Podcast appearances and mentions of barry hughart

It must have been three or four years ago that I started bouncing this idea off Janie about a discussion regarding historical fiction rooted in Chinese history. Janie, being a successful writer of this genre, was perfect to have this discussion. Today the historical fiction genre is quite substantial and new authors are publishing new content online and in print every day. Many of these novels are set against the backdrop of Chinese history (in China or Overseas). The way historical novelists present this history to life can be very engaging and relatable. I hope you enjoy this CHP Special episode as much as I did. This is such a huge topic to discuss Janie's list of books & Buy links at her website: https://janiechang.com/books/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JanieChangWriter | Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janiechang33/ TIME Magazine article: The Risky Journey That Saved One of China's Greatest Literary Treasures: https://time.com/5852229/saving-chinese-encyclopedia/ RACE THE RISING SUN: A CHINESE UNIVERSITY'S EXODUS DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR by Chiao-Min Hsieh and Jean Kan Hsieh https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/race-the-rising-sun-chiao-min-hsieh/1123966361 or https://www.amazon.com/Race-Rising-Sun-Chinese-Universitys/dp/0761841482 TEACHING IN WARTIME CHINA: A PHOTO MEMOIR 1937 – 1939 by Edward Gulick: https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Wartime-China-Photo-Memoir-1937-1939/dp/0870239120 Amitav Ghosh – Opium War Trilogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibis_trilogy  https://amitavghosh.com/ Lisa See Author Page -- https://lisasee.com/ Yangsze Choo -- https://yschoo.com/about/ Weina Dai Randel -- https://weinarandel.com/ Barry Hughart series -- https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/barry-hughart/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It must have been three or four years ago that I started bouncing this idea off Janie about a discussion regarding historical fiction rooted in Chinese history. Janie, being a successful writer of this genre, was perfect to have this discussion. Today the historical fiction genre is quite substantial and new authors are publishing new content online and in print every day. Many of these novels are set against the backdrop of Chinese history (in China or Overseas). The way historical novelists present this history to life can be very engaging and relatable. I hope you enjoy this CHP Special episode as much as I did. This is such a huge topic to discuss Janie's list of books & Buy links at her website: https://janiechang.com/books/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JanieChangWriter | Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janiechang33/ TIME Magazine article: The Risky Journey That Saved One of China's Greatest Literary Treasures: https://time.com/5852229/saving-chinese-encyclopedia/ RACE THE RISING SUN: A CHINESE UNIVERSITY'S EXODUS DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR by Chiao-Min Hsieh and Jean Kan Hsieh https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/race-the-rising-sun-chiao-min-hsieh/1123966361 or https://www.amazon.com/Race-Rising-Sun-Chinese-Universitys/dp/0761841482 TEACHING IN WARTIME CHINA: A PHOTO MEMOIR 1937 – 1939 by Edward Gulick: https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Wartime-China-Photo-Memoir-1937-1939/dp/0870239120 Amitav Ghosh – Opium War Trilogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibis_trilogy  https://amitavghosh.com/ Lisa See Author Page -- https://lisasee.com/ Yangsze Choo -- https://yschoo.com/about/ Weina Dai Randel -- https://weinarandel.com/ Barry Hughart series -- https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/barry-hughart/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It must have been three or four years ago that I started bouncing this idea off Janie about a discussion regarding historical fiction rooted in Chinese history. Janie, being a successful writer of this genre, was perfect to have this discussion. Today the historical fiction genre is quite substantial and new authors are publishing new content online and in print every day. Many of these novels are set against the backdrop of Chinese history (in China or Overseas). The way historical novelists present this history to life can be very engaging and relatable. I hope you enjoy this CHP Special episode as much as I did. This is such a huge topic to discuss Janie's list of books & Buy links at her website: https://janiechang.com/books/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JanieChangWriter | Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janiechang33/ TIME Magazine article: The Risky Journey That Saved One of China's Greatest Literary Treasures: https://time.com/5852229/saving-chinese-encyclopedia/ RACE THE RISING SUN: A CHINESE UNIVERSITY'S EXODUS DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR by Chiao-Min Hsieh and Jean Kan Hsieh https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/race-the-rising-sun-chiao-min-hsieh/1123966361 or https://www.amazon.com/Race-Rising-Sun-Chinese-Universitys/dp/0761841482 TEACHING IN WARTIME CHINA: A PHOTO MEMOIR 1937 – 1939 by Edward Gulick: https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Wartime-China-Photo-Memoir-1937-1939/dp/0870239120 Amitav Ghosh – Opium War Trilogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibis_trilogy  https://amitavghosh.com/ Lisa See Author Page -- https://lisasee.com/ Yangsze Choo -- https://yschoo.com/about/ Weina Dai Randel -- https://weinarandel.com/ Barry Hughart series -- https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/barry-hughart/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It must have been three or four years ago that I started bouncing this idea off Janie about a discussion regarding historical fiction rooted in Chinese history. Janie, being a successful writer of this genre, was perfect to have this discussion. Today the historical fiction genre is quite substantial and new authors are publishing new content online and in print every day. Many of these novels are set against the backdrop of Chinese history (in China or Overseas). The way historical novelists present this history to life can be very engaging and relatable. I hope you enjoy this CHP Special episode as much as I did. This is such a huge topic to discuss Janie's list of books & Buy links at her website: https://janiechang.com/books/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JanieChangWriter | Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janiechang33/ TIME Magazine article: The Risky Journey That Saved One of China's Greatest Literary Treasures: https://time.com/5852229/saving-chinese-encyclopedia/ RACE THE RISING SUN: A CHINESE UNIVERSITY'S EXODUS DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR by Chiao-Min Hsieh and Jean Kan Hsieh https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/race-the-rising-sun-chiao-min-hsieh/1123966361 or https://www.amazon.com/Race-Rising-Sun-Chinese-Universitys/dp/0761841482 TEACHING IN WARTIME CHINA: A PHOTO MEMOIR 1937 – 1939 by Edward Gulick: https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Wartime-China-Photo-Memoir-1937-1939/dp/0870239120 Amitav Ghosh – Opium War Trilogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibis_trilogy  https://amitavghosh.com/ Lisa See Author Page -- https://lisasee.com/ Yangsze Choo -- https://yschoo.com/about/ Weina Dai Randel -- https://weinarandel.com/ Barry Hughart series -- https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/barry-hughart/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So what did I read this year? Well, I'm all over the place. But I thought I'd take a moment to hit some of the highlights. These are in no particular order. A Gentleman in Moscow By Amor TowlesThe best book I read this year is A Gentlemen in Moscow by Amor Towles. It's just a wonderful and wonderfully crafted book. I can't say enough great things about it. It has one of the most beautiful and perfect metaphors involving a wine cellar. I literally put the book down and cursed out loud. I couldn't believe how good it was. I thought about it for weeks. But really that's a technical thing. The story is set in 1922. It's about Count Alexander Rostov, an Aristocrat who survives the Russian Revolution because he wrote a poem. Instead of being put against the wall and shot, is sentenced to house arrest, and ultimately labor, in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. This book does what great art should always do, expand your experience of being alive. I don't think I've read a better book in the last five years and I don't expect I will in the next five. For after all, if attentiveness should be measured in minutes and discipline measured in hours, then indomitability must be measured in years.But as they came to the bend in the road where the Count would normally give a snap of the reins to speed the horses home, Helena would place a hand on his arm to signal that he should slow the team—for midnight had just arrived, and a mile behind them the bells of Ascension had begun to swing, their chimes cascading over the frozen land in holy canticle. And in the pause between hymns, if one listened with care, above the pant of the horses, above the whistle of the wind, one could hear the bells of St. Michael’s ten miles away—and then the bells of St. Sofia’s even farther afield—calling one to another like flocks of geese across a pond at dusk. The bells of Ascension . . .“I’ll tell you what is convenient,” he said after a moment. “To sleep until noon and have someone bring you your breakfast on a tray. To cancel an appointment at the very last minute. To keep a carriage waiting at the door of one party so that on a moment’s notice it can whisk you away to another. To sidestep marriage in your youth and put off having children altogether. These are the greatest of conveniences, Anushka—and at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to me most.” Anna Urbanova took the cigarette from the Count’s fingers, dropped it in a water glass, and kissed him on the nose.Since the day I was born, Sofia, there was only one time when Life needed me to be in a particular place at a particular time, and that was when your mother brought you to the lobby of the Metropol. And I would not accept the Tsarship of all the Russias in exchange for being in this hotel at that hour.”The Last Good Kiss By James CrumleyTo whipsaw things another great novel that I read was The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley. Here's the beginning:When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon. I would say that Crumley is a guilty pleasure, but I don't feel guilty in the slightest. He's like Hunter S. Thompson and Raymond Chandler had a baby. After I finished that one, I plowed through two more of Crumley's books. No guilt. No regrets. The Story of the Stone by Barry HughartI read The Story of the Stone by Barry Hughart. It's the middle book of the Chronicles of Master Li and Number 10 Ox. These books aren't really like anything else. I have all three and didn't want to guzzle them. They're set in a mythical China that never was. They're wonderfully fantastic, very funny and surprisingly poignant in places. They are also something of a cautionary tale, the book struggled to get traction because it's in a genre of its own. It is fantasy, but Ancient Imperial China as a setting rather than the Middle Ages. Master Li is ancient and the smartest man in China. Number 10 Ox is the narrator and is played as the big, dumb strong guy, but there's a fair amount of unreliable narrator jazz.Big fun and great writing. Here's a couple of sloppily random snags“My surname is Li and my personal name is Kao, and there is a slight flaw in my character,” he said matter-of-factly. “You got a problem?”Fable has strong shoulders that carry far more truth than fact can.Master Li turned bright red while he scorched the air with the Sixty Sequential Sacrileges with which he had won the all-China Freestyle Blasphemy Competition in Hangchow three years in a row.The abbot used to say that the emotional health of a village depended upon having a man whom everyone loved to hate, and Heaven had blessed us with two of them.The Immortality Key: the Secret History of the Religion with No Name by Brian C. MurareskuReading this now. The book is an investigation into what is likely the oldest and most widespread religion -- centered around a funerary rite with hallucinogenic beer and later wine. I pounced on this after listening to an author interview with Andrew Sullivan. It's an intellectual detective story, and quite good. The first thing that hooked me was that this was an explanation for the Eleusinian Mysteries, which was a ceremony that was a well-kept secret in the Greco-Roman world. People made a pilgrimage to Eleusis, fasted, drank the beer, had unbelievable visions, and raved about the experience. Saying things like it's what made civilization possible. And say it removed the fear of death. Which was described as "If you die before you die you will not die."Best guess is the beer was brewed with ergotized wheat. But nobody knows for sure. But two things are interesting about this. One, we can actually test old vessels and figure out what was in these beverages right now. And modern medical research is showing that a single dose, if you will, of psychedelic mushrooms, cures depression and PTSD and takes away the fear of death in hospice patients. Essentially inducing a religious experience with chemicals. Johns Hopkins is doing this research, not some unwashed hippy with a YouTube channel.There are real questions about the early Christian Eucharist: was hallucinogenic? Was it an extension of the Eleusian and Dionysian mysteries. But for me, the craziest thing in the book to wrap my head around has been Goebleki Tepe the oldest known temple, dated from 10,000 B.C. Which appears to have been a sacred brewery for hallucinogenic beer. And, honestly, the hallucinogenic part is the least crazy part of that last statement. The 10,000 b.c. is nuts. That's 6000 years before settled agriculture. And the temple is constructed from gigantic slabs of stone, in a way that we didn't think people could build back then. Insert Ancient Aliens nonsense if you must, but the crazy part is that it reverses what I thought the causality of civilization. It was always thought that first came agriculture, then came beer. But it seems that beer -- as a sacrament -- predates civilization by thousands of years. The other crazy thing about his book is that the brewing of sacred potions was exclusively the realm of women. Old women. Which appears to be the origin of our archetype of witches. Boil toil and trouble anyone? And that this was stamped out as the underground Christ cult grew into the state religion of Rome. There's a lot going on in this book. And if anything I've just mentioned pique your curiosity, you should definitely check it out. Hamilton by Ron ChernowAfter watching the musical on Disney +, which scarcely needs praise from me, but is unbelievably fantastic. And amazing accomplishment on many levels -- I dipped into Ron Chernow's biography, it's also great. Here's a gem that seems uniquely appropriate to the current moment.> “This misfortune affects me less than others,” he told Eliza Schuyler, “because it is not in my temper to repine at evils that are past but to endeavor to draw good out of them, and because I think our safety depends on a total change of system. And this change of system will only be produced by misfortune.”The Bobiverse Series -- Dennis E. TaylorThis series starts with "We Are Legion (We Are Bob)" I listened to a bunch of these, so I don't have a bunch of quotes. Just read them all. They are just lovely, humane, funny speculative fiction. A guy is turned into a Von Neumann probe, A self-replicating device to explore the universe. And as he goes, he replicates himself, fights off aliens, struggles help save humanity -- it's tremendously positive without being trite or stupid. Really, really great. And the audiobooks are some of the best I've heard. In fact, if I had to rank the best audiobooks I've ever heard this currently comes in third Best performance is Stephen Fry reading the complete works of Sherlock Holmes. Of course, the stories are great, but Fry is a great actor who loves Holmes and puts everything he's got into the performance. I can't overstate how good this audio is. Number 2 and Best ensemble performance is 'World War Z'And third place is Ray Porter reading Dennis Taylor's Bobiverse books. Richard Stark, The JuggerI dipped back into this one. Westlake -- Stark was Donald Westlake's pen name -- always said this was the worst book of the series, but there's a moment in this one that's just shockingly powerful. I won't ruin it, but Westlake is master for a host of reasons. Here's a bit of his description Freedman led the way to his office. He was short and barrel-shaped and walked as though he’d do better if he rolled instead. His face was made of Silly Putty, plus hornrimmed glasses.The Road to Character, by David Brooks This book is really a compilation of short biographies of people of great character and how they developed themselves. It is quite good. I dug into it as research on virtues. And the book paid for itself in the introduction here's an excerpt:I wrote this book not sure I could follow the road to character, but I wanted at least to know what the road looks like and how other people have trodden it. The Plan The plan of this book is simple. In the next chapter I will describe an older moral ecology. It was a cultural and intellectual tradition, the “crooked timber” tradition, that emphasized our own brokenness. It was a tradition that demanded humility in the face of our own limitations. But it was also a tradition that held that each of us has the power to confront our own weaknesses, tackle our own sins, and that in the course of this confrontation with ourselves we build character.My general belief is that we’ve accidentally left this moral tradition behind. Over the last several decades, we’ve lost this language, this way of organizing life. We’re not bad. But we are morally inarticulate. We’re not more selfish or venal than people in other times, but we’ve lost the understanding of how character is built.But it did occur to me that there was perhaps a strain of humility that was more common then than now, that there was a moral ecology, stretching back centuries but less prominent now, encouraging people to be more skeptical of their desires, more aware of their own weaknesses, more intent on combatting the flaws in their own natures and turning weakness into strength. People in this tradition, I thought, are less likely to feel that every thought, feeling, and achievement should be immediately shared with the world at large.This is the way humility leads to wisdom. Montaigne once wrote, “We can be knowledgeable with other men’s knowledge, but we can’t be wise with other men’s wisdom.” That’s because wisdom isn’t a body of information. It’s the moral quality of knowing what you don’t know and figuring out a way to handle your ignorance, uncertainty, and limitation.And in it I found this great quote from St. Augustine“How small, of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws and kings can cause or cure.”Aristotle's Politics and EthicsI first read Aristotle's Ethics in college for a class on Classical Political Philosophy. And I jumped back in, as research for thinking about virtueThere is an idea that reading old books is pretentious or stuffy or dull. And that's not been my experience at all. The reason to read books like this, even when they get a little hard is because they are incredibly useful. The Greeks and Aristotle, in particular, laid the foundation stones of civilization -- or drew up the attack plan for what G.K. Chesterton calls "the whole courageous raid which we call civilization." I like that metaphor, because it suggests heroism, fragility and glory in what reveals itself to the not-so-simple work of civilizing one's self and others. This gem came from the commentary to Aristotle's Politics. Aristotle's attention is here directed chiefly towards the phenomena of "Incontinence," weakness of will or imperfect self-control. This condition was to the Greeks a matter of only too frequent experience, but it appeared to them peculiarly difficult to understand. How can a man know what is good or best for him, and yet chronically fail to act upon his knowledge? Socrates was driven to the paradox of denying the possibility, but the facts are too strong for him. Knowledge of the right rule may be present, nay the rightfulness of its authority may be acknowledged, and yet time after time it may be disobeyed; the will may be good and yet overmastered by the force of desire, so that the act done is contrary to the agent's will.It underscores a naïveté of classical political thought -- and this is not to say that the ancients were generally naive -- this is just a mistake. Because, I think I could make a really good case that wrestling with yourself about doing what you know to be good is the defining human problem here at the beginning of the 21st century. The Good Shepherd by C.S. ForesterI have loved the Horatio Hornblower novels since I was, maybe 12. When I saw a preview of the movie Greyhound, I became aware that C.S. Forester had written this book about a commander of a convoy to Britain in the early days of WWII. Tom Hanks got this movie made, wrote the screenplay, starred in it. And that's a clue for you. Not that the movie -- it might be, I haven't seen it -- is good, but that the source material is excellent. Because somebody expended career capital to get it made. This is a tremendous book. The psychological tension and strain of command in combat is represented here in a way that I've never read before. I don't know how you could render this in film. And by that, I'm saying this book does what only books can do, very, very well. It's well-crafted and relentless in a way that doesn't lend itself to punchy quotes, but it made a huge impression on me. Fathers and Sons by Ivan TurgenevI just finished this one and I need more time to think about it. I read it primarily because another writer I greatly admire is giving a lecture on it, so I wanted to be adequately armed for the lecture. A lot of the book is concerned with what happens when you don't believe anything -- if it's even possible not to believe anything. For me, Russian novels manage to be profoundly psychological and spiritual and I can't ingest them quickly. But in it, I found this gem of a line. "Death's an old joke, but it comes fresh to every one."Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt VonnegutI have read embarrassingly little Vonnegut. I read Harrison Bergeron in school -- and it's prescience has terrified me ever since. Vonnegut is amazing. And I'm going to work my way through many more of his books. This was my start. Here's a taste.Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.And so it goes…Inventing the Individual: the Origins of Western Liberalism By Larry SiedentopThe biggest problem with not reading and not being familiar with history is that you can be easily fooled into thinking that the way things are now is the way that they have always been. Even highly educated and intelligent people can fall into this trap and become provincial in time. The book is a study of how the individual became the unit of social organization in the West. It's fascinating. For in the eyes of Islamic fundamentalists, and indeed in the eyes of not a few in the West, liberalism has come to stand for ‘non-belief’ – for indifference and permissiveness, if not for decadence. Why is that? And is the charge justified? This book is an attempt to find out. Its argument rests on two assumptions. The first is that if we are to understand the relationship between beliefs and social institutions – that is, to understand ourselves – then we have to take a very long view. Deep moral changes, changes in belief, can take centuries to begin to modify social institutions. It is folly to expect popular habits and attitudes to change overnight. The second assumption is that beliefs are nonetheless of primary importance, an assumption once far more widely held than it is today. In the nineteenth century there was a prolonged contest between ‘idealist’ and ‘materialist’ views of historical change, with the latter holding that social order rests not so much on shared beliefs but on technology, economic interdependence and an advanced social division of labour. Even the declining appeal of Marxism in the later twentieth century did not discredit that view. Rather, in a strange afterlife, Marxism infiltrated liberal thinking, creating a further temptation to downgrade the role of beliefs. That temptation became all the greater because of the unprecedented prosperity enjoyed by the West after the Second World War. We have come to worship at the shrine of economic growth.The Peloponnesian War by Robert Kagan and Thucydides Commentary Okay, every time I say Peloponnesian War - I've got this stupid line in my head. "Pelop's Ponesian War" Like a guy name Pelops decided to put on a war for entertainment. No idea why this is the case. But this seems to happen with Greek words. I have a joke about Sophocles as well. Big Guido -- "Mikey, why you always writing like that? You should be out playing ball."Micheal -- "I've got a paper due on Sophocles."Big Guido -- "Sophocles? How about you try Sophocles" (Grabs crotch)I've read Thucydides before. Hard, but worth it. Kagan wrote a four-volume masterwork on the history of the War for scholars then distilled it down into this book. I read these, partially because Thucydides is great. And partially as research for a project for something I can't really talk about while it's in the works. The Peloponnesian War was effectively the first “World War” Athenians v Spartans, all the other Greek city states picked a team. It’s got Vietnam baked in (the disastrous Athenian campaign in Syracuse), earthquakes, plagues and some of the defining speeches of Western Culture. Piranesi by Suzzanna ClarkeI liked it. It's gorgeously written, but it didn't have the impact on me that Dr. Strange and Mr. Norell did. I loved that book. Which is a kind of alternate history presupposing disused magic existed in the Napoleonic era. This is is my favorite part“Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange.Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could.” The Toymakers by Robert DinsdaleI've only read half of this book. It's a Christmas book about a magical toystore in the Heart of London before WWI. In the spring, I started reading it on the recommendation of a friend and I decided to save it for the week of Christmas. It's marvelous magical realism. If you want a Christmas book -- this is the one. Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by K.J. ParkerThis is the blurb for the book: "A siege is approaching, and the city has little time to prepare. The people have no food and no weapons, and the enemy has sworn to slaughter them all.To save the city will take a miracle, but what it has is Orhan. A colonel of engineers, Orhan has far more experience with bridge-building than battles, is a cheat and a liar, and has a serious problem with authority. He is, in other words, perfect for the job."What nothing on the outside of the book will tell you is that this is a book about the tensions of civilization, racism, oppression and ideology. Orhan is part of a downtrodden minority in the book. Yet it falls to him to save the city and the empire -- the same empire that crushes everybody who's not the empire beneath it's cruel sandaled heel. There's a lot in this book.Orhan is also a magnificent narrator. And this book is funny, insightful, profound, here's a few clips. “A wise man once said, the difference between luck and a wheelbarrow is, luck doesn’t work if you push it.” “Beautiful people, though, I struggle with. Unless you keep your eyes shut or look the other way, you can’t help but have the awful fact ground into you, like the wheel of a heavy wagon running over your neck, that here is someone divided from you by a vast, unbridgeable gap, and they’ve done absolutely nothing to deserve it. Ogus’s wife – her name was Sichelgaita – was that level of beauty. I won’t even try to describe her, because they don’t make words that could take the strain. You felt ashamed to look at her.” “The way I see it, the truth is just barren moorland, all useless bog and heather. It’s only when you break it up and turn it over with the ploughshare of the Good Lie that you can screw a livelihood out of it. Isn’t that what humans do? They take a dead landscape and reshape it into what they need, and want, and can use. I’ve never hesitated to adapt the world to suit me, when I can get away with it.” “That’s how the world changes. It’s either so quick that we never know what hit us, or so gradual that we don’t notice. It’s only later, when books are written and scholars decide what mattered and what didn’t, that red lines are drawn – before this point, the world was this way, after this point, everything was different. You could be there and not have a clue. You could be asleep, or looking the other way, having a quiet s**t or screwing in an alley, and an unseen pen draws a line. Here the Empire ended. Here the Dark Ages began.” A lot of Conn IgguldenConn Iggulden is one of the authors of the Dangerous Book for Boys. But he also writes historical fiction. And, for my money, he makes Bernard Cornwall look like a chump. And Cornwall is excellent. This year I read the Emperor Series about Julius Ceasar. Last year I read his Genghis Khan series. Both excellent. Both in a page-turning, thrilling, gore and violence, arrrgh adventure! Way and as writing. Especially the first two books of the Ceasar series. Some very powerful human moments. And he write women very well. He's tremendously talented. And very diligent with this history. I also read The Falcon of Sparta which is his retelling to Xenophon's Anabasis. The story is one of the greatest adventure stories of all time. Xenophon goes with a 10,000 Hoplite Mercenaries to fight for Cyrus the Younger who attempted to steal the Throne of Persia, but gets killed and his army is defeated.All except the 10,000 greek mercenaries. See they were on the other side of the hill from Cyrus's army, so they are busy routing the rest of the Persian army. And when they find out Cyrus is dead, they have a huge problem. It's the story about how they fought their way back home to Greece. Or Coney Island. Because, not only is this a true story, but it's also the inspiration and plot of Walter Hill's classic 1977 film The Warriors. If you need some historical fiction, pick up some Iggulden. He's a master. And it's seriously fun to say his last name. Boswell's Life of JohnsonI'm reading this bit by bit. My sense is the biography has lasted better than anything Johnson wrote when he was alive. Which is a bit crazy because, except for his Biography of Johnson, it seems that Boswell might have been an annoying drunken hanger-on of a jackass who never did anything else right in his life. Samuel Johnson came from crushing poverty and hardship -- and pretty much single-handedly compiled the first Dictionary of the English Language. In the preface of which he wrote: It is the fate of those who toil at the lower employments of life, to be rather driven by the fear of evil, than attracted by the prospect of good; to be exposed to censure, without hope of praise; to be disgraced by miscarriage, or punished for neglect, where success would have been without applause, and diligence without reward.Among these unhappy mortals is the writer of dictionaries; whom mankind have considered, not as the pupil, but the slave of science, the pioneer of literature, doomed only to remove rubbish and clear obstructions from the paths of Learning and Genius, who press forward to conquest and glory, without bestowing a smile on the humble drudge that facilitates their progress. Every other authour may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few.He was also a prodigiously fast writer and reader. Boswell says this of him. 'Johnson knew more books than any man alive.' He had a peculiar facility in seizing at once what was valuable in any book, without submitting to the labour of perusing it from beginning to end. He had, from the irritability of his constitution, at all times, an impatience and hurry when he either read or wrote.Which makes me feel better about the way I sometimes raid nonfiction books rather than read them. Or maybe the way I render them, like one boils scraps of meat to render the useful fats out of them. I'm not going to take the time to find the precise metaphor. Whatever it is, it isn't pretty -- it's messy and nothing I'd want my children to watch. I just try to rip the guts right out of the book. And that fact that Johnson did it too makes me feel a little better. The Border by Don WinslowGood, but honestly, not his best. I would suggest The Power of the Dog -- the first book in the trilogy. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it, but reading The Power of the Dog and The Cartel was an experience like I've never had before. Winslow knows the sordid ins and outs of the Drug War like few others and he gets so much out of it as an author. I am personally against the prohibition of drugs on moral grounds. In addition to being electrifying thrillers, these books help make the human cost of our price supports for drugs real. If cocaine wasn't expensive in the U.S. people wouldn't kill themselves for it in Juarez and Colombia. Pablo Escobar blew up an airliner and bombed the Colombian Supreme Court. That's on him. But it's also on us. But don't let my speechifying put you off. The books are great thrillers. If you liked Narcos, you'll love these. The Three Body Problem, by Liu CixinHere's the Amazon blurb: Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.This is a triple winner of a great book. 1) It's great hard sci-fi. 2) It's is great psychological fiction. Not only is the science good, but the insights into people and society are great as well. 3) It's Chinese science fiction, so you get a glimpse into another culture. Having been to a few conventions and having met a number of sci fi and fantasy authors, it is a little dismal how conventional many of them are. There is a groupthink in what they call "The Field" of writing speculative fiction. And, of course, a lot of internal strife. Who's the good guys, who's the bad guys? I don't pretend to know, but you can get a lot of sameness in fiction when they have the same worldview and they've spend a lot of the same time in the same rooms talking about the same things in the same way. This book wasn't like that at all for me. It was brilliant and refreshing.Plus Others, but...That's for this post. Throw in some scattered reading in the Bible, Shakespeare, Economics and Poetry and it's a year well-spent. Of course, I wish I had a chance to read more, but, you know there was real life to be lived as well. If anybody has a suggestion of something I should read next year, put it in the comments. I have a bit of an addiction with buying books, so please enable me. Get full access to How It's Written by Patrick E. McLean at patrickemclean.substack.com/subscribe

The guys open the show congratulating the winners of the 31st Annual Lambda Literary Awards. They also discuss the podcast’s inclusion in Apple Podcasts’ Pride Month recommendations. Jeff also talks about some of the past week’s happenings with his Codename: Winger series and Will asks him what it was like wrapping up the series. Jeff and Will discuss the new Tales of the City series on Netflix. Will reviews the first two books in Piper Scott & Susi Hawke’s Redneck Unicorn Series. Aidan Wayne is interviewed about their three new books out this year: Hitting The Mark, Play It Again and the forthcoming Stage Presents. They also talk about how they decide what goes into the books, how they got started writing, author influences and what’s coming next. Complete shownotes for episode 192 along with a transcript of the interview are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. Interview Transcript – Aidan Wayne This transcript was made possible by our community on Patreon. You can get information on how to join them at patreon.com/biggayfictionpodcast. Jeff: Welcome, Aidan, to the podcast. It’s great to have you here. Aidan: Thank you. I’m excited to be here. It’s an interesting experience for me. Never done this before. Jeff: Oh, cool. First podcast. Always fun to have people doing their first podcast with us. Now, you’ve had a busy few months of releases and we wanna talk about the most recent one first, which is “Hitting the Mark.” Tell us a little bit about that book and what inspired it. Aidan: Okay. So “Hitting the Mark,” in a nutshell, it’s about a famous movie star named Marcus Economidis, who used to train in martial arts when he was really young and really shy. And that helped him come out of a shell and then he moves. And being in martial arts actually helps him become more confident and he ends up getting a movie role, and that spirals, and then becomes a famous…10 years later, he’s a famous movie star who is also famous for doing his own stunts. Meanwhile, in Marcus’s hometown essentially, his original school – Choi’s Taekwondo Academy – is now run by Taemin Choi. Taemin was Marcus’s kind of assistant instructor growing up. They’re about 10 years apart. So Marcus was 10, Taemin was, like, in his early 20s and Taemin runs the school now. And Marcus happens to be coming back into town for a shoot and he decides to pay a visit to his old school… kind of nostalgia. He lost contact with Taemin when he moved. And so, he kind of wants to bridge the gap again, just like say hi, see what happens. And then they do meet with Marcus being an adult and, you know, there’s kind of an instant connection. The entire book is essentially about them navigating, first, relearning each other because they knew each other for several years, but it’s been several more years since they actually talked again. So they’re relearning who they are as people, especially Marcus as he’s grown into his own self, and that turns into a romantic relationship. And they’re just figuring out how to be in one considering that, you know, Marcus is this famous person and Taemin is a very busy man who runs his own school and takes care of a lot of things. And just, that’s the story basically. I do a lot of character-based stories where the plot is kind of, like, playing the course as opposed to, like, a person antagonist sort of. So it’s kind of like another one of those things for me. Jeff: Okay. And it ticks so many boxes because there’s friends to lovers, and second chances, and an age gap. Aidan: I tend to, when I write, sometimes I have several different things that I wanna include in various ideas. And so, sometimes when I have, like, the base, I’m just like, “Let’s just squish them all together. Let’s just push them all in one thing and see what happens, and if I can pull it off.” Jeff: And you mentioned when we were emailing to set this interview up that this is one of the books you didn’t have to do a ton of research on because… Aidan: Thank God. Jeff: …movies and martial arts, you had the knowledge there. What aspects of your background, you know, play into that? Aidan: Well, I’ve been involved in martial arts for about 20 years now, primarily Taekwondo and that’s the style that I had Taemin doing because I know the most about Taekwondo in Korean style. I technically have my black belt in two disciplines. One is Taekwondo and the other is a mixed type of martial art that I actually ended up teaching. I used to run a school. So a lot of my experience did transfer over into Taemin’s experiences in running a school and dealing with students and various endeavors that are required. And with movies, I actually majored in media production in college. I was on movie sets a lot both behind the camera and also growing up, I kind of dabbled in acting and I’ve been in front of the camera a lot too including on some big sets. Michigan used to be a pretty big movie hub before the tax thing happened and a lot of places moved away from it. And I was actually on a few different, like, SAG films. So I got to kind of be both in front of the camera and behind the camera. So learning about that aspect was…It was fun to basically shove as much knowledge as I could, especially the martial arts into one book because I have such a love for martial arts that it was like, “Let’s include inside jokes and inside knowledge. And I’ve never had to spell this Korean word in English before. So I have to probably look that up.” And fun fact actually, I’m not gonna spoil anything, but one of the plot points is Taemin working towards the Olympics. He’s qualified for the qualification and that entire piece is actually based on a co-worker of mine I used to work with who did qualify for the Olympic matches. Jeff: Incredible. You did stuff a lot in here in terms of all of your knowledge kinda went into this book. Aidan: Yeah. It was kinda, it was a nice break. I still had to do research obviously because I had to, like, fresh some things and again, like, Korean, making sure that I got that right. But for a lot of it, like, I have another book that I released late last year, “His Two Leading Men,” which takes place in New York with a Broadway star, and I’m like, “I like Broadway, I can just write about plays, that’s fine.” No, I ended up having to map out the entire city to figure out distances to whichever…I’m crazy…whichever restaurant he’d like to go to, which is closer, where is laundromat was. Like, I’m absolutely ridiculous when it comes to stuff like that. Nobody is gonna notice but me. But, like, I care. Jeff: But the native New Yorkers might. And so, it matters. Aidan: Yeah, yeah. Jeff: I have stopped myself of books going, “That’s not right. I know where that is and that doesn’t work that way.” So you do work Michigan into a lot of your books. “Hitting the Mark” is in Michigan. “Play It Again,” which we’ll dive more into in just a second, has a Michigan element simply because you have somebody sending Dovid, the main character, some Faygo Red Pop and some other Michigan treats, some Mackinac fudge included. Obviously, you live in Michigan. Is it something you try to work into the books, a little Michigan angle? Aidan: Kind of. Half of it is ‘write what you know’ because I’m thoroughly uncreative when it comes to that and it’s way easier to just, like, I don’t have to make something up, I don’t have to do more research. I just can set it in Farmington Hills or wherever it is. But sometimes it’s because I have, like, certain places in mind or I want to include certain things like, with Dovid receiving a care package, I wanted to make sure that I had a care package that at least was state-based and was really cool and could include especially a lot of food because a lot of…Dovid being blind, a lot of his things are food-based, it’s part of his schtick. So he reacts to taste and stuff. So knowing that I have my own experience with various Michigan cuisines and snacks and stuff, I could include that pretty easily and know that it would ring true but also be kind of funny. And even if the person didn’t necessarily know what things were, it would still, like, be something that they could get. Jeff: Speaking of “Play it Again,” that I reviewed back in episode 186 and really, really loved it. It was like the book I didn’t know I needed at the time. Aidan: Thank you. Jeff: And it’s quite different from “Hitting the Mark.” What was the inspiration behind this tale of two YouTubers who managed to find love even though they live half a world apart? Aidan: Well, going back to my ‘I have various ideas, but squish them all together into one sometimes.’ I really, really wanted to showcase a blind character. A lot of the characters that I do showcase are disabled in some way or have, you know, different aspects of their life that aren’t typical, you know, part of normative parts of society, etc., etc. And I apologize if my verbiage isn’t the best. And I really want to showcase a blind character, but obviously, I didn’t wanna fetishize that I wanted him to be successful and happy, and not be just blind as his character if that makes sense. And I thought YouTube would be a fun angle for that. And on the other side, I really wanted to focus on, like, a Let’s Player because I thought that it would be fun to try to, like, figure out how to write that because it’s so much narration and video-audio-based. And I like playing and like, “Can I do this? I will see if I can.” So making it a long-distance relationship was also kind of something that sort of happened because long-distance relationships, specifically internet-based ones, are very important to me because I have several relationships that started being internet-only and I consider a lot of these people some of my closest friends and I’ve met many of them in person now. One of my friends, I’ve only ever met them once, and it was in our first meeting ever…we then spent two weeks together, but our first meeting ever was in Narita Airport in Tokyo where we both flew separately and then spent two weeks in Japan together. So, like, yeah, there’s a lot that can come from internet relationships and I really wanted to showcase something like that too. Jeff: And I’d imagine here that the research was more than “Hitting the Mark” because you needed to make sure that Dovid was portrayed in the way that you wanted to where, you know, he wasn’t necessarily defined by the blindness. Aidan: Oh, yeah. I do extensive research whenever I write, especially disabled characters, because, you know, there’s so much misinformation out there and it’s so easy to fall into the trap of what the media has portrayed a person to be like or to do as opposed to actually reading experiences and watching experiences about, you know, real people. I kind of posed this question to myself on Twitter a while back, but it was basically, how does one write about a successful blind YouTuber? Watch a lot of successful blind YouTubers basically. So I watched a lot of, like, “The Tommy Edison Experience” is a man who is blind and he has a lot of Q&As; on YouTube. A lot of his videos are older and he’s an older gentleman. But it was still, you know, very informative. He has, like, an episode about cooking, which Dovid is the chef of his little family where he lives with his sister, Rachel. So it was interesting to, like, make sure that I was, you know, portraying his ability to do that correctly and, like, different tools that he’d use. Molly Burke is also a YouTuber that does makeup and fashion. But how she interacts, you know, with her audience and interacts with herself, and the things that are important to her – her experiences – because she does talk about that as well. It was very important. There’s a Tumblr called “Actually Blind” that did Q&As; and did a lot of commentary on different things and responded to different situations where, you know, there’s one impairment affected daily life that was not considered. And “Actually Blind” was a huge help in doing a lot of research because even when I didn’t actually ask the question myself, sometimes they just talked about things that I hadn’t thought about before. So that was a really good thing to notice. Like for instance, they had a post about the fact that the face touch thing in so many books and so many movies is absolutely ludicrous and no blind person really does that. And because it was made up by a sighted person who thought that it was kind of like romantic and intimate to have the blind person, like, touch the other person’s face to see what they look like and “Actually Blind” was like, “No, no. Uh-uh.” So it was something that I didn’t include then and I might have if I hadn’t read something like that. Jeff: The research is oh, so important. Aidan: Absolutely, absolutely. And I do a lot of sensitivity readers too. I have a short story that is going to be coming out probably in October, because I’m spacing it out a little bit, where one of the main characters is in a wheelchair. So luckily, I’m like, “Hey, sibling, I’m gonna ask you some wheelchair questions.” And know about how my experiences in, you know, living with somebody who uses a mobility aid and all that. So proper portrayal is really important to me. Jeff: And you have still yet another type of story coming out with your upcoming YA novel, “Stage Presents.” And I’m fascinated by this way because you’re taking us to Disney College Program. Do you have experience in that or was that a ton more research? And of course, what is this book about because it sounds just delightful? Aidan: Oh, well, thank you. I hope it is delightful. I hope people enjoy it. And to your question, yes and yes. I did experience, I did do the Disney college program many years ago, but I also did do a lot of research for the story in part because, you know, Disney updates and changes things. So some of the things I had to look up were the current menus and stuff because, again, it’s like a tiny little detail that only I will notice but I cared about. But I also had to make sure that I was getting details right in terms of characters because one of the main characters, Ashlee, with two Es, is a Disney princess literally. I did a lot of research into behind the scenes of that a little bit. I watched a lot of ex-princess interviews and posts about the experience of being a character performer. I didn’t have a lot of experience in that capacity. I knew some people who are friends with characters while I was in the program and I did ask, you know, I did learn about it that way. But princesses, I had to learn a little bit more. And, oh, yeah, what the book is about. Two girls who both get onto the Disney College Program and end up his roommates. One, Dana is a kind of, you know, calm, cool, collected, very down to earth, logical girl who is going into international business, she’s excited about working in a Fortune 500 company. She’s looking forward to living away from home. She’s trans. So, you know, that’s just another aspect of who she is as a person and she’s kind of like not sure about how she’s gonna get along with people. But she kind of has the mindset of ‘judge people before they judge you’ sort of thing because of past experiences. Meanwhile, on the other side, Ashlee, with two Es, loves Disney…I know, it’s a very important detail. She loves Disney, she’s a Disneyphile, she loves all the movies, she loves all the songs. She gets cast as an actual Disney princess. This is her dream come true. She’s been dancing since she was little. So one of her goals is to be a parade performer Disney princess, essentially, and she’s super excited. She’s from good old Southern Georgia and has never really, you know, met somebody who’s not exactly like her and her little clique, you know, popular, excited, happy group. So she doesn’t really know what trans means and she was born around…she knows what the internet is, but still, it’s different from knowing and meeting and, like, actually talking to somebody and interacting. And then so, Ashlee is kind of ignorant and Dana is kind of standoffish, and they hate each other. A good portion of the book is just them hating each other, and eventually, of course, a couple of different things happen and it turns into a begrudging friendship, which turns into actual friendship, which turns into more. And it was, you know, writing the evolution of enemies to lovers, which is something that I hadn’t done before really, and integrating different aspects of their situation and being roommates and living in such close quarters and, like, what constitutes that kind of relationship too, especially while you do not like each other and then as friends, and then, you know, once you’re more intimate as well. So that was, like, a whole encompassing aspect of the story itself. Jeff: And now, it sounds even more delightful than when I read the blurb. Aidan: Okay. Good. I had a lot of fun. I like my stories, which is, you know, a fun thing to be able to say because a lot of them I think, just kind of get defined as ‘fun’. There are obviously elements of angst and stuff and, you know, negativity that happens, but I have fun, you know, writing them. I hope that people have fun reading them. Jeff: What got you into writing and M/M romance in particular? Aidan: Well, I’ve always been a storyteller. My dad also, when we were kids, he would make up bedtime stories. We got read to a lot too, but he would make them up. So I grew up with the elements of imagination as something that you could play with and figuring out different elements of what characters could do. Really, you know, being totally honest, fan fiction. I was really, really interested in “Elfquest” as a kid. It is a fantasy novel by Wendy and Richard Penny. And man, I was an “Elfquest” fan. I read and actually own, I’ve collected almost all of the books and volumes and made up as a tiny little 9-year-old, self-inserts in my head as being an elf with such and such power, and being part of that self-insert stuff. And as I got into more media growing up, I really enjoyed reading and writing fan fiction because it was a way to interact with something that I enjoyed so much past where the media itself went. And sometimes things happen that you didn’t like. So you could make them better by writing it yourself or reading it by other people who did a good job or further exploring the world that had already been created with characters you already liked. And from there, it was kind of like, “Oh, I could do this with my own characters and make whatever I want to happen, happen. What? Oh.” And the kickoff was when I was, I don’t know, like, 15, I participated in my first NaNoWriMo and that was the first, like, write a lot of words and also write them really quickly. So you can’t think too much about what you were doing, you know, “wrong.” I wrote 50,000 words in the 30 days. And man, I still have it and it really portrays what I was into, what I was learning, and what I was experimenting with as a 15-year-old because it is a lot of stuff. And I really enjoyed doing that and I kind of just kept at it. And eventually, I had a friend who I really admired, Mina MacLeod, who was also a writer that I was friends with at the time. And she talked about an anthology and encouraged me to also, you know, submit a story, a piece, and I did. And we both got in and I still have the copy of the book, but we’re both in the anthology, both me and this writer that I really admire. And, like, that was really cool. And from there, I went, “Oh, wait, publishing is possible, that this is a thing that actually can happen to, like, real human people as opposed to just authors who are these untouchable people on pedestals.” So my next book that I wrote was written with publishing in mind. That was “Loud and Clear.” And it was technically my first original, original piece. Speaking of smooshing everything together at once, that book is about a man who is so dyslexic, he is essentially illiterate and a businessman who has a stutter so bad that he is a selective mute, falling in love and entering into a relationship. So you got someone who can’t read and someone who communicates through writing and I was like, “Let’s just make this as complicated for myself as possible. That’s a good idea.” But, you know. Jeff: Yeah. For a first book, you took on a lot there. Aidan: You know, it suffers from an overuse of italics, but it’s still something that I really appreciate that I did as a writer. I really like it. I had a lot of people really like the fact that I, you know, portrayed people that way, and of course, it does focus on non-normative people with disabilities and challenges in, you know, typical normal society. The illiteracy was actually based on a friend of mine who is illiterate. His dyslexia is so bad, he is effectively illiterate. He’s also an engineer. So, you know, it doesn’t stop you. It doesn’t have to stop you as long as you have the right elements and encouragement and resources. And that’s what a lot of people do struggle with. Like, he had to be homeschooled because his school that his parents had put him in originally were like, “We don’t know what to do with this child.” So being homeschooled allowed him to learn and actually grow and actually learn. Jeff: I have a suspicion a little bit where this next question at least will go a little bit given the “Elfquest” things, but what authors and genres do you tend to read? Aidan: Basically everything, but gore horror to be honest. I really enjoy contemporary pieces. I like fantasy. I really like nonfiction. I love learning stuff. This is probably not a surprise considering my need for research, my favorite author in the entire world is Terry Pratchett. That probably will never change. The man was absolutely brilliant and his ability to tell stories, and well-rounded characters, and development in plot, and his care in structure, and how he’s able to tie things up neatly with, you know, no questions except for like, what could happen next? He’s absolutely amazing. I really admire him. If I like a tenth of his ability to just, like, story weave, I’d be content in my ability to create. One of the other authors I really enjoy, he’s a very lesser known author, but Barry Hughart. He wrote “Bridge of Birds.” That is a Chinese fantasy mythology story, which basically happens in a historical China, but is written as if mythology was real. And he’s also, like, a very unknown and should be more known author for what he’s able to do with creativity. Other books that I appreciate, I enjoy a lot of Tamora Pierce’s work, especially the “Keladry” series because I really enjoyed her portrayal of a woman, a girl growing up and wanting to be a knight and fighting and dealing with a lot of the prejudices that come from, you know, girls trying to do anything that boys like to do. So, those pieces and she also is essentially…she’s written as not really interested in amorous connections, so to speak, and Tamora Pierce did end up saying that she did write her as asexual even though she didn’t, like, really know the term at the time. So that was really appreciated. Oh, that dovetailed a lot. M/M romance, yes, okay. There is a lot of het romance out there and that’s fine, you know, it’s got a market for a reason. It can be very well done. Me personally, it’s done by other people well and I gravitated more towards queer characters. M/M romance was easier for me to write because it was easier for me not necessarily to identify with the characters, but write about them in ways I wanted to, you know, with gentler portrayals and different effects. I wouldn’t say that I particularly write, like, alpha man male sort of things because it’s not really something that appeals to me personally as an author or as a person. I like people who are settled into themselves and know who they are and may be confident, maybe inconfident. For instance, in “Play it Again,” Dovid is a very confident individual who knows who he is and is really happy with himself. And Sam is much shyer and he’s wracked with anxiety all the time. But they’re both human. I like portraying clear people as human and I think that’s why I gravitated towards it first. I’m not super sure why I write M/M mostly. It’s just because it is a little bit easier for me to…I guess, it does come back to identification. I’ve written one…I have one published female-centric romance, which I do really like. It’s called “Making Love,” which I think is one of my favorite titles ever. It’s about a succubus and cupid falling in love. I was very proud of that, and it’s adorable. It’s very cute, it’s very loving, it’s really soft. And Carla, the cupid is just, like, made of cotton candy and love, sweet, and is really happy and bubbly. And Leeta, the succubus, is kind of cool and had reason to put up a lot of walls. Carla melts her heart and it’s so cute. It’s very silly, a lot of my reviews were like, “It’s cute, but cheesy.” And I’m like, “Yes, that was exactly what I was doing.” It’s called “Making Love,” what were you expecting? And then, same thing with “Stage Presents,” both the main characters are female. Dana is trans. I really enjoy portraying again, like, different aspects and different facets of queer people being human. They make coffee and they’re grumpy, and they might have disabilities or other challenges in life. And they also like stuff and are bad at things, and aren’t just, like, one cutout of a representation that, you know, people have one idea about. I like character-driven stories. Queer people deserve happy endings too. That’s the other thing. Jeff: Yeah. Absolutely on that one for sure. So we know “Stage Presents” is coming up here soon. What else is coming for you this year? Aidan: Well, I’ve mentioned it briefly, I have a short story that I had been kind of working on off and on. I was calling it “Baker Story” on Twitter and I did name it “Not So Cookie-Cutter” or something terrible like that because every single one of my titles…you may or may not know this, every single one of my titles are puns or play on words because I’m ridiculous and I love it. Yeah. So the book, “Bakery Story,” is called “Not So Cookie-Cutter.” I’m probably going to release it around October. It’s about two POC characters, which I did get sensitivity readers for because that was important to me. Jerel who is a baker at like, a cafe/coffee shop and Rafi who is a client who falls in love with Jerel’s pumpkin cheesecake essentially, and romance. They’re cute, it’s cute. One of my favorite things about the story is Rafi uses a wheelchair and Jerel is so smitten by Rafi that he doesn’t notice for, like, two chapters because Rafi is sitting down when he’s, you know, at the cafe and Jerel is just like, “Oh, my gosh, this handsome, amazing human being who is talking to me, like, he thinks I’m cute, okay.” And then, like, when Rafi actually, like, moves in front of him and he rolls away, Jerel’s like, “Oh, my God. I’m an idiot. This is fine. I’m an idiot.” So… Jeff: Nice. That will be one to look forward to this fall. Aidan: Yeah. I think, you know, it’s cute, cute and dumb. That’s kind of my mode. Jeff: What’s the best way for everyone to keep up with you online? Aidan: Twitter is mostly what I use, @aidanwayne is my Twitter handle, user name thing, and that’s primarily where I am. I have a website too and if you go to my website, there’s an option to sign up for my mailing list and mailing list is kind of how I send out information about releases to people. But I don’t like inundate people with mail. It’s just like, “I have a release, yay. Here it is, yay.” Jeff: Cool. We will link to those as well as all of the great stuff that we’ve talked about in this interview. Aidan: Cool. Jeff: Aidan, thank you so much for hanging out with us. It has just been a delight talking to you. Aidan: Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Again, I’m ridiculous. So I appreciate being able to be ridiculous on a podcast. That’s cool. And, yeah, this was a lot of fun. Thank you so much. Book Reviews Here’s the text of this week’s book reviews: Seriously Horny (Redneck Unicorns #1) by Piper Scott & Susi Hawke and Dangerously Horny (Redneck Unicorns #2) by Piper Scott & Susi Hawke. Reviewed by Will.Seriously Horny Unicorn shifter Isaiah is pure white trash. How do we know? We’re introduced to him as he’s settling in for the evening, in his trailer with a bottle of his pappy’s moonshine – but he’s also an expert tracker. He’s tasked with finding a missing teenage dragon shifter. He runs into the kid’s college age brother, Eric, an irresistible dragon omega. They go to search together for Eric’s brother. One night, in a motel room they give in to their desire, and trust me, the scene lives up to the book’s title. Eric has the power of second sight, kind of like Faye Dunaway in Eyes of Laura Mars, and he ‘sees’ where his brother lays injured. Isaiah and Eric find him and bring him back to the dragon compound where he can heal from his injuries. Eric is with child after his night with Isaiah, and months later we find our heroes happily in love with the beginnings of a new family. In Dangerously Horny, Unicorn shifter Bo Luke finally gets up the nerve to tell Mitch just how he feels. But broken-down dragon is a less than ideal match for someone so young. The rejection hits Bo Luke hard and he runs off, straight into the clutches of a crazed woman who has uncovered the secret of the unicorn clan, and desperately wants to touch Bo Luke’s horn – and yes, that euphemism means exactly what you think it means. Mitch and some of his dragon buddies are sent to find Bo Luke. They rescue him and subdue his kidnapper. Because this is a paranormal shifter Mpreg romance, omega Bo Luke finds himself in an uncomfortable situation, and alpha Mitch is the only one who can scratch his particular itch. They fuck and it’s hot and amazing and (of course) totally magical. Mitch’s misgivings were unfounded, they are now fated mates. While waiting for their child to be born, Bo Luke’s stalker escapes custody and attempts to kidnap her unicorn obsession once more. In an action sequence that I thought was particularly bad-ass, Mitch and the entire dragon clan literally reign down fire upon her, rescuing Bo Luke once again. The story wraps up with a hilarious scene in which our heroes experience a very memorable wedding/birthday. The covers of these books tell you everything you need to know. The hot cover models clue you into the sexy times ahead, while the titles, which are decidedly camp, tell you that these romances also about the humor – humor with heart. I loved both of these stories and think they’re a fantastic way to kick off the new series. While ‘Redneck Unicorns’ is a continuation of the author’s previous dragon series, they stand alone just fine.

Thema der Woche: Bücher die in China spielen! …weil ich selber gerade da bin und weil das ein Hörer so wollte. In „Die Brücke der Vögel“ von Barry Hughart unternehmen wir eine Reise in ein imperiales China, das es nie gab: Schlimme Dinge passieren, und zwei sehr unterschiedliche Charaktere machen sich auf um die Dinge […]

Join RevKess and Kalisara as we talk to Assaph Mehr about his Felix the Fox series. Assaph has been a bibliophile since he learnt to read at the age of five, and a Romanophile ever since he first got his hands on Asterix, way back in elementary school. His main influences in writing are Steven Saylor, Lindsey Davis, Barry Hughart and Boris Akunin. Assaph now lives in Sydney, Australia with his wife Julia, four kids and two cats. By day he is a software product manager, bridging the gap between developers and users, and by night he's writing - he seems to do his best writing after midnight. Murder in Absentia: A young man is found dead in his bed, with a look of extreme agony on his face and strange tattoos all over his body. His distraught senator father suspects foul play, and knows who to call on. Enter Felix the Fox, a professional investigator. In the business of ferreting out dark information for his clients, Felix is neither a traditional detective nor a traditional magician - but something in between. Drawing on his experience of dealing with the shady elements of society and his aborted education in the magical arts, Felix dons his toga and sets out to discover the young man's killers. You can follow Assaph on his blog, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Goodreads.

You deserve a short break while the podcast loads.Our Guest+Tim CallahanShow Notes after the jumpDrinkingOddside Ales Red Eye PAArnold Palmer, not the golferTour de Franzia (Franzia Chianti)SpinningClint MansellDrive soundtrackSolaris soundtrackNels Cline SingersSoggy Bog of Doom (Adam might have gotten a detail or two wrong here)CandlemassReadingTOR.com Appendix N seriesThe Witcher (the "Lord of the Rings of Poland") Andrzej Sapkowski, the Last WishTim & Adam agree: the Dresden Files really fucking sucksKothar & The Wizard Slayer, Gardner FoxAdam earns hate mail over DuneDesigners & Dragons 1970's by Shannon AppleclinePlaying At The World by Jon PetersonBridge of Birds by Barry Hughart - Chronicles of Master Li & Number Ten OxRunningAstonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea and mad props to +Jeff TalanianAdventurer Conqueror King System Iron CoastDungeon Crawl ClassicsDwimmermount - Labyrinth Lord - and mad props to +James MaliszewskiTraveller'd By The ApocalypseMetal Gods of Ur-HadadDelving Deeper HyperbarbariaOther NotesRest in peace, Tom Magliozzi of Car TalkAs always, thanks to Blue Snaggletooth for the badass theme. Their new album "Beyond Thule" is out now and rocks!Thanks for joining us for this episode of Drink Spin Run. We'd love to read your comments on the show, suggestions, where exactly we can stick what and other thinly-veiled threats. Send us your thoughts at dsr@kickassistan.net. Once again, thanks for listening.

Estimados oyentes, nos complace sobremanera volver a presentarnos en sus vidas con el episodio episodio más reciente del podcast de Los VerdHugos, de nuevo en su formación extendida con Leticia Lara de Fantástica Ficción. En este episodio charlaremos de fantasía y ciencia ficción, con la excusa de pasar revista a las nominaciones a la actual edición de los Premios Hugo y los ganadores de los Premios Nebula.Entre los temas que hemos comentado se cuentan algunas de las polémicas que se han producido este año en torno a los premios Hugo, como la existencia de una campaña que ha llevado a la nominación de algunos autores con ideas… bueno… valorad vosotros mismos… (y, por si os parece poco, podéis echar un vistazo a lo que pensamos de la calidad de su obra)  o la impopular decisión por parte de Orbit de no incluir ninguna de sus novelas en el Hugo Voter’s Pack.Al final del programa, siguiendo nuestra tónica habitual, cada uno de los cinco verdhugos recomendará un par de libros o cómics que haya leído recientemente y considere merecedores de vuestra atención. Rompiendo una lanza a favor de los espoilers, las recomendaciones en cuestión son las siguientes:Las Recomendaciones de Los VerdHugosElías- Reach for Infinity, Jonathan Strahan (Antología) - Vicious, de Victoria Schwab Pedro- La Cosecha de Samhein, de José Antonio Cotrina - Maquinas del Tiempo, de Nina Allan Leti- Puente de Pájaros, de Barry Hughart - Zot!, de Scott McCloud Miquel- James Tiptree Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, de Julie Phillips. - Quemando Cromo, de William Gibson Josep María- Las Sirenas de Titán, de Kurt Vonnegut - In Search of Wonder, de Damon Knight Como siempre, podéis descargar el episodio en Archive.org y, en cuanto se propaguen los feeds, en iVoox e iTunes.Créditos:Música: Bitches of your souls (The Saurs) Logotipo: Javier Hansard