Hi I'm Rosemarie and I like to write. I write short stories and longer fiction, poetry and occasionally articles. I'm working on quite a few things at the minute and wouldn't mind one day actually getting published in print.
Format: Paperback Expected publication: June 1, 2023 by Puffin ISBN: 9780241450833 (ISBN10: 0241450837)
Lia is off on an adventure, and she’d like a pet to take with her. In another corner of the meadow is Lion – who is also looking for an adventure, and for a pet of his own . . . What will happen when they meet?
A story from a stunning new author-illustrator about a special friendship, the nature of play, conflict and compromise, and about how much richer life is when you work out how to share it.
Format: 232 pages, Hardcover Published: May 19, 2020 by Pen and Sword History ISBN: 9781526748072 (ISBN10: 152674807X)
Blurb
The meteoric rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party cowed the masses into a sense of false utopia. During Hitler’s 1932 election campaign over half those who voted for Hitler were women. Germany’s women had witnessed the anarchy of the post-First World War years, and the chaos brought about by the rival political gangs brawling on their streets. When Hitler came to power there was at last a ray of hope that this man of the people would restore not only political stability to Germany but prosperity to its people.
As reforms were set in place, Hitler encouraged women to step aside from their jobs and allow men to take their place. As the guardian of the home, the women of Hitler’s Germany were pinned as the very foundation for a future thousand-year Reich. Not every female in Nazi Germany readily embraced the principle of living in a society where two distinct worlds existed, however with the outbreak of the Second World War, Germany’s women would soon find themselves on the frontline.
Ultimately Hitler’s housewives experienced mixed fortunes throughout the years of the Second World War. Those whose loved ones went off to war never to return; those who lost children not only to the influences of the Hitler Youth but the Allied bombing; those who sought comfort in the arms of other young men and those who would serve above and beyond of exemplary on the German home front. Their stories form intimate and intricately woven tales of life, love, joy, fear and death. Hitler’s Housewives: German Women on the Home Front is not only an essential document towards better understanding one of the twentieth century’s greatest tragedies where the women became an inextricable link, but also the role played by Germany’s women on the home front which ultimately became blurred within the horrors of total war.
This is their story, in their own words, told for the first time.
Format: 368 pages, Paperback Published: January 1, 2023 by Orbit ISBN: 9780356520865 (ISBN10: 0356520862) Language: English
Blurb
The Terraformers is an equally heart-warming and thought-provoking vision of the future for fans of Becky Chambers, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Martha Wells.
Destry is a top network analyst with the Environmental Rescue Team, an ancient organization devoted to preventing ecosystem collapse. On the planet Sask-E, her mission is to terraform an Earthlike world, with the help of her taciturn moose, Whistle. But then she discovers a city that isn’t supposed to exist, hidden inside a massive volcano. Torn between loyalty to the ERT and the truth of the planet’s history, Destry makes a decision that echoes down the generations.
Centuries later, Destry’s protege, Misha, is building a planetwide transit system when his worldview is turned upside-down by Sulfur, a brilliant engineer from the volcano city. Together, they uncover a dark secret about the real estate company that’s buying up huge swaths of the planet―a secret that could destroy the lives of everyone who isn’t Homo sapiens. Working with a team of robots, naked mole rats, and a very angry cyborg cow, they quietly sow seeds of subversion. But when they’re threatened with violent diaspora, Misha and Sulfur’s very unusual child faces a stark choice: deploy a planet-altering weapon, or watch their people lose everything they’ve built on Sask-E.
My Review
This is two stories that follow on from each other, taking place several thousand years apart, containing some of the same characters. The characters are a variety of species and genders.
The character pairs of Destry and Moose, Sulfur and Misha, Moose and Scrubjay, are memorable and loving in their own way. They are biological or mechanical, hominins or other species, all with sentience. They interact with each other, form families and are torn between doing the right thing and being controlled by Verdance or Emerald. Scrubjay and Moose are particularly interesting. Scrubjay is a sentient flying train, Moose is a sentient cat. They fall in love with each other while taking on and taking down Emerald, the corporation that has taken control of Sask-E and who are trying to destroy Spider City.
The main theme of the story is that companies controlling life is a bad idea. That better ways of governing and building communities are possible, but there will always be forces intent on breaking those better ways for their own profit.
I enjoyed the descriptions of the environments of Sask-E and the social structures. They are clearly thought out and based on a lot of research.
Newitz is a clear and amusing writer. I have read (listened to) their non-fiction book, Four Lost Cities, and to be fair I also follow Annalee Newitz on Instagram. I listen to their Our Opinions Are Correct podcast. It’s a sci-fi and fantasy podcast Annalee Newitz does with Charlie Jane Anders.
172 pages, Paperback First published January 1, 2014 This edition Format: 172 pages, Paperback Published: June 30, 2020 by Routledge ISBN: 9780367600778 (ISBN10: 0367600773) Language: English
Blurb
Cultural anxieties about fatness and the attendant stigmatisation of fat bodies, have lent a medical authority and cultural legitimacy to what can be described as ‘fat-phobia’. Against the backdrop of the ever-growing medicalisation, pathologisation, and commodification of fatness, coupled with the moral panic over an alleged ‘obesity epidemic’, this volume brings together the latest scholarship from various critical disciplines to challenge existing ideas of fat and fat embodiment.
Shedding light on the ways in which fat embodiment is lived, experienced, regulated and (re)produced across a range of cultural sites and contexts, Queering Fat Embodiment destabilises established ideas about fat bodies, making explicit the intersectionality of fat identities and thereby countering the assertion that fat studies has in recent years reproduced a white, ableist, heteronormative subjectivity in its analyses.
A critical queer examination on fatness, Queering Fat Embodiment will be of interest to scholars of cultural and queer theory, sociology and media studies, working on questions of embodiment, stigmatisation and gender and sexuality.
Format: Hardcover Expected publication: June 1, 2023 by Puffin Classics ISBN: 9780241545423 (ISBN10: 0241545420) Language: English
Ten captivating stories of adventure and resilience celebrating LGBTQ+ characters, published as an illustrated collection of queer classics for the first time.
These are the fairy tales that history forgot – or concealed. Tales in which gender is fluid and where queer stories can have a happy ending.
Yes, I know I said I wasn’t going to do weight loss or weight management programmes anymore, after the last one fucked my mental health over, but I did that one for 18 months. This has only been a 6-month programme., because I refuse to pay the full monthly price. I got some sort of deal through Hello Fresh.
Actually, that’s a good point; Hello Fresh leads people to the WW website if you choose one of their WW Personal Points meals. Clearly they have some sort of partnership and benefit from driving consumers from their respective websites to each other. It’s somewhat sick that they take advantage of people like that. I was just looking for something good in my discounted meals.
I decided to turn the experience into an experiment. I’m going to take things month-by-month and write a bit each month. There will be an explanation in the September 2022 section.
Narrated by: Katherine Parkinson, Bill Nighy, Peter Serafinowicz Series: Discworld, Book 31, Discworld: Industrial Revolution, Book 3 Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins Unabridged Audiobook Release date: 23-02-23 Language: English Publisher: Penguin Audio
Summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
The audiobook of Monstrous Regiment is narrated by Katherine Parkinson, star of The IT Crowd and Here We Go. BAFTA and Golden Globe award-winning actor Bill Nighy (Love Actually; Pirates of the Caribbean; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) reads the footnotes, and Peter Serafinowicz (Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace; Shaun of the Dead) stars as the voice of Death. Featuring a new theme tune composed by James Hannigan.
‘THAT’S THE TROUBLE ABOUT THE GOOD GUYS AND THE BAD GUYS! THEY’RE ALL GUYS!’
In the small yet aggressive country of Borogravia, there are strict rules citizens must follow. For a start, women belong in the kitchen – not in jobs, pubs, or indeed trousers. And certainly not on the front line.
Polly Perks has to become a boy in a hurry if she wants to find her missing brother in the army. Cutting off her hair and wearing the trousers is easy. Going to war however, is not.
Polly and her fellow raw recruits are suddenly in the thick of a losing battle. All they have on their side is the most artful sergeant in the army and a vampire with a lust for coffee.
It’s time to make a stand.
The first book in the Discworld series-The Colour of Magic-was published in 1983. Some elements of the Discworld universe may reflect this.
My Review
I always enjoyed this book, right from the first time I read it when the hardback came out. Terry Pratchett took on gender in this novel and questioned everything. He acknowledged the complexities of gender and explores the attitudes of societies that have very strict gender roles and hierarchies.
Polly Parks is a barman’s daughter in Borogravia, and she needs to find her brother. He went off to war and nothing has been heard of him since. She joins a regiment, the cheese mongers, who are led by Sergeant Jack Jackrum, a legend in the army. The squad – a few humans, a troll, a vampire, a dodgy, political, corporal and the ebullient sergeant Jackrum – are the very last of Borogravia’s army recruits.
We also see Vimes and the Watch in their diplomatic roles.
I happen to love this book, and this edition of the audiobook is really good. Kathrine Parkinson is a good narrator. I’m not sure about some of the pronunciation but I managed to get into it and really enjoyed it.
Dellaria Wells – petty con artist, occasional thief, and partly educated fire witch – is behind on her rent. To make ends meet, Delly talks her way into a guard job in the city of Leiscourt, joining a team of unconventional women to protect an aristocrat from unseen assassins.
It looks like easy money and a chance to romance her confident companion Winn – but when did anything in Delly’s life go to plan? With the help of a necromancer, a shapeshifting schoolgirl and a reanimated mouse named Buttons, Delly and Winn find themselves facing an adversary who wields a twisted magic and has friends in the highest of places.
My Review
I think I got recommended this book as another example of a ‘cosy fantasy’ after I enjoyed Legends & Lattes. This book was originally published by Ace in 2021, and a new Penguin edition will be published in July. I might get the Penguin edition too, although the covers are the same. Ace books tend to be a bit rough and the printing quality can be not great, and this book isn’t an exception.
I’ve ordered the Penguin edition of Unnatural Magic, which is being published in July; it’s the other book in this series and was originally published by Ace in 2019. I’ll compare the quality of both and order the other editions if I think there’s any point.
Dellaria Wells is desperate for funds and can’t find her mum. In Leiscourt, her ability as a Firewitch marks her out among the poor and makes her an object of derision for the rich. Unfortunately, her ability to get in her own way and mess things up has led to any advantages her skills and natural talents might have given her being more a cause for trouble than a benefit.
She stumbles into a gig as a bodyguard for a wealthy woman about to get married. Here she meets some ‘properly trained’ magicians, all women. She is immediately attracted to a half-troll called Winn, who is an amazing shot and reasonable at illusions. Her dad also happens to know some very important people. Delly sets her cap at Winn, a prospect for possible expensive gifts, but finds she actually really likes Winn. The job looks easy, a bit of romance and enough money to pay the rent for a few months.
Except things get a bit dangerous when they’re attacked by the creations of necromancers and the bride is almost killed by one of the party. When another of the party is murdered by the necromancer and the guilty party goes on the run, the job changes – this time it’s about revenge and the pay is a lot better.
Delly, Winn and co head back to Leiscourt to find the murderer and bring down a crime ring providing drugs that are currently killing lots of people, including Delly’s mum.
Delly seems to be a rather uncomplicated person until we get into the meat of the story, when we discover her complicated relationship with her mother, who is addicted to drugs and alcohol, and was a neglectful parent. As a child she is neglected and as an adult she has to look after her mother. She is angry and sad when she discovers her in hospital or in bars. She hopes for her to be a better person and is distressed when her mother reverts back to her usual behaviour.
Delly also has a complicated relationship with Winn; Winn sees the best in her, which Delly can’t see in herself. She is convinced that Winn is being duped by her own sense of goodness. They do love each other but Delly can’t say it even after they save each others’ lives.
Mrs Totham is cool. I found her very sympathetic and increasingly funny as she goes from being a bird-obsessed elderly lady to a revenge-obsessed necromancer (sorry, body scientist) after her daughter is murdered.
The plot is entertaining and gets complicated as the crew start investigating a couple of crimes – a murder and a drugs gang. The excitement builds as they finally bring down their enemy and a house explodes.
The setting is something like a Victorian London with magic, and some customs that seem strange to the reader. It took me a bit to get used to things. I still don’t quite get some of the background like ‘householders’ and ‘Hexos’. What are these things? The society is fairly open to relationships that certainly would not have been acceptable in Victorian London.
It was a fun read and I’m looking forward to reading Unnatural Magic in July.
Narrated by: Colin Morgan, Peter Serafinowicz, Bill Nighy Release date: 07-07-22
Rincewind, and by extension the faculty of Unseen University, have a lot of adventures, fight all sorts of monsters, sometimes with a half-brick in a sock, and visit the far corners of the Disc.
Rincewind goes off to the both the Counterweight Continent and Fourecks, as well as over the edge of the Disc. He meets the Discs first tourist, the Discs greatest hero, a kid with amazing magical skills and another without any, some very tall ladies, a strange kangaroo, and plays football. In the process we see the way the University changes as an institution, and the social developments in Ankh-Morpork.
Some of the books were written in the early years of the Discworld, so there are attitudes that reflect that. Terry Pratchett was always trying to be a better person and you can see his social attitudes changing over the course of the novels, but the Rincewind/Wizards books are heavily weighted towards his early years. There is a massive improvement in his writing skills and his social conscience between The Colour of Magic and Unseen Academicals. There are legitimate criticisms of the orientalism in Interesting Times, and the treatment of women in The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. I highly recommend The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret podcast for discussions about this.
Colin Morgan isn’t bad as a narrator, but his voices for Rincewind and some of the wizards are wrong. Sorry, they just are. I prefer Steven Briggs’ versions.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 