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How to Fake It in Society by KJ Charles is m/m historical romance about a dashing scoundrel and his sweet cinnamon bun of a target. It’s 1821. Titus Pilcrow makes paints for a living. He’s quiet, kindhearted, and seriously overworked. Abruptly inheriting a massive fortune courtesy of a dying elderly woman who is not about to let her murderous nephew inherit is both going to make his life easier and infinitely more complicated.

Enter Nicolas-Marc, Comte de Valois de La Motte. London Society believes he is the son of an infamous French noblewoman who stole a diamond necklace. In reality, Nico is an actor in an immense amount of debt with gangsters on his tail. His plan had been to marry a certain elderly woman, but someone beat him to the punch.

How to Fake It in Society by KJ Charles is m/m historical romance at its finest—featuring a con man and his target. The yearning! (Oh, the yearning.) Dealing with manners and societal expectations! The fascinating facts interwoven throughout! There are secrets and schemes, fashion and dastardly villains, and so much more. Did I mention the yearning? Or what happens when they give into said yearning? WHAT’S IT ABOUT It is 1821, and Titus Pilcrow, a simple seller of paints, finds himself suddenly bestowed with a great fortune. Titus becomes a target of every scammer in London...including one Nicolas-Marc, Comte de Valois de La Motte. When Titus offers Nico a space in his household, it's the perfect chance for Nico to exploit London's newest golden purse—until he falls in love with the man he needs to cheat.

This time it’s not my fault! The author lady herself put the idea in my head! ⬇

Only, those bright, wispy colours just don’t work for most KJ Charles books. And the butterflies in the original meant I pretty much had to pick The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal to do up romance cover style. It even had enough animals to replace the ones in the original…though they’re much less friendly animals. So I sacrificed the colour scheme in favour of keeping it closer to the tone of the book, but kept the very stereotypical romance novel composition. 

Here’s the full original cover, for comparison:

In response to all those articles about talking to women with headphones…

Someone always says it, whenever it comes up: “I guess I’m just not allowed to talk to anyone any more!” Well. Yes. It is my duty to inform you that we took a vote all us women and determined that you are not allowed to talk to anyone ever again. This vote is legally binding. Yes, of course, all women know each other, the way you always suspected. (Incidentally, so do Canadians. I’m just throwing that out there.) We went into the women’s room at the Applebee’s at the corner of 54 and all the others streamed in through the doors into that endless liminal space, a chain of humans stretching backward heavy skulled Neanderthal women laughing with New York socialites, Lucille Ball hand in hand with the Taung child. We sat around in the couches in the women’s room (I know you’ve always been suspicious of those couches) and chatted with each other in the secret female language that you always knew existed. Somebody set up a console– the Empress Wu is ruthless at Mario Kart and Cleopatra never learned to lose and a woman who ruled an empire that fell when the Sea People came and left no trace can use the blue shell like a surgical instrument. Eventually we took the vote. You had three defenders: your grandmother and your first-grade teacher and an Albanian nun who believes the best of everybody. Your mom abstained. It was duly recorded in the secret notebooks that have been kept under the couch in the Applebee’s since the beginning of recorded time. And then we went back to playing Mario Kart and Hoelun took off her bra and we didn’t think about you again except that I had to carry this message. So anyway good luck with that it’s just as you always said it was. Hush now, no talking

As a personal project I designed my own versions of the covers for the Society of Gentlemen books by KJ Charles! These have been in the works for a very long time so I’m excited to finally share them. Thank you KJ for this wonderful series and its characters! 

(Spoilers for A Seditious Affair) That feeling when you’ve been seeing someone for a whole year but you NEVER KNEW EACH OTHER’S NAMES. Then it turns out you’re enemies and now work is super awkward. And also the people who introduced you assumed you knew too and that’s why nobody said anything. Oh boy.

This book is a feelings rollercoaster each time I read it. Delightful angst and dramatic irony and sweetness.

My favourite book of the Society of Gentlemen series was ‘A Seditious Affair’ so it was about time I drew its featured lovers Dom and Silas. The whole series is worth checking out if you’re looking for Regency-era LGBT literature with gripping plot (and happy endings, important), but these two, THESE TWO. 

I got punched right in the heart. In a good and satisfying way, because I can’t resist a good love story where they’re on opposite sides of the law. Bonus points if they don’t KNOW that beforehand, like these idiots…

1. You have an enormous black dog which must be walked for four hours daily or it puts its excess energy to use in lighting witch-fires in awkward places. One day you were feeling a little ill, so you asked the unreliable narrator to walk the dog instead. The unreliable narrator faithfully walked the dog for four hours. It is a complete mystery as to why everything is on fire.

2. You hid under the grand staircase to escape that thing that was knocking at your window in the height of the storm. Now there is a ‘delivery failed’ notice on the mat. You are going to have to pick up your artisan cheeses from the local depot twenty miles away.

3. The malign spirit possessing you has lapsed on its ghastly rent, and as a consequence you have been re-possessed by a bailiff. It is somewhat alarming to be in the possession of a supernatural bailiff. Your body spends more time in the high court of the dead that you would like.

4. You came to this graveyard on the cliff over the sea at the dead of night with the intent of digging up the grave of your long-lost love, which you believe to contain the silver dagger that alone can settle her unquiet ghost. It is a stressful situation. You were never very good at numbers when stressed. You believe you may have taken twenty rather than thirty paces from the old yew tree and may in consequence have dug up a badger.

5. A dread raven has settled over your door, from which it hourly proclaims your doom. You made a plan to get rid of the raven. The raven network appears to have got hold of this plan, because another smaller raven turned up to perch on the shoulder of the first and proclaim its doom. Now a third, even smaller one has turned up. You have recursive ravens. There is probably a lot of doom about to come down.

6. Lacking a cellar, you have walled up your rival beneath your floorboards. Unfortunately your rival is a mouse and seems to be enjoying it down there. Will the cheese board will never be safe?

7. Now that they the have closed the refinery across the bay, the mist no longer descends over the high moor at night and as a consequence gruesome deeds cannot be done unnoticed. You have a huge to-do list of gruesome deeds. The local undertaker has started to call you up regarding supply chain issues.

8. You have been staring into this abyss for some considerable time. It is not gazing back. In point of fact it is ignoring you completely. It looks like you will be going home alone tonight.

“La sirena y el pescador,” Elisa Chavez.

Hey all! This poem is part of my chapbook Miss Translated, which I produced in a limited run as Town Hall Seattle’s Spring 2017 artist-in-residence. The main conceit behind this work is that to accurately portray my relationship with Spanish, I have to explore the pain and ambiguity of not speaking the language of my grandparents and ancestors. As a result, these poems are bilingual … sort of. Each one is translated into English incorrectly.

and something about…blood? and transformation?  oooh yikes.  she didn’t want legs in the spanish version did she.  and it was a painful process.

First, I should tell you my experience of reading this. I didn’t even look at the English at first, because I didn’t know that the mistranslation was the point, and of course I didn’t need it. So I read the whole poem in Spanish and thought it was really sad and moving. Then I looked at the English and my eyebrows went right up to my hairline. Why the hell would you translate it this way, I thought. 

Then I read the caption and realized that this is a genius way of demonstrating how translation into English can be an act of colonization and violence.

I would translate the first two lines as “The mermaid rose from the sea / To see the dry world.” They’re very neutral lines. She was curious about the dry world, so she went to check it out. That’s a very different connotation from the mistranslation, which tells you that the mermaid preferred the land to the sea.

The second two lines I would say mean “She found a fisherman on the beach / this beautiful fish without a net.” She’s the one with agency here, not the fisherman, and she thinks of herself as a free fish, unconstrained by a net, not as a fish without a home.

The next three lines by my lights read “She had a gleaming tail; scales / that covered her breasts, arms, and face / and a wake of lacy waves.” Again, it’s from her perspective, not the fisherman’s, and she thinks of herself as having a gleaming rather than oily tail, a lacy wake rather than a frothing one.

Next stanza: “The fisherman caught her by the tail / and cut it in half.” From her point of view, the fisherman has committed a sudden and senseless mutilation. Then he goes, “’Now,’ he said to her, ‘you have legs. / Why don’t you walk?’” It’s almost like an accusation. You have legs now, why don’t you just get up and walk?

My read on the next stanza is: “The mermaid began to sing to the sea / for aid, her blood transforming / the sand of the beach into rainbows.” The sea is her home, not the land, and she’s crying out to her home in pain as she bleeds.

Then the poem ends with “She sang to the fisherman, ‘I forgive you, I forgive you, I forgive you.’”

The reason this mistranslation is so brilliant is that it takes a story about a mermaid trying to forgive a man who’s committed senseless violence against her, and turns it into a story about a man who uplifts a woman to a better life out of the kindness of his heart. And the thing is, that’s exactly what happens to so many stories from colonized cultures when they’re adapted by the oppressor. Translation into English, and further the cultural language of the oppressor, can be an act of violence and erasure rather than one of respect.

So hey, this year is generally shit, but book-wise? INCREDIBLE. So I decided to do a tiny giveaway of the best books I’ve read this year so far <3

The gist is that two lucky followers can chose one of these books, and will receive ebook from me! Wish I could offer more, but alas, finances.

Rules are simple:

You need to be following me

You need to have Amazon account and have no problem giving me your email 

No giveaway blogs or some such

Both likes and reblogs count, but reblog only once please, it’s enough

You should be over 18 years of age, since most of these have sex scenes in them

Two people will be randomly chosen, after I contact them, they get to chose which book they want 

Im probably forgetting something but eh, just ask me if you have questions

RIGHT that what I was forgetting- the giveaway ends on 27th July!

Here’s what I’m offering:

Wanted, A Gentleman by KJ Charles

An Unseen Attraction by KJ Charles

An Unnatural Vice by KJ Charles

The Lawrence Browne Affair by Cat Sebastian

The Ruin of a Rake by Cat Sebastian

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Undertow by Jordan L. Hawk

Widdershins/Draakenwood by Jordan L. Hawk, depending on whether you’ve already started the series

KJ’s promotional graphic for Unnatural Vice :DD The last one is mine :DDD

Looking for Pride month reads? Pick up the LGBT+ Storybundle, including my gaslamp fantasy novel Death by Silver!