Month of Joy: Scotland! by Betsy Dornbusch
Hi! I’m Betsy Dornbusch, author of Archive of Fire, Books of the Seven Eyes, and The Silver Scar (forthcoming June 2018 from Skyhorse) and lots of novellas and short stories. I’m so excited to participate in the Month of Joy at Skiffy and Fanty! My first happy place is writing, but my desk is dull and messy, riddled with whisky bottles, teacups, pens, maps, bullet casings, and the random sword. (Don’t judge, I’m on deadline.) So I thought I’d go with my second happy place: which is basically everywhere I travel. I spent three weeks last June in Italy with my family and hanging out with a friend in Scotland. Yes, packing for Scorching to Rather Chilly in a carryon was a challenge.
Month of Joy: Translation by Rachel Cordasco
Many things bring me joy: books, chocolate, my kids (when they’re behaving), languages, books, opera, embroidery, and did I mention books? One thing that has recently been bringing me joy is translation. I’ve always loved languages, going back to when I was 6 or 7 and watching “Pepe le Pew” whisper sweet faux-French nothings into the ears of very uninterested cats. I started buying dual-language dictionaries around that time and never looked back. I’ve studied Hebrew, French, Russian, and Italian, and would have learned Chinese next but life got crazy and I’ve had to postpone it until…probably retirement.
Month of Joy: My Favorite Books of December 2017 by Martha Wells
This was an incredible year for SF and fantasy, both in long and shorter fiction. There were outstanding debut novels and incredible new work by established authors. So much new work was original and innovative and outside the box, it was hard to pick a favorites list. Back in November, I did a book rec list for the year on the Book Smugglers blog: http://thebooksmugglers.com/2017/12/books-year-smugglivus-post-martha-wells.html and I wanted to take this chance to add a few books to it that I read in December.
