Two Bluestockings

Bela Gary is the writer of The Midlife Crisis of A Perfect Woman . She agreed to an interview with us the week that we reviewed her book. These are her answers as she sent them to us.  Aarika: Do you try to be original or to deliver to readers what they want?  Bela: My work is definitely original because I don’t follow a certain formula, nor create to make anyone else happy. I create for myself (have for years!), for the sake of creation (you should read Srinivasan Rao’s book, An Audience of One— an amazing read!). Not that I don’t want people to enjoy my book, I know that not everyone will, but I definitely want it to resonate with some and perhaps help them lean and grow...When you create to please others, creation loses its impact and meaning. The whole idea of following a formula and routine is not appealing. Aarika: What advice do you have for other writers? Bela: Write without fear, from the heart, without judgment. Meditate, dream, and live and write about those experie...

     Maureen Morrissey is the author of Woven: Six Stories, One Epic Journey . In this novel, you watch the history of a family unfold from the great-grandparents to the fourth generation. Morrissey says in the author's note that this was her 2020 project that she wrote during the COVID-19 pandemic.      Morrissey obviously is a history buff. I learned some things about World War Two that I didn't know like: a group of nurses crashed in the mountains and had to hike nine weeks to reach their destination and the Japanese actually put together prison camps that were equally as horrible as some of the camps in Germany.      The book is divided into two parts: his and hers. The "His" stands for Cam's story and the "Hers" stands for Tessa's story. The story begins with Cam's great-grandfather who fled to the United States to escape the Irish potato famine and threads down through the generations to Cam's grandfather who was the first in his family...

    T he Venom Protocols  by John Murray McKay is a fast-paced novel about a female assassin. From his work, you can see that McKay is influenced by Marvel Comics, which he says that he loves in his GoodReads profile.       Charlotte Corday is hiding out in Hawaii, running from her past as a hitwoman for the mafia in New York. When a well-dressed man shows up to demand that she complete one last mission, the reader drops into her disorienting past. From her first (albeit involuntary kill) to her attempt to flee from the wicked men trying to control her, Charlie checks every box for a badass heroine. She's funny. She's dangerous. (Basically, she's as if Venom--from the Marvel movie--mixed with Jason Bourne. It's a wild but fascinating combo.)      My first gripe with the book is that McKay calls cookies biscuits. Or at least, that's what I assumed--and Aarika confirmed. One character bakes these "biscuits" badly, which is a running joke i...