In January of this year, the 1998 Danish cover of @meganwhalenturner ’s The Thief was shared in the Geninsula (a discord for Queen’s Thief fans).
We were in turns delighted, horrified, and amused by the design choices made here, but what really stuck out to us what what appeared to be a classic robber’s mask around Gen’s neck. He’s The Thief, you guys. In case you weren’t sure.
Anyway, Danish Raccoon Gen fascinated us and the talented @sassaffrassa drew us a “terrible emoji face” of him:
I love him, your honor.
So, I did what any self-respecting crafter would do, and made an amigurumi version of him. I really struggled with the eyes until I realized what the only possible solution could be:
It’s pretty hard to sneak around with googly eyes, you know. It’s a good thing Gen hasn’t offended the gods.
(I’ve been working on Helen and Irene off and on since then, and I think I’ve finally figured out how I want Irene’s hair so she’ll probably be finished next.)
Attention ancient history nerds and fans of really weird and unusual fantasy books, THE WISDOM OF EMPERORS kickstarter campaign just launched!
Hello, btw, I'm Alexandra Rowland, the author of A TASTE OF GOLD AND IRON, RUNNING CLOSE TO THE WIND, YIELD UNDER GREAT PERSUASION, and several other books. This is my new one!!
Inspired by the story of the Ancient Roman emperor Hadrian and his lover Antinous, THE WISDOM OF EMPERORS is a second-world adult fantasy novel written in the style of a fictional academic text. It documents the translation and study of a world-changing artifact discovered in an archaeological dig: a manuscript which provides the clues to finally unravel one of the most perplexing mysteries in all of ancient history.
If this sounds like your jam, go back it on kickstarter! If you're not sure whether it is your jam, the merch reveal updates on the campaign include excerpts from the book so you can get a flavor for it -- the ENTIRE Foreword to the book is on there!
I do not have a publisher to help with a marketing and publicity budget, so this book's success really depends on grassroots support from readers -- if you can spare a signal boost, that'd be amazing.
I'M GONNA GO WALK INTO THE SEA NOW AND BECOME ONE WITH THE MOLLUSCS, but before i do, here is the full summary of the book:
SUMMARY:
An ancient emperor who, along with his entire army, vanished from the historical record for ten years, as if into thin air.
A long-suffering scribe, dragged along on a quest that was doomed from the start, furiously scrawling his thoughts in a manuscript that will be lost for millennia.
An enslaved young man, as beautiful as a marble statue, breaking his chains and flying to freedom.
And a patient, steadfast scholar, dauntlessly seeking the answer to a mystery that has plagued historians for two thousand years.
The great tragedy of studying history is that there is so much we will never know. But a recent archaeological excavation has discovered an ancient manuscript, allegedly the journal kept by one of Emperor Cabian’s scribes during the years of his mysterious disappearance. Though most historians initially dismissed it as a hoax or a forgery, Amatio Orlanti took on the challenge—not only proving the authenticity of the manuscript, but translating it, uncovering the most jaw-dropping corroborating sources and, at last, presenting these astonishing revelations to the world: The truth of Cabian’s ill-fated journey, the twin poisons of imperialist violence and desperate, misguided love that drove him relentlessly onwards, and the ultimate fate of his lost beloved, the legendary beauty Anaticula. This new edition of Orlanti’s dissertation, with its academic commentaries and explanatory footnotes now revised for the general public, offers a glimpse of one of the most famous figures of Ancient Lausa—and casts a light on the rot and depravity lying behind the empire’s outward magnificence.
Miracles in history and archaeology just don’t happen… except when they do.
A new fantasy novel by Alexandra Rowland, author of A TASTE OF GOLD AND IRON, RUNNING CLOSE TO THE WIND, & YIELD UNDER GREAT PERSUASION
The magic of childhood is that you were constantly encountering new things. The best way to feel that way again is to fill your life with new experiences.
The magic of childhood is that you were constantly encountering new things. The best way to feel that way again is to fill your life with new experiences.
BOOK BIRTHDAY! BOOK! BIRTHDAY! I'm so excited to get SECOND HELPINGS out into the world. It's a warm, cozy and funny second-chance romance filled with found family, a chaotic deli dog named Pastrami, and all the comfort food you could ever want. I loved writing it, and I hope you'll love reading it 💜🥪
👨💻 Sam Adelson has spent more than ten years pouring his heart into Silverman's Deli, the beloved Cleveland institution his family has run for seventy-five years. So when a bad review tanks his business, Sam develops some strong feelings about the critic responsible. Fantasies involving expired clam juice may be involved.
❤️🩹 Then Jake Thompson walks through the door—Sam's first love, the one who got away. Reconnecting after over a decade feels like coming home, and having Jake around makes even the chaos of saving the deli feel manageable. But Sam’s fought to move on from the disaster that tore them apart, and now pretending it never happened is becoming more impossible every day.
🧑🍳 As Sam falls harder than he ever meant to, Jake's past begins to catch up with both of them. Some recipes are worth perfecting, even when the first attempt was a disaster—Sam just hopes this one doesn't blow up in his face...
📌 Perfect for fans of Casey McQuiston and TJ Klune. Second Helpings is a male x male contemporary romance, featuring:
• Second-chance romance
• Surprise neighbors (again)
• Slow burn, mild spice
• Cozy vibes
• Grumpy Steady x Chaotic Anxious
• Forced proximity
• Food as a love language
• Found family
• He's fine (he's not fine)
Grab a copy in ebook, print or audio! You can also find this title through bookshop.org, Hoopla, requesting from your local library, and elsewhere ✨ 💕
My review: I wish I could bottle up this chatty, friendly, clever, sad, hopeful book and carry it around with me forever.
I love the third person POV from one character, we don’t get bogged down in what I’m sure is the swamp of trauma in Jake’s mind and that helps keep what could be a really heavy book feeling fairly light. Although I will admit my kid saw me reading and asked why I looked so sad. I absolutely cried twice.
Sam’s got plenty of his own shit to sort out, and I love the cast of characters around him who are there to help, or needle him, or challenge him as needed. Every single one was unique and fully formed and instantly likable or dislikable as needed.
Plus the food? Oh my god, PLEASE release a cookbook or at least link us to your inspo. More deli-based romances, please!
Hello! I'm sorry to bother you but I've been trying to get my hands on a copy of The Scottish Boy and I haven't been able to find anywhere that sells it in the Netherlands. Is the book only available in North America? Thank you in advance, I'm dying to read it :(
Hi! The book’s previous publisher (Unbound) went bankrupt last year—owing me and hundreds of other authors lots of money 😭 BUT thankfully, the book has been picked up by new publishers and there will be new English print and digital editions coming out in September! You should see preorder links soon for them.
So the kickstarter passed $70k last night, which meant I was on the hook to film a melodramatic video for the "Please Don't Do This" stretch goal.
THAT'S ENOUGH EVERYONE!!!! STOP BACKING MY KICKSTARTER!!! THAT'S ENOUGH NOW! I'm going to link it here ONLY so you don't accidentally find it and back it because you didn't know any better!! Stop giving me money! I have 800+ packages to pack!
A new fantasy novel by Alexandra Rowland, author of A TASTE OF GOLD AND IRON, RUNNING CLOSE TO THE WIND, & YIELD UNDER GREAT PERSUASION
I've made this exact post like 3 different times atp but. It's endlessly funny when people (especially tech company people) treat Asimov's three laws as a legit proposed framework for Artificial Intelligence safety when like. Nearly every single Asimov story they're featured in involves something going wrong as a result of a robot trying to follow three three laws in a situation that makes execution of the laws ambiguous or contradictory. They're not a guideline for legit AI programming they're a plot device designed to cause problems due to interacting in weird ways with complicated hypothetical situations!
“scientists don’t want you know” is a phrase that always cracks me up because if you actually meet a scientist they will be shaking and crying like an overstimulated chihuahua with the need to let you know
Okay so. The Romans think that sex doesn't count as real sex unless Someone Is Getting Penetrated By A Dick Or Dick-Adjacent Object. Very sort of dick-centric system.
So Latin has six words for "to fuck", divided into three pairs: one pair for each of the possible Holes (ass, mouth, pussy). In each pair there is a word for topping and a word for bottoming.
Most people who know a little about Latin fuck verbs know 'pedicare' and 'irrumare' from the first line of Catullus 16 (Pēdīcābō ego vōs et irrumābō), which is a poem about saying "absolutely shut the fuck up and piss all the way off" to fandom antis and purity police who are making repulsive accusations about you personally, based on things they're reading into your work from a bad-faith perspective. Catullus was so real for that and it's incredibly endearing to me that he was dealing with the same thing we are still dealing with. I got a hater in my askbox doing this about The Wisdom of Emperors just the other day, but I took the high road and, unlike Catullus, did not tell them "I will assfuck you and I will facefuck you"
So here sort of a chart about the verbs:
Topping | Bottoming
Mouth: irrumare | fellare
Ass: pedicare | cevere
Cunt: futuere | crisare
Another fun fact related to the fuck verbs was that the Romans didn't think about sexual orientation in terms of who you're attracted to, they thought about it in terms of "which is your favorite hole and what do you like to do with it." So you'll get graffiti (ancient roman subtweeting) about things like "Marcus is a fututor [cunt-fucker] and a pedico [ass-fucker] but omg girlies I also heard he's a fellator [cock-sucker] 👀👀👀👀" In the modern day we'd just call him bisexual, but in Ancient Rome it is not enough to know if someone is bisexual (they think it's kind of perverted if a man only fucks women, like do you have some kind of freaky pussy fetish???? you've never once even fucked a twink??? dat's gay, bro. gay to not be bi), you also have to know if he's being bisexual in a respectable sort of way
You will notice that pussy-eating is not on this list, because those words do not mean "to fuck", they translate more directly to just "pussy-licking" (cunnilingus), and because the Romans are sexist as all hell and think that's gross and filthy anyway. This is not ONLY because of pussy terror, it's also that the mouth is the most sacred part of the body -- so eating pussy or sucking a dick is actually considered slightly more "shameful" than getting fucked in the ass. (Please note as well that the fuck verbs are gender neutral -- if you're a roman man and your girlfriend owns a strap-on, she can [pedicare] you. but be careful because your sworn enemy in the forum will have a fucking FIELD DAY if he hears about that and will write a Mean Poem about you or subtweet you on a public wall)
The moral of this story is that the Ancient Romans were absolutely *GAGGING* for social media (see Martial's Epigrams, aka My Best Tweets), and the second moral of this story is that if this was a fun post for you, you should look at my kickstarter for alllllll of this kind of nonsense in the form of A Fantasy Novel That's Pretending To Be An Academic Paper With A Fake Bibliography And Foonotes aka The Wisdom of Emperors. And please signal boost this so everyone can know about Latin Fuck Verbs and Roman Subtweeting, we've really learned so much here together
