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ANNOUNCEMENT: Lace and Blade 4 Anthology

Lace and Blade 4

QSFer Heather Rose Jones has a story in a new FF Fantasy anthology (mixed straight/queer):

A decade ago, readers thrilled to the debut of a new series of elegant, romantic fantasy stories. Now there is a new volume, brimming with tales that enchant and delight. Here are stories of love and betrayal, of alchemy and swordplay, of lovers lost and found, of dreams denied and fulfilled — from the secret heirs of Alexander the Great to a bard who sings traumatized dragons back to sanity to an African girls’ cricket team to an American patriot on the eve of the Revolutionary War, from the rooftops of Victorian Paris to 17th Century India to imaginary but no less vivid lands and characters who will whisper to you of sweet, sweet dreams long after the final page is turned.

Table of Contents:

  • “At the Sign of the Crow and Quill,” by Marie Brennan
  • “On the Peacock Path,” by Judith Tarr
  • “Sunset Games,” by Robin Wayne Bailey
  • “Sorcery of the Heart,” by Lawrence Watt-Evans
  • “The Butcher’s Boy and the Piri Folk,” by Pat MacEwen
  • “Gifts Tell Truth,” by Heather Rose Jones
  • “A Sword for Liberty,” by Diana L. Paxson
  • “Hearts of Broken Glass,” by Rosemary Edghill
  • “The Game of Lions,” by Marella Sands
  • “The Sharpest Cut,” by Doranna Durgin
  • “Pawn’s Queen,” by India Edghill
  • “The Heart’s Coda,” by Carol Berg
  • “The Wind’s Kiss,” by Dave Smeds

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Excerpt

From “Gifts Tell Truth” by Heather Rose Jones:
 
In The Mystic Marriage, Vicomtesse Jeanne de Cherdillac tells another character, ‘I have loved—truly loved—only four women. One of them is dead. One never found the courage to say either yes or no. You were the third.’ When I wrote those words, I knew relatively little about those first two women, but I had the first inkling that Jeanne might have some interesting stories to tell. This is not the story of either that first or second love, but of the time between them when grief and regret had not yet been replaced by archness and a cultivated sophistication. 
 
Jeanne selected a card and tossed it carelessly onto the others, then shrugged as Arpik, sitting at her right, swept them up. His partner, an older Frenchman, now led with a seven. Sweat glistened on the forehead of Captain Delville opposite her. A face appeared over his shoulder. The newcomer must have entered the card room on the heels of the drinks, otherwise Jeanne thought she would have noticed him earlier.

Rikerd Chanturi had the sort of lean dark features she had once found attractive. A face that would look well above a crimson Alpennian cavalry uniform—indeed, report had it that he’d worn one at the battle of Tarnzais. No one in Rotenek wore those colors now except men too ancient to fear French reprisals and willing to bear Prince Aukust’s more pro forma disapproval. That had been the price of the tenuous peace, a hair’s-breadth this side of surrender: Prince Aukust would do the French emperor’s bidding and in return would keep the illusion that he still ruled Alpennia.

Chanturi was not the only man rumored to have exchanged his colors for a less public commission. Tonight he wore a dark suit of burfroi sobriety and watched the play with an intensity that might have supported those rumors if he were turning his gaze on secret correspondence rather than the card table.

Captain Delville was too fixed on his cards to realize his hand was under scrutiny, betraying his inexperience. As he began to choose a card, the newcomer reached down and stopped him, tapping the card’s neighbor instead. It was the worst breach of etiquette—one that would have meant harsh words or even drawn swords in the gentlemen’s clubs on the Peretrez. But French officers were not welcome on the Peretrez.

Jeanne’s partner looked up, wavering between affront and relief. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced, citizen.”

Author Bio

Heather Rose Jones is writing a historic fantasy series with swordswomen and magic set in the alternate-Regency-era country of Alpennia. She blogs about research into lesbian-like motifs in history and literature at the Lesbian Historic Motif Project [http://alpennia.com/lhmp/about]  and writes both historical and fantasy fiction based on that research. She has a PhD in linguistics, studying metaphor theory and the semantics of Medieval Welsh prepositions, and works as an industrial failure investigator in biotech.

Book Links

Bella Books: http://www.bellabooks.com/Bella-Author-Heather-Rose-Jones-cat.html

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Heather-Rose-Jones/e/B00ID2LQE6

Social Media:

Website: http://alpennia.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/heatherosejones

Facebook (author page): https://www.facebook.com/Heather-Rose-Jones-490950014312292/

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