We Interrupt This Blog for This Special and Important Announcement

 

Josie Jaffrey resides in Oxford, England with her husband and two cats. She is a lawyer, focusing on intellectual property and commercial property. A lover of books, Jaffrey runs a video book review club, The Gin Book Club, through her website.

You can now add author to Jaffrey’s impressive credits with the release of her book The Gilded King-Sovereign: Book, the first in an installment of a three-part series. FYI: The Solis Invicti series (a prequel series to the Sovereign series) is available now, along with other books by Jaffrey.

Here is a brief description of The Gilded King:

“In the Blue, the world’s last city, all is not well. Julia is stuck within its walls. She serves the nobility from a distance until she meets Lucas, a boy who believes in fairytales that Julia’s world can’t accommodate. The Blue is her prison, not her castle, and she’d escape into the trees if she didn’t know that contamination and death awaited humanity outside. But not everyone in the Blue is human, and not everyone can be contained. Beyond the city’s boundaries, in the wild forests of the Red, Cameron has precious little humanity left to lose. As he searches for a lost queen, he finds an enemy rising that he thought long dead. An enemy that the humans have forgotten how to fight. One way or another, the walls of the Blue are going to come down. The only question is what side you’ll be on when they do.”

Here is more information about The Gilded King.

Book Info
Author: Josie Jaffrey
Cover Art: Martin Beckett Art
Publisher: Self-published
Page Count: 292
Word Count: 100,000
ASIN (Amazon): B07D3BZGR6
ISBN (Print): 978-1719204866
Release Date: 25 June 2018
Rating: Young Adult
Series: Sovereign
Series number: Book 1
Books in series: 3
Genre: Dystopian, Young Adult, Fantasy

Important Links
Author’s Website
Amazon
Good Reads

For more information please contact Josie Jaffrey at josiejaffrey@gmail.com

Book Reviews: Ladies in Shiny Pants by Jill Soloway

Upon her Sunday night triumph, I just had to dust off this review of Jill Solaway’s book Ladies in Shiny Pants from one of my now-defunct blogs. Enjoy!

Jill Soloway is a talented screenwriter, director, and TV show creator who has written for television shows like Six Feet Under, Grey’s Anatomy, The United States of Tara and most recently, the critically acclaimed Transparent. And this past Sunday, Soloway won a much-deserved Emmy for best director for directing an episode of Transparent.

Along with her sister, Faith, Jill has written the live shows The Real Live Brady Bunch and The Vagina Pageant. She’s a professional colleague and friends with Diablo Cody and has written for several anthologies. And in 2005, Jill’s collection of essays Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants: Based on a True Story was published.

In Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants, Jill tells us about her younger years growing up in the Chicago in the only white and Jewish family in the neighborhood, and the years that followed. At only 13, Jill and her friends would don their tightest, shiniest clothes and go to concerts hoping to meet their rock and roll heroes. Jill figured if she met her favorite musician, he would see past her young age, and fall madly in love with her. Of course, her rock and roll dreams never came true, and thusly, led her on a path of romantic confusion

A few years later, Jill loses her virginity to an older man. This doesn’t destroy her, yet she readily admits that her vulnerability and feeling less-than her prettier friends made it easy for this man to get her into bed before she was truly ready for such intimacy. However, Jill does show a sense of humor about the entire situation, later calling this guy “Lotion Bag” because he was always asking about a bag he carried around that carried his lotion.

As she gets older, Jill faces the world of being a grown up, and what it is like to be a young woman trying to navigate a post-feminist world, where getting breast implants is supposed to be empowering, yet she can’t help but watch the Miss America pageant year after year. Jill admits she feels some connection to Monica Lewinsky and the murdered intern Chandra Levy. She’s honest about her attraction to both cop bars and guys she calls “toolbelts”-hot construction workers.

Post-college Jill ends up in Los Angeles and finds success as a screenwriter, producer and comedian. But despite her success, she can’t help but snark on the absurdity that is Hollywood and her life.

Jill is funny, honest and very self-deprecating. She doesn’t shy from calling herself a feminist and she’s proud of her Jewish heritage. The over-use of exclamation points can get out of hand at times, but I see this book as a conversation with your excitable friend who uses her hands in conversation a lot. Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants reminds me a bit of People are Unappealing by Sara Barron, which I reviewed quite a while ago. Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants is a fun summer read that will make you cringe, make you say, “Right on!” and totally entertain you.

Book Marks

Well, done Svetlana Alexievich, well done!

Girls creator, Lena Dunham, talks about writing about women at Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls website.

Another Humans of New York is coming out on the 13^th!

Amazon to open bricks and mortar store in Seattle.

Speaking of Amazon, they are going to start their own version of Etsy, which will be another way for crafters and artisans to sell their wares.

Author James Patterson to offer holiday bonuses to booksellers throughout the US. So cool!

Okay, Chrissie Hynde; I won’t buy your book! Neener, neener!

Ten books that should have gender-swapped main characters.

Creative writing prompts for every day of the year!

Need a good cathartic bawl-fest? Read these books.

Book Marks

Charles Koch’s (yes, one of the Koch Brothers) daughter Elizabeth launches new publishing venture Catapult. And like with anything Koch-related, this is not necessarily a good thing.

The late Maya Angelou, a true Renaissance woman, was a lover of art. And her art collection just sold for a huge sum of money! Nope, you don’t have to win the lottery to write a novel. Brian Klems tells you how in nine easily achievable steps.

My friend (and guest reviewer) Jen recently mentioned a job ad she saw for a marketing/public relations company that called for a person who is an expert on using various social mediums. Ugh. Anyone with some knowledge of writing properly, knows the plural of medium is media. Sadly, as someone who has worked in various communications fields (journalism, copywriting, PR, tech writing to name a few) I’ve seen this idiocy quite a bit. And here is a list of some of the worst spelling, grammar and other writing mistakes found in media.

Did I mention public relations? Philly-based writer and editor, Matthew Brodsky, calls some of them out on their stupidity and as someone who has done work in PR and lived to tell the tale, he is so spot-on!

We use food to feed our bodies. Here are five books to feed our brains.

The calendar may say 2015, but the 2016 presidential campaign season is in full swing (just in case you are wondering, I am feeling the Bern). Here’s a great list of political-related books all women should read.

Here is National Book Foundation Long-List for its 2015 National Book Awards.

In an age of big box bookstores and Amazon here are four reasons why independent bookstores are doing so well! Yay!!!!

This post is a bit old, but Get Off My Internets (GOMI) has a very interesting open dialogue on when blogs start to suck.

 

 

 

 

Book Marks

Are you a badass woman? Well, even you’re not, you’ve got to read these books!

Befuddled and battle-weary from on-line critics? Four authors show how to handle them with aplomb!

Here is an independent alternative to buying books through Amazon, Bookindy.com.

Are you a bit potty-mouthed? Here are some old-fashioned swear words to round out your naughty word vocabulary.

Ann Coulter names racist fucknugget as one of her “intellectual” influences? Ann Coulter influenced by a racist? Gee, shocking.

 

Brag Book (Nope, Not About Me)

Hello, everyone. Just a quick note to let you know my friend Oma’s husband Jeff has published his first novel under the pen name, Victor Marbury. The name of the book is Lights out in America’s Dairyland: An EMP Adventure. Here is a description of the book.

“Follow Ben and his friends as they travel through Wisconsin after A devastating EMP event. Ben, a dedicated prepper and police officer is caught away from his home and supplies when a naturally generated EMP knocks out the world-wide electrical grid and all unprotected electronics. With the help of his new friends, Simone, Robert, and Mitch, Ben tries makes his way back to Milwaukee and his extensive stockpile. During the ride, Ben and company will encounter new friends, enemies and an old nemesis from the past who harbors a grudge from years before.”

You can download Lights Out in America’s Dairyland: An EMP Adventure into your Kindle via Amazon. To learn amore about Victor Marbury here is a link to his Amazon author page.

Book Marks

MacKenzie Bezos’, wife of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, isn’t exactly too fond on a book about her husband and the Internet giant. And she’s letting everyone know about it, on where else? Amazon.com!

Cosmo’s sex and relationship advice is complete bullshit. Hmm, who knew?

Entertainment Weekly asks, “What is your favorite YA novel of all time?” There will always be a special place in my heart for Judy Blume’s work in my adolescent heart. I also like SE Hinton, Paul Zindel and Naomi Klein. But one of the best YA novels I read as an actual adult is Steven Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Hmm, do I smell a retro review?

Are book covers better with googly eyes? Discuss.

British writer and all-around badass , Caitlin Moran, on why libraries are so important to individuals and communities.