Mystery Grab Bag Ace Fiction Month

So, as planned, this is the last month I plan to do this ‘ace fiction from [publisher/publishing platform] month’ thing. The them for this month is:

MYSTERY GRAB BAG!

Great, so what books are you going to review?

It’s a mystery! EDIT: It’s not a mystery anymore because the month is over, and you can see a list of all of the reviews I posted this month here:

This Song Is (Not) for You by Laura Nowlin
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
Clariel by Garth Nix
Kindred Spirits by Katharine Eliska Kimbriel
Seven Ways We Lie by Riley Redgate
Deadly Sweet Lies by Erica Cameron
Mindtouch by M.C.A. Hogarth

It’s never been a mystery before.

Well, I did not quite announce it in advance for the the novel(las) I reviewed for Asexual Awareness Week in October. By even that was predictable once one saw the first few titles.

So why aren’t you announcing it in advance?

Because I want to do something different this month?

Also, though I have a pretty good idea which books I’m going to review this month, I am not entirely sure, for three reasons:

1) I am not sure how many ace fiction books I will manage to read before the end of the month.
2) There are a couple books which I suspect might have an ace content rating of ‘zero’ and if I discover it is so I want to be able to quietly not review them.
3) There is one book which I suspect I may not be able to get my hands on in time.

Aha, I get it, you put a hold on Every Heart a Doorway at the library, but you’re not sure when it will become available to borrow.

Shush! It’s supposed to be a mystery! UPDATE: I got the book much earlier than I expected.

And isn’t one of those novels which you suspect has an ace content rating of ‘zero’ a NOVEL YOU HAVE ALREADY READ???!!!

Yes. However, it has been almost twenty years since I read that novel, and when I read it I did not really have a clue about asexuality, so it is entirely possible that I completely disregarded its ace content at the time. I was really surprised when I first saw it appear on lists of ace fiction, because I thought ‘hey wait a minute, I’ve read that! I don’t remember much about it, but I read it!’ Astonishingly, even though it has been so long since I’ve read it, it was really easy to find my old copy of it, which is convenient.

Can you give us any more hints about what is in your MYSTERY GRAB BAG?

Well, there is nothing from LGBTQ+ publishers. I think it is fantastic that Less Than Three Press, Dreamspinner Press / Harmony Ink Press, and Riptide Publishing have published a significant amount of ace fiction, but right now, I am saturated with the type of ace fiction the LGBTQ+ small publishers put out, and want to read ace fiction from other kinds of publishers.

Will you FINALLY review ace fiction from a mainstream publisher?

Yes, I will. Even though I am not completely sure of the list, I can say that I will review at least one novel published by an independent publisher, at least one novel published by a mainstream publisher, and at least one self-published novel.

Is it too late to offer suggestions?

It’s almost too late? I will accept recommendations of ace fiction to read in general (not necessarily this month), and if multiple books on my tentative list fall through for whatever reason, I might pull from a suggestion to make a last-minute substitution, but … yeah.

Anyway, I look forward to the quirkiest month of ace fiction yet!

Only you would consider the month which includes mainstream fiction to be the ‘quirky’ one.

After reading a pile of ace fiction published by LGBTQ+ publishers and a self-publishing platform, yeah, the mainstream stuff starts to look like the quirky stuff.