I'm about a million years behind on this one but I just finished Francine Prose's Lives of the Muses. It's a very interesting book - pretty much perfect for anyone who likes their history in an eclectic manner and certainly for the folks who enjoy women's history. (I had a very regrettable women's history course in college. It seemed to consis primarily of all of us sitting around in a circle discussing how history was told from the wrong perspective and thus full of lies. I kept wondering where the part would start where we actually talked about real historical women but I must have missed that.) The most upsetting biography in the collection is poor Lizzie Siddal - she was pretty much doomed from the beginning but Dante Gabriel Rossetti sure didn't do much to save her. (And the grave robbing bit - ehhh!) As always I'm fascinated by Alice Liddell and Lewis Carroll. I love the Alice books (both of them) but can't get away from the thought that there was something creepy in his feelings for her. Katie Roiphe wrote a wonderful novel about Carroll and Alice a few years ago that I love, Still She Haunts Me. If you're an Alice fan it's a must read.

Coincidentally, I read Carol Goodman's new "literary thriller" The Ghost Orchid right after Muses. In Goodman's book there is also much talk of the muses although in this case they are talking about the original Greeks. It's a very creepy and well done mystery set at a writer's colony in Upstate New York. She had me on the edge of my seat for pretty much the whole book. I've been wanting to read her stuff for ages and still plan to get her other books. This one came to me via Jessa at Bookslut for review though, so I'll write about it probably for May. If your looking for something smart and quietly intense, this is the one to pick up. Consider yourself a major winner if you like writer's colonies and/or a bit of history thrown in. (If you are interested in the American spiritualist movement then you have the perfect book - again, oddly, I just finished writing about The Reluctant Spiritualist, the story of Margaret Fox, founder of the movement. Coincidences surround me today.)

I realized a couple of days ago that my decision to use a revolving first person voice in the YA urban fantasy wasn't working, so I need to go back and change to third person everywhere. Tedious work at best. I don't want to lose momentum though so I think I'll leave the changes until I'm in rewrite mode anyway and just start anew from where I'm at. That's easy for me and it keeps me going forward. I'm researching the missionary priests in early Canada right now (Jesuits, I believe) and also what dragons want (they always seem surrounded by gold in the old stories, and also get virgin sacrifices - not sure why). How do you mix Jesuits and dragons? Very carefully friends, very carefully.

Paradise showed up today, the fictionalized story of early Canadian immigrant Margaret de La Rocque. More coincidences I'm sure, but very cool to get my hands on. Expect to hear more about this title soon.