Recommended Reading List: January 2023

I taught a workshop, and spent a lot of January reading stories in manuscript. (I still have a lot to go because of a stupidly busy February.) I ended up reading a novel that was awful. The writing was good; the situation implausible; the characters all dumber than rocks. But I couldn’t figure out how this traditionally published author got to his ending. So I […]

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Free Fiction Monday: The Last Surviving Gondola Widow

In an alternate post-Civil War Chicago, the citizens still remember the day the Gondolas sent by the South died and the city burned—again. Lou, a Pinkerton detective, uses magic to hunt down the Gondola pilots, now called Gondola widows. She thought she caught them all. But when evidence comes to light that one last widow hides in the most public of places, Lou must find […]

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