In Book News & Events

Book Festivals!

By Rachel Gold

I like to think that fall is book season (along with summer and winter and maybe spring). The air is crisp, it's a good time to curl up with a novel or, if you're feeling more social, to head out in search of your favorite novelists. I'll be at two book festival in the near future: Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books, Sat. & Sun. Sept 21-22. I'm on the panel ”OUTspoken & OUTfront: LGBTQ Writers Moving Beyond Binaries.” (At 4:30 p.m. on Saturday in N129.) Twin Cities Book Festival, Sat. Oct. 12. I was on a panel last year and had a great time. Not sure if I'm doing anything official this year, but I'm definitely going to hang out. Book festivals are great because they're about books (I know, right?) and this tends to attract other book-lovers, which makes for a really great group of people to hang out with while to listen to authors say smart and/or funny things and get to shop for books. If you're around for either book festival, stop by and say hi!

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September 16, 2013
In Book News & Events

Witches, Werewolves and Starship Captains: Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy

By Rachel Gold

On Friday, March 8 for International Women’s Day, Catherine Lundoff and I hosted a radio program on KFAI. You can hear it here.Since we ran through a whole lot of names and titles during the show, we thought we’d list them on our blogs for anyone who wanted to follow up on our recommendations (or add some of your own in the comments). You can see Catherine’s picks over on her blog. These are roughly in order that we mention them, though not exactly. Rachel Pollack – Unquenchable Fire, Temporary Agency, Godmother Night, and more Robin McKinley – Sunshine (named as an example of an urban fantasy with a vampire rather than paranormal)Louisa May Alcott – She wrote more than Little Women, check out her tales of suspense!Emma Bull – War for the Oaks (wonderful urban fantasy set in Minneapolis)Nnedi Okorafor – Akata Witch (amazing young adult urban fantasy set in Nigeria)Charlaine Harris – The Sookie Stackhouse books on which the HBO show True Blood is basedPatricia Briggs – Check out her Mercy Thompson seriesJacqueline Carey – If you only know her Kushiel books, I also highly recommend her novels Santa Olivia and Saints AstrayKim Harrison – The Hallows seriesTate Hallaway

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March 8, 2013
In Book News & Events

MarsCon 2013

By Rachel Gold

I'm on four panels for MarsCon March 1-3. If you're planning on attending, I'm looking forward to seeing you there. Below are the panels I'm on and you can see the full program here. Gender Limitations in SF/F Re(a)d Mars/Taylor (2nd Floor) — Friday 06:00 pm Discuss how strong female characters are frequently portrayed as abandoning most, if not all, things feminine. Also, male characters who take on what are considered traditionally female roles are being portrayed as emasculated. Can a powerful female character be warm and nurturing and can a house husband be more than a punch line? With: W. Scott Patterson, mod.; Rachel Gold, Lyda Kimberly Long-Ewing, Lyda Morehouse, Kathryn Sullivan Social Media Marketing for Creatives & Geeks Krushenko’s (13th Floor) — Saturday 01:00 pm Strategies and tips for successfully marketing your geeky creative endeavor or business on various social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr and LinkedIn will be discussed. With: Hal Bichel, mod.; Rachel Gold, Christopher Jones, Heather Luca, Catherine Lundoff, David Schwartz Diversity of Character Re(a)d Mars/Taylor (2nd Floor) — Saturday 02:00 pm A lot of the characters in speculative fiction have similar personalities to most fans. Are writers limiting their audience by failing to include characters that express the whole range of diverse human personalities? Who’s good at doing this? What techniques do writers use to design characters unlike themselves? With: Rebecca Chesin, Andre Guirard, co-mods.;

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February 26, 2013
In Book News & Events

My Next Big Thing

By Rachel Gold

If you’ve been following the “Next Big Thing” blog hop going around author websites, you may have seen my post on the Being Emily site announcing that the sequel is in progress. There’s more exciting news. I recently signed the contract for another book to come out next year – a romantic paranormal novel. The details about the book are below but I also want to add that this book and any others in its series will be out under my pen name “Rachel Calish.” As you can see, I’m not using the pen name to cover my identity, rather it’s to distinguish the two kinds of books that I write. Young adult is a very different genre than romantic paranormal, so I wanted to let readers decide for themselves if they want to read in both genres rather than assuming that someone who loved Being Emily will automatically want to read my paranormal novels. What is the working title of your next book? The Demon Abraxas What genre does your book fall under? Romantic paranormal/urban fantasy What is the synopsis or blurb of your book? Having escaped the poverty and violence of her childhood, Ana thought she didn’t have room for any more inner demons until she met one who knew more about being human than she did. Ana Koury knows there’s more to life

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December 23, 2012
In Book News & Events

My book is available

By Rachel Gold

My novel became widely available this week! Now I get to put into practice all that book marketing stuff I've been reading the last few years. If you haven't seen it yet, here's the basic info about my novel and where to find it: Being Emily is first young adult novel to tell the story of transsexual girl from her perspective. It’s a story for anyone who has ever felt that their inside and outside don’t match and no one else will understand. You can read an excerpt on the publisher’s site http://blog.bellabooks.com/2012/06/being-emily-by-rachel-gold-now.html. And you can buy the book there or on Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Being-Emily-Rachel-Gold/dp/1594932832 or on Barnes & Noble http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/being-emily-rachel-gold/1104889199. For an eBook you can use in most eReaders, click here: http://www.bellabooks.com/9781594932830e-prod.html.

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June 26, 2012