Blog Without A Name

He must have been an admiral, a sultan or a king

Things are still somewhat in disarray here at the Cat Farm.  Scrabble and Mozart are still insisting that The Kid has to be here somewhere, darnit, and they occasionally mount exploratory surveys.

Mozart yesterday went over the entire house, using the MomCat call, but damn — The Kid still didn’t turn up.  He then sought Steve out to Explain This At Length, and (possibly) to Demand Assistance.  Steve was, sadly, not able to bring much to this, except to offer scribbles.

Scrabble, ever methodical, periodically checks Socks’ favorite spots, and has three times now put his favorite toys into play, noisily — but that didn’t pull him out of his Silly Fluff sulks, either.  There are also Other Worrisome Developments, such as Socks’ bowl going missing.  She has duly noted this on the inventory.

The humans are at loose ends, somewhat, and not so sprightly as they might be.  Work, however, goes on; things arrive in the mail; and laundry must be done.

Things that have arrived in the mail include three! guidebooks for Angkor Wat, which are fascinating.  (No, I’m not going to Angkor Wat or Siem Reap or Cambodia or Viet Nam.  No, I don’t know why I had to have these books.  The backbrain at work, I suppose. I try not to question too closely in the belief that, eventually, All Will Become Clear.  It would be nice to occasionally get a memo, though.)  Anyhow — fascinating, with pictures! and teensytinyitsybitsy little print, and it is to swoon.  So, yanno, at least the backbrain’s happy.

Also in the mail — today, in fact — was a sympathy card from the vet’s office, with personal notes from all the staff, aka Socks’ Waterville Fan Club; and  Protector, the next Foreigner novel.

Speaking of guidebooks, I ought to get one for New York, so I can figure out how far things are from other things and how to move around the place.  Hmm.  Steve and I will be at Book Expo America (aka BEA) at the end of May, doing a book signing and some other stuff TBA.  In theory, we will have some unscheduled time to do, um, stuff.  Noting that the Sheer Amount of Stuff  in New York makes thinking about what one would like to do-or-see. . .somewhat overwhelming.

But!  What do I find, via the New Yorker, but that Kinky Boots, the Musical! is/will be at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre (located at 45th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues, it says, here, helpfully, no doubt). This is very exciting, and visions of theater tickets dance in my brain (to be immediately dashed by my lack of knowing almost everything I need to know in order to figure out if a night at the theater is even possible.  That guidebook is looking like a better and better idea…)

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Of possible interest to those who follow the ups and downs of the publishing biz, and wonder why writers go crazy, is the whole Night Shade Books Nightmare.  Steve and I are not involved with Night Shade, we have no skin in the game, but a lot of our friends and colleagues are involved in this. . .horrifying situation.

Here’s a fairly temperate analysis, with history, written by a well-known SF/F agent.

Here’s another summary of the situation, by Tobias Buckell.

Here’s Phil Foglio’s take (Night Shade publishes the Girl Genius text novels (NOT the graphic novels)

Here’s the first i09 article regarding the situation.

And, here’s Mr. Lassen of Night Shade, in his own words.

Kameron Hurley, one of Night Shade’s authors, rings down the sky, and explains why she’s considering the “deal.”

Andy Zack, of the Zack Literary Agency, weighs in.

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Progress on Carousel Seas

24,893/100,000 OR 24.89% Complete

“That’s an impressive bit of work the man does,” I said, slowly. “I wonder if it does any good, in the long run.”

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.

* * *

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.

* * *

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.

* * *

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.”

The Intermittent Hugo Course

First of all, if you missed the announcement yesterday:

The final ballot for the Hugo Awards, which will be voted on by the membership of LoneStarCon 3, the 71st World Science Fiction Convention, has been posted, here.  Congratulations to all the nominees!

Now, this is an interesting ballot for a buncha reasons.

First, the Hugo Administrators have been doing a dern good job of growing the number of readers involved in the nomination process.  This year 1,343 valid ballots were received by the committee, up from last year’s record of 1,101.  When I wrote the first Intermittent Hugo blog post, in 2007, 567 votes on the final ballot decided “Best Novel” for 2006.

In 2011, AussieCon managed to get a whopping 1,094 valid Hugo ballots — meaning that more than half of their membership voted.

So!  More participants.  Excellent.

What’s also interesting about this ballot is what’s been nominated.  Kim Stanley Robinson, Lois McMaster Bujold, and John Scalzi aren’t exactly strangers to the Hugo nominee list, but Saladin Ahmed is a first-time novelist.

Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire is on this ballot no less than four times (five times, if you count the Podcast category, but I’m just dealing with fiction, here), with two entries in the Novelette category.

Out of 18 nominees, 8 are women (that’s counting only once for Mira/Seanan; had she in fact been two women rather than one with the energy of three, fully half of the fiction ballot would have been held by women).  There’s been some…complaint over the last few years over the lack of women represented in the Hugo ballots; perhaps this year is the beginning of a trend.

When I posted the link to the nominee list, and congratulations on my Facebook wall yesterday, a couple people wanted to know why Lee and Miller aren’t on the list*, and I said I’d explain that, so below is the explanation.

The Hugo Awards are a readers award, like the SFSite Readers Choice, but there are a few important differences:

1.  The SFSite Readers Choice is open to anyone within the sound of its webpage, and

2.  There is no monetary cost involved in voting.

Readers who nominate for and vote on the Hugo Awards must:

1.  Be either an Attending or Supporting member of the current WorldCon (the full rules are here)

…and…

2.  Right now, Attending Memberships are $200; Supporting Memberships are $60

So, what you have in the case of the Hugos is a closed pool of self-selected, convention-going readers/voters.  These readers/voters tend to read and vote for writers they know.  Growing the pool of readers/voters by making participation more attractive to people who don’t attend WorldCons is, I think, going to change — to widen — the nominations.  I think this year’s ballot shows the beginnings of that.

What any of this has to do with a lack of Lee-and-Miller on the ballot is. . .the core of our readership are not convention-going fans, and therefore they do not nominate for, or vote on, the Hugo Awards.

This is not to be taken as a complaint; I don’t feel especially ill-used.  It is what it is, and I’m not telling any tales out of school when I say that our fans are the envy of writers everywhere.

Steve and I aren’t shy about promoting our work, and we’ll continue to mention it when we have works that are eligible for this or that award, because, hey — it’s what writers do.

Thank you all for your ongoing interest in and support of our work.

__________

*This is, in a way, like asking a writer why their novel hasn’t been made into a movie.  “No interest,” is kinda hard to argue with.

 

Fledgling by Lee and Miller now a free ebook

To the best of my understanding, which is a little shaky on certain bits, the ebook edition of Fledgling, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, is now available from the Baen Free Library in all ebook formats known to Man. Here’s the link.

Also? There’s a Fledgling Second Edition which will soon be for sale at the Kindle Store (it is, in fact for sale here as of this moment), the iBookstore, and at Baker & Taylor (Blio)  for $6.99. The second edition is available as an ebook only and includes The Authors’ Working Notes as new content.

Everybody confused? Good. Me, too.

What’s not confusing is that Fledgling is another portal book into the Liaden Universe®, so!  If the friend you offered Agent of Change (still available for free! from Amazon and from the Baen Free Library) to felt that Giant Sentient Turtles, gunfights, space battles, and True Love were a Little Too Much, here’s a nice, quiet coming-of-age story, with a little academic intrigue to keep things interesting, and no sentient aliens at all, unless you count norbears, which I certainly do.

 

Five things make a post

1.  I grew up in an area where the construction “might could” was allowable — as was “youse” and “y’all” (but not “all y’all”) — these are the benefits of growing up in a border state.  In any case, I needed clarity on whether “might could” was a Maine eccentricity, and of course, I turned to the internet, where I found this fascinating (if you like that kind of thing) discussion.

2.  Barnes & Noble and Simon & Schuster are having an argument.  So, of course, it seems like a swell idea for B&N to take it out on S&S’s writers.  Who can do nothing about any of it; who are not part of the problem; and who will lose money and perhaps readers while existing fans write to them asking if they know that Barnes and Noble refuses to carry their book.  I’ve lost count, but this?  Is another reason why writers drink.*

2a.  Here’s the Wall Street Journal article

2b.  Here’s the blog of one author caught in the middle

2c.  Here’s another blog of another affected author, who has decided to Do Something

3.  In another news, Harper-Collins is the latest in a series of publishers to adopt the Humpty Dumpty Theory of Language (“When I use a word, it means what I want it to mean”).  Here’s that link.

4.  I very much doubt that I’m going to list the songs to which I know the lyrics.  It just seems that my time could be more profitably spent doing something else.  You are certainly free to use your imaginations.

5.  I’m working on a short story, so there is no Carousel Seas snippet tonight.  Maybe tomorrow.  Though I sorta hope to finish the short story tomorrow.

Good-night Wesley; sleep well.  I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.

And she’d throw him bouquets on the stage

A slow day of catchup of things that were let slide because of catmergencies.  The laundry’s done.  Go, me.  I spent a little bit of time with Carousel Seas and managed to get some words down.  Socks has been intermittently about.  He’s still exhausted, poor guy.  Scrabble spent much of the day on the rocker, while Mozart helped me and Ox hold down the couch.

I am inordinately pleased to discover at this late date that Bruce Springsteen covered “The Man on the Flying Trapeze,” one of my grandmother’s favorite songs, and one which she sang with, err, GUSTO when we went to Sing-A-Longs in the Park.  (Are there still Sing-a-Longs in the Park?)  I was my grandmother’s chosen companion on these trips — possibly because I couldn’t sing a note, or because she believed that children should be exposed to the classics.  As a result, I know the words to a Very Odd mix of songs.

In the excitement of the Socks’ Homecoming Gala, I forgot to mention yesterday that…I bought more knives.  Cheesy Dollar Store knives, but they’ll spread the mustard.

Progress on Carousel Seas:

16,353/100,000 OR 16.35% complete

He shook his head. “Wasn’t a drop of harm in that girl, an’ her father could never say the same.”

Socks update: You can never tell with cats

This is a little later than I had intended to update; you’ll see the reason soon enough.  But I want to preface this with a story about another cat who lived with us, back when we were still in Maryland.  This cat’s name was Buzz-z; he was a grey plush who weighed in right about coon cat size.  He’d been allowed to roam by his then-owner, and one night he and a raccoon met each other out on the town, the raccoon said something, Buzz-z said something in return and, well. . .they kinda broke up the bar.

Buzz-z came home sporting multiple scrapes, scratches and bites, and over the course of a couple days, during which his owner refused to take him to the vet, because “cats heal,” he became sick, and progressively sicker. We remonstrated with the owner, the owner was adamant that it was “no sense” taking a cat to the vet, whereupon I suggested that what the owner really wanted to do, instead of talking to an animal control officer, was to give me the cat.

Steve and I then took our new cat to our vet, who checked him over, did blood work, and an x-ray, which found what appeared to be a raccoon tooth buried in Buzz-z’s  right foreleg, and said, “I’m not sure I can save this one, guys.”

We left him there, and waited for the call that would tell us that we’d waited  too long.

Well…the phone did ring, about five hours later, and it was the vet.  And the vet said something like, Can you guys come down here and pick up Buzz-z?  He won’t stay in a cage, and he’s running all around the office, flirting with the girls, and nobody’s getting any work done.

So, raise a glass of whatever it is you’re having to Buzz-z, who taught us that, You never can tell with cats.

Had we not had this lesson, we might well have told the emergency vet to let Socks go.  Had we, frankly, been as broke as we have sometimes been in the past (and indeed, as we were when we intervened on Buzz-z’s behalf), we might have told her to let Socks go.  Knowing that we had the funds to buy time, to see what would happen with treatment, because you never can tell with cats — I don’t think I can begin to tell you what a relief that was. Thank you all, again.

So, for today. . .We got up before breakfast, picked Socks up at the Lewiston Emergency Clinic, wearing a cone of shame and sporting some serious gearage in his right foreleg, and drove him up to our vet in Waterville to continue the IV hydration project.

The second we took him out of his cat carrier in the examining room, he perked up (he hates to be in the cat carrier and in addition this morning there was the whole cone of shame issue), he demanded skritches, he ran up to his vet and head-butted her, he made happy feet. . .

We left him, expecting that he would stay on ’til Wednesday, when the emergency vet’s 72 hours of hydration was complete.  Around 3:15 (after we had a nap, and lunch, and dealt with some business correspondence), we got a call from the vet, saying that we should come and get him, the new panel of blood work had shown much lower BUN/CREA numbers (though they are still elevated); the blood sugar values were down to normal.  There was, yes, still the heart murmur, and the  cancer issue which another of the vets in the practice had also scoped out, so there’s three vets saying the same thing, but what we have in hand at the moment is a joyful, comfortable, mischevious cat-person, who is extremely happy to be home.

So, that’s what we’re going with.  Steve and I now both know how to give subcutaneous liquids; we have needles and eleven sessions worth of lactated ringer solution, and Socks is right now sitting on the co-pilot’s chair beside me, having just finished giving himself a very thorough bath.

 

Socks on the co-pilot's chair. He's a little tired, thanks.
Socks on the co-pilot’s chair. He’s a little tired, thanks.

 

Socks update: the emergency vet says…

I spoke to the day-vet.  He says that Socks is doing “OK, all things considered.”  To the list of “all things” we now add a heart murmur and what this vet, as a result of performing his own examination, explains as a “lumpy, bumpy kidney,” which he finds “very suspicious,” and tentatively diagnoses as lymphoma.

On the positive side of the ledger, Socks is snacking a little, is taking a lively interest in his surroundings, and has started in to building the core for a Lewiston branch of the Socks Fan Club.

The plan remains for continued IV liquids and close observation at the Emergency Clinic, then a before-sunrise-pick-up tomorrow morning (the Emergency Clinic is 24 hours on weekends; all patients must be picked up before 7:30 a.m. on Monday), and transport to our local vet in Waterville for continued treatment.

Socks update: The news is. . .unfortunate

So, last night around 10:00, just about the time Steve and I had knocked off for the night, Socks rose from his floofy thing atop the hamper in the bathroom, walked out into hall, looked faintly startled, threw up. . .

. . .and fell over.

Long story short, Socks is at the Animal Emergency Clinic of Central Maine, in Lewiston, about an hour away from the Cat Farm.  This is an excellent facility; we’ve now had three interactions with them, including Hexapuma’s last journey, and the vets are knowledgeable and caring and very patient.

I have to tell you that the vet treating Socks. . .is not optimistic of a happy outcome.  His BUN and CREA numbers had gone even higher than they had been on Wednesday; his blood sugar was high; his white blood count considerably elevated; both of his kidneys were very large.  The vet was concerned that what she was seeing in ultrasound/xray was abnormal — she wasn’t able to tell if it was “just” inflammation, polycystic, or if the kidneys were being infiltrated by cancer cells.

Since much of this could be caused by the sudden spike in numbers, we have asked the hospital to put Socks on intravenous fluid and see what he looks like, once he’s properly hydrated and his system is less stressed.

I’m going to be calling the vet this afternoon, and will relate any new news, if there is any.  The clinic operates on a “no news is good news” policy, and they haven’t called us, so — fingers crossed, please, for Socks.