“You can’t scare a gem, Devina. No matter how fierce you seem.”
The book launch for the third book in Fran Wilde’s Gem Universe series, The Book of Gems, took place on June 20 at A Novel Idea on Passyunk in Philadelphia.
Fran was joined by two other Philadelphia-area authors, Stephanie Feldman and Eric Smith, who also read selections from their work. The event began with a Q&A session, mainly about Fran’s work and her new novella, though both Stephanie and Eric also received and answered a few questions.
After a reading from The Book of Gems (a selection from one of my favorite parts, when the protagonist has to enter an excavation site via a dried-up sewer tunnel), the other authors also read selections from their work. Stephanie Feldman read a selection from her acclaimed novel Saturnalia, an adult horror novel set in a near-future climate disaster Philadelphia, and Eric Smith read from his upcoming contemporary young adult rom-com With or Without You, set in a rather less disastrous version of Philly.
A few highlights from the in-conversation portion of the event:
- Eric asked about the main thread that connects the three Gem Universe books, which take place in the same world but hundreds of years apart. Fran spoke on the framing device in the original novella, The Jewel and Her Lapidary, which opens with an excerpt from a fictional tourist guide to the Gem Valley. Each volume of the series uses a different fictional book as a framing device.
- Fran spoke on one aspect of the inspiration for the book: working on gemstones during her college years. She also explained that pretty much the worst gems to work on are emeralds, which may not be surprising to readers who’ve read the second installment in the series, The Fire Opal Mechanism.
- Fran shared that her next book publication is a short story in the upcoming anthology of A Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi about Mon Mothma. This installment of the Certain Point of View anthology series will be available in August 2023.
About The Book of Gems
Some truths are shatterproof…
It’s been centuries since the Jeweled Valley and its magical gems were destroyed. In the republics that rose from its ashes, scientists craft synthetic jewels to heat homes, power gadgetry, and wage war.
Dr. Devina Brunai is one of these scientists. She also is the only person who believes true gems still exist. The recent unearthing of the Palace of Gems gives her the perfect opportunity to find them and prove her naysayers wrong.
Her chance is snatched away at the last moment when her mentor steals her research and wins the trip for himself. Soon, his messages from the field transform into bizarre ramblings about a book, a Prince, and an enemy borne of the dark. Now Dev must enter the Valley, find her mentor, and save her research before they, like gems, become relics of a time long forgotten.
Gem Universe books
Total books by Fran Wilde
About Other Authors
The Saturnalia carnival marks three years since Nina walked away from Philadelphia’s elite Saturn Club—with its genteel debauchery, arcane pecking order, and winking interest in alchemy and the occult. In doing so, she abandoned her closest friends and her chance to climb the social ladder. Since then, she’s eked out a living by telling fortunes with her Saturn Club tarot deck, a solemn initiation gift that Nina always considered a gag but has turned out to be more useful than she could have ever imagined.
For most, the Saturnalia carnival marks a brief winter reprieve for the beleaguered people of the historic city, which is being eroded by extreme weather, a collapsing economy, and feverish summers—whose disease carrying mosquitos are perhaps the only thing one can count on. Like Thanksgiving or Halloween, Saturnalia has become a purely American holiday despite its pagan roots; and nearly everyone, rich or poor, forgets their troubles for a moment.
For Nina, Saturnalia is simply a cruel reminder of the night that changed everything for her. But when she gets a chance call from Max, one of the Saturn Club’s best-connected members and her last remaining friend, the favor he asks will plunge her back into the Club’s wild solstice masquerade, on a mysterious errand she cannot say no to.
Tonight, Nina will put on a dress of blackest black, and attend the biggest party of the year. Before it’s over, she will discover secret societies battling for power in an increasingly precarious world and become custodian of a horrifying secret—and the target of a mysterious hunter. As Nina runs across an alternate Philadelphia balanced on a knife’s edge between celebration and catastrophe, through parades, worship houses, museums, hidden mansions, and the place she once called home, she’s forced to confront her past in order to take charge of her own—and perhaps everyone’s—future.
Everyone knows Jordan Plazas and Cindy Ortiz hate each other.
According to many viral videos of their public shouting matches, the Plazas and Ortiz families have a well-known food truck rivalry. Jordan and Cindy have spent all of high school making cheesesteaks and slinging insults at each other across their shared Philadelphia street.
But the truth? They’re in love, and it’s all just an act for the tourists.
When the fake feud lands them a reality tv show pilot, Jordan and Cindy find themselves having to lie on a much bigger scale. Trapped between pursuing their dreams or their love, can they find a way to have their cheesesteak and eat it too?
