Farmers markets and…books!
Howdy Spiffy Peeps! I hope you are having the best possible August. Up here around Ottwa it’s kinda the best—temperatures around 68-70 Fahrenheit and everything’s green, and the farmers’ markets are full of freshly harvested goodies. The berries are in, you know, and sweet corn and so on. Since I’m surrounded by farms, I have quite the selection—we can get a bunch of stuff all grown within thirty minutes of our place. I mean, lookit, we even have jalapenos and serrano peppers so I can make some mean nachos:
I buy bread from a local baker and then get eggs from a small chicken farm five minutes away, maple syrup from a sugar shack twenty minutes away, raspberries from a bush down the street, and wheee! Local French toast for breakfast.
I’ve become more conscious of where the food’s coming from because of the tariff shenanigans, you know. Coming soon—the nineteenth—there may be new 50% tariffs on Canadian stuff, which means a tax for US peeps on a whole lot of products. I hope it doesn’t happen, but if it does, know this: It doesn’t apply to books. That’s right, books are still exempt from tariffs! I’ve brought back a deal for you in case you’re interested and adjusted the price down a bit: The Five Oberons, which gets you all four of Oberon’s Meaty Mysteries plus Oberon’s Bathtime Stories for $55. They’ll be signed and you’ll get a signed bookmark too.
Bizarrely…I might try selling books at the farmers market. Just to give the payment process a trial run, you know, because I’ll have a booth at Can*Con in Ottawa in October, and I’d like to have the commerce obstacles worked out before then. It’s not an unheard-of thing; I’ve seen a couple different authors selling stuff there before. I don’t know if they are selling enough to make it worth it for them, but whatever, I just have to prove the tech works.
The Double Entendre Warning
It didn’t occur to me that this would be necessary, but: Sometimes Oberon makes some observations about life that can be taken two ways. From the beginning of the Iron Druid novels, it’s clear that Atticus purposely never explains to Oberon that some terms can have sexual meanings among humans. Atticus withheld this information because he thinks it’s funny. And I thought readers would think it’s funny too and be in on the joke because hey, if you’re joining the Post Club, you should be familiar with Oberon. But someone got mad at me for a recent edition of Oberon’s Post Club where Oberon suggested that if you want to relax, just go play with your balls. Oberon, of course, means actual rubber or tennis balls and is entirely unaware of the other meaning. But I guess someone subscribed to Oberon's Post Club for their 12-year-old grandson and thought that was entirely inappropriate. Sorry! While the novels and stories can be enjoyed by younger readers, my target audience is adults. So please be warned: Double entendres exist in Oberon’s Post Club. Oberon is completely innocent and is saying these things from a dog’s perspective. The postcard, letter, and sticker from this month is no exception. Oberon is saying and meaning one thing, but humans may perceive an additional meaning. So, if you like double entendres, please subscribe to Oberon’s Post Club! But yeah, if you’re wanting to give these to a younger person, it might not always be a safe bet. I’m writing for grown-ups, y’all.
So what are we reading, eh? I’ve heard about this first one from various sources and what’s immediately different about it is that it features a female serial killer; they are relatively rare, and what inspires them to turn murderous is typically different from what inspires male serial killers. If you’d like an example of another yarn about a female serial killer, check out Bloom by Delilah S. Dawson.
Honey
A dark, provocative, adrenaline-rush of a novel about a graduate student who murders bad men and justifies it in the name of feminism, by a bold new voice in fiction
She just wants to know what justice feels like.
Yrsa is bored: bored with her PhD program, her entitled students, and the never-ending pages of racial violence and feminist theory she has to read. But most of all, she’s bored with the men in her life—especially the bad ones.
And then, one sunny afternoon, she accidentally kills one.
Suddenly a problematic professor is dead, and Yrsa, well—she’s no longer bored.
Emboldened, she starts to chase the high, and soon no misbehaving sexist man within commuting distance is safe.
Finally Yrsa’s academic research feels useful. But how long can killing in the name of feminist and racial solidarity justify her actions? And how long until her actions—and buried family secrets—come back to unravel her?
This next one is out TUESDAY OMG A BRAND NEW ONE FROM CHUCK
The Calamities
The heir to one of the world’s most influential families reckons with the demonic secret of their power in this contemporary dark fantasy that melds occult magic with shocking family drama, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Accidents.
“Vivid, unsettling, and darkly compelling, The Calamities is Chuck Wendig at his best.”—#1 New York Timesbestselling author Veronica Roth
Mourning Mayne knows he’ll one day bear the duty of managing his family’s vast empire of wealth and power. But the feckless Mourning has always struggled to accept this legacy of cruelty, domination, and exploitation . . . and something even darker.
Because the Maynes are no ordinary family: Hidden in our world are the fiends—half-human, half-demon, and possessed of a dark magic born from buying human souls—and the Maynes are one of the oldest and most influential fiendish families.
But when Mourning’s estranged father, the formidable and terrifying Hadrian Mayne, demands that Mourning return to the fold, he has to decide whether to accept his legacy and embrace his role in the family or to forge his own destiny, and with it, change the course of the world.
Because along the way home, he will meet Key, a black-market seller of human souls, and Quinn, an artist who may hold the dark truth behind the fate of the fiends. Alone, they have all struggled with the darkness of their natures . . . but together, they might find a path out of the shadows.
Member discussion