Words on Paper

Another in an occasional series of posts about literature and what I'm reading and other things.

I've been a little obsessed with superheroes lately. I have George R. R. Martin's Wild Cards series to blame. I went to the library recently with the intention of finally reading the Game of Thrones series. It was completely checked out, but the cover for Fort Freak, the most recent collection of the Wild Cards short stories, jumped out at me, and the summary sealed the deal.

 

I was hooked from the start. In this world that the various authors have created and kept growing, a super-virus is unleashed on 1946-era New York City by a race of aliens. The virus has a 90% mortality rate for those infected (referred to as "Black Queens"). Those who survive become what are called jokers, deuces, or aces. In the case of jokers, they are typically deformed and may posses no powers or minimal abilities. Deuces are aces, but typically have powers that aren't very consequential. The true aces are the new super heroes...and sometimes the super villains as well. I read the two newest Wild Cards novels in reverse order, although since I started at the end I'll be working my way back to the beginning anyway.

Piggybacking off of that, I bought Austin Grossman's Soon I Will Be Invincible, which tells the parts of the superhero story we rarely see. I'm not very far into it, but I am enjoying it so far.

 What I'm Reading Now: Or, Books To Be Put On Hold Until Further Notice

However, I will be setting this one (and the rest of my reading list) aside for a little while while I take part in the Worlds Without End 'Women of Genre Fiction' 2013 reading challenge. This is an attempt on my part to not only read more female authors, but also to shake up the comfort zone a little while I get some writing practice in. It's a long list, full of veterans and freshmen alike, and I've read a handful already - most notably, Gail Carriger, Cherie Priest, and Lauren Beukes, who, as anyone who knows me at all can tell you, are writers I try to recommend to everyone I know like some kind of back alley book-pusher. "Hey, psst. You like Steampunk? I got that. Future-tech-dystopian, too."

There seem to be a lot of supernatural type story lines represented, with no small amount of that skirting the erotica sub-genres. Enh...I don't know if I'm ready to push that particular envelope as a reader. I've only picked nine of my twelve options, and I'm planning on heading out to the library tomorrow to see which of the books I have listed to start with are available.

I also have other things on the table - various art and writing projects, two back-to-back online classes that are for fun and not for profit, the new experience of being a beta reader, and trying to help my husband plan and execute his own creative endeavors. As such, for the rest of summer and well into the fall, as the French would say, "Le plate, she is full."