No Foolin’

This is, as it has been for some time, an April Fool Free Zone.

What we here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory do on April 1 instead of playing stressful and/or annoying pranks on each other is. . .

1.  Celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary of the entanglement of the Lee library and cat with the Miller library and cat. And. . .

2.  (New this year!)  Celebrate the first anniversary of Socks’ arrival at the Cat Farm.

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Today also sees the release of the free! edition! of Fledgling (the first edition) on Amazon.  The free edition has been available, and continues to be available in All Possible Ebook Formats from the Baen Free Library.

Likewise, the Agent of Change eBook continues to be available for free from Amazon and at the Baen Free Library.

Please go forth and inform your friends, your relatives, the guy at the table next to you at the coffeeshop. . .  Again, the purpose of giving these editions away is to grow the readership of the Liaden Universe® — and you can help!  In fact, many of you have been helping for years; we’re grateful, and hope that the availability of the free ebooks will make your work easier and more pleasurable.

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We’ve had several inquiries regarding Socks, his health, and if he’s “maintaining.”

Socks. . .is on a slow downward spiral.  He’s requiring more of the various medications more often than the vets had anticipated — the most worrying of those being the drug to increase his appetite.  Sick cats, as sick humans, need to eat.  We had two scares over the weekend when we thought we had lost him — remembering that the emergency vet had not been at all convinced that he was going to survive last weekend.

Despite the lack of appetite, Socks remains interested in the general operations of the Confusion Factory.  As always, he makes certain to be with one or the other of us as work goes forth; he seeks us out for lap-sitting, and scrubbles; and stakes out his space on the bed (usually on my stomach; sometimes on Steve’s hip) for the long night-nap.

So. . .gentle thoughts for Socks, please.

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Progress on Carousel Seas

20,957/100,000 words OR 20.96% complete

 “It is seldom that all of one’s affairs flourish, my lady, but I have no cause for complaint of my treatment at the hands of the universe.”