*Shameface*

Wow...a lot has obviously happened since I last updated this thing.  I am so sorry.  I moved, didn't have Internet for three months, and then like twelve different things started eating up my time.  And then I forgot this blog existed.  Sorry.

So, in personal news:

• I'm an aunt now!  My sister-in-law gave birth to a beautiful baby boy named Jeffrey.  He is four months old and looks like a good mash-up between his parents.  It's still weird to think my brother sired a child, but there's undeniable proof now.  It's weirder that he's so adorable and yet still directly related to Matt.  I got him Winnie the Pooh for companionship.  You know, when he can grab him.  I'm thinking over the years I'll probably be foisting many a Disney character on him....
• I'm engaged!  Tony and I have been together for 11 or 12 years now (depending on when you start counting) so this should not be a surprise to anyone who knows us.  But it is still exciting and gratifying.  No wedding plans as of yet, but we will be moving in together soon enough for me to forget about this blog again.  Also I can't stop looking at wedding dresses.  Because they are sparkly.
• I became an official Nerdfighter!  Also I finally discovered the brothers Hank and John Green.  Because I'm officially late to EVERY bandwagon.
• My gallbladder tried to escape my body and succeeded!  Literally 5 days after getting my engagement ring I ended up in the hospital with some debilitating abdominal pain.  I had six stones in my gallbladder, one stuck in the freaking valve.  I opted to get it removed, which was good because as the surgeon was trying to remove it, it was actively trying to explode.  Surgery took one hour instead of half an hour because the gallbladder was, in medical terms, "tense and throbbing".  After reading the pathology report it basically boiled down to: "This looks like an effed up gallbladder that was removed from a human body.  There are a ton of stones in it, including one stuck in the valve that was nearly 3cms.  It's really gross."  This was around the new year (surgery was the day before New Year's Eve).  Yay 2013!  Still a better ending than Twilight.  ;)

I have eagerly been reading The Infernal Devices series by the fantastic Cassandra Clare.  Long story short, my nook recommended them to me and I thought: "I've heard of Cassandra Clare before..."  It turns out that it's a penname and I remember the author because she wrote a rather famous and acclaimed Harry Potter fanfiction called The Draco Trilogy.  I remember seeing it on www.pumpkinpie.org.  Yes, I was an Auror.  No, I'm not ashamed.  Yes, I hated the canonical ending of the series, why do you ask?  Anyway, the trilogy is a prequel to the City of Ashes series which I haven't read but totally spoiled for myself on Wikipedia.  It's Steampunk Fantasy, which is a genre I've been enjoying way too much of recently.  I'm also on the last Gail Carriger book of her Soulless series.  It's awesome, please read.

I will honestly try to update more frequently in the future.  My apologies for the long gaps.
~Jill

Jacqueline Carey (Yay For Non Urban Fantasy!)

So, one of my favorite authors in ever just finished another series set in an Ersatz Renaissance France with fantasy elements.  I'm wondering what's next for the talented Jacqueline Carey because frankly there aren't that many great Olde Thyme Fantasy writers.  She makes some true, epic fantasy.  Plus I love the world she created and the characters that have populated it.  I still can't decide if I love Phedre or Moiren better.  Both had their strengths, both had their weaknesses, and both were truly great heroines with unique love stories that were actually interesting as opposed to cliched or plot by numbers.

I like urban fantasy but it's beginning to grate on me.  I get that it's popular right now, but that also means that now there's a lot of crap to wade through to get to the good stuff.  I also like steampunk but sometimes it doesn't strike that crucial balance between science, danger, mystique and Britishness that it needs too.  A lot of it falls kinda flat.  I could use some recommendations right now.

Though I did start reading Kelley Armstrong's works and I'm liking them. 

Anyway: Mystical Creatures.  A lot of fantasy right now is sticking to a small and thoroughly over-used number of them right now.  Vampires, Weres/Shifters, ghosts, dwarfs and elves.  Ask anyone on the street about any of these creatures and they'll tell you why they love or hate Twilight, True Blood, The Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter.  We've kind of forgotten about dragons, griffons, sea monsters, giants, pagan gods and demons, faeries, unicorns, and other strange beasts that have no practical purpose whatsoever (think Grendel and his mother in Beowulf (not that horrid CGI monstrosity)).  True, most of the things I named were in Harry Potter, but work with me here.  You'll see these things on the edge of good fantasy works, but never a story about them.  Remember when dragons were huge, scary, incredibly difficult to defeat and had hordes of treasure for no discernable reason?  THAT WAS AWESOME!!  Bring that back.  Bring back the unknown, the mysterious, the alien.  I'm sick of all this "But for the grace of God go I" b.s. that vampires and shifters give us.  Bring back the sublime to my fantasy.  I'm sick of all this mirror-holding business turning badass vampires and wraiths into sparkly vampires and helpful ghosts.  Give me back the mischevious and terrifying imps and fae that grant a gift to humans only to drown them in a lake a few pages later.  Give me back the fantastic in fantasy!