In this ninth installment of Westerson’s Crispin Guest medieval noir series, we find Crispin himself playing a supporting role as his apprentice, Jack Tucker, takes the lead. A mysterious man hires a very drunk Crispin to kill a woman. Crispin, his chivalrous nature horrified at the very idea, instead goes to warn her. Beguiled by her beauty, he ends up in bed with her, eventually passing out from the alcohol. When he comes to, he is shocked to discover that the woman had been murdered while he was unconscious. Before he can get far in his investigation, he is himself arrested for the murder, leaving Jack to solve the crime on his own. With the help of some new characters – the plucky lawyer, Nigellus Cobmartin; and the lovely Isabel Langton, niece of Gilbert and Eleanor of the Boar’s Tusk Tavern – and our old friend John Rykener, Jack takes on the mantle of The Tracker alone for the first time.

I have read and loved every other book in the Crispin series, which is set in late 14th-century London, and this one was no different. It is somewhat bittersweet to see Jack growing up, becoming a man, and meeting a girl he can seriously consider marrying. I still think of him as the little boy he was in the first book. At the same time, it is wonderful to see him grow and use the skills he’s learned at Crispin’s knee to save his mentor from the gallows. Westerson crafted a terrific story once again, full of twists and intrigue, and frankly a lot of frustration! Those sheriffs need a good swift kick. If it is infuriating to read about their petty tyrannies, how much worse must it be for poor Crispin to have to live and work with them. Another masterful job from Westerson. Highly recommended!

First published on the Historical Novel Society website: https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/a-maiden-weeping/

Dear Mystical Moments,

Let’s have a chat, friends. I was happily scrolling through my newsfeed this morning and came across this article about you. While I am quite happy to read about something other than the unimaginable horror show of the US election season and Trump’s latest brain damaged utterances, I am very disappointed to see this take its place. If I can say so, you’re taking yourselves way too seriously. Sell the wands to the Muggles, already!

Look, I’m not saying that your wands aren’t awesome. You have a product you’re proud of. You SHOULD be proud of what you sell! I’m also not really saying that you can’t believe only some people are worthy to have them. I’m just pointing out why you are super wrong in not sharing it with the Muggles. You could probably make a metric fuckton more money if you would change your opinion on that, but whatever. Someone else will probably open shop across the street and sell wands to anyone who wants them. Next time I go to England, I’ll be sure to visit that shop. But honestly, how did you decide to deny selling your wands to Potterheads? Is it JUST the Potterheads that are refused service? Or do you similarly refuse to sell your Very Special Wands to fans of, say, Alice Hoffman, or Marion Zimmer Bradley, or Sarah Addison Allen, or Neil Gaiman, or Paula Brackston, or any other authors who write witch-themed novels who might decide they want a wand because of something they read in a book? There are many, many to choose from.

Or is it just YA you are opposed to? Do you turn your nose up at Cate Tiernan’s fans as well? How about Kami Garcia, Diane Duane, Sarah J. Maas, or Diana Wynn Jones? Because, honestly. If you discriminate against one, you should at least be consistent and discriminate against them all. One rabid fan is much like another and equally deserving of your disdain, amirite? Also, it smacks of genre snobbery. A friend of mine is dealing with that right now with her MFA mentor, of all people, who is convinced that nothing other than Proper Literary Fiction(™) can possibly be good writing; certainly not fantasy, which everyone knows is garbage! Genre snobbery isn’t cool.

Also, um, so what if Harry Potter is for children? (Side note: just because it is YA doesn’t mean it is childish. It deals with some hard core concepts like bravery, tolerance, acceptance, death, and discovering oneself as a unique person. It’s not just kids waving wands around. Maybe you missed those parts.) Even if it was just a silly kid’s book, if it prompted a child to be interested in your religion, would you not welcome that and use it as an opportunity to teach them about it? If you are concerned about real witches not being able “to reveal themselves without people thinking they are mental,” then a good way to combat that is by educating people. How do you expect to do that when you are turning away people who might be somewhat ignorant about the details of your faith but might at least have some earnest interest in learning about it? You’re effectively preaching to the choir by only serving people who already think the same way as you do.

I’ll share a secret with you. When I was 11, I read The Mists of Avalon for the first time. It blew my mind in so many ways. I’d always loved Arthurian legends, but beyond that, it was the first time I’d considered that there could be a goddess-based religion. By that time in my life, I knew I wasn’t Christian like my dad’s family, and I hadn’t learned yet that my mom was atheist (which is what I ultimately ended up), but I didn’t really know what else there was. That book opened my eyes to at least one new-to-me possibility. As a result, I spent several years afterward learning about and practicing Wicca. I even had my own wand! That never would have happened if I hadn’t first read and loved The Mists of Avalon. My experience was many years before Harry Potter was a scribble on Rowling’s cocktail napkin, but if I had been younger, I might easily have had the same experience with that series instead. How do you know there aren’t several other young people with similar experiences and questions who might wander into your shop, looking for a wand and some answers to some questions, only to get turned away because you have a preconceived idea about them? You assume they are just children wanting a wand to play with, just like some others might assume real witches are “mental,” as you put it.

How about, instead of disdaining someone who wanders into your store because you decide they aren’t the right sort of person, you strike up a conversation with them instead of reading their aura and deciding they are minions of the Dark Lord who are only up to no good and see what’s going on? Maybe you’ll learn they have some questions you can help them with. Maybe they came to those questions by way of Harry Potter, but that doesn’t invalidate the question, or the questioner. And yes, maybe some will only want a wand because they want to display it on their bookcase next to their beloved set of Harry Potter books. If you know anything about Potterheads, you should be flattered they’d want to buy your wands to display next to their books. I, for one, am ridiculously picky about items that get displayed on my already too-crowded bookcases and so have to be very selective. Besides, what harm does it do to provide some joy to someone? Remember the Threefold Law. If you give joy to a Potterhead, you’re going to get a major karmic kickback. Fangirls and fanboys tend to get really excited about things. Just sayin’.

Books have real power to change the way people think about real issues in the world. How a reader comes to understand – whether it is through fantasy or graphic novels or literary fiction – is irrelevant. It is the journey that matters. Don’t dismiss someone because they took a different path than you did. At the end of the day, you may end up in the same place.

Love,

Me

(This post originally ran on Book Riot).

In the spirit of International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, which was August 9, I wanted to learn more about indigenous and ethnic peoples. The theme for the 2016 International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples is the right to education, specifically the right of indigenous peoples “to establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning.” I think that’s absolutely rad, and in an effort to educate myself and anyone who might read this, I made the following reading list of indigenous authors, based on broad geographic regions. I tried to include a little bio wherever possible for each entry, though for some it was all I could do simply to find authors for the region at all. Hopefully one day it won’t be so hard to find diverse and indigenous authors like this. Continue reading “Indigenous Authors” →

(This post originally ran on Book Riot).

This year, I missed my personal Chaucer Day celebration. Woe. It was on April 17, 1397, that Geoffrey Chaucer first told The Canterbury Tales at the court of Richard II. For medieval scholars, there are many things to love about Chaucer – his language, of course; his rich cast of characters; the glimpse he gives us into the lives of regular medieval people. I even had a shirt from the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS), which is run through my alma mater, that said, “The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.” Yay, Parliament of Foules! I wore that thing until it was in tatters and thoroughly indecent. Continue reading “Geoffrey Chaucer: Poet, Spy…Character” →