Goings-On

The start of this week was pretending to be winter, and it had me really worried. But the weekend has been lovely so far. I spent most of Saturday outside reading and writing a review, and now I’m sat outside again, surrounded by dogs trying to get at my cuddles. I tried to fence them out with a couple of chairs, but Play, my bf’s Husky, is cleverer than that. Not clever enough to find his way back out it seems. It’s really nice to be able to sit outside without melting or freezing, enjoying it while it lasts. Enjoy my view while writing this:

Last weekend I was at FIYAHCON, a virtual convention centering the perspectives and celebrating the contributions of BIPOC in speculative fiction. It was soooo goood. I watched as many panels as I could in between my usual weekend chores, and every one of them was on fire! Very aptly named indeed.

There were a couple of things I loved about Fiyahcon:

• The panel topics – they were really detailed and about themes that I’ve seen a lot in my reading and I’m interested in, a lot of panels touching on colonialism, imperialism but also fun stuff like writing good sex. I think it was mainly meant for writers not so much readers, but it was still super interesting for me, although I didn’t get to watch most of the ones specific to publishing. A lot of my favorite authors were on panels so that was great to see.
• The internationality – Fiyahcon was the main programming, but outside US daytimes there was Bonfiyah, so there was non-stop programming through the weekend, with a lot of the panelist being outside the US. It was just amazing getting to hear and see so many perspectives. (I also need to catch up with Futurecon which had a similar international focus, but I’ve learned watching panels while bf is home is annoying cause I have to turn up the volume, so planning to binge that next week while he’s away)
• The atmosphere was so good! A lot of panels started with an annoucement that bullshit would be moderated strictly, but I never saw a need for it as everyone was so cool and supportive. The vibes were so good.
• The website they used, Airmeet was really neat, it had a section for video panels, which included live chat and live closed captioning, a lounge with tables where the panels could overflow and had tables from small presses or other sponsors. There was also a writing game Em-Dash that I didn’t participate in, but seemed a lot of fun. It was fun having everything on one platform, and when there were tech issues they were quickly solved.

Books read

• The Stariel series by A.J. Lancaster. If you like Romantic Fantasy at all, drop what you’re doing and go check out this series. It’s lovely and joyful and so engaging I’ve already gotten 3 of my friends to binge read it since I finished on Tuesday. I read about 1 book every 2 days, one of my friends read 2 books a day. It is that hard to put down. It’s a secondary world fantasy set around the beggining of the 20th century, with an inheritance to sort out, an atypical, modern, independant protagonist and alluring and dangerous faeries.
• The Winter King by C.L. Wilson – another romantic fantasy, this one has some …questionably written sex scenes in the first half that made it kinda hard to take seriously, but I’m glad I stuck with it because the second half is proper epic, and it got really plot heavy and the romance was good and I ended up loving it
• Keeping with my romance mood I started The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite, a F/F historical romance that I’m enjoying a lot
• In ebook I’m currently reading A Dash of Trouble (Love Sugar Magic #1) by Anna Meriano, which Alicia @A Kernel of Nonsense mention in her Talk Chisme to Me: Latinx Heritage Month 2021 TBR post (well, book 3, but I started with 1). I’m enjoying it a lot, sweet MG fantasy with light trouble. It also had me making gingersnaps at 9 PM last night

Blog posts

• Mini reviews: The Obelisk Gate, Nightshift Dragons, The Eternal Champion, Elatsoe, Child of the Daystar
• Top Ten Tuesday: 10 SFF books with numbers in the title
• The Evil Cat Book Tag
• Rambling questions: How to blog hop?

I’m linking up with The Sunday Post, hosted by Kimberly @ Caffeinated Reviewer. and The Sunday Salon, hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz, and Stacking the Shelves hosted Team Tynga’s Reviews and Reading Reality

The dogs seem set to super cute today, so have another picture: