BVC Announces A Hinky Universe Bundle by Jennifer Stevenson

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A Hinky Universe Bundle by Jennifer StevensonA Hinky Universe Bundle
Book 1 from three series: Hinky Chicago, Slacker Demons, Coed Demon Sluts
by Jennifer Stevenson

This bundle contains the complete first novel from three different series set in the same magical universe:

The Hinky Brass Bed (Hinky Chicago book #1)
It’s Raining Men (Slacker Demons book #1)
Coed Demon Sluts: Beth (Coed Demon Sluts book #1)

How will Chicago survive the worldwide infestation of magic?

Can fraud cop Jewel save the city from phonies and sexy crooks with the aid of a magical bed?

Will the slacker demons heal the city’s women with magical nooky?

Or should the team of trainee succubi take over the slackers’ man-lair and pump the lair and the city full of estrogen and riot-grrl power?

Dip into three different paranormal series set in a city with magic on its mind. You need a laugh in your day!

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More about Coed Demon Sluts: Beth

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This whole series sprang out of a title. I’d finished my series Slacker Demons and had realized that the Lair where these incubi hung out on the north side of Chicago was way, way too cool to toss in the ashcan.

But what do you do when you’ve used up an idea about lazy male sex demons?

Duh. You plug in some industrious female sex demons. Since the Chicago theatre scene boasted for years a long-running play called Coed Prison Sluts, it wasn’t a big jump to Coed Demon Sluts.

I realized right away that these ladies would not have stories like the boys with horns. A broad, informal survey of my acquaintance showed that my male friends, and my lesbian friends, all agreed that the reason they would sign up for a gig as a sex demon was simply the sex. Continue reading →

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A Botched Kiridashi Knife and Other Stories

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I was thinking about many different topics for this blog. Some of them were political. Notably about there not being acceptance of voting reality. Or maybe the about Moderna’s new vaccine– or an even more nano-particle vaccine that does exceedingly well in mice.

I tried. I really did.

But all of these things are tied together and whenever I pulled on one thread it unraveled back to things that depressed me and I felt like clutching my dog and weeping for my homeland.

No. It has to be better than that.

So I’m going to talk about failure. Continue reading →

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Birds, Whales and Tortoises in the skies

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Cetus

I’m on a constellation binge. They crept into a short story I’m writing, and the resulting research has filled my head with ideas, not always a good thing. Hopefully soon, my dear fan, I will veer into another subject and leave my mythological obsession behind.

Monsters, as I wrote I last week, were given a hard time by the ancients. Most that made it into the stars were murdered, by either gods or heroes, who were descended from the gods. In one tale Draco, the dragon, was slaughtered by Minerva, who threw him into the sky where he froze into the twisted, tortuous constellation he is today. Draco was of the Gigantes race, who strove to rule the cosmos, and thus fought a sustained war with the gods. Guess who won?

Heracles, who was renamed Hercules by the Romans, killed many monsters as he ticked off his list of Twelve Labors. Among them were the Hydra of Lerna, a multi-headed water snake with poisonously bad breath, the Nemean Lion, Stimphalian Birds, and Erymanthian Boar

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The Rambling Writer Visits Thailand, part 14: Khao Sok National Park

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Continuing your virtual vacation with Thor and me, join us in a hike through the oldest evergreen rainforest in the world.

NOTE: “And now for something completely different.” Thor and I made our first trip to Asia — the beautiful country of Thailand.  We were lucky to squeak through the pandemic flight closures in January/February of 2020 as we returned from our three-week trip. Since more travel has now become a distant prospect, we hope you’ll take a virtual vacation with us in the following weeks. (This blog series started on June 13.)

If you’ve been following this blog series, you know that Thor and I were staying in a treehouse in Our Jungle House on the edge of the Khao Sok National Park, and visited an elephant refuge nearby. The next day, we hopped onto a “taxi” — a pickup truck outfitted with wooden benches — for a short ride to the park entrance. The park covers 285 square miles and rises to a height of 3150 feet at limestone peaks. It shelters wild elephants, tigers, bears, boars, and monkeys, along with 188 species of birds and countless insects. (Surprisingly, we weren’t bothered by mosquitoes there.) Continue reading →

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New Worlds: A Bit on the Side

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(This post is part of my Patreon-supported New Worlds series.)

In theory, most cultures agree that once you marry a person (or persons), you’re not supposed to sleep around outside of that bond.

In practice . . .

Adultery happens a lot, even in situations where the penalties for it are dire. We’re kind of a randy species overall; while individual drives vary, straying is a temptation for many. When it comes to the cultural level of how permissible this is, though, and how we as a society respond to it — well, the elephant in the room is the howling double standard between the sexes.

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CAFE READS: The Sea is Coming: A Collection from the Left Hand World, by Jill Zeller

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Stories from the Left Hand World by Jill Zeller

I seldom read short stories anymore, yet when I do, I wonder why not. They offer such an array of experiences. Jill Zeller’s The Sea is Coming is no exception. The book is a diverse collection of unusual and fascinating stories drawn from a variety of geographies, and featuring unique and often endearing characters. Continue reading →

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No Slang Like Old Slang: Another Quiz

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Since everyone seemed to have fun with the last vocabulary quiz I posted, I’ve brought you another. So sharpen your pencils (or your quill pens!) and get ready to tell me which of the following words, expressions, or exclamations were commonly used in the 19th century, and which are more modern (post 1900). Answers will be listed below, after a spoiler space. Cheaters who peek first will have their hands slapped with a ruler and be forced to copy the sentence “I will not cheat at quizzes on the Book View Cafe blog” fifty times on the finest foolscap with peacock-blue ink.

Are you ready? Continue reading →

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New Writers Ask… How Did You Get Published?

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”How did you get published?” is one of the first questions I get from aspiring writers and the merely curious.

Too often it is asked by aspiring writers looking for a shortcut to success. Indeed, after my first book was published I was ”courted” by a series of aspiring writers who were certain that I knew some secret that, if I would only impart it to them, would get them published, too. 

One of these was a doctor who had written a series of interesting vignettes that were wonderful story building blocks, but only suggested a coherent story. He had talent, though raw, and hadn’t really grasped the concept of storytelling. He asked who he needed to meet in order to get published; he was certain that’s how I’d done it—I’d met the right person. Continue reading →

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