Welcome back to another week at Speculative Chic! The holidays are officially in gear, with a freshly wrapped Thanksgiving, Black Friday’s recent end, a forthcoming Cyber Monday, and all the major December holidays coming in one right after the other. This time of year can go by so fast, so don’t forget to take some […]

Welcome back to Sound Off!, a semi-regular column where members of Speculative Chic gather together to chat about the latest BIG THING in entertainment. This time, get into a treasure-hunting frame of mind and discuss Tomb Raider, which premiered in the United States on Friday, March 16, 2018. Sound Off! is meant to be a reaction, but […]

Halloween is next week! What are my plans? Well, I’m an English teacher in Japan at three different high schools, and as a cultural ambassador, one of my goals is to expose my students to traditions from my home country. I go all-out for Halloween as much as possible, including giving out candy and of […]

How do librarians choose books for their libraries? If you’ve ever asked that question, pull up a beanbag. You’ve come to the right place. But first, a confession. (This is how all good stories start, right?) I didn’t set out to become a librarian. I was going to be an archaeologist or a writer. Or […]

It’s Day 24 of The Kasturi/Files here at Speculative Chic as we continue through the October days of this horror movie extravaganza of chitchat, film discussion, book recs, and cocktail recipes from Sandra Kasturi and Gemma Files! Read More »

‘Tis the season where holiday music invades your ear like a Ceti eel, heralding the annual shopping season for holiday gift-giving! While this time of year very much promotes giving for the sake of giving, we can’t overlook the fact that requesting is very much a part of it, too. For well over a hundred […]

They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we sit down with F.T. Lukens, whose latest book, […]

They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we sit down with F.T. Lukens, whose latest book, […]

Hats off to all you magical people out there! I mentioned in last week’s roundup about us not getting rain in my corner of Japan, then wished for your help in securing said rain through whimsical, unscientific means, and voilà! It rained! Not all week, but in long-enough spurts to actually mean something to the […]

Welcome back to The Kasturi/Files at Speculative Chic, Day 8 of our October horror show of movies, books, and cocktails! We’re covering a couple of older movies today, so if you haven’t seen these yet, well, we guess there are spoilers? But, come on. There has to be a “best before” date. Like if the […]

It’s Day 20 of The Kasturi/Files at Speculative Chic, where Gemma Files and Sandra Kasturi do some trash talking about horror movies for the month of October. By “trash talking” we of course mean erudite and thoughtful examinations of genre tropes as represented in current and past films, and their impact on the cultural conversation. […]

Magic Triumphs (2018) Written by: Ilona Andrews Series: Kate Daniels #10 Genre: Urban Fantasy Pages: 439 Publisher: Ace Books Why I Chose This: My 2019 Resolution Project for Speculative Chic is to read the books in the Kate Daniels series and finish up with a first read of the final book. This is my first time reading this […]

They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we sit down with Darin Kennedy, who is the […]

Catfishing on CatNet (2019) Written by: Naomi Kritzer Genre: YA Science Fiction Pages: 294 (Hardcover) Publisher: Tor Teen Why I Chose It: I read and really enjoyed Kritzer’s award-winning short story “More Cat Pictures, Please” and heard she was expanding that world of a kind, cat-loving, self-improvement-urging AI into a novel. My first thought was, […]