Lots of excitement here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory today.
First, two boxes of this arrived:
My photography skills being what they are, you can’t really see it well — but! the view screen is actually silvered, and Theo’s hand stands out almost in 3D. Very cool cover!
In other news, Truth triumphed in a small but important way today. Not, unfortunately, before I had given myself a headache over the whole thing, but triumph is good. And the filing got done, too.
I don’t think I mentioned that, yesterday, Steve interviewed Kevin Collins, the narrator of the Books of Before (Crystal Soldier, Crystal Dragon, Balance of Trade) as part of a special giveaway Audible has up its sleeve. Tomorrow, I’ll be interviewing Andy Caploe, the narrator of the Agent of Change Sequence, and Steve will be interviewing Eileen Stevens, who narrates the Theo Waitley books.
Carousel Sun proceeds at a stately pace. One of Kate’s immediate problems, of course, is to find a replacement for the carousel horse that’s gone missing. Which means she’s going to have to come up with something that’s different, in style and in age, from the rest of the animals on the carousel. It struck me that this is a dilemma that many of the restored carousels must have — if all the animals from the old, say, PTC* machine haven’t been recovered, or cannot be restored, they may have to fill in with Dentzel animals, or even new-made animals. So, what you’ll have is mixed carousels — all vintage, but not necessarily original to that particular machine. That’s an odd thing to think about, that. . .mixing of styles and kinds. It had used to be, of course, that each company’s machines were recognizable. That’s not necessarily so, anymore.
Well. I suppose we’re lucky that there are any old wooden carousels at all, not to mention people who are willing to keep them.
And on that note, I believe I’ll go find some aspirin and a coon cat.
Everybody have a good night.
Progress on Carousel Sun
17,275/100,000 OR 17.27% complete
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*PTC = Philadelphia Toboggan Company
Next time you & Steve are in the Midwest with some extra time on your hands (OK, don’t laugh) you should mosey on up to the House on the Rock in southwest Wisconsin — a weirdly wonderful example of vulgar excess in the best “roadside attraction” tradition. The “attraction” includes a huge indoor carousel (it featured briefly in Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods”) with almost 270 handcrafted carousel animals — except that none of them are horses. I think there’s also another carousel where all the animals (some of which are horses)are being ridden by as many dolls as the operators can cram onto their backs.