Okay, I’m all geeked out. I went to Context this past weekend and met this guy, Alex Bledsoe, and we chatted, and I friended him on Facebook and he accepted, and I’m following him on Twitter, and we nodded at each other all weekend, and all was chummy and fine.

And then I get home and I realize — THAT WAS ALEX BLEDSOE! He wrote one of the books I got as swag one year, THE SWORD-EDGED BLONDE. I’d like to claim I gave it five out of five stars on Goodreads, but I gave it four. Here’s the review, and you’ll see why:

I suppose Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden and other Urban Fantasy books and Terry Pratchett’s City Watch books primed me for this. So, when this book opened like Raymond Chandler, I was intrigued. By the time I got to the bottom of the first page and the narrator said, “It was a good place for someone like me, a private sword jockey with a talent for discretion, to quietly ply his trade,” the book was MINE.

This is book one of a series (the next is BURN ME DEADLY). I’ll have to get it and read it, in memory of my sweet little gray-headed grandmother, who purely LOVED the Mike Hammer books.

As a cozy fan, myself, I’m not certain how far I’ll be able to follow this series, good as it is. It gets very graphic and gritty at times, and I don’t handle graphic and gritty very well.

If a lot of fantasy is too rainbows and unicorns for you, if you like your magic spells with crossbows attached, if Sam Vimes is your favorite Discworld character, this is a book for you.

Graphic, you see. Gritty. But good. I haven’t been able to get the book out of my mind. I mean, seriously — if Raymond Chandler and Fritz Leiber had a baby, it would be these books. So I finally broke down and ordered the second and third and fourth books of the series. I’ll be collecting the others, too, as I’m able to pry the money from my own clutch.

They’re available electronically, but I ordered these in paper. That’s how much I like them. Besides, paper was cheaper.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: What would you do if you met an author you admired AND REALIZED IT?

MA