Cozy Fantasy - One Day Deal

It's the Cozy Up With Fantasy book blast today!

TODAY ONLY, you can get more than 70 cozy fantasy books, from all different authors, for only 99 cents each (USD). This book blast includes cozy fantasy of all types, whether it’s set in our world or a fantasy world, monster romance or gaslamp fantasy or isekai, high heat or closed door. The only connecting factors are 1. magic 2. cozy vibes, so there's definitely something for everything.

My own offering is Bespoke and Bespelled, a cozy urban fantasy romance and the first in my Movie Magic series. Browse the full lineup at CozyUpWithFantasy.com!

Marnie Taylor, stitch-witch and costume supervisor, my beloved.

One of my favourite essayists, Nadine Hura, started a bunch of collaborative zines moving around the country. The one that I got - built into the cover of an old copy of Barchester Towers - offered "songs that you always secretly believed were about you" as a prompt (though was also very clear that there were no rules when it came to zining).

I cannot draw, and felt little inclination to write, but I saw "lipstick" as a suggested material, and that, plus the prompt, spawned this:

Right hand page: Lip prints in a variety of colours form a background to a sketched coffee cup from which steam is rising and resolving into lipstick clouds. Text below reads "I HAD SOME DREAMS they were clouds in my coffee". Left page: a single lip print and below it a printed label in the style of an art gallery reading: Karen Healey, b.1981. YOU'RE SO VAIN. 2025. Pencil, lipstick, eyeliner, eyebrow pencil, eye shadow on graph paper."

I do not actually think "You're So Vain" is about me, but I've always liked the line about "clouds in my coffee". And women are constantly accused of vanity when they wear makeup or, conversely, of "not caring enough" about their appearance if they don't. So here is vanity as dream, as art, as counter-culture, because in my 40s my driving goal is to do what I want (relatively easy) and care less about what anyone thinks of that (relatively horrendously difficult).

I put on every lipstick I own to make this, one after another, and by the time I was done the washcloth I was using to wipe my mouth between applications looked like a work of art in itself. I also got to put an eyeliner that was no good as an eyeliner to excellent use as a pastel crayon. Then I sent the whole package off to its next recipient. All hail the 'zine!

I have mentioned before that everyone in my family is roughly 300 times more sporty than I am, and as further evidence I present that one of my brothers and my sister recently completed (respectively) 50k and 100k runs. I was very impressed, perhaps even more so because my favourite sport is non-competitive video games.

My other brother is currently competing in the New Zealand Special Olympics National Summer Games. His event is ten pin bowling, and he competes in both teams and pairs.

I got to attend the opening ceremony, and it was about seventy percent a stirring celebration of the passion and dedication of the athletes, and about thirty percent lengthy speeches by people who didn't need to be making speeches.

(The inclusion of Louise Upston, the Minister for Disability Issues, was particularly baffling, given that in New Zealand she is mostly famous for cutting funding and services for people with disabilities and losing the trust of disability community members. She rolled out some rhetoric on including people with disabilities in the community and the workplace, which would have been terrific if anyone there thought she'd put her money where her mouth was. The supporters in the stands were notably unimpressed. I did not applaud.)

But even for a decidedly agnostic sports person, the verve of some 1200 athletes gathered to compete across ten sporting codes was electrifying. I teared up a little bit when the athlete representatives took their oaths - "Kia toa ahau. Ki te kore ahau e toa, kia māia ahau ahakoa ka hinga/Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt." I teared up again when the torch reached the stage, greeted by haka and rapturous cheering, and lit the Olympic flame.

My brother is staying in the Games Village, so I'll only see him at his events. I'm super proud of him. He is part of something special.

That Healey Girl is the newsletter of Karen (or Kate) Healey, a romance and speculative fiction author who lives in Ōtautahi, New Zealand and shakes plots loose by wandering along the river. Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you think might like it!