Monday, October 12: Signing at Recovering Hearts (2 pm)

I’ll be joining other Bold Strokes Authors (Radclyffe, Dena Hankins, Missouri Vaun, Franci McMahon, and Laydin Michaels) at Recovering Hearts bookstore at 4 Standish Street.

Wednesday, October 14: Reading at Gabriel’s (1 pm)

I’ll be reading (my first ever!) as part of the BSB panel “It’s a Zoo in Here: Four-Legged Heroes,” moderated by Barbara Ann Wright.  Also on the panel will be D. Jackson Leigh, Franci McMahon, C.A. Popovich, Radclyffe, and Dena Hankins. Gabriel’s is located at 102 Bradford Street.

Wednesday, October 14: (Another) Reading at Gabriel’s (2 pm)

I’ll be doing my second reading ever right after my first reading ever, as part of the BSB panel “Chatty Cathy: Readings with Great Dialogue,” moderated by Kris Bryant. The panel will also feature Missouri Vaun, Justine Saracen, MJ Williamz, C. F. Frizzell, and Sophia Kell Hagin. (Gabriel’s, 102 Bradford Street).

Wednesday, October 14: Signing at Recovering Hearts (3:15 AND 4 pm)

My fellow panelists and I will be signing at Recovering Hearts (4 Standish Street) at 3:15 (Four-Legged Heroes) and 4:00 (Readings with Great Dialogue).

Thursday, October 15: Bold Strokes Books Meet & Greet (5 to 7 pm)

Join me (and lots of other BSB authors) at the Harbor Lounge (359 Commercial Street). Stop by, chat, schmooze, mingle, hang out, do the snack and beverage thing.

Saturday, October 17: Reading at the Library (2 pm)

I’ll be doing a reading as part of the panel “Knock, Knock…Who’s There? Readings That Define the Author’s Voice,” moderated by Dena Hankins, along with Franci McMahon, Ali Vali, Justine Saracen, Melissa Brayden, and Missouri Vaun. We’ll be at the Provincetown Public Library (356 Commercial Street).

Saturday, October 17: Signing at Recovering Hearts (4 pm)

All the panelists from “Readings That Define the Author’s Voice”—me included—will be signing at Recovering Hearts (4 Standish Street).

All Week Long: Lots & Lots of BSB Events

• Author Q & A/Panel discussions
  • Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday @ 10 in the Library
• Readings
  • Wednesday & Thursday @ 1 (Gabriel’s)
  • Wednesday & Thursday @ 2 (Gabriel’s)
  • Friday & Saturday @ 1 (Library)
  • Friday & Saturday @ 2 (Library)
• Signings at Recovering Hearts
  • Monday @ 2
  • Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday @ 3:15
  • Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday @ 4

Plus Everything Else Going on at Women’s Week

• Music, comedy, theater, workshops, films, dances, etc., etc., etc.
• Check the Women’s Week website for the schedule

Y’all Come!

Review from smlowry.com

Review from imjustbooking.blogspot.co.uk

The most beautiful place on earth (Provincetown, Massachusetts, of course). Photo by Argos’Dad [Creative Commons Share-Alike, via Wikimedia Commons]

Recovering Hearts is located at 4 Standish Street (just north of the Commercial Street intersection where the police direct traffic to and from MacMillan Wharf).

If you’re in town, stop by and say hi. And maybe buy a book. Heck, buy lots of books.

But definitely say hi.

In the blog I discuss Anne Lister, a real-life Regency lesbian who in part inspired the character of Artemisia in my novel Romance by the Book. However, I’m mainly paying homage to the fabulous, amazing Helena Whitbread, the scholar to whom a lot of people (myself included) owe a huge debt of gratitude for editing and publishing Anne Lister’s diaries.  Over 6,000 pages of teeny-tiny writing intermixed with secret code, and from this morass Ms. Whitbread has crafted engaging, informative books that bring Lister’s words and deeds to vivid life. Apparently she’s now working on a biography of Lister, and I for one can’t wait.

Why settle for reading this caption, when you can read the actual book?

My new novel, Romance by the Book, has been officially released by Bold Strokes Books.

It’s a paperback!

It’s an ebook!

It’s a paperback and an ebook!

“Mmm, tastes terrific.” “And just look at that shine.”

“Jo Victor’s latest novel is great,” said Jo Victor in an exclusive interview with jovictor.com

Romance by the Book is NOW available for purchase from the Bold Strokes Books webstore. You—yes, you!—can now get your (virtual) hands on the ebook or your (actual) hands on the paperback. [Maybe you should get both kinds. Life is so uncertain.] People all over my house are super excited about my brand new novel, and now you can be, too! Don’t delay—supplies are limited. [Actually, they aren’t…yet. Then again, why risk it?]

Somehow or other, 2014 disappeared on me, or I disappeared on it, at least in terms of this website. So what happened? Teaching happened (And my second novel happened; more on that another time.)

When I first started teaching, a colleague told me, “Teaching will eat you alive, if you let it.”

It does, and it did, especially this year.

Not in a “zombies ate my brain” way (although some days it feels exactly like that), but in an “I’ll just finish one more thing and then I’ll definitely [go home/turn off the computer/go to bed/whatever]” way. And then when you look back at the clock it’s absurdly late and you never did stop, did you? But you still have to get up at Oh, my God o’clock and do it all over again.

And no, this isn’t a “Woe is me, teachers have it so tough” rant. Because, as my colleague pointed out, we do this to ourselves. Nobody is making us put in extra time improving our lessons or trying to figure out how best to help a particular student. We pour our time and effort into teaching, despite whatever it may cost in terms of our own well-being, because it’s what we want to do.

Notice how the 2 students in front are too busy texting each other to listen to the teacher? Plus ça change… [School of Athens (detail), Raphael, 1509]

[Full disclosure: I also have lousy time management skills. Lots of dedicated teachers don’t get eaten alive because they figure out how to get and stay organized and how to balance teaching with everything else in their lives. I’m still working on it. And always will be, I suspect.]

Do You Hear the People Snore? 

I was of course a little leery about the whole privacy thing, but my main concern had to do with what to post. After all, the point of being on Facebook is to interact with people by sharing about yourself, and while the details of my life are endlessly fascinating to me, I had a hard time imagining that they would be quite so enthralling to others.

What on earth could I post about? Offering regular “and then I scrubbed the bathtub”-type updates didn’t seem like a good idea. (Or maybe I’m thinking of how to be boring on Twitter. Anyway.)

Even if I managed to ramp things up a bit (“Sitting in the kitchen eating madeleines and trying to remember why I never got around to reading Proust”), I would then be in danger of something much, much worse…the dreaded “Christmas Letter” effect.

Christoalphabetaphobia (Fear of Xmas Letters)

The Heartbreak of Christoalphabetaphobia (The Last of the Spirits, John Leech, 1843)

For those of you lucky enough never to have seen one of these concoctions, here’s a sampling of what you missed:

 Dear Everybody,

                Once again we’ve had a fabulous year. Fifi graduated summa cum laude from obedience school. Pat got another promotion (which makes three in eighteen months). Since I’ve been spending so much time raising all that money for Save the Ferrets, I’ve cut back to only five days a week at my ice sculpting studio.

And so on and relentlessly on for an entire page (or worse, two pages), single spaced (extra points for using a background in a shade of green or red so dark the words can barely be read).

Needless to say, not the sort of thing I’m anxious to inflict on others, even accidentally.

Everything, All the Time (Except Christmas Letters)

Now that I’m actually on Facebook, I can see why people love it. It’s a huge, friendly free-for-all with everybody chatting and posting and commenting all over the place—lots and lots (and lots and lots) of posts that are thought-provoking, silly, informative, funny, intriguing, and—Danger, Will Robinson—fun to read.

Facebook, it turns out, is like a giant newspaper full of human interest stories [and for those who know exactly what I’m talking about, let us pause a moment to sigh over the decline of the daily paper].

In fact, the main problem I’ve discovered is that there’s just too much going on. I bounce around, reading what other people have to say and chiming in with my own ideas, and suddenly hours have gone by and I haven’t done any actual work (like, say, writing a few more pages of my new novel). Oops.

People on Facebook have been very welcoming—“Come on in, splash around, the water’s fine.” I’m looking forward to finding out what I have to contribute to the conversation.

I’m so happy I could just about bust. Today my novel, Revenge of the Parson’s Daughter Or The Lass that Loved a Pirate, makes its official worldwide debut. I can hardly believe it. This time last year I hadn’t even finished the manuscript, and now the book is out there just waiting for you to fall in love with it and take it home.

On Virtual Bookshelves Everywhere

My book is now available at all finer online literary emporiums (emporia?) [Barnes and Noble, Amazon, etc.]—and always from Bold Strokes Books (in all e-book formats).

A Sneak Peek Inside

You can check out two different excerpts from Revenge of the Parson’s Daughter:

Another Satisfied Customer [YMMV] (Young Woman Reading, Jean Raoux)

• Bold Strokes has posted the first chapter of all their August releases. My selection (Kate’s first meeting with Lady Isabella) is the very last one in the file (p. 64). In other words, you’ll be reading the beginning of four other great lesbian-themed novels (Dirty Power, Exit Wounds, Forsaking All Others, and Trusting Tomorrow) before you get to mine. Gosh, that’s too bad. {You can also sample the other two August releases [Deadly Cult—a gay mystery—and Lake Thirteen—an LGBT YA ghost story (say that three times fast)].}
• Also available for preview is a short excerpt describing Kate and Stevie’s first meeting.

Enjoy!

Here’s the short version:  I love, love, love the sounds and variations of the English language. And throughout the blog, Stevie gets a chance to speak for herself.

Yeah, Stevie Talks Funny (How the Music of the English Language Led Me Astray)