Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 131

Sale Ends today —

Just a reminder that The Year’s Midnight is free just through today as a Kindle ebook.

And I hope you’re all having a fantastic 4th of July, especially if you’re in the US and planning on hitting a fireworks display tonight!

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Bookish crimes

From Crime Reads: SEVEN MYSTERY NOVELS WHERE THE CRIMES ARE MOTIVATED BY BOOKS

I am a passionate bibliophile myself….This avocation is what inspired me to create the Bibliophile Mysteries, featuring a bookbinder who solves murders linked to the rare books in her care. So you might legitimately call me a book fanatic. But I’m not as far gone as book collectors who feel obsessed to possess. Those for whom a particular treasure may inspire them to felonious deeds.

And then, as advertised, seven murder mysteries featuring book-centered crimes. These mysteries mostly look like cozies, but a couple don’t seem to fit that subgenre. All of them sound intriguing. I like the book chosen as the centerpiece for this mystery:

A Page Marked for Murder by Lauren Elliott

As the charming coastal town of Greyborne Harbor is gearing up for their annual Fire and Ice Festival, Addie Greyborne’s friend Gloria suffers a fall that sends her to the hospital. While at Gloria’s house to care for her dog, Addie notices a rare and valuable first edition of The Secret Garden. But on her next visit, the book is missing, which makes her wonder if Gloria’s fall wasn’t an accident at all—and whether it’s linked to the dead body found behind the bakery. The owner of the bakery is charged with the crime, but Addie is convinced that the police have the wrong person in custody. And so of course, as amateur sleuths do, she’ll have to track down the killer herself. What I love best about the Beyond the Page Bookstore Mysteries are the complex and appealing characters. I’d love to join them at the local café for a cup of coffee and a hot dish of gossip.

The mysteries in the linked post feature things like a first edition of Jekyll and Hyde or the first-ever-written Sherlock Holmes story or whatever, and those are fine, but I have to admit, I loved The Secret Garden and am drawn at once toward this book, just because it mentions that one.

Although the book by Frances Hodgson Burnett I loved the most was, hands down, A Little Princess.

Googling now, I find that Burnett wrote an awful lot of books, including many I’ve never heard of, much less read. This one, a fairy tale, is available for free from Amazon. Every book description of Burnett’s books makes the stories sound so twee and sentimental. And in some ways, I guess they are sentimental, and yet so very charming. If any of you have read any of her books other than A Little Princess or The Secret Garden, which, and what did you think?

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Story collection by sharon shinn

Okay, so, this was released in April, but I missed it. I knew it was coming out, but I forgot exactly when. Well, here it is:

Very Gothic cover!

A writer who would rather live with ghosts than face her troubled marriage. A woman who receives calls over her cell phone from people who have recently died. A man who suddenly finds strange objects appearing in his life—and just as suddenly disappearing.

These characters and more fill the pages of Sharon Shinn’s collection of seven short stories. Romance, mystery, and a little bit of magic follow each of them as they grapple with the past so they can move forward into the future.

Chief Executed Officers is never before published. The other six stories have appeared previously in anthologies published 2004 through 2012.

I’m guessing the cover goes with the writer who would rather live with ghosts. That sounds like it could be quite Gothic in tone. Now, as you see, six of the stories have appeared elsewhere. However, I think every one of them is new to me. Here are the titles:

The Sorcerer’s AssassinIn the House of Seven SpiritsChief Executed OfficersThe Unrhymed Couplets of the Universe — what a great title!Can You Hear Me Now? The Double-Edged SwordWintermoon Wish

None of those sound familiar to me. Very nice to have them collected now for those of us who missed out on them in previous anthologies. I know lots of you are also Sharon Shinn fans, so perhaps you’ll like this collection.

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Five weeks and two days, but who’s counting?

I’m counting the days because every. single. puppy. is willing to either eat Royal Canin Starter (good) or at least lick chicken baby food off my finger (not as good, but it’s a start). I want them all eating kibble, softened if necessary, though those vicious little teeth are starting to suggest that they should be able to handle dry kibble pretty soon. I want this because at the moment they aren’t eating enough to really keep them going, so I still have to get up at one in the morning and take Morgan upstairs and supervise her while the puppies nurse. Have I mentioned I get up at four thirty in the morning as just a standard part of my schedule?

I will say, a couple broken nights usually suffices for me to train myself to go back to sleep promptly.

Well, another week … surely not much more … should see major gains in weaning and hopefully unbroken nights for Morgan and for me.

Meanwhile!

I think this picture is so funny! The puppies are venturing out of the puppy room. Every single puppy appears to be nicely confident and ready to explore. Keeping track of five is quite a trick, incidentally. Here we see the ruby girl and her almost entirely invisible black-and-tan brother, revealed mainly by the shadow of his tail, exploring about five feet from the puppy room gate. They didn’t stop here, either. The ruby found the open crate that really more or less belongs to Leda, though different dogs like to go in there sometimes, and in she went. The black-and-tan turned the other way and toddled into the living room, suddenly wondered if he’d gotten farther than he wanted to be, and was quickly rescued and restored to the puppy room before he could worry about being lost.

Meanwhile, after explorations are over for the moment, the puppies all still nap very thoroughly.

Meanwhile! On the way to work this morning, I suddenly realized how Dimilioc is going to solve the central problem of witches and black witchcraft, in a really great visual scene at the end of Silver Circle. It was one of those OF COURSE moments that is so helpful. I paused before turning onto the highway to scribble a quick note, though I doubt I’ll forget.

No doubt everyone will have some difficulty getting to that point. I don’t know yet what exact obstacles they will have to overcome to get there. But I do clearly know where they’re going. Also, I’m certain Justin will be important, which means Keziah will probably be moving more toward center stage as well. I know that will please some of you. Honestly, the cast of characters is so big by now it’s just a real challenge.

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Worldbuilding: building a word to believe in

Here’s an interesting post at Book View Cafe by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff: New Writers Ask: What goes into building a world?

I had a ghostwriting client for an epic historical fantasy who insisted that the opening chapter of his novel be dedicated to the arrival of a main character at a seaport and his subsequent trek to the regional capital by caravan. This, in itself, was problematic as it took pages for the story to actually get started. … But even a leisurely intro can be interesting to read if the details on the page paint a vivid picture and illuminate the world. 

Okay, isn’t that interesting? Maybe it’s just me, but I find the whole phenomenon of ghostwriting really intriguing, from both the pov of the person who hires the writer and the pov of the person who does the ghostwriting. It’s one of those things that’s hard to quite wrap my mind around, which is why it’s interesting. Bohnhoff’s posts on this subject are good at explaining some of what goes into ghostwriting.

Of course I also agree that a leisurely intro could be fine. I mean, it depends, but I wouldn’t as a rule object to beginning a story with a caravan journey, thus letting the author “paint a vivid picture and illuminate the world.” That basically sounds like something that would work for me. Mind you, I would sort of expect a certain amount of adventure during the caravan journey. Bandits! Sandstorms! Djinn! All three! But just seeing the world would be a benefit of opening with a journey.

But Bohnhoff continues:

He objected that this was not the way he envisioned the [seaport] at all. In his mind, the port—we’ll call it Wedebi—was basically a bunch of tents on a sandy beach inhabited by anonymous characters needed to unload the ship. There were no docks or wharves; the goods had to be taken from the vessels by small boats and carried perilously to shore.

And this takes us to the worldbuilding part. This is a longish post that goes into detail about building a port town in a sensible way, a town that could plausibly exist.

The post ends with a bunch of questions of the kind I never actually ask myself …

How old is this location?Why does it exist and how did it get here? (Bonus points if you describe how it was founded and by whom.)How populous is it?Who lives here and where do they live?What do they eat and where to they get what they eat?Is it a sea or river port? Is it supported by a farming community that it supports in return? Is it a regional capital, financial capital, trade center, religious locus?How does trade work here? Is there money or only barter or both? 

Because as far as I’m concerned, these questions, while excellent, are the sort that are generally answered in the back of the mind, drawing on a lifetime of paying reasonable attention to the world and/or reading nonfiction or well–researched historical novels …

… except that I do pay more attention these days to saying, “Oh, look at these wide, rolling fields of grain around this city” or whatever, because somehow I seem to have seen a lot of comments lately about fantasy cities that ought to be starving. I think for some readers, cities without agriculture are starting to fall into the same painful category as horses that gallop for hours without dropping dead. No one wants that. So my characters tend to look at fields of waving grain now and then.

Good post, though. Click through if you have a moment.

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Sale today —

Just a reminder that The Year’s Midnight is free today as a Kindle ebook.

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Progress report: finally moving forward again

Wow, it was a serious pain in the neck getting really started on something — anything — after June 15th, when I finally sent No Foreign Sky back to my agent.

Those puppies were (and are) taking up a certain amount of my time, and by “a certain amount,” I mean “a lot.” Also, getting up at 1:00 AM every night to make Morgan nurse her puppies was causing me to take a lot of naps in the afternoon, which is the low-energy period of the day for me anyway. This is true even though the puppies nurse in like five minutes flat. Maybe ten max. Very different from nursing all the time when they were newborns.

Anyway, stuff I have been working on, a little: Tasmakat. Since stuff in the Tuyo world is easier for me to work on than anything else, that’s what I worked on. Even that was slow. (For stuff in this world, very slow.) However, I now have chapters one, two, and probably five written. Chapter five was fun to write; that’s why I wrote it out of order.

I also have been poking at a story from Thaddeus’ pov for the next Black Dog collection. I know in broad terms what ought to happen in that story, and for various reasons I think it would be good to write that story, but I then set it aside in the hope that specific scenes will just occur to me one of these days. Preferably in the next month or so.

Instead, last night, a different story for this collection started to work itself out in my head. It is the first (and will be the only) story told from Grayson’s point of view. I can’t tell you much about it. Almost all of the events in this story depend on the events in a different story in the same collection. So I can say, “Grayson and Martya deal with the poroniec demon,” but that is obviously meaningless to you at this time. I can say, this will be the last story in the collection. I think it obviously makes sense to leave a Grayson pov story till the end.

It was nice to start moving forward with something I think I can finish in a week or two … or three, considering the puppies are only going to get cuter for some time yet … anyway, with luck this will be a fairly quick story to write. I’ll be aiming for sixty to eighty pages, which is about the length I prefer.

Placing all five puppies in new homes would clear the distraction out of my home. Morgan sure wouldn’t mind, as far as I can tell. However, I have to say, these tricolor girl puppies are very, very appealing. I’m really positive they are going to have pretty heads. I especially like Tricolor Girl One.

Also, Naamah has become extremely focused on playing with puppies, since no other dog in the household is remotely as playful as she is. Morgan used to be and may be again, but not right now. So Naamah has taught herself to play very gently with the infants. She is quite safe to leave with them while I go on about other things. But she is dying to play tag and wrestle. She flings herself energetically onto her back to try to get them to jump on her, but they are still at the pounce-and-fall-over stage. But, what I’m saying is, plainly it would be kinder to Naamah to keep a puppy …

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Andrea K Höst by another name

So, here’s something some of you might want to take a look at: The Book of Firsts by Karan K Anders, which is to say, Andrea K Höst.

AKH evidently put this one out under a different name because there’s lots of explicit sex in the story, a departure for her, and she didn’t want to accidentally mislead the many fans of her other works into picking up a book of hers automatically and then being disappointed.

Although in general I prefer no explicit sex, I do read contemporary “hot” romances if I like the story in other ways, and I’m sure I’ll like this one just fine. Those of you who like or don’t hate erotica in a story will probably want to check this one out. Here’s the description from Amazon:

Three boys, the ‘kings’ of the school. One cynical newcomer. An outrageous competition.
When Mika Niles overhears the details of “The Book of Firsts” she’s at first bemused, then scornful, then intrigued. Judging which of three very handsome young men is best at kissing, and…?

With no time in her final year for serious attachments, a series of lunchtime trysts is more than tempting – and an opportunity like this might never come her way again. But this light-hearted game is also a scandalous secret, and few can play with fire and walk away unscathed.

This isn’t something I would be interested in trying if it were by some other author, but AKH? That’s different. I’ve picked it up and will probably try it soon.

Also, that’s a really pretty cover, much nicer, or at least a whole lot more to my taste, than the bare-chested hot-dude closeups we so often see on romance novels.

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The cutest Puppy ever

Yes, she went to sleep in that position.

Hard to believe Tricolor Girl One could be comfortable in that position, but apparently she was, as she let me take a bunch of pictures without twitching.

The puppies are doing very nicely. Objectively, they aren’t much trouble at this age. Alas, they are now cute enough to be pretty distracting. They remain awake and playful for half an hour, maybe a little more, after nursing. They are distractingly cute for that entire period.

When I say they aren’t that much trouble, that’s in relative terms. The Tricolor boy no longer chokes at all, though he occasionally still needs a little extra formula from me. Today he was fine, gaining nicely by himself, so that was good to see.

But this litter is being super annoying about not wanting to wean. They won’t try, or immediately spit out:

Puppy food soaked in formula.

Puppy food soaked in water.

Royal Canin Starter, which is supposed to be super palatable. And probably is, for any other puppies.

Baby food — chicken

Baby food — beef

Actual top quality, very lean, minced raw beef. I’m going to eat the rest of that myself. Not raw, obviously.

A couple of them will lap a little formula out of a tiny saucer (actually a jar lid). Not this girl. The other tricolor girl and the b/t boy. Other than that, nothing. Well, I saw the ruby girl drink a little water this morning. It’s not like they’re not capable. They just aren’t interested. I tried limiting their nursing time this weekend. Nothing. I’m not going to starve them, especially not the little boys, so … they are just going to be slow to wean, I guess.

Poor Morgan! She would have liked to retire from nursing two weeks ago. At least she no longer has any sign of a rash and is plainly a lot more comfortable despite the vicious little puppy teeth that have appeared. All the puppies have correct scissors bites right now, by the way, which is excellent. Ish had a slight underbite that corrected (finally) at age five. Despite his glamor, I never showed him because of that incorrect bite. Morgan has the BEST bite, plus very nice strong teeth. Hopefully all the puppies will take after her. And preferably they will start to USE their teeth soon, for more than biting each other’s ears.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had this problem, but it’s been quite a while. I think it’s been eight or ten years since I had a litter refuse to wean. In one way, it’s not a big deal. They all get weaned eventually. In another way, obviously it’s hard on Morgan. I’m pouring food down her, but she has lost a bit of weight anyway.

I had one litter once that refused absolutely everything and eventually weaned straight onto dry kibble at about six or seven weeks, I don’t remember exactly when. Hopefully these puppies will not be quite that stubborn. But I will try dry kibble soon and see whether they like the crunch.

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What a difference Two weeks makes

Here is the ruby girl at two weeks of age:

And here she is this morning, greeting her father for the first time:

I didn’t let the boys meet the puppies until the puppies were up on their feet, looking and acting like puppies rather than potentially looking and acting like some sort of squirrel or whatever. Ish has killed, or at least been in on killing, four rabbits this year so far. His prey drive is fairly high generally and pretty much revved up this year in particular. He showed some possibly predatory interest in the puppies when they were newborns. So … four weeks, and finally an introduction, with careful supervision. No problem! He is now for sure clear on the idea that these are puppies, not prey. That does let me relax a little. I’m always careful about gates, but I was very careful indeed for the first few weeks because I did not want to experiment with Ish unexpectedly meeting puppies before I was ready. Or Conner, but Conner, though he did not show any kind of problematic behavior as far as I could tell.

Ish is seven, so he has seen … hmm … four or five litters of puppies, probably. He’s fine with puppies. Very tolerant and sweet. He lay down to talk to this little girl a minute after I took this picture. She tried to kill his ears. It was all very charming.

Her adult color, by the way, will be very close to what you see now on her ears. The body color for red Cavalier babies is quite a lot paler than the adult color will be. It’s not an optical illusion that her body looks much lighter in color than her head. That’s really the way the color looks at this age.

Ish is so very glamorous. I really can’t wait to see if any of his puppies are going to match him in that respect. At the moment, the girls have broader heads than the boys — broad is good — but they are also larger, so we shall see.

This puppy in particular has been the biggest and strongest for a long time. I think the tricolor girls have just now beaten her out for biggest in the litter. Honestly, this time around, the girls have just been no trouble at all compared to the boys!

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