Celebrate Bloomsday with Penelope, Marjory, and Dorothy!

Oh, and Cait -- don't forget Cait ...

It’s a busy day here at Cornelia Quick Enterprises International Headquarters: I’ve got a brand new Dorothy Warren story, Marjory’s Lesson is available now on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited, and it’s Bloomsday, one of the most important events on the calendar!

But what is this “Bloomsday” thing, Cornelia? I hear some of you ask.

Bloomsday is, of course, the day we celebrate a walk that Leopold Bloom took around Dublin on June 16, 1904, a walk that changed modern literature, as recounted in James Joyce’s Ulysses. This raucous, polyphonic spree of a book, published in 1922, weaves together Irish history, Greek mythology, and a lifetime’s worth of dirty jokes. Indeed, it’s such a filthy, funny book that it was banned in the US under the Comstock Act until 1933, and was widely available in Ireland only in the 1960s.

But what does that have to do with Cornelia Quick’s smutty books? a voice from the back shouts.

Well, everything, really.

I’m a huge Joyce fan, absolutely in love with his language and characters and wit, with the way he creates a rich tapestry of history and folklore, and, of course, with the filthier parts of his voluminous mind. “Ulysses” is one of those books you can return to again and again, always finding something new and strange and surprisingly earthy between its pages.

And you’d better believe that Penelope (named for Odysseus’ wife, of course), the protagonist of Shagged in the Bookshop and Marjory’s Lesson, has a dog-eared copy of “Ulysses” in her library, with all the dirty parts highlighted for easy retrieval. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of “Dreadful Penny’s Story Time” readings is Molly Bloom’s masturbatory soliloquy …

And that Molly Bloom … the foul-mouthed, unfaithful, truly loving wife of Leopold is definitely one of the inspirations behind Dorothy Warren, the marketing-executive-turned-nymphomaniac-farm-wife featured in quite a few of my stories. A new Dorothy story, Dorothy’s Filthy Fourth, is available now for pre-order for July 2, and is also for sale on Payhip for a limited time.

A couple of St. Patrick’s Days ago, I put a little collection up on Payhip containing some exclusive stories, my Sheela Na Gig collection (if you know, you know …). This collection contains a bonus chapter from The Betwixtmas Switch featuring an Irish lass (from Cork rather than Dublin, though there are some Joyce links to that city as well), so it seemed fitting to bring it back for a limited time to celebrate Bloomsday.

So, there’s your Bloomsday to-do list, dear reader: go peruse the newly-released Marjory’s Lesson, pre-order Dorothy’s Filthy Fourth, and join Cait and all of her friends in a special Sheela Na Gig collection! I’m quite sure Mr. Joyce would approve, even if the scolds who banned his books wouldn’t.

(Also, while you’re at it, consider supporting the Freedom to Read Foundation, the American Library Association, and the American Civil Liberties Union, who are working tirelessly to prevent the contemporary scolds from emptying the library shelves of dangerous words!)