luninosity

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I've got an essay about Gothic romance & Barbara Hambly's tie-in novel Children of the Jedi in here! For all my Star Wars friends & scholars, come grab a copy and check out all the fabulous contributions!

#star wars #scholarship #barbara hambly #scifi #star wars celebration

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anytime someone from the UK orders a print from me I’m delighted because the addresses tend to be charming and sound completely made-up, I just suspend my disbelief and accept that I’m sending a package someplace with a name like Bristleberry House at Ditchmallow in Brambleford-on-Cotton—incredible lmaooo I bet this gets delivered to you by a badger in a little coat

#english place names

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Yes I have, and you should should read it too. (My favorite of her books is still The Moon and the Sun, though.)

vote YES if you have finished the entire book.

vote NO if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

#vonda n. mcintyre

[luninosity]

Not a friend/follower/mutual and I haven't lived in Tartu in years but I spent my youth there and adore the town!

I used to spend all my time at Ruunipizza (restaurant), which is very close to the town hall and university and used to be decent, cheap and have plenty vegetarian options. But that was years ago and very much a place for students to go and hang out at, so Idk if that's something

Me and my American friends also liked La Dolce Vita for pizza back then. There's also a great place for cake opposite the university called Werner and the Gunpowder Cellar is a pretty cool pub.

In my opinion, the most important attraction in Tartu is the giant wooden swing (külakiik) in Supilinn but that might be personal preference. I am also a big fan of the AHAA keskus (science exhibition with planetarium) and I believe the museum of toys (mänguasjamuuseum) is a hidden gem if you have some time to spare. There is also a botanical garden in Tartu that I liked to hang out at. Sometimes they even have special activities; I remember building a bird house for winter there once :)

Definitely try to catch some folk music and/or dancing performance while you're in Estonia, they're really special!

I am taking notes about food recommendations! Cake is always good! And the Gunpowder Cellar looks fascinating! (Who wouldn't want to have a drink in, well, an ancient gunpowder cellar? Sign this history nerd up :D :D )

We have managed to get ballet tickets, as well! I am hoping I will have some time around conference panels to go exploring; the weather should be nice enough in May, right? Not too cold? Awesome Husband will probably also do some exploring without me, too. (He likes sci-fi, but he is not an academic - an engineer, instead! - so being in a room full of scholars Loudly Discussing the scholarship of science fiction is not entirely his thing, at least not for four days worth! He'll come to my panel though.)

For anyone wondering, we shall be in Tartu, Estonia in early May - around the 7th-11th! For the International Science Fiction Research Association Conference, at the university.

We've never been to Estonia, so we are excited! We're actually flying into Helsinki a day (and a night) early and spending a day in Finland, because we have also not been there, and then taking the ferry over. :D :D

#estonia #travel #yay friends! #if you're nearby come say hi! #finland #science fiction #sfra

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I think you just got a shoutout on Tasting History with Max Miller?

I did! In the Robin Hood episode! It was very cool.

I love Max - we emailed for a while before that episode, and hung out at a wine tasting event at the Getty! I may see if I can nudge him into doing something for an upcoming academic book project... :D :D

#tasting history #max miller #robin hood #medievalism

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I saw you have a new Snails story!?! I’m so excited.

YES INDEED IT IS OUT NOW *flails*

(I have been super-bad at logging onto Tumblr lately, so please know I'm not ignoring anyone! I just haven't been here much! I love you!)

The new Snails story is called "The Merchant Witch," and it is story number three, after "The Snails of Dun Nas" and "In the Pass of Ghosts," and it's got...Aric and Em (my swordsman and his genderfluid half-fairy partner) agreeing to take a job that...well...doesn't go as planned, because their employer's got a magical secret, and an enemy...

You can buy it at Amazon here! Or directly from JMS Books here! Or wherever you like to buy books!

(There will be at least two more, possibly three more - they all stand alone okay, with a small developing threat in the background, but the specific story plot gets resolved in each one! I really wanted that classic sword-and-sorcery-but-queer vibe - very much the LGTBQ version of Barbara Hambly's Sun Wolf & Starhawk, or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser, all that. <3 )

#k.l. noone #sword and sorcery #lgbtq #fantasy #fantasy romance #romantasy #my fic #yay! #jms books

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The CFP is up for this year's Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) conference! As your Fantasy & the Fantastic Area Chair, I encourage you to send proposals my way, if you've got something dealing with any aspect of, well, fantasy and the fantastic! Happy to consider proposals from independent scholars or creative folks, as well. Please ask me if you've got any questions!

We will be in sunny Palm Springs this year, in November, so come visit Southern California and hang out with us! (There are many other lovely sessions too - from Disney to Food Studies to Medieval Literature - though I will of course encourage you to submit to the Fantasy area! :D )

I'll copy my specific CFP below, and the link to my session - deadline for proposals is April 30!

Fantasy & the Fantastic

Fantasy and the supernatural, broadly defined, shape many popular narratives and universes—from Lord of the Rings to Game of Thrones, from World of Warcraft to The Witcher, from classical and medieval tales of monsters and dragons to the worlds of N.K. Jemisin, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, and Ursula K. Le Guin. As a genre, fantasy engages with questions of rhetoric, identity, and power in multiple ways, across media, subgenres, and cultural traditions; the enchantment of fantastic and supernatural narratives casts a persistent and global spell. For this standing session, all proposals that explore fantasy's evolutions and impacts, the fantastic and the supernatural, and/or intersections of fantasy and diverse genres, media, traditions, or time periods are invited.

Proposals which intersect with the PAMLA conference theme of “Translation in Action” are welcome, particularly those which consider related questions of translation, mediation, interpretation, power and subversion, challenges and impossibilities and discoveries, histories and practice and representation of translation, language-learning and world-construction, and cosmopolitanism. Direct link to Fantasy area here!

General PAMLA CFP here!

#cfp #fantasy #scholarship #conferences #academia #palm springs #pamla #romantasy #fantasy books

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All right, everyone: it's up for pre-order!

Strange Novel Worlds: Essays on Star Trek Tie-In Fiction, edited by Caroline-Isabelle Caron and me! Let's boldly go!

With chapters by Una McCormack and David Mack, alongside our academics! You can pre-order from McFarland (publisher) here! (I know it's a bit expensive - academic book pricing, sorry, we didn't get a say in it!)

Engage!

#star trek #scholarship #science fiction #una mccormack #sometimes i wear the professor hat

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#water #beautiful places

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It’s Queer Your Bookshelf time! Over 300 ebooks, on sale for 99 cents each, as long as it’s February 2 someplace in the world! Come check out the book list over here!

My included offering is Magician, if you might like high fantasy m/m romance with a magician in need of redemption & a very persistent hero in need of help… (It's also one of my favorites of my own books!)

#sales #lgbtq #books #queer your bookshelf

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One of the papers I wrote in an undergraduate honors course was about the nuance of the Bennets as *different kinds of bad parents*, and this says it so much more succinctly!

If none of them married, how desperate would the Bennett girls actually have been?

Well the only dowry they have is £50 apiece from their mother’s small inheritance, per year; so that’s a total of £250 generated by Mrs. Bennet’s inherited investments per annum.

The Dashwoods (four women) are living on £500 a year when they are forced to live in Barton Cottage (with good-will making the rent presumably ridiculously low thanks to Sir John Middleton’s good nature, to say nothing of all the dinners and outings he invites the ladies to, which will help them economize on housekeeping costs for heavier meals.)

So there would be six Bennet women left to live on half as much as the Dashwoods are barely scraping by on. £250 is roughly considered enough to keep ONE gentleman at a barely-genteel level of leisure (presuming he does not keep a horse or estate or have any major expenses beyond securing his own lodgings/clothes/meals at a level becoming of a gentleman.)

None of the Bennet girls have been educated well enough for them to be governesses to support themselves, so…yes, their situation would heavily rely on mega-charity from others to just help them survive, much less maintain them in the lifestyle they’ve been accustomed to. The Dashwood women have NO social life beyond the outings provided by Sir John and the offer of Mrs. Jennings to host the older girls in London–otherwise they’d be stuck in their cottage, meeting absolutely no eligible men, creating a cycle of being poor and unmarried and too poor to meet anyone with money they could marry.

If the Bennet girls don’t at least have ONE of them marry well enough to help the rest before their father dies, they are really, truly, deeply fucked.

They may joke about beautiful Jane being the saviour of the family, but…it’s true. Mr. Bennet failed his daughters several times over in A) presuming he’d have a son, B) not saving money independently from his income to support his family after his death when it became clear he wasn’t going to have a son, C) not educating them well enough to enable them to support themselves in even in the disagreeable way of being a governess, D) not making any effort to escort his daughters to London or even local assemblies to help their matrimonial chances because he just doesn’t feel like it, E) throwing up his hands and shrugging when faced with the crises of Mr. Collins and Wickham.

Much as we are relieved on a romantic level that Mr. Bennet’s support of Elizabeth saves her from parental pressure to accept Mr. Collins, Mrs. Bennet is NOT A DICK for pushing for the match, because on a material level it very much means they get to KEEP THEIR HOUSE and gain a connection to the powerful patron Lady Catherine de Bourgh, which could be VERY advantageous for the other unmarried girls.

And the scandal of Wickham very nearly scuppers the chances of ANY of the other girls, and Wickham is a further DRAIN on the family finances, not a man who is going to substantially be able to support them. It is SUCH a disaster, and of course there’s not much Mr. Bennet can do until they are found, but he’s away in London and doing…what, exactly? Mr. Gardiner takes over and manages everything and Mr. Bennet seems happy to just let him.

Mr. Bennet does the ABSOLUTE LEAST, and actively damages his children’s futures by his inaction AND by his one action to support Lizzie’s individual needs being prioritized over the collective gain, which…I mean, Lizzie is going to be JUST as homeless and destitute as her sisters when he dies, so much good being Dad’s Favourite is going to do her. :/

#pride & prejudice

[luninosity]

(Much funnier given this mutually bisexual marriage, mind you)

us: *watching a video about the history of pretzels*

Awesome Husband: ...honestly, I like the feel when it's more soft than hard, in my mouth. *pause* I mean PRETZELS!

#awesome husband is awesome

[luninosity]

The ebook version of Flashes, the collection of my short & flash-fic stories, is out now from JMS Books!

I'm so excited about this - it feels like some sort of author milestone, having enough short stories for my own collection! There's contemporary, historical, fantasy, sci-fi...old friends and brand-new ones...I hope you enjoy!

(Note that the ebook and print versions will be slightly different - the ebook contains *only* the previously unpublished stories, while the print version will add in the previously published flash-fic stories! Those are already available digitally, which is why they're not in the ebook version - people don't have to effectively buy them twice / keeps the ebook shorter & cheaper for you!) JMS Books link here!

Amazon link here!

#jms books #k.l. noone #lgbtq #short stories #romance #yay!

[luninosity]

listen. i know it's not 2014 anymore and i know it's just a throwaway line and that the russo brothers didnt intend for marvel action blockbuster captain america the winter soldier to become the tragic gay love story that never was but man. having steve say "it's kind of hard to find someone with shared life experience" in a conversation about romantic relationships right before the bucky reveal is so cruel. it's not just about steve and bucky obviously having the shared experience of being "out of time," it's the fact that they've both been stripped of their humanity in opposite directions. steve is a legend, he is an american hero and a national icon before he is a human being the same way that bucky is a weapon and a killing machine before he is a human being. steve knows that anyone who falls in love with him in the 21st century fell in love with captain america first, and that's just not him. but then the one person who knew him first and knew him best and loved him (not captain america, that little guy from brooklyn) so much he died for it is alive, impossibly. and it's a miracle because he's back and it's horrific because he's back under the worst possible circumstances. but to steve, the winter soldier is worth tearing the world apart for because he's always been bucky first. they find each other and suddenly they're human again. and maybe, despite it all, being "out of time" becomes a blessing, because in this century they'd finally be allowed to love each other the way they've always wanted to. like real people do.

like. no. the captain america trilogy isn't about two queer men traumatized and alienated by war and modern life rediscovering and reclaiming their humanity through their love for each other. but. i mean. it couldve been

#the winter soldier #yep #sounds about right

[luninosity]

us: *watching a video about the history of pretzels*

Awesome Husband: ...honestly, I like the feel when it's more soft than hard, in my mouth. *pause* I mean PRETZELS!

#awesome husband is awesome

[luninosity]

Hello, friends! A Question -

do I know any of you in Estonia? I ask because I will be there (likely with Awesome Husband, and possibly my mother, who loves travel) in May, for the International Science Fiction Research Association Conference! (I shall be talking about Star Trek and history.)

The conference is being hosted by the University of Tartu (here's the conference website) so we will likely be staying around there; they've got some recommended hotels nearby with conference rates. I'd love to say hi to any of you! - or, if you've got some recommendations for food or interesting historical sites or botanical gardens, that would be marvelous!

(Food notes: my mom is vegetarian, if she's coming along; Awesome Husband and I are not but he can't do fish/shellfish and neither of us is terribly big on Giant Slabs of Red Meat, like rare steak etc; really in practice we're like 80% vegetarian, we tend not to buy meat for us when cooking at home, but we do like to drop by In-N-Out on occasion, or have a good pepperoni pizza...)

Also, it looks like it might be possible to pop into Finland, maybe? How complicated would that be? That's somewhere else we've never been, and I think - especially if my mom wants to come along - that could be fun, if it's feasible!

#estonia #travel #science fiction

[luninosity]

It’s time for this year’s JMS Books Top Ten Anthology, out now – and I’m thrilled to be part of it again! The 2023 anthology includes my short story “December Beginnings,” which is perfectly seasonal! It was also a very fun story to write – a little spin-off story for Matthew, Finn’s stunt double from the Finn & Wes seasonal stories, in which he gets his own (much deserved) happy ending.

Also I, er, might’ve dropped a character down a flight of stairs again in this one. Look, it’s not really a habit…only twice…oh, okay, if a cliff counts, maybe three times…

The collection is currently in the 20% off new release sale at JMS Books until January 5th!

Buy links and description:

JMS Books

Amazon

Universal Book Link

2023 Top Ten Gay Romance brings together the best-selling short stories published by JMS Books that year. From first love to true love, from submission to sensual, from heat to sweet and everything in between, the couples in these stories are sure to keep you turning the pages as you fall in love with them. With stories by T.J. Blackley, Holly Day, Nell Iris, Shawn Lane, Eve Morton, K.L. Noone, Charles Payseur, Glenn Quigley, Mere Rain, and Ellie Thomas, this head-over-heels collection goes beyond bedtime reading. Whether happily ever after or happy for now, there’s an ending for everyone in here! Contains the stories: The Wedding by T.J. Blackley, Saved by the Bear by Holly Day, After Marcus by Nell Iris, Loving the Boss by Shawn Lane, My Roommate Kyle by Eve Morton, December Beginnings by K.L. Noone, Fieldwork by Charles Payseur, The Great Santa Showdown by Glenn Quigley, Nice and Vicious by Mere Rain, and A Christmas Engagement by Ellie Thomas.

#m/m romance #gay romance #jms books #k.l. noone #yay!