#divinity 36

Read some pretty great books in March, and there's a few I'm still reading that I hope to finish in April!

I was able to continue some series that I've been reading, such as The Murderbot Diaries and Kushiel's Legacy. I also finally finished the Imperial Radch trilogy!

- House of Sky and Breath by Sarah J Maas (partial re-read, Partial re-read, very good, kept wanting to read more, didn’t cry but felt the Emotions, friendship! Connected much more to some characters this time around)

- Divinity 36 by Gail Carriger (Good, engrossing, very emotional, lots of heart at its core, enjoyed it more as I continued reading)

- This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (thank you Bigolas Dickolas for the push to finally read this book! Loved the audiobook, beautiful, not as confusing as I’d feared, loved how their relationship developed, the prose and metaphors and language…)

- Traveller's Joy by Victoria Goddard (Good, emotional, heartwarming, some sadness and dramatic irony, friendship!)

- Kushiel's Chosen (finally got to the second book, and it didn't disappoint! So good, kept binging it, so emotional and philosophical, heartbreaking at parts, loved it even more than book one)

- Network Effect by Martha Wells (so good and readable, Murderbot my beloved, loved seeing the characters and their relationships and Three, Murderbot being rescued!!!!)

New book. New book! NEW BOOK!

DIVINITY 36

Coming June 1, 2023

The most fun I’m having with this cover is when I show it to people it always reminds them of something specific. My mum said "the intro credits to the David Suchet Poirot mystery series" (she's a devout cozy mystery fan). Beret Black Pudding said Jodi Taylor's Time Police spinoff series. A couple friends have said Metropolis. One chirrup subscriber said "an advertisement for a Busby Berkeley performance."

The State of the Gail: Gossip Session

I sat down with my fans to discuss how things are going in Gail Land.

 I keep talking about my newsletter/the Chirrup that is here. 

The audiobooks under discussion:

Divinity 36  

Demigod 12

Dome 6 is coming soon, Chirrup will have more details! 

Lippy: Revlon ColorStay Crayon in 009 Ruffled Feathers

Events and teas and bookstores and all the things to do with launching DIVINITY 36 into the world.

Being a total dork with my new book: Divinity 36.

In the office in front of all my other books.

You may or may not have already noticed that I love research and I tend to do a ton for my books (even though they’re fiction). Tinkered Starsong is particularly meaty because while it is a cozy warm hug of a scifi with tons of found family, it also deals with some seriously high concepts, for example:

The nature and power of art.

The damage done by parasocial relationships & celebrity obsession.

Soup ladles.

Divinity 36 is loosely based on the idea of a survival show entertainment competition, like American Idol or The Voice. Only the competition is about creating a whole group, so I guess more like Produce 101 or Boys Planet out of South Korea.

And now, without further ado..

10 Most Interesting Things Researched for Divinity 36

Synesthesia

The language of colors

Color meets motion interfaces as media art installations (of the kind portrayed in Color Rush) & similarly, permanent museum sensory experiences like those at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA

For galactic bureaucracy reasons I needed to know how refugees were classified and treated here on Earth, so I found this article on Different Types of Refugees: Why They Flee. Since stateless doesn’t work on a galactic level I had to invent a new term. You’ll have to read Divinity 36 to learn what I came up with.

Aestheticism

All In The Mind podcast: Hacking humans – social engineering & the power of influence

Freakonomics Radio podcast: 521. I’m Your Biggest Fan! – unsurprisingly mostly about sports teams since that’s where the research is focused, but a lot of the conclusions can be applied to something like Kpop fandoms or Harry Potter houses or personality tests

Hallyu or The Korean Wave (한류) – a cultural phenomenon in which the global popularity of South Korean popular culture has dramatically risen since the 1990s

Social identity theory – “Social identity is the portion of a person’s self-concept that is derived from their perceived membership in a relevant social group (e.g., political party, sports team, music group fandom) and is motivated by both a need to self-enhance and reduce feelings of uncertainty (Hogg, 2006, 2007, 2012).” ~ Jessica Tomory for The Inquisitive Mind (source)

Imaginary friends and real-world consequences: parasocial relationships (YouTube video)

Yes Phex’s running and associated tricks/abilities are an adapted version of parkour. I used parkour videos and information sites when writing Crudrat (a decade ago), and since Phex also started out as a crudrat I gave him a similar skill set to Maura. But I’d already done that research so…

After the series ends, I will post a big appendices glossary extras blog post full of all the references and resources but I don’t want to be too spoilery, so these 10 is all you get for now.

Stay tuned, there are posts about playlists, inspirational songs, and the singers who informed the cantor characters in this series, including Phex, Missit, Kagee and more!

here’s me playing with my book cover and putting myself in a grace position, since clearly I should NEVER be cantor

More?

Here’s a playlist featuring some of the many videos I watched while researching these books

Pronunciation Guide for the Tinkered Starsong Books + Alien Linguistics

Sample That Tasty Book! Read the first chapter of Divinity 36, Gail Carriger’s Latest

Even more?

I invented a tea to go with Divinity 36! Divini-tea – heh heh 

2 cups boiling water + 1 teaspoon Taiwanese milk oolong + 2 whole dried butterfly pea flowers. Seep for 3 minutes. The butterfly pea turns it bright blue (and, to my pallet, doesn’t seem to affect flavor that much). It matches the cover perfectly and feels very scifi. (I used this teapot.) 

Adding milk will not change the color, but adding lemon will turn it purple.

Yours (destined to be earmarked by homeland security for researching the wrong thing),

Miss Gail 

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