5 Things I love About HBO’s The Gilded Age (And one thing I’m on the fence about…)
I binge-watched HBO’s The Gilded Age (created by Julian Fellowes of Downton Abbey fame) over the past couple weeks, and I have thoughts: I LOVED IT!
Set against post-collapse/far-future, soft-apocalypse, and fully imaginary backdrops, my novels are best described as speculative fiction with a romantic twist. I love to explore the roles of young women in various societies, especially those that could emerge here on Earth after a complete global collapse. No matter the setting, my heroines always find ways to challenge their roles and societal expectations, and though they all fall in love (and are often conflicted in love), they don’t let their relationships define them.
We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.
– Jane Austen
Love, friendship, family, belonging, home, secrets, conflicting worlds, and finding magic in the everyday are some of the recurring themes in my novels. My favorite tropes are: secret identity, stuck together, forced proximity, found family, childhood friends to romance, enemies to romance, forbidden romance, lost heir, beauty and the beast, sunny vs grumpy, and time travel. Also: I’m a sucker for love triangles. Sorry! (Not sorry!) Although there are consummated love scenes, they are not explicit in detail. However, the suggested reading age is 17 and up.
Speculative fiction is an umbrella term for genres like sci-fi, fantasy, and supernatural fiction. It includes subgenres such as post-apocalyptic, dystopian, far-future, steampunk, and urban fantasy. These genres and subgenres explore imagined worlds and circumstances that are very different from our own, but often in ways that reflect or parallel life in our world.
How many times have you noticed that it’s the little quiet moments in the midst of life that seem to give the rest extra-special meaning
– Fred Rogers