Notices by Wendy Palmer (wendypalmer@mastodon.au)

I am the current coordinator of the Queer Romance Club (QRC), the FediBookClub for all readers of queer romance.

Boost this post to be notified-on-Edit of each month's pick, or find it pinned on my profile.

FEBRUARY 2025: Leather, Lace and Locs by Anne Shade

https://mastodon.au/@wendypalmer/113921129100039891

QRC is open to all, read at your own pace over the month and post about it under #QueerRomanceClub and @queerromanceclub tags, and/or add some commentary on Bookwyrm.

No rules: let’s hear reactions, theories, reviews, favourite quotes etc, any time throughout the month or indeed whenever you happen to read it 😊
CW for spoilers if going into details but general observations can be open.

Note we’re also open to free choice selections, so if you’d rather post comments about a different book you’re reading as well or instead, feel free to use the tags for those too. We’re all about the queer romance book love, and love to hear about titles we may have missed!

2025 Schedule (subject to change/open to suggestions):

Dec: winter/holiday vibes
Nov: classics/old favourites
Oct: paranormal
Sept: mystery/suspense
Aug: cosy
July: Lambda winners
June: pride month no matter what the fascists say
May: fantasy
April: science fiction
March: historical
Feb: BIPOC — Leather, Lace and Locs by Anne Shade
Jan: contemporary — Roland Rogers Isn’t Dead Yet by Samatha Allen

#QueerRomance #books #BookClub #LGBTQBooks #romanceReads

#introduction #WriterIntro

I write (frequently queer) fantasy fiction with entertaining characters, enjoyably perilous adventures, romantic entanglements, some dark undertones, but always happy, hopeful endings. I have standalones, duologies, and a YA fairytale-inspired trilogy.

They’re available in ebook, including on Kobo Plus, Everand, and Hoopla, and the most recent are also in print. You can read more about them on my website:

https://wendypalmer.au/books/

or find your preferred retailer here:

https://books2read.com/wendypalmer/

My latest book is The Use of Myriad Arts, a follow-up to my most popular book, The Uses of Illicit Art. It’s a romantic historical fantasy about a pregnant amnesiac firestarter in the Victorian era.

#Books #Fantasy #RomanticFantasy @lgbtbookstodon @bookstodon #IndieAuthor

#WordWeavers 5. Share an interesting fact about the society your characters live in

It’s Viking-inspired, and do you know what happened as the raids began to die off and trading came to the fore?

Here’s my “bear-warrior” complaining about it

My kid just introduced me to “glaze” as in slang for empty over-praising/gushing to the point of making the recipient cringe.

At first I thought it was glaise, as in a portmanteau of praise and some gl- word, but it comes from glazing a cake.

I really like it, I feel like it fills a minor gap (I also really liked yeet for the same reason)

#slang #GenAlpha #linguistics

This whole thing about a company needing more “masculine energy” reminds me of those old research stats about how men assume women are talking too much, ie more than 50%, during a conversation when the actual percentage is ridiculously low.

Or judging that there’s too many women in a movie’s crowd scene once it’s about 25-30% women.

@liztai I love the look he’s giving the camera in the bigger photo. It looks like he’s saying “Girl, I know” too 😂

There are five days left in October.
All books in the backlog have been read.
There is no sign of incoming Libby and BorrowBox holds.
All Hoopla borrows are used.
This months’s book budget is depleted.
Desperate times. I might be driven to…clean the house

My library: that book you requested is here!

Crisis averted. That was close.

@bookstodon

@ignova this is beautiful 😊 your alt text mentions the leaf size and it’s something I never wondered about before: does the leaf size reduce naturally over time with training?

#3goodthings

1) after unrecognised anaemia sapped my fitness for 18 months, I finally made it the top of our biggest hill without being out of breath (which, actually, makes me fitter than I was before 🎉)

2) the school rang…and said something NICE about our kid for once. (He’s not generally badly behaved, but the only time we ever normally hear from the school is when he’s messed up)

3) making excellent progress on this month’s goals, so I can have a go-slow day in this suddenly beautiful spring weather, and enjoy an especially long walk with the dogs and an excellent audiobook

@FlashMobOfOne I’m a fan of Grady Hendrix if you haven’t come across him

My partner decided “loaf” was a weird word so I looked up its etymology and now we know “lord” comes from “loaf-ward” ie guardian of the bread.

#etymology #TIL

@maisiesummers @acm_redfox @countcol cook cleans up is exactly my policy now — if I’m having a night off from cooking, I want it to be a complete night off, not having to clean up the truly phenomenal mess my partner manages to leave in his wake 😊

@ryanhoulihan

@sfwrtr @strangeseawolf @Nichelle

“it might mean that your gut reaction about where the plot needs to go will have to be carefully examined. Writers have reflexes, too!”

I’d most like to write a book as usual, then click a button and have every pronoun switch, and see how that affects the story.

@sfwrtr @strangeseawolf @Nichelle

true, that’s why it’d be such an interesting experiment. I feel like I write relatively gender-neutral characters but we’re all so seeped in our respective cultures’ gender markers that it’d be sure to trip me over my own subconscious biases and that would be valuable.

“Booty call” and “butt dial” has been offered up as an example of where the literal meaning of two phrases is the same but the implied meaning is very different (denotative vs connotative meanings).

Today a coffee mug gave me another example: “dad bod” and “father figure”

#linguistics #wordplay