matter, they’d hired Archie. The show needed “livening up,” they’d said. She’d taken that as code for what they were really trying to say: she’d gotten too old, and they were worried she could no longer carry one of Flixer’s most streamed shows alone. To add insult to injury, the producers had demanded that Archie stay with her in a guest suite in the East Wing of Grafton. “They want to keep the judges and the contestants separate,” Francis had relayed to her. “Then let him stay in a hotel,” Betsy had shot back, only to be on the receiving end of that look, the one he gives her when she’s said something particularly difficult that he prays she won’t say to anyone else. So, she’d tried to accept Archie Morris as gracefully as possible. At least on the surface. Besides, she knew she had no choice. She needed the money the show brought in to keep the manor running. Without Bake Week, what would keep Grafton afloat? Her cookbook royalties weren’t enough to keep a full manor house alive. Much like herself, an older building must be maintained in order to function properly. There is always something that needs looking into, repairs both small and large to contend with. Along with the aesthetic work—it was unending—there was always a room that needed painting, a floor refinishing. She couldn’t hope to keep up without the money from the studio. Aging is not for the weak. Or the poor. Betsy had swallowed her pride and hoped for the best, even though she did not think he was the right fit. Both of them—Grafton and her—would have to endure Archie Morris to survive. Melanie signals from the back of the tent as the camerapeople make their final adjustments. Watching the bakers come into themselves is one of the joys of Bake Week, something that sets it apart from other cooking shows where some angry chef barks out insults and orders. At Bake Week, the goal was not just to win, not just to bake well, but to be human in the process. That is what makes compelling television programming. That is what makes viewers tune in in droves. Not to see how fast you can make a blini while someone barks out the seconds left on a ticking clock. It was one of the tenets Betsy had insisted on when she created this show over a decade ago, that it be truly inclusive. And so far, it has been. She credits Bake Week’s massive success to the way it treats people. No yelling, no scolding, just good-natured competition and respectful defeat. Father would have appreciated that part. You must know how to lose, and to learn when you lose, he’d always told her. It’s the only way you can come back to win. She pulls an index card out of her pocket and cups it in the palm of her hand one last time before the cameras start to roll. Archie has no notecard with names to memorize. In fact, he’d pushed her arm away when she’d tried to give him one the day before. “Don’t need it.” He’d tapped smugly at the crown of his head and winked. God, she’d wanted to stab him with a cake tester, but she breathed deeply and tried to let it pass, focusing instead on the indisputable knowledge that this is her show. She can feel the irritation begin to well up again as he starts to work the bakers like the warm-up act at a bad stand-up club. He ambles from table to table, chatting with Hannah and gently poking fun of Gerald’s lovely suit, palling around with Peter and Pradyumna. She watches as each contestant he speaks to melts under the gooey warmth of his attention. Disgusting. Finally, having made a full round, he comes back around to the front, giving her a cocky little wink as he takes his place next to her, a bit too close, as though he might be trying to inch her to the side of the screen. His head is truly too large in size, like an overfilled balloon. She looks to the side of the tent where Melanie confers with several of the crew. She points to something on her clipboard, appearing to scold a young woman holding the boom mic. The girl’s face falls, and Betsy wonders if she needs to speak with Melanie about her manner. She’s noticed a change in the last few seasons that coincided with her climbing rank. Her look has become more intimidating, much more polished and put together. Melanie has always been a bit of a perfectionist, which Betsy appreciates, but sometimes that tendency has her veering a bit too close to control freak for Betsy’s comfort. Betsy inspects a gold button on her jacket. They are already a half an hour behind schedule. Time to get started already. Then a signal finally comes from Melanie. Filming is about to begin. The glow of the lights is familiar on her face, and she steps into them, embracing their warmth. She raises her arms, a gesture welcoming the bakers to the tent and, if she’s judged the cameras correctly, blocking Archie’s face from the shot entirely. __________________________________ From THE GOLDEN SPOON. Used with the permission of the publisher, Atria. Copyright © 2023 by Jessa Maxwell. View the full article -
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Velvet by Lisette Marshall
C Velvet by Lisette Marshall May 25, 2021 Erotica/Erotic RomanceFantasy/Fairy Tale RomanceRomance Y’all, this book is kinda bananas, but I also think it will definitely be some people’s catnip, so I have to Alert the Bitchery. I mentioned Velvet in Watcha Reading a while ago (like, a really long while ago before I was sucked into the vortex that was nursing school). I described it as having fanfiction vibes then, and I stand by that assessment. Like, it’s not obviously veiled fanfiction of anything in particular; it just uses many of the same tropes and setups that I have seen in fanfiction, especially in the “porn WITH plot” genre. The overall scenario here is that princess Viviette was sent away from home to be “polished” in a foreign court and is now back in her home country, which seems to be a sort of medieval-ish mountain nation called the Peaks. She wants to be actively involved in the political running of the Peaks but her father insists on seeing her as only ornamental, and he wants his spymaster, Jaghar, to help protect her. This naturally creates some initial animosity between them as she tries to convince Jaghar that she is capable of actually Doing Things. But of course, they are secretly very horny for each other. I picked it up because I LOVE any kind of courtly/intrigue type romance with spies. Bonus points for the spy character being a cold or icy person with ~hidden passions.~ I wouldn’t say this is the most shining example of the sexy fantasy spy romance, but I did enjoy it. This was the kind of book that was hard to put down when I was actually reading it but was sort of forgettable when I was not. I ended up reading Velvet in two sittings but they were over a month apart. There is a plot involving intra- and inter-kingdom politics but it is fairly preposterous and mostly just designed to get people into Sex Scenarios. On these preposterous sex scenarios – SLIGHTLY spoiler-y, but This one reached maximum preposterousness The spymaster hero runs (and also works at) a secret brothel in the castle with the purpose of extracting secrets from guests during pillow talk. He lets the PRINCESS heroine work at his secret brothel at her insistence. All of the sex workers in this brothel are masked, but it is ludicrous that no one would notice that they were having sex with the spymaster and/or the princess, which seems like it would cause way more problems than it would solve!!! But whatever, masked sex shenanigans, lol. Once I got my giggles out about how silly this setup was, I found that some of the sex was really hot, and some of it was kinda weird. At one point lavender-scented bathing oil is used as an anal lubricant, and I was internally screaming DO NOT PUT A SCENTED OIL INSIDE YOUR BUTTHOLE PLEASE, OUCH. The characters are…fine? I would not say that Viviette and Jaghar were particularly dynamic or realistically-drawn, but they did not actively annoy me, and again, since this is really just one big porn-with-plot trope-fest, the characterization is not that important. The villain is one-note of mustache-twirling evil (but he also has incredible sexual magnetism, because of course). There is also a secondary villain character who is basically evil because she is so jealous and possessive of the hero, which, again, eye-roll. Importantly, I want to issue some MAJOR TWS for child sexual abuse in one of the characters’ backstories (which was alluded to with enough detail to be quite disturbing, actually) and multiple instances of attempted sexual assault (I wouldn’t say they were graphic, but I did kind of roll my eyes because FIND ANOTHER WAY TO BUILD STAKES, THANKS). Also, each member of the main couple has sex with other people on page which I know some people do not like so be aware of that! There is a happy-for-now ending that includes some consensual polyamory elements. It is the first book in a series; I may or may not pick up the sequel at some point if the mood strikes me. I think reading enjoyment of this book is all about having the right expectation level. If you go in expecting a somewhat absurd sexy spy medieval costume drama, it hits. If you go in expecting a lot of in-depth world-building, well-drawn courtly intrigue, and a plot that makes sense, you will be disappointed. View the full article -
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New York Write to Pitch Conference 2023 - Reviews
The conference verified what I already hoped: I want to be a writer. I received honest and clear feedback on my pitch and manuscript concept. The professionals are rooting for us to get our work recognized and provided the feedback on what it takes to be commercially successful. As a relative neophyte, I was prepared to be intimidated and that never happened as Michael created a relaxed and creative environment for us. While I have my work cut out for me, I am only too happy to commit even more to the craft. I received concrete and detailed recommendations. While there was no sugar coating, everyone was nice and professional. After 4 days with my writer's group, I was sad to leave. I have been home for 2 days now and I want to go back! I highly recommend NY Write to Pitch and would not hesitate to return. -
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New York Write to Pitch Conference 2023 - Reviews
Through pitch after pitch, this conference taught me to structure and deliver a strong pitch with the feedback of very expert professionals, whose questions and responses are clear clues about what's working and not working. These quick and practiced minds really listen, express genuine feedback about what aspects of my project will excite the marketplace, and what aspects may be problematic and need more honing. I felt that every person I pitched to was on my side, wanting to see my project clearly and to offer ways to enhance my positioning of its potential. I learned a lot over the course of the conference. At first, I thought my mental pivots were only about the pitch itself, only to realize that the way I was pitching my story has huge implications in the way I structure and execute on the novel as well. I came away from the conference with a new model for how to restructure my novel, and am excited for all the tools that will assist me as I tackle a rewrite. So "Write to Pitch" is exactly what I am learning to do, and my novel will be better for it! Four months of writing groups did not move the needle as much as these three days + the pre-work. I recommend that people attend at a point in the lifecycle of their novel development that they have a well developed sense of their characters, their plot, and why they're writing this book; yet early enough that they're willing and able to make big pivots. It was also wonderful to bond with a group of other practiced writers, and learning from their projects and their pitch experiences. We developed a community of support very quickly. -
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New York Write to Pitch Conference 2023 - Reviews
What a great experience. Exactly what I was hoping for. Really talented writers and our group leader Paula was amazing. She was informative, thoughtful, patient and worked hard to help us all from beginning to end. Definitely recommend for anyone wanting to understand the business better -
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New York Write to Pitch Conference 2023 - Reviews
I had such a fantastic and rewarding time at the conference. The pre-conference reading material and assignments were extremely helpful. Then during the conference itself I learned how important it is to write a pitch correctly, because otherwise no one will be intrigued enough to look at my actual pages. The way the pitch development sessions were structured was really wonderful, we all got to learn from the feedback each person received, and bond. Since writing is such a solitary endeavor, the community we built was super important to me. -
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Non-Fiction, a Freebie, & More
Peg and Rose Solve a Murder Peg and Rose Solve a Murder by Laurien Berenson is $2.99! I mentioned this on a previous edition of Get Rec’d. If you’re on the “senior sleuths” train, maybe pick this one up! Murder, She Wrote meets The Golden Girls in the award-winning author’s brand-new series! Two cantankerous septuagenarians, opposites in every way, put aside their differences to stop a killer… if they don’t throttle each other first! Rose Donovan looks for the good in everyone. With her sister-in-law, Peg, that sometimes requires a lot of searching. Even a sixty-something former nun like Rose has her limits, and gruff Peg Turnbull sure knows how to push them. But after forty years of bickering, they’re attempting to start over, partnering up to join the local bridge club. Peg and Rose barely have a chance to celebrate their first win before one of the club’s most accomplished players is killed in his home. As the newest members, the sisters-in-law come under scrutiny and decide to start some digging of their own. Bridge is typically seen as a wholesome pastime, yet this group of senior citizens harbors a wealth of vices, including gambling, cheating, and adultery . . . By comparison, Peg and Rose’s fractious relationship is starting to feel almost functional. But as their suspect list narrows, they’re unaware that their logic has a dangerous flaw. And they’ll have to hope that their teamwork holds steady when they’re confronted by a killer who’s through with playing games . . . Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Murder in Westminster Murder in Westminster by Vanessa Riley is $2.99! This was another Get Rec’d book, if you’re in the mood for historical mysteries with a hint of romance. However, some comments mentioned there’s a lot of exposition and plot packed into this one. Perfect for readers looking for a darker twist on Bridgerton, this first story in a vibrant, inclusive new historical mystery series from an acclaimed author portrays the true diversity of the Regency-era, as a widow whose skin color and notorious family history have left her with few friends she can rely on – just as the local vicar names her the prime suspect in a murder case… A BiblioLifestyle Most Anticipated Mystery of Summer 2022 Discovering a body on her property presents Lady Abigail Worthing with more than one pressing problem. The victim is Juliet, the wife of her neighbor, Stapleton Henderson. Although Abigail has little connection with the lady in question, she expects to be under suspicion. Abigail’s skin color and her mother’s notorious past have earned her a certain reputation among the ton, and no amount of wealth or status will eclipse it. Abigail can’t divulge that she was attending a secret pro-abolition meeting at the time of the murder. To her surprise, Henderson offers her an alibi. Though he and Juliet were long estranged, and she had a string of lovers, he feels a certain loyalty to his late wife. Perhaps together, he and Abigail can learn the truth. Abigail, whose marriage to Lord Worthing was not a love match, knows well how appearances can deceive. For all its surface elegance, London’s high society can be treacherous. Yet who in their circle would have killed Juliet, and why? Taking the reins of her life in a way she never has before, Abby intends to find out—but in the process she will uncover more danger than she ever imagined… Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. The Lady from the Black Lagoon The Lady from the Black Lagoon by Mallory O’Meara is $2.99 at Amazon! It’s not being price-matched elsewhere, so this could be an expiring deal. This is a biography about the woman who created the famous creature from the Black Lagoon, and her lost legacy. The Lady from the Black Lagoon uncovers the life and work of Milicent Patrick—one of Disney’s first female animators and the only woman in history to create one of Hollywood’s classic movie monsters. As a teenager, Mallory O’Meara was thrilled to discover that one of her favorite movies, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, featured a monster designed by a woman, Milicent Patrick. But for someone who should have been hailed as a pioneer in the genre there was little information available. For, as O’Meara soon discovered, Patrick’s contribution had been claimed by a jealous male colleague, her career had been cut short and she soon after had disappeared from film history. No one even knew if she was still alive. As a young woman working in the horror film industry, O’Meara set out to right the wrong, and in the process discovered the full, fascinating story of an ambitious, artistic woman ahead of her time. Patrick’s contribution to special effects proved to be just the latest chapter in a remarkable, unconventional life, from her youth growing up in the shadow of Hearst Castle, to her career as one of Disney’s first female animators. And at last, O’Meara discovered what really had happened to Patrick after The Creature’s success, and where she went. A true-life detective story and a celebration of a forgotten feminist trailblazer, Mallory O’Meara’s The Lady from the Black Lagoon establishes Patrick in her rightful place in film history while calling out a Hollywood culture where little has changed since. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Fluffy Fluffy by Julia Kent is FREE! It’s also book one in a series and the other titles are also on sale. I’m on the fence about trying this one because it sounds hilarious with the “fluffer” misunderstanding, but humor is so subjective and I’ve been burned by romantic comedies before. An all-new STANDALONE from New York Times bestselling author Julia Kent It all started with the wrong Help Wanted ad. Of course it did. I’m a professional fluffer. It’s NOT what you think. I stage homes for a living. Real estate agents love me, and my work stands on its own merits. Sigh. Get your mind out of the gutter. Go ahead. Laugh. I’ll wait. See? That’s the problem. My career has used the term “fluffer” for decades. I didn’t even know there was a more… lascivious definition of the term. Until it was too late. The ad for a “professional fluffer” on Craigslist seemed like divine intervention. My last unemployment check was in the bank. I was desperate. Rent was due. The ad said cash paid at the end of the day. The perfect job! Staging homes means showing your best angle. The same principle applies in making a certain kind of movie. Turns out a “fluffer” doesn’t arrange decorative pillows on a couch. They arrange other soft, round-ish objects. The job isn’t hard. Er, I mean, it is — it’s about being hard. Or, well… helping other people to be hard. Oh, man… And that’s the other problem. A man. No, not one of the stars on the movie set. Will Lotham – my high school crush. The owner of the house where we’re filming. Illegally. In a vacation rental. By the time the cops show up, what I thought was just a great house staging gig turned into a nightmare involving pictures of me with an undressed star, Will rescuing me from an arrest, and a humiliating lesson in my own naivete. My job turned out to be so much harder than I expected. But you know what’s easier than I ever imagined? Having all my dreams come true. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. View the full article -
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Announcing Our Seventieth-Anniversary Issue
A few days before the Review’s new Spring issue went to print, the poet Rita Dove called me from her Charlottesville home to set a few facts straight. She and her husband, the German novelist Fred Viebahn, are night owls—emails from Dove often land around 9 A.M., just before bedtime—and they had just spent several long nights poring over her interview, which was conducted by Kevin Young and which spans Dove’s childhood in Akron, Ohio, where her father was the first Black chemist at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company; her adventures with the German language; her experience as poet laureate of the United States, between 1993 and 1995; and her love of ballroom dancing and of sewing, during which she might “find the solution for an enjambment” halfway through stitching a seam. Working their way through the conversation, she and Viebahn had confirmed or emended the kinds of small but crucial details that are also the material of Dove’s poems: the number of siblings in her father’s family, the color of the book that inspired the poem “Parsley,” the name of the German lettering in which her childhood copy of Friedrich Schiller’s Das Lied von der Glocke was printed (not Sütterlin, it transpired, but Fraktur). We talked through her corrections, and then Dove produced a final fact that caught me by surprise. Two decades ago, she said, she had been preparing to be interviewed for The Paris Review by George Plimpton. He’d called to set a date for their first conversation, and the next day, she said, came the shocking news that he had died. This spring rings in the magazine’s seventieth anniversary, and twenty years since the loss of its visionary longtime editor. To mark the occasion, issue no. 243 has a cover created for the Review by Peter Doig—inspired, he told us, by a birthday card he made for his son Locker—and includes not two but three Writers at Work interviews: with Dove, with the American short story writer and novelist Mary Gaitskill, and with Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. In many ways, though, this issue is consistent with the others in our long history, featuring the best prose, poetry, and art that we could muster, by writers and artists you’ve heard of and some you haven’t. You’ll find prose by Marie NDiaye, Elisa Gonzalez, Rivers Solomon, Daniel Mason, and Elaine Feeney; poems by Nam Le and D. S. Marriott; and artworks including a portfolio by Tabboo!, featuring paintings inspired by words he associates with the magazine (including “high falutin,” “bon vivant,” and “wreaking havoc”). We are grateful to everyone who has appeared in our pages, and to all the people who have shepherded the Review over the past seven decades, so that this one can land in your mailbox as the season turns. View the full article
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