Release the Chickens! Part 3 of 4

The third part of the episode sees Bruce and sharon continuing to share their current reads, such as the Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison among others.. 

Things that get mentioned: https://www.katherineaddison.com/books https://www.kensingtonbooks.com/author/tessa-harris/ https://douglasstarr.com https://redwombatstudio.com https://nicolagriffith.com

This episode was recorded August 25, 2022.

Join authors Sharon Skinner and Bruce Davis as they record the next episode of their Brick Cave Podcast. Covering a wide gamut of literary topics, you are sure to find the listen an engaging and entertaining event.

About Sharon Skinner

Sharon Skinner is the author of numerous books and a number of short stories, including the Tavara Tinker Series. Her most recent title, The Exile's Gift, is available now from Brick Cave Media. She is online at https://sharonskinner.com or https://bookcoachingbysharon.com

About Bruce Davis

Bruce Davis is the author of many books and several short pieces of fiction. He writes science fiction, fantasy and non fiction. His most recent title, Silver Magic, is currently available from Brick Cave Media. He is online at https://brucecdavis.com

About Brick Cave Media®

The Brick Cave Podcast is ©2024 Brick Cave Media LLC., all rights reserved. for more information on Brick Cave Media, visit the organization's website at https://brickcave.media. The Brick Cave Membership Community is called the BC Book Club, and you can join at http://bcbookclub.com.

Wanna Hear Their Thoughts on YOUR first Page?

First Words is the segment of the show where Bruce and Sharon each select the first page of someone’s work, read it on air, and discuss it with feedback.

You can submit your first manuscript page to have them read it during the show, learn more here:

https://brickcave.media/index.php/brick-cave-podcast/about-the-podcast

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You know, happen to live on these islands, but these are

(00:03):
real people who have different concerns than city folk. And
a little bit different cultural Yeah. Aspects. Yeah. Yeah. So it was it was a
fun read. That was a lot of fun. I mentioned previously the Goblin
Emperor. Yes. You did. I talked about that.
And I enjoyed it but I was glad I also had it as

(00:23):
an audiobook that I could listen to simultaneously because it taught me how to
pronounce a lot of these very weird naming conventions. Yeah. That's what you were saying
that the naming conventions were a big part of the
culture. Yes. And you had to wrap your brain around that and really
And in that sense, the world building and the cultural aspect was
brilliant. The plot was a little straightforward

(00:47):
and predictable. Okay. And I actually want
now when a book wants me leaving more, I
guess that's a good thing. Right. From what I can
tell, the subsequent books aren't going into things that I wanna know
more about. Although, she does take one of her more interesting characters and makes it
into gives him his own narrative. Right. But I also

(01:09):
kinda wanna find out about some of these other characters that I hope she
goes back and delves She goes back. Yeah. Yeah.
I got into books by Tessa Harris.
And these are set in the, in
Britain in the early 18

(01:31):
eighties So historical fiction? Or It's historical murder
mystery. It's what it is. But they're
they focus on an American who expat who's
in London and is an
anatomist. So in those in those days, that was not always a
reputable trade. He teaches at the medical school. He's a very

(01:53):
young man, and he's gotten a very prestigious position for his
age. But he's using
what we would consider modern forensics to solve these murder mysteries,
except this is, you know, very, very basic.
This is the early days of of even anatomy, much less
forensic science. Right. And so he's using,

(02:16):
a a knowledge of herbs and and
plants and his knowledge of anatomy and poisons
to try to solve these mysteries.
The dead shall not rest was a was a particularly good one because
it deals with historical people.
And and there was a very unfortunate man,

(02:40):
John Hammersmith, who was a who
probably had pituitary giantism. Oh,
okay. So he's the Irish giant. Mhmm. He
was only in his early twenties. He died before his 30th birthday because
of Right. Hormonal difficulties. But he's being exploited,
and he was shamelessly exploited by

(03:02):
promoters and then ultimately fell in with a,
an anatomist in the London Schools who wanted to study
him. Promised him get a got him away from the carnival
scene, But really then just exhibited him to a higher
class guy until Mhmm. To pay for his own experiments.
So, yeah, it's they're interesting. You like that.

(03:25):
I do have a recommendation for you if you haven't read it, The Killer of
Little Shepherds. And I don't remember who wrote it, but it's the
birth of forensics in, and the
that era and how that progressed. So I highly recommend
that if you're into that sort of thing that you look at that one. We'd
pick that one up. So that's that's about it. I read some fun stuff,

(03:48):
you know, some fanfic from I don't wanna call it
fanfic. I guess it's tie in fiction for Firefly. Oh, okay.
That was fun. Well, let's see. The my most
the most recent things I read this summer that I really enjoyed were Nettle and
Bone by T Kingfisher. Working my way through.
I just there's something about that dark

(04:11):
fantasy aspect and the twists that they put on it.
And I we'll talk about it when you're done reading it then because we won't
talk about that tonight. When you're done reading it, I wanna have a conversation with
you about that. I also read Hilled by Nicola
Griffith, which is about Saint Hilled, and
it's, she took some license to fill in some of the blanks,

(04:32):
but she used a lot of authentic records and historic,
historical documents to kind of piece together the life of
this young woman. And it
was dense because it's historical fiction,
but it was fascinating to me because it
was that era

(04:55):
when the isles the British Isles were shifting
from, paganism and into
more of, the Christianity and that overlap
and how the the kings were convinced to do that by the priests
and the how the priests were a communication network
because they could write and send messages. But even

(05:18):
more than that, it was all about the women's side of things and
the the work that they did and how they operated,
and, you know, they they ran the wool trade and the weaving
and the dyeing and, you know, they managed the household. What is this time frame?
So this would have been, I wanna say

(05:41):
gosh. Now you're gonna nail me to the floor, but I wanna say 600.
Okay. So before the Viking incursions?
Around the around yeah. Right. Right. Before
that. When when the English were called the English
and the Right. And and the Welsh were considered,
there was another name for the Welsh and, you know, that sort of thing. So

(06:03):
it was that era before. Yeah. This is
before, really, the establishment of the the 4
main English kingdoms, Anglo Saxon
kingdoms that It was around that time. Yeah. I should read that. Yeah. So
fascinating book, and I guess there's more. So, I'm
looking forward to reading more of that. Have to look that one up. So it's

(06:24):
called Hilled by, Nicola Griffith. I I
also read, The Grim Rose Girls by
Laura Paul, which is about a
school where girls are dying, and
they're the reason that they're dying is because they are somehow tied to fairy tales.
So that was a really interesting twist on taking

(06:46):
the fairy tales and then twisting them around
into and and how these girls were dying, and then they have to
solve the mystery of why that's happening. So that was I enjoyed that. And
then I also read Amari
and the Night Brothers by Bebe Alston, which is a middle
grade. I I've heard of this one. Yeah. It was good.

(07:09):
It was it was different. It was good. I
it's a girl whose brother disappears because he become he
starts to work for the magic, basically,
the underground. They're not the underground, but they run all the magic and they hide
all the magical beings and, you know, that sort of thing. And they're in charge
of all that, and he was one of their top agents, and he disappears.

(07:32):
And then she gets kind of brought into that.
So I enjoyed that. I thought it was a fun
adventure. It was different. It was it was refreshing.
And the last one I I wanna talk about is,
Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas Mhmm. Which is
a kind of a twist on the Peter Pan story.

(07:55):
And while, you know, I liked Cemetery Boys better,
which is also an Aiden Thomas book, I I enjoyed Cemetery Boys better.
I I just really engaged with it more deeply.
I still enjoyed Lost in the Never Woods, and I
liked the twist. All and the darkness of the twist
really surprised me at the end of the book. So I I do recommend it

(08:18):
for anybody who's a Peter Pan person or who likes that kind of
stuff because, you know, I wrote Lost and Found,
which takes elements of Peter Pan, and so I really wanted to read this book.
So I've been kind of finding some of these books that are those books. You
keep telling me lost and found this Peter Pan, but it's Oliver. It's
well, it's both. It's it's it's Peter Pan, Oliver

(08:41):
Twist, and steampunk. It's all kinda mashed together. Oliver elements
just come through to me much more strongly than I mean, other than your little
mechanical fairy. I yeah. I mean,
yes. I love quacks, but Yeah. You know, this is
Oliver. I mean, it's just, you know. It it is in so many ways.
Even from the opening scene, I know. But I I loved writing that book. So

(09:03):
and I didn't wanna adhere too closely to the Peter Pan
elements, but I wanted to use the the
elements that included Klax and some of the
other details that we put in in the steampunk. I wanted to include that
those as part of it. So, yeah, that was a lot of fun to write.
So those are the things that I've been reading. I did

(09:26):
read one other thing. I I read a
memoir called Bomb Shelter by Mary Laura
Philpott. It's bomb shelter, love time, and other explosives,
and I really, really
engaged with this particular book. It starts
with her son having a

(09:49):
a seizure, and then it follows through what their family
had to go through and deal with around,
his medical condition and him wanting to play sports and
having to deal with all of these different things because he