First things first: having found my head rolling around on the floor and screwed it back on to my shoulders, I’m ready to announce the winner of the MNC release contest! By the high-tech randomization method of rolling a die — what? I’m a gamer — the copy of Paradox #12 goes to archangl23. Send me your address at marie dot brennanATgmail dot com, and I’ll send you the magazine!

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Second: there’s a new interview with me, this time over at the urban fantasy community “Fangs, Fur, and Fey.” We mostly talk about Midnight Never Come, but also about urban fantasy more broadly.

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Two more reviews in . . .

Karen at SF Signal gives it three stars, calling it “An excellent story full of political machinations and historical accuracy.” I’ll note in passing that I’m pleased by how my prose seems to be coming across; I’m sure there are people who will find it off-puttingly archaic, but for the most part I appear to have hit the target I aimed at — namely, to suggest the period without being impenetrable.

(Now, can I keep doing that?)

Robert Thompson at Fantasy Book Critic also liked it. Pull-quote: “a seductive blend of historical fiction, court intrigue, fantasy, mystery and romance.”

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Also, two interesting news developments about the Elizabethan period. First, it seems that archaeologists have found a fabulously well-preserved shipwreck from the period. (Is that the fault of my characters? You decide!) And Slate has a piece on a controversial decision to excise a poem called “The Lover’s Complaint” from the Shakespearean canon, and to add a new one —

“To the Queen”

As the dial hand tells o’er
The same hours it had before,
Still beginning in the ending,
Circular account still lending,
So, most mighty Queen we pray,
Like the dial day by day
You may lead the season on,
Making new when old are gone
That the babe which is now young
And hath no use of tongue
Many a Shrovetide here may bow
To the empress I do now,
That these children of these lords
Sitting at your council boards,
May be grave and aged seen
Of her that was their fathers’ queen.
Once I wish this wish again,
Heaven subscribe it with Amen.

If you come across any interesting Elizabethan news, do pass it along. It amuses me to read it through a lens of fiction.

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And progress goes apace on AAL. Mush!