Sylvia Spruck Wrigley

Sylvia Spruck Wrigley was born in Germany on the 7th of March 1968. She spent most of her childhood in Los Angeles but escaped at the end of the 1980s. After a few years of drifting, she moved to England where her accent was irretrievably damaged. She now splits her time between South Wales and the Costa del Sol.

Her new novella is Domnall and the Borrowed Child.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:

At the moment, I'm reading four books. This is problematic because I'm not really much for juggling. My reading pattern is usually serial monogamy but somehow I've ended up in a mess.

The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross
This is the first in the Laundry Files series and considered a novella although it seems to have the heft of a novel to me. The Laundry Files are a series of Lovecraftian spy thrillers told from the view point of a computer expert working for a secret department in the British intelligence organisation.

My son has devoured every book in the Laundry Files and has been recommending them to me for some time. We agreed on a recommendation trade: if he read Andy Weir's The Martian then I would read the first book in the series. He's done his bit (and gone to watch the film too) but I was only about a third of the way in when I got interrupted.

Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
Hopefully the Discworld needs no introduction. The Wee Free Men is the story that introduces Tiffany Aching, young witch who is tasked with saving her brother when he is kidnapped by the Queen of the Fairies. She gets by with some help from the Nac Mac Feegles.

I wrote an article about five books with bad-ass fairies and one of the books I chose was this one, because the Nac Mac Feegles are totally bad-ass. One of my proofreaders said he didn't think that the Nac Mac Feegles were fairies. So I bought an e-book version to make sure that I wasn't mis-remembering. I was right... they are specifically described as fairy when they first appear. I have to justify the purchase, though, so I have kept reading. I was almost done when I realised I was falling behind on other reading.

Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
This book is about Consuelo Ramos, a 37-year old American woman admitted into a mental hospital by her niece's pimp. I'm not far enough into the story to tell you much more than that, though.

I'm in a book club where each member gets the chance to nominate three books and then we all vote on which one is the book of the month for us to read. It's a great group with some very good discussions but it is getting a bit quiet. This is actually our October book and I haven't read it yet so I really need to get dug in.

Wings of Sorrow and Bone by Beth Cato
This is a novella, not a novel, so I should get caught up quickly. It's a tie-in story to the Clockwork Dagger world which a great steampunk series of adventure and magic. The novella follows a machinist named Rivka, rescued from the slums in The Clockwork Crown, who is struggling to fit in with proper society.

Buying new books at this point seems insane but Beth Cato's novella happened to come out the same day as mine, so it seemed like fate. This is the what I am actually reading right now but I'm sure I'll catch up on the whole pile soon!

Visit Sylvia Spruck Wrigley's website and Twitter perch.

--Marshal Zeringue