Strangely enough, all my family’s Christmas food traditions are Christmas Eve based. I’m from San Francisco originally and Christmas Eve always meant cold Dungeness crab and french onion soup. Christmas Eve was always the best because we would sit around with our next door neighbors and sing carols and eat treats all afternoon. Our neighbors
When I picked up Christmas in The Duke’s Arms, I went into it with trepidation. I expected…well…Dukes. And while I don’t have a problem with Dukes per se, I do have a problem with the sameness of Dukes: powerful guy, lots of wealth and responsibility, inevitably rakish, rarely seen doing any government work or estate
Today’s post has nothing to do with romance. And that picture has nothing to do with this recipe. But this post is all food all the time. I tried out a new recipe from a favorite food blog a couple weeks ago and was quite pleased with the final product, but not with the amount
I’m not a huge fan of Christmas romance in general. So it’s really not surprising that my Christmas posts for the next few weeks will feature a couple historicals and, well, this. I guess it’s sort of futuristic? I’d called it speculative fiction rather than sci fi though because there’s no real science going on
Back in October during Queer Romance Month, I picked up A Matter of Disagreement by E.E. Ottoman. The premise of the book grabbed me right away: two steampunk scientists have an academic difference of opinion regarding the future of their chosen field of mechanical animation. As plots go, it’s a fresh one, and the conflict
Anyone who’s been following this blog for awhile probably knows that I’ll take a “beta” hero over an “alpha” hero any day, but that mostly I wish the distinction didn’t exist. Actually, I don’t think sociology upholds the dichotomy at all so outside of romance novels, the distinction really doesn’t exist. It’s arbitrary, unrealistic and
I love the old Harlequin Presents romances I pick up at thrift shops and used bookstores, mainly out in the hinterlands of Virginia: their heroine-centric perspectives, island and glamorous European settings, strong heroes who read like real people. But they are often just the slightest bit dissatisfying. Some endings seem rushed. The hero falls heads
