Not many people know the "lore" of Ink & Ether. Even fewer know what the turning point was that made me go from thinking about it, to doing it.

Walk with me back to 2025.

So I had lost my corporate job about a year after having my son. I had spent a year sending out resumes, applying for everything I could find, and I couldn't even get an interview for Walmart. I was working part-time at my local coffee shop and I was actually loving it. I had purpose, people cared about what I was doing and so did I. But part-time at an indie coffee shop leaves room for improvement financially.

One night after my son was asleep, my husband and I chatted before we inevitably dozed. I expressed my concern about finances and what it meant in the long run for our family. Ever the optimist my husband said I should do my own thing. Like a bookstore or something.

My internal critic immediately reacted I don't know anything about running a bookstore.

My husband is rarely dissuaded by my pessimism and this moment was no exception. But you like books and you read all the time. Such a generous observation, considering I'd rarely had time to brush my hair since having my son, let alone read a novel.

But he did make one good point.

Books and reading were one of the few constants in my life. Of all the hobbies that fell by the wayside throughout the years, books remained. Maybe I really should try to make a career out of something that meant that much to me. I know I could never get tired of reading. It's literally the dream to read all day, every day.

I gave myself a moment to allow the dream. What would I call it? Wouldn't it be cool if it was next door to the coffee shop? It would need to be something I could wholeheartedly enjoy being in every day. There are so many romance-only bookstores now, I can't do the same thing. How could I make something more me?

That was the moment it came to me, a fantasy bookstore, a pop-up to start out because funds were limited. A store with a backstory. Something fantasy worthy.

This is the story that motivated me that night and every day since. A story that needed to be brought to fruition and not allowed to fade by the light of day.

The Lore

There is a place where stories are kept safe—not lost, but guarded.

Ink & Ether is not located on any map, nor bound by bricks or borders. It exists between the folds of time and space, tucked in the breath between turning pages and fading dreams.

Some say it was created by a circle of bookwitches and scholar-priestesses—keepers of memory who refused to let the sacred voices of women be silenced. Others whisper that the shop found them, gathering seekers and scribes who could hear the call in their bones.

The storefront appears only to those who need it: a flicker in a foggy alley, a tent at twilight, a shadow between shelves at a market. It travels not by road, but by resonance—drawn to the curious, the quiet, the ones who listen.

Within its shelves lie tomes of power: cursed romances, whispered rebellions, folktales shaped like spells. Some books are new. Some are old enough to remember you. All are waiting.

Ink & Ether is not a business. It is a repository for the quietly enchanted, for those who seek truth, transformation, or simply a beautiful sentence to carry in their pocket like a charm.

You didn’t stumble upon us. You were summoned.

hi besties! i'm working on editing my youtube video for this weekend and thought i'd share some behind the scenes photos!! (daisy is helping, obviously)

i love filming library vlogs, it's fun to go to the library with a goal in mind, browse the shelves, and romanticize the relaxing environment. i used to drag my husband along with me on my library trips, and now i take you teehee

can't wait to share this one on saturday!

Hello All,

SNAIL MAIL CLUB IS BACK IN BUSINESS, baby! (Who can help me think of a cuter name)

Updates:

$5 members will continue to get mail August, October and December.

Beginning in October, Snail Mail Club will be moving to a monthly benefit for

$12 and $25 members only. ($25 slightly fancier, more handwritten items)

You must opt in each month in the sign up form, which you will receive as a Bindery email. If you do not opt in by the deadline, you will not receive the mail. You must be a paid member to receive benefits.

For August paid members.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdkaphYu-7JS2FZUYyr4WeS4yNiw05-8fEKdjeU6QtAUz0ePw/viewform?usp=publish-editor

FORM MUST BE FILLED OUT BY Saturday, August 1 at 4pm PST.

$5 members will receive mail from me

$12 members will receive mail + a few extras

$25 members will receive mail + a few extras (fancy pants)

All $12 and $25 members will receive a copy of this print, an art design by our very talented author (and artist LMFAOOOO) of some What Feeds Below creatures:

Okay, so I did NOT realize this book was going to be this wild!!

We have our main protagonist, who became deaf after getting sick when she was young. One thing I think this book does incredibly well is explore how Black communities sometimes navigate disability without making the story feel like a lecture or an obvious critique.

Our MFC's parents never learned sign language. Instead, they got her hearing aids when she started school and taught her that the world wasn't going to make accommodations for her disability, so she needed to learn how to navigate it.

And honestly...as a Black woman, I understand the complexity of that. It's already hard navigating the world as a Black person, but being Black and disabled adds another layer entirely. Sometimes it feels like there is no room to be vulnerable.

But also...they should have done better. They should have taken the time to support their child and learn ASL instead of placing the responsibility solely on her to be "strong" and adapt.

And I think that's a difficult conversation we sometimes have to have in the Black community. Sometimes the survival skills that helped previous generations navigate the world can unintentionally become the same things that prevent us from giving our children the support and softness they deserve.

What I love is that the author doesn't force the reader to view this through one specific lens. She just tells this character's story, and the commentary is there if you're willing to sit with it. Which I did lol 

Currently, our MFC is engaged to a man who is not treating her the way he should be. And his parents?! HORRIBLE. This book will have you wanting to jump into the pages and wring someone's neck.

What I was NOT expecting was our MMC.

Because this man is...a lot. 😂

He is confident, unapologetic, sexually liberated (this man is spicy friends), he's friends with illegal drag racers, and a successful business owner who truly does not care what people think of him.

And when I first found out about his lifestyle, I was genuinely shocked because the contrast between him and our MFC is so interesting.

We have this bubbly, sensitive Black woman who has spent so much of her life allowing people to overstep her boundaries.

And then we have this man who says exactly what he thinks, knows exactly who he is, and refuses to apologize for it.

This book has been the BEST surprise, and I'm so happy my Instagram audience picked it for me to read.

I'm about 50% through the audiobook, and I am addicted.

At first, the pacing was really fast, but then the author slowed things down and gave us time to truly understand both the MFC and MMC. That slower section was needed because now that we know these characters, the story is about to pick back up with some new information coming to light.

Anywho...what are y'all currently reading?

The votes are in, Fiction it is! This series was picked by our beloved Marcus

While Babel usually gets a lot of the attention when people talk about Kuang, the Poppy War Trilogy is an incredible series too. Instead of a fantasy world based on a European medieval setting, the Poppy War has a decidedly Eastern perspective. These differences create fascinating characters and situations that make the fantasy genre feel new again. Kuang has also created a difficult and sometimes unlikable main character whom you truly root for and care about, which is a near impossible task. I devoured this series. 

What should our next recommendation be?

1984 meets The Handmaid's Tale meets Blade Runner 2049. That's the best mashup I can think of for this book.

I flew through The Infinite State and I barely know how I managed it. The pacing was breathless and tense and nonstop, I really like Swan's writing style! I will wholly admit this is my first book by him, but man... what a banger to start with. This was clearly a poignant project he was passionate about that involved processing a lot of things all at once. It took risks, it was fun, and the characters were all difficult people in an impossible situation.

I love when a book can engage in political commentary without it feeling overburdened and I felt like Swan did a great job. For me, it occasionally felt hamfisted at parts but that's because I am very aware (too aware) of political systems and how they work - that was a Me problem not a Richard problem. For someone who has no foreknowledge, I think the explanations of fascism and democracy are fantastic. He made them conversational and didn't bulldoze you with a billion explainers on theory, he just gave very accessible overviews of what different political systems are and the fact that none of them are perfect. These explainers were essential, too, which sometimes books can forget about when we get too deep in the weeds. He gave readers as much theory as they needed to understand the Empire's threat and the reasons Gabriel was an important project.

I loved the atmosphere Swan included in this book, too. The dreary landscapes of the Empire juxtaposed with the humid, colorful Gabriel was a great visual and even before he described Gabriel in such a way I was already seeing it in that palette. One thing he did well, though, which I think is both hard to do and uncommon to see is the threat of a concept. It's challenging to get the sense of threat in a fascist state translated into a fictional book - let alone a fictional space book - because there's no one singular threatening enemy. Books tend to crystalize around a clear enemy and a clear hero or heroes. I love when they manage to subvert that and turn either into something new, which Swan manages in The Infinite State. He makes the very concept of fascism the bad guy and shows you using the actions of his characters. From the Emperor to Cyprian to Droor to Morita to Morozov, Swan makes it hard to separate the idea of "bad guy" into any singular operator for the Decurion Empire. It isn't even the Decurion Empire that's the villain, necessarily, its the systems and antithetical mindsets that let the Empire exist in the first place.

Swan was very smart and thoughtful about how he leveraged human nature and how the Empire acts in conflict with what we have naturally evolved into. As someone who lovingly refers to myself as a defiant optimist - someone who refuses to stop believing in the best in things or people or situations - I felt very, very seen in this book. Swan believes in the inherent human desire to help and do good and the Empire beating and tormenting that out of people is turning its people into these twisted, abominable visages of humanity that are in direct conflict with one of our most important base instincts. It's the denial of agency and the discouragement of joy that sets the Empire's people to suffering. In their suffering, they're too tired and scared and cynical to do anything to oppose their fascist overlords.

He put so many different facets of what fascism does to people in here that I feel like I could talk about this for a dozen pages at least. One of my favorites was his demonstration of how the Empire's own worst enemy was... the Empire. Not the Free Nations, but itself. You can only stagnate and oppress your people for so long because you start to fall so far behind you create the tools for your own system to collapse. Denial of what human beings are and what we need at our core is a house of cards that always collapses in on itself, it's only ever been a matter of time.

His inclusion of the technology disparity was also very, very fun to watch. When Katherine gets out into the wider world (space, fine fine fine), she's blown away by how much of their suffering in the Empire is the Empire's choice. It's a decision that helps facilitate the repeated subjugation of their people by keeping them sick when they don't have to be, overworked when they don't have to be, poor when they don't have to be. It was a great way to show that the obligation of a government is to care for its people and its decay begins when it loses sight of that goal. When our basic needs aren't met and a government turns it into a flagellation of the people, a moralistic chiding that blames the people it was established to govern instead of itself, it begins to poison itself and heralds its own doom.

Somehow, in all of this, we also managed to fit one of my favorite topics to rant about and I will do my best to stay high level with it: the military industrial complex. I hate the military industrial complex and I got the impression Swan does, too, but he was much better about making The Infinite State informative as to why it's so damaging and terrible for a population to let military privateers run amok than I would have been. The Perpetual War Council from the get go gave me TMJ because, yeah. If you're engaged in perpetual warfare, you're probably in the wrong. He talked about the human canon fodder of their own children the Party members create, how the constant forced birthing and obsession with pregnancy is just a mechanism to feed the constant machine of interstellar war and has nothing to do with women's rights or family, the lack of technological improvement feeds their trumped up propaganda narrative about the nobility of these stupid wars, and how the distance of the people watching the footage of these endless wars keeps them removed from the true horror of them and thus continually in support of these "expansion efforts". The arms fair made my skin crawl, but Swan also was very smart about including why it's necessary to be armed when everyone else around you is armed. I appreciated that inclusion a lot because it's under discussed how when everyone around you has nukes, you need to be able to also defend yourself from nukes kind of thing. Smaller countries arm themselves up because everyone around them has armed themselves up. If they don't they just open themselves up to being overtaken under the guise of "protection" and then fully annexed against their will. Sounds remarkably like a very recent conflict occurring actively today, right?

Okay, I won't preach, I swear. As someone who loves political themes in books and believes fully that reading is political, books are political, and books are affected by the political climate of the era they were written in, this was a very bold story that directly faced down modern issues and conflicts most authors shy away from or leave room to pretend has nothing to do with modern day situations. I felt like Swan confronted complicated current events in a smart, accessible, thoughtful way that you could couch as a reader in terms of science fiction and places that don't exist. While the removal from the current day is there plainly and front and center (in my opinion), the way he bluntly addresses systems is very easily taken into our own world. Too often, authors rename fascism like "urblanagism" or "portoricianism" or give it some made up name that allows us to remove ourselves even farther from the concepts and pretend that's fully made up and not real and doesn't exist outside of the context of that story. Swan didn't. He called a spade a spade and I think in the era of surveillance states, flirting with fascism, and watching once-great governments forget that their priority is the wellbeing of the people they govern? This distinction is relevant, important, and will be a lens into the current state of the world to future readers.

Pater Delenda Est

Hi paid members! Just a reminder that this is the final week to help populate our monthly newsletter with all your cozy, creative joy. This month’s theme is: Cozy Summer🌱

I'd love to see how you're embracing a cozier summer this season! Feel free to share:

• Your favorite summer recipe or treat

• Your current vacation read or a summer book recommendation

• Your garden, porch, patio, or favorite outdoor reading spot

• A picnic, beach day, or cozy summer outing

• Summer-inspired artwork, crafts, or photography

Ready to submit? CLICK HERE to send in your photo, piece of writing, book rec, drawing, etc. by July 31st and I’ll include it.

I can’t wait to see what you submit!
Meg

This Tuesday delivers a big batch of new books. Here is a roundup of romances hitting shelves today that have a Rebel Ever After vibe. Reminder that I haven't read any of these titles yet, so this isn't an official endorsement!

[This isn't an exhaustive list of every romance novel out today. If you are an author with a progressive romance coming out soon, please email brosandprose@gmail.com to get it on my radar!]

Out today 7/28:

Fossil Feud by Maggie North (Dell) — RIVAL PALEONTOLOGISTS! I DO NOT NEED TO SAY MORE.

Pride Comes Before a Fall by Virginia Heath (St. Martin's Griffin) — This Regency heroine writes for a radical newspaper that wants to take down the aristocracy. Must be awkward when she falls in love with a duke! 

Sea of Charms by Sarah Beth Durst (Bramble) — Sarah Beth Durst’s fantasy books are so cozy and lovely. This is the third book in her Spellshop universe. I’m in conversation with her about Sea of Charms at Northport Books on August 12th. Come through! 

Second First Dates by Gabriella Gamez (Forever) — A new contemporary romance by the author of The Next Big Fling and Kiss Me, Maybe. I’ll buy it just to own that beautiful Olivia Dade cover.

Wild Goose Chase by Sarah Adler (Berkley) — Two antique dealers have to find and dispose of an illegal taxidermied goose. This line in the marketing copy killed me: “Will the hunt for their felonious fowl lead to true love, or end in ruin?” Bonkers premise, I’m sold. 

Maggie and Arthur's Magic Moment by Leslie René (Ace) — Magical university professors have to share an office. Even in fantasy realms, those pesky budget cuts in academia, am I right? 

Breakup For Two by E.M. Wilson (Frayed Pages x Wattpad Books) — I’m curious about this imprint spearheaded by breakout Wattpad author Anna Todd. Breakup for Two is pitched for fans of Talia Hibbert, Jackie Lau, and Rachel Lynn Solomon.

New titles missed last week:

How (Not) to Renovate a Haunted House by Jenny L. Howe — I forgot to include this new spooky Summerween YA romance in my last roundup. Jenny is a previous Rebel Ever After guest who writes fantastic fat representation. She just wrote on Instagram about why fat characters are disappearing from YA titles, and her analysis applies to adult romance, too.

Happy Tuesday, mis internet amigxs,

Before we get to all of today's amazing Latine releases, a reminder that we begin reading The Intrigue by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Audiobook) on SATURDAY over on Discord! I can not wait to scream about this noir with you all!

How YOU can support Bien Leidos

We have a really short introduction this morning because I have TWO books I didn't include in the early exclusive newsletter for the month I wanted to cover. If you want to support the work I do AND receive an early, lengthier look at all these amazing Latine releases, a great way to do it is by supporting me at the Libritos or Lectores membership level. I'm in the process of planning some incredible Latinx Heritage Month content and your support would mean everything!

And now on to today's releases...

YOUNG ADULT NOVEL IN VERSE

Evamar by Margarita Engle

LITERARY FICTION

Beginning, Middle, and End by Valerie Luiselli (Audiobook)

ROMANCE

Second First Dates by Gabrielle Gamez (Audiobook)

TRANSLATED FICTON

The Winds of Maracaibo by Maria Elena Moran (Audiobook)

Five by César Aira and Translated by Chris Andrews

The Red Earth by Morgana Kretzmann and Translated by Daniel Hahn (Audiobook)

SCIENCE FANTASY

The Demon Star by Jesse Aragon (Audiobook)

xo,

Carmen

Another fantastic night in The Land thanks to Suzanne and Mac's Backs! Proud to share the stage with an awesome nurse and doc, and to be supported by some of my oldest Cleveland friends. Happy to represent GV Art & Design's awesome C-Town Superman T and of course, finished the night at Tommy's next door.

And yes, that's me buying Paul Tremblay's book at my own signing.

Hi BGN Lit Lounge and Sanctuary Members!

Please excuse the double email, but this is an important one!

We're running a little behind this month after the whirlwind that was Comic-Con, so thank you for your patience. Now it's time to choose our August Book Club selection, and we need your help!

We'd love for each of you to nominate one or two books that you think would make a great read for our August selection. Whether it's fantasy, sci-fi, horror, romance, graphic novels, or another genre that celebrates the nerdy stories we love, we want to see your picks.

Because we're on a tight timeline, please submit your nominations by Thursday, July 30.

We'll open voting to the Inner Circle members on August 1st, and the winning title will become our August Book Club selection!

We can't wait to see what books you're excited about. Happy nominating! 📖

Our first Black Girl Nerds Book Club selection, Sistah Samurai: A Champloo Novella, was a fun and memorable read that sparked great conversations among our members. Now we're excited to take the discussion one step further by giving our BGN Sanctuary members the opportunity to connect directly with author Tatiana Obey.

Join us for an exclusive Zoom conversation on Tuesday, August 26, at 3:00 p.m. ET / 12:00 p.m. PT, where Tatiana will discuss the inspiration behind the novel, her creative process, and answer your questions about the book.

We're looking forward to sharing this special event with you!

Not a BGN Sanctuary member? Don't worry! We'll be recording the conversation and making it available at a later date so everyone can enjoy this insightful discussion.

Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87899056146

I'm back home!

After a long 8 days in Peru, I'm glad to finally be home and rested for a few days. The trip was incredible and I got to see my first wonder of the world, but nothing beats sleeping in your own bed... and AC!

Some updates: I'm about to start pitching my client's book! The first book I helped pitch is still out with editors, some passing and some haven't gotten back to me just yet. I'm both excited and nervous!! I'm still open to queries and hoping something amazing comes across my query box so I can sign another author for my list!

Reading update: I actually finished a couple of books (CRAZY)!! One will be featured in this week's western wednesday while the other... not so much. It was one of those books that you just have to finish even if you know you don't really like it. Oh well!

Post update: I'm editing parts of my dissertation for release on this platform periodically and I'm very excited about that. Hopefully y'all are, too!

Anyway, that's all for now! See you guys Wednesday!

xx ellen

SICKOOOOOOOS! Let me know the books you plan on reading this week in the comments and I'll share with you everything I got planned. Let's boogie!

READING

REVIEW

DEFIANCE: A MEMOIR OF AWAKENING, REBELLION, AND SURVIVAL IN SYRIA by LOUBNA MRIE (nonfiction memoir)

Progress: Finished

I feel like I've spent a month with this one with the stops and starts, but again, that was my fault starting too many books at the same time. The final half of this is A LOT, I mean there's some super heartbreaking stuff in here. There's so many angles to this one and I credit Mrie for exploring all of them without losing any of the energy it carried throughout. I kept a running log of notes so hopefully my full review will be coherent but one fact I'll highlight here is that apparently they put corn on pizza in Syria? What do y'all think of that?

STREETS OF LAREDO by LARRY MCMURTRY [Lonesome Dove - Pub Order #2/Chronological Order #4] (western fiction)

Progress: 427/538

Another bite taken out of this puppy and while most of the qualms I noted last week still stand, I am finding the story taking a path that is more gripping than it was in the first half. It's still not going to touch the genius of Lonesome Dove but that's a crazy bar to hit.

1177 B.C.: THE YEAR CIVILIZATION COLLAPSED by ERIC H. CLINE (nonfiction history)

Progress: 51/179

It lost out in the History Sickos vote but it's one I was gonna read anyway. I read this a long time ago but after having watched The Odyssey, I was pulled back to it for reasons that will become clear with this snippet from Barry Strauss' introduction:

PREVIEW/AUGUST BOOK CLUB PICKS

It'll be all about the book clubs for my next reads, and the winners are:

FICTION SICKOS BOOK CLUB: The Odyssey by Homer (any translation)

HISTORY SICKOS BOOK CLUB: Black Flag, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious Pirates by Eric Jay Dolin

EVERYTHING ELSE

• Publishing News: No formal announcement yet for our second acquisition but I can tell you that the other was revealed in our Discord like a Scooby Doo villain last week!

• Game of the Week: I'm fully addicted to Assassin's Creed Odyssey for the fourth time (playing as Kassandra, of course). I'm up to level 17 and am starting to hunt down these doggone cultists.

• Show of the Week: No idea tbh. Maybe Frieren S2?!

• Movie of the Week: We gotta figure out a Jurassic Park watch-along in the Discord I think.

• Content News: New YouTube is up! In this one I'm ranking the books the Fiction Sickos have read this year.

• I'll be on vacation next week so there won't be an update. It's the week before the wee emperor starts school again so I wanted to spend more quality time with him. I do have plenty of stuff to film (or clip out from YT) so you may not even notice other than the missing update.

Hello, Inner Circle!

I have been a busy, frazzled creature. How is everyone's summer going?

Hexes Go Well with Tequila is currently being recorded by Patricia Santomasso, who is an Earphones and Odyssey Award winning narrator and has recorded over 400 audiobooks.

She's recorded books for Riley Sager, T. Kingfisher, Frieda McFadden and many more incredible authors-so, I was delighted when I heard her reading an excerpt of Hexes Go Well with Tequila in audition.

As we gear up for the re-release of Hexes Go Well with Tequila in October, I am working on the fourth installment of The Lost Souls, something I wasn't sure that I would dive into for a while. But, alas, one of the characters came knocking in my brain so I had to start getting her story down.

Any guesses who this one is about?

I hope you all are doing well. I will be doing a cover reveal for Hay House Hexes Go Well with Tequila here first before it goes public, so stay tuned!

Magically,

Lee

I had an amazing time celebrating the release of A Forsaken Prophecy by Stacey McEwan at The Ripped Bodice!

I fell in love with Nina and Patrick last year when I read A Forbidden Alchemy, and I think I’m even more obsessed with them now. This was an amazing sequel that I was lucky enough to read early, and I’m so happy it’s officially out in the world.

If you haven’t started The Artisan Trilogy yet, what are you waiting for?! Pick it up already!

Below is a link to a video of some snippets from the event, which is exclusive for my bindery subscribers for one week before it hits YouTube! I hope you enjoy!

https://youtu.be/yjGZUF3hCGg