Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 379

More on self-publishing and discoverability

So, are you familiar with the Underground Book Reviews website? I wasn’t, until I looked around for a site that might review specifically self-published works. Lots of reviews and author interviews here. The site looks professional, but since I have no idea how critical the reviewers are, or what their preferences might be, it’s hard to guess how helpful this website would be in identifying gems in the self-published “slushpile.” On the other hand, here this website is, and it is certainly better than nothing.

A lot better.

Infinitely better, really.

There is a “suggested readings” page where you can get a better idea about the reviewers, and obviously following reviews for a while would give you an excellent idea about the taste and focus of each reviewer. I can’t say that I desperately need more books on my TBR pile, but it would be nice to read one or two self-published titles now and then, rather than sticking strictly to the shiny hyped new releases from the Big Five. This might be the place to pick a couple out.

Also, every now and then, someone runs a useful feature on self-published titles. For example, World blog, which picked out a handful of standouts from last year. Mostly these are not fantasy titles, but on the other hand, how about this:

Beneath the Chipvole Mountains A.K. Brennan (Scherzo, 2011)

In a way reminiscent of the classic Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Brennan tells of a mouse whose husband had gotten entangled with an up-to-no-good weasel king, so she and her children decide to move back to the Chipvole Mountains.

Do you remember Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh? Because I loved that book when I was a kid.

Okay, one more link: Here at Fantasy Review Barn, we have a post about a handful of self-published gems from 2013, and of course this time they are all SFF. Plus, this time the reviwer establishes her credibility by naming two of Andrea Höst’s books. That right there makes me inclined to check out the reviewer’s other picks.

The Demon of Cliffside by Nathan Fierro sounds really intriguing. So does The Five Elements by Scott Marlowe. In fact, all of the titles mentioned in this post sound like the deserve a second look.

So there you go: hopefully a boost to discoverability right there.

Discovering self-published gems

Have you all ever read anything by Chuck Wendig? I mean posts at his Terrible Minds site, not fiction; I don’t think his fiction sounds like my kind of thing (it sounds like horror or perhaps very very very dark fantasy and I’m not inclined to get within a hundred feet of it) (If I’ve got it pegged wrong, let me know). But his blog posts are a) almost always funny and b) rather crude, just so you know if you click through, and c) frequently spot-on about whatever topic.

He has a long post about self-published books which is worth reading because it’s funny and probably at least partly spot on, and he starts it thus:

“I do not hate self-publishing and I am in fact my own author-publisher on a number of releases, and will continue to be so. I am in fact one of those “hybrid authors” you keep hearing about, which means I have fins like a dolphin and claws like a badger and I can both play the violin and kill with my mind. This is not a post bashing self-publishing, but rather a post that aims for critical awareness and constructive thinking.”

Which sounds promising. Am I going to suddenly be able to play the violin and kill with my mind after I self-publish something, which I want to do, probably later this year?

Anyway, it’s a long post, in which he makes these points, among many others:

a) in the United States alone you have about 300,000 new books added per year to the traditional pile, and Bowker claims the number for self-publishing is somewhat higher (~400,000 in 2012) if you count them by ISBNs, and many self-published authors do not use ISBNs, so when you add in other countries and territories, you could be looking at twice or more of that number.

This is obviously both YAY! and OMG! because it’s so completely plain that you will never, never, never find even a fraction of the books you would most love. And the reason you won’t find them this year or next year or the year after that is because discoverability is so impossible. Here’s a tiny bit of what Chuck says about that:

b) Given that word-of-mouth still requires some genesis in discovery, let’s talk about one’s experience when going to browse an online bookseller to discover new work.

*inchoate screaming*

Oh, jeez, sorry! I tried to browse Amazon for new books and found myself plunging into a nightmare of noise and garbage.

Chuck actually thinks Amazon used to be easier to browse. If so, I missed that. I think it is impossible to browse online. The very closest you get is “if you liked this, you might like that”, and that is not at all close. And it doesn’t even matter how easy Amazon is to browse, because are you kidding me? 800,000 books (or more) per year and all the books published in all the earlier years that keep piling up, and there is NO WAY anybody can possibly browse. Hence, discoverability is THE issue. Especially for self-published authors because so few blogs / pro reviewers / libraries / bookstores / etc are willing to even glance at self-published work, and who can blame them, because 800,000 books! Per year! Is too many and everyone MUST have a gatekeeper to sort this pile before they look at it. Chuck says:

c) I was once open to self-published authors sharing this space [on his blog], but when I open myself to that, it’s like trying to get a sip of water from a water fountain and getting a fire hose instead. A fire hose that shoots sewage. . . . these books. These books. And these authors, man. … So, what I get is: a bunch of ugly books with quality issues pushed forward by unprofessional authors. Now, that’s by no means all of what I get from the self-published, but it’s at least half of what I get from them. And here someone is going to say, “Well, I’m sure you get the same from the authors with big publishers,” and here is where I say: not once. Not ever.

And thus Chuck Wendig concludes that the pile o’ slush is not harmless, because many avenues of discovery are closed to self-published authors because nearly everybody gets very tired very fast of the fire hose that shoots sewage. Then he winds it up by offering potential reactions to the problem, many of which are awful but I could certainly imagine them happening, such as Amazon segregating self-published work into a different search engine, and just imagine what that would do, burying gems that are self-published in a pit that no one would ever in a million years want to look at. Which is where they are now, mostly, but not as deeply and uniformly buried as a policy like that would bury them.

Solutions!

I don’t have any. Except: Once a specific person discovers a specific book, an awareness of that book can ripple outward via personal recommendations, until not only personal friends but also bloggers and reviewers and so forth start to pick it up. For example, Bibliotrophic has a perfectly clear no-self-published-books policy, but here is a recent review of Andrea Host’s AND ALL THE STARS at Bibliotrophic.

Social media probably helps with this, because I expect other reviewers’ enthusiasm for AND ALL THE STARS encouraged Bibliotrophic to make an exception.

But social media isn’t a perfect solution, because (as Chuck Wendig also points out) book recommendations that you see on social media do blur from signal into noise. It’s not that I don’t trust the taste of (lots of) the people I follow on Twitter. It’s that all of them are recommending books all the time, and unless someone says just the right thing about a book (Foodies will love this wonderful alternate-China fantasy! Wonderful sibling relationship plus dragons!) or specifically directs a recommendation right to @rachelneumeier, I am not likely to pay that much attention.

This makes me sad because I assume that most of the people who see recommendations on Twitter for MY books also don’t pay that much attention, but it also seems inevitable.

I will say, when someone *does* direct a recommendation directly to me, I pay attention. So that makes me happy, since I trust everyone has the same reaction on those rare occasions a friend specifically recommends about one of my books.

The amazing ease of giving books as gifts via Kindle may help, too. I’ve started to simply now and then send a book I love to someone I think will also love it, because that makes almost no difference to my overall book budget (huge compared to a normal person) and the prices for ebooks are often fairly low, and I just enjoy doing that. My bet is absolutely all of a person’s friends and acquaintances will pay attention to a gift dropped onto their Kindles (ie, pure signal, zero noise for this particular method of calling attention to a book you just fell in love with).

Which is a very long way of saying that I just discovered a new author whom I think is self-published, because of a direct personal recommendation from a frequent commenter (Thanks, Elaine!).

I loved this book, and also the second in the series:

Which should be read as a duology. You can expect a review to appear in the next few days, but I will say that to me the third book — while fun and worth reading — felt rather like an extended epilogue. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, because I love epilogues. I mean: plan to buy the first two and then if you love them, which I think you will, then buy the third.

The other warning I’ll offer right now is: these books were far, far too distracting for me and I have gotten nothing useful done for the past couple of days. Don’t start the first unless you have time to finish both it and the second.

Black dog genetics

My brother commented recently that I must have worked out the genetics behind the black dogs and Pure in detail — which is true! And actually, a reader asked about it, though she might not *really* want to know *all* the details. But hey! For those of you with esoteric interests, or anybody who just wonders, I thought I’d lay it out for you, semi-briefly.

Actually, this is *very* brief, considering the file I have on this is about ten pages long! But here is the short version:

Okay, the black dog “trait” itself is quite simple, a straight-up no-frills two-allele dominant, which I will call “B”. Well, the trait is not actually perfectly simple, because a BB homozygote will generally have a stronger shadow than a Bb heterozygote, so you could say it is an incomplete dominant — but essentially everyone with a BB or Bb genotype will be a black dog. A stronger shadow is not a good thing, by the way, since a strong demonic shadow tends to “eat” the original human personality. Also, remember that there is significant supernatural influence on this trait, which messes up normal probability, so that if a human woman bears children to a black dog man, with every pregnancy, the child is more likely to be a black dog.

You know, of course, that there has been a lot of demonic influence behind the scenes in the BLACK DOG world. So perhaps it won’t surprise you to learn that many people carry a genetic resistance to demonic influence. For all I know, there may be more than one such trait, but the one that concerns us is the X-linked E/e series. The recessive “e” allele confers some slight resistance to demonic influence of all kinds. The vampire miasma was always quite effective, but never quite complete enough to prevent some knowledge of vampires and other demonic creatures from “leaking out.” People with the XeXe and XeY genotypes were the ones responsible for this. (Sorry, WordPress doesn’t seem to want to let me do superscripts.)

Okay, now, suppose a Bb XeY (black dog man) has a child with a bb XEXe woman (human). Unfortunately, there is demonic pressure against the “Xe” allele being passed on, so that there is a pretty good chance the child will get the “XE” from the mother and a REALLY good chance the child will get the “Y” from his father. This is one primary factor that leads to the preponderance of black dogs being male.

Now, the Pure. As you know, Saint Walburga (or Vaubourg, or Waltpurde, or Gauburge) did the magic or channeled the miracle that led to the creation of black dogs. This was around was 740 AD, so it was some time ago. Whatever she did, the effect was to create a new allele (at an unlinked locus) that confers a different and stronger kind of resistance to demonic influence. Call it the “r” allele — or actually the “rp” allele because it leads to the Pure. Sorry for the lack of a superscript. The plain “r” allele was the “wild type” and confers no resistance.

Now, it turns out that IF you are genetically a black dog and IF you line up enough “resistance” alleles, you wind up Pure. Unfortunately for guys, “enough” is four, and even then it’s only enough if you’re working against less-powerful shadows. The only genotype that creates a Pure individual is Bb rprp XeXe. This is why the Pure are so rare, and it’s also why the Pure are always female. However, a black dog with a genotype such as BB rprp XeY will have plenty of strength AND vastly enhanced control over his shadow. This is Ezekiel’s genotype (but even for this genotype, he is also on the extra-cool end of the probability curve). Probably quite a few Dimilioc black dogs have a similar genotype.

Now, if you look up Saint Walburga, you’ll find that she was born in England but spend a large chunk of her life doing important saint-type things in Germany, so that is why the first black dog houses that really made use of the Pure were founded in those countries. Their influence spread, so there were actually quite a handful of such black dog families in Western Europe for a while there, and of course Dimilioc emigrated to North America, but as you know a whole lot of black dogs were killed in the war. It’s not clear yet if enough black dogs with this kind of heritage are left to reconstitute any of the European houses.

What the Dimilioc black dogs don’t know — what, in fact, no one knows except me (and now you) is that a second “create the Pure” miracle happened elsewhere in Europe at about the same time or perhaps a bit later — in Moorish Spain, almost certainly in the Jewish population. This new allele is also part of the “R” series, but it’s not the same as the “rp” allele. If you’re working with the “rp” allele, you need four “resistance” alleles to create a Pure genetype, but if you’re working with the “R” allele, you only need three. The “R” allele wound up significantly more widespread than the “rp” allele, because it was carried into the Middle East by the Spanish Jews and into Latin America and elsewhere by other people of Spanish extraction. But the “R” allele is far less concentrated in any one population than the “rp” allele, so RR homozygotes are quite rare.

There are, however, ten genotypes involving the “R” allele which could lead to a Pure individual being born: Bb RR XEXe , Bb RR XeXe , Bb RR XeY , Bb Rrp XeXe , Bb Rr XeXe , and the same again only homozygous for the BB allele.

Not only is the “R” allele more epistatic to the BB genotype than the “rp” allele, able to create the Pure even from a BB genotype, but also it may be the case that the Pure might be more able to work with black dog magic if they possess an “R” allele. Who knows? Maybe that explains certain things about Natividad and her mother. Plus, you can see that there is a chance of getting a Pure guy if he is really lucky and gets an “R” allele from each parent, plus an “Xe” from his mother, plus at least one “B”.

Anyway, the “R” allele can yield substantially better outcomes than the “rp” allele ever managed on its own, so it’s too bad Dimilioc doesn’t know the genetics behind all this and can’t go deliberately seek out that kind of Pure. However, they’ve lucked out in Natividad, who got the “R” from her mother and the “rp” from her father and whose genotype is either Bb Rrp XEXe or BB Rrp XeXe.

Now, aren’t you glad you know all that?

The odd experience of reading reviews

First, I’m happy to see the number of reviews ticking steadily upward both at Goodreads and Amazon. As always seems to be the case, there are more reviews at Goodreads (twice as many, which is to say, about forty so far), but the star rating is higher at Amazon. The two sites do seem to run that way.

Oh, btw, evidence that reviews matter, check out this tidbit from Cecilia’s review (Feb 19th): But what actually got me reading? Stephanie Burgis’ tweet and Liviana’s review.

See? So reviews DO matter. Though you probably knew that already. I bet we all pick up plenty of books based strictly on reviews.

Second, it is just so interesting to see how different reviewers disagree with one another. This is basically freeing: If one person thinks the fight scenes are boring and seem too distant from the action, and someone else declares that the fight scenes are great but the in-between scenes seem slow and boring . . . well, I may as well please myself. (Well, and my agent, and my editor.)

Opinions are even more divided on the characters, especially Natividad.

Natividad is sometimes seen as rather Mary-Sue-ish, which by the way is a term that has been appropriated to mean “overly nice” rather than “idealized author,” since no one would ever think Natividad is a bit like me. But even more often, Natividad is a favorite character. I haven’t tracked all the references down, because obviously that would be quite a job, but opinions don’t seem quite as divided about Alejandro, probably because no one would ever think of him as “overly nice”.

The worldbuilding is sometimes lauded as beautifully subtle, without boring infodumps; and sometimes panned as too confusing, without enough infodumps (not usually phrased as “more infodumping please,” but that is sort of the impression I get).

The reviews at Goodreads have dates. The reviews I pulled off specific blogs have the blog name. AND, don’t take any specific comment as necessarily reflecting the overall tone of the review. Quite a few of these were basically positive reviews with one or two negative comments. I don’t think I have read any truly negative reviews, because I try not to.

Okay, here we go:

The Bookish Outsider: …it was great to see Alejandro’s struggle firsthand, to see into his head about everything that was happening especially with his beloved sister. Natividad was also a strong character, headstrong, backing down if she absolutely had to but more than willing to go out a limb to help people even at the risk of her own life.

Robin, Jan 17th: Natividad is brave and really someone you want to get behind. She makes mistakes but is always trying to protect those around her.

Cecilia Feb 19th: I wonder if it is possible NOT to fall in love with Natividad.

Ellie at Book Revels: Natividad is one of the bravest characters in the story, which is saying something considering practically everyone else is a fearless, badass black dog.

Book Yurt: I wanted [Natividad] to stand out as a character, as a person – but aside from a few glimmers of personality, by and large [she] is just a hodgepodge of overly perfect traits: nice, sweet, fragile, beautiful, a good cook, even, and magic to boot, instantly beloved by everyone she sees…

Emma, Jan 7th: Rather than opening with a ton of info-dumping or endless buildup, we’re thrown right into the middle of the world of black dogs and magic users, but not so much as to make it hard to keep up.

Deniz Feb 13th: The world building is absolutely awesome! . . . But I found it quite hard to relate to any character much.

Tabitha at My Shelf Confessions: While the story arc for the characters was strong, the background history of the alternate version of our world was a touch weak. The story is set in a time after a war with vampires has taken place (I think worldwide?), so it is referenced a lot but there just isn’t enough detail given on these points to properly acquaint the reader with the state of things in the world.

Fangs for the Fantasy Jan 16th: The world presented is fascinating and presented in a way that is almost frustrating at the rate of reveal. . . . If I have one criticism it’s that the fight scenes didn’t flow and participants often felt like observers. . . . I also think that [Natividad's] rash actions bordered on open insult to the Dimilioc which seems beyond ridiculous given the circumstances.

Ria at Bibliotropic: If there’s anywhere that this book fell down for me it was that the narration at times felt flat and distanced from the characters, a hovering overhead camera instead of being right there in the thick of things. Except for fast-paced and brutal battles, that is; then we were thrown right into the middle of the action, which made it seem even more tense by comparison. I got more emotion and connection from Alejandro’s viewpoint than I did from Natividad’s.

Isn’t that interesting? And, as I said, freeing. Such disparate takes on everything — fight scenes, characters, worldbuilding — means that probably didn’t get anything TOO wrong.

I do look forward to the sequel hitting the shelves. Because a good many reviewers who made one or another type of negative comment about, uh, certain things, are probably going to be happy to see, um, certain plot twists and new worldbuilding elements.

You have NO IDEA how hard it is not to just TELL everyone what is going to happen in the sequel.

Archetypes vs stereotypes

A post over at Fantasy Faction.

“What is the difference between a great character and a placeholder? Why is one warrior or wizard better than the other? They might serve exactly the same purpose in the novel, but one is clearly superior. Your grey-bearded magic user with the impractical hat just can’t compare with the scarred conjuror addicted to demon blood. One is a well developed protagonist, while the other is a cardboard cut-out from any generic fantasy novel.”

I would add: Yes, but sometimes a stock character is kind of what you want for a particular story. Tolkien gets criticized for stereotypical characters, but a) he was for all intents and purposes the original, and b) characterization was not the point of The Lord of the Rings. That is a work that is all about the world — very much venue-driven rather than character-driven. It’s a mark of greatness that I love the work anyway, since I am a character reader. Though it’s true I am also all about setting and venue, much more so than a lot of readers.

There are other situations where you might want one or more stereotypical characters: where you are focusing on plot (this doesn’t work well for me personally), or where you are focusing on the protagonist or on a specific set of characters and feel it would detract from that focus to draw out one or more of the secondary characters. I believe that latter case can legitimately lead to a decision to not round out specific characters.

Granted, I greatly admire authors who are capable of rounding out minor characters with just two lines here or there, without making them important characters. That’s really something. For me, one author who did this beautifully is Brian Katcher in his book Almost Perfect.

Giveaway –

Just letting you all know about this Goodreads giveaway: one signed copy of BLACK DOG.

Fictional relationships –

I noticed a new post over at Chachic’s Book Nook,about great fictional couples. I have the first Lupi book on my Kindle and I really want to read that this year, which will leave out only the Ruthie Knox title. I like the foodie aspects of that one, so maybe I’ll pick it up, too.

Of course I’m especially happy to see Natividad and Ezekiel on the list, even though their relationship is still, um, in the process of being defined. It is just killing me not to tell you all whether and how it works out between those two in the sequel. I am sure you mostly do not actually want to know ahead of time.

I do want to mention a handful of the fictional couples I like best, though — and a handful of my favorite non-romantic relationships, too, because it’s way too late now to call this a Valentine’s Day post, so why stick to romance?

But, as romances, here are some I really enjoy:

Dag and Fawn in Bujold’s Sharing Knife series. They are too well suited in too many ways for the age difference to bother me, and in fact I like the additional complications the age difference adds to their relationship.

While we’re on Bujold, how about Miles and Ekaterin? A perfect couple, right? And A CIVIL CAMPAIGN is practically a perfect book, too.

I’m going to continue to nudge everyone who loves Kaoren Ruuol and Cassandra to try to find a copy of An Alien Music, because I bet you will love Jesse and Ben Hammond.

I really love the slowly building relationship between Benjamen January and Rose in Barbara Hambly’s series, starting with A Free Man of Color.

And one I may not have ever specifically mentioned before, but which works wonderfully well: Wen and Jasper in Sharon Shinn’s Fortune and Fate.

That story is linked to the Thirteen Houses series, but is fairly independent and certainly can be read as a standalone. Of course Shinn almost always uses a lot of romance tropes when she writes, you probably already know that, but this particular story is one of my favorites of hers. I particularly love how Wen is the physically competent swordswoman and how Jasper is the bookish guy, and how they really have to work at understanding one another. Seriously, romance lovers should try this one — so should people who enjoy non-romance fantasy, because there’s plenty of other stuff going on in this book.

There is a particular exchange in Fortune and Fate which really resonated with me, too — this arises from the backstory — where Wen says to someone, “I just don’t know how I can go on after that.” And he answers, “But, Wen, you already have.”

I read that scene several times. It still leaps to my mind whenever I think of this book. I just think that line really captures a kind of day-to-day endurance after tragedy, that turns imperceptibly into the rest of your life.

Anyway!

For non-romantic relationships, it’s hard to beat Alan and Nick from The Demon’s Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennen, don’t you think?

I just re-read Martha Wells’ Raksura trilogy, and so I’m still thinking about how much I love the relationship between Moon and Stone. Of course there’s also the excellent romance between Moon and Jade, but even that can’t beat the son-father vibe that gets going between Moon and Stone.

You know I have also just re-read (most of) the Touchstone Trilogy, and I’m so impressed by the relationship Cassandra builds with those kids, especially Ys. One of the best mother-kid vibes out there, even though the age difference between Cassandra and Ys is not really all that huge. They’re only about nine, ten years apart, but Cassandra is such a great mother for those kids anyway.

And, back to Sharon Shinn, I really loved Adele and Eleda, the mirror twins in A Truthteller’s Tale. A thoroughly charming story, beautifully put together, I really should re-read that, too. So many books, so little time!

One more, though I think it’s cheating to reach out of the literary world into TV, but still. I really appreciate the relationship between Veronica Mars and her dad, which to me was one of the strongest aspects of a show that had a lot of strengths. Even I am looking forward to the Veronica Mars movie, and I normally don’t care very much about movies. (I don’t have anything against movies, really! I just would normally rather read a book.)

How about you, any particularly favorite couples or other relationships that leap to your mind?

Blog tour –

Here’s an interview over at Say It With Books – plus pictures, including a picture of my very favorite woody shrub / tree, because this interview is about balancing writing with life, and gardening is part of the “life” part.

I do hope that my tiny cuttings have made it through this grim horrible Ice-Age winter.

Always a good thing when another author likes your books –

Check this out: Gail Carriger just read BLACK DOG! Hah, that makes me happy, especially since she tweeted about it to about all the followers in the entire Twitterverse. (Is “twitterverse” a term people use? I have no idea.)

She did miss the thing about Dimilioc forbidding OTHER black dogs to marry the Pure, so her full review at Goodreads offers a moment of confusion about that, but she is sensible enough to say “I might have missed something” rather than “clearly a problem with the logic of the story.” I wonder if this is because as a writer she knows very well that all those layers of copy editors are not likely to miss something like that.

I will have to start checking in at Carriger’s blog because I like the “daily infusion of cute” and “tisane of smart” and “writerly tinctures.”

I have been reading more Regencies lately, what with not only Georgette Heyer but also modern writers like Teresa Romain. Maybe it’s time to get Carriger’s first book off my TBR shelves and give it a try.

Also, I like this link, which was the link from “writerly tinctures.” Because, YES, reviewers should DEFINTELY stick to reviewing books from genres they actually read and like. I’ve noticed that, too, that if a reviewer mostly reads contemporary romance, or literary, then they may try to write a fair review for one of my non-romance-non-literary secondary world fantasies, but they stumble over it. Why do this? Just say No when a publisher offers you an ARC for something that really isn’t your cup of tea.

However, as you may have noticed, I don’t agree that reviews should necessarily “summarize the book succinctly” rather than offer a visceral reaction to the book. I actually barely skim plot summaries, even if the reviewer is brilliant. I am way more interested in the reviewer’s visceral reaction, provided I think I share their taste in books. I can’t tell you how many times I have picked up a book DESPITE the plot summary, BECAUSE of the reviewer’s reaction to the book.

Kind of a place for both, imo.

Comfort reads

It turns out Andrea Höst’s Touchstone Trilogy has become a comfort read for me. I’m reading it backwards. The Gratuitous Epilogue is perfect for unstressful reading. All that about architecture and wedding dresses and birthday presents and everyone living happily ever after.

Now I’ve gone back and started about halfway through the second book. I can’t tell yet if I’ll go all the way back to the beginning later.

I’m also writing a short story from Miguel’s pov. Don’t ask me how it’s going. I’m not used to writing short stories, so it’s hard to tell if it’s going to have the right kind of structure for a short story. If I finish it today, I guess it was going well.

I really need to write this boring report for work today since I took off an unexpectedly huge number of hours recently. Plus, I just need to write it. THis presents me with the choice of a) write boring and rather depressing statistical report about tutoring outcomes last semester. b) work on Miguel’s short story and maybe try to go on with the one where Natividad and Keziah go Christmas shopping together. c) read the rest of Caszandra.

It’s tough. The day already looks too short and it’s only 6:30 AM.

Brief puppy update: he’s still okay as of this morning. Gaining 3 ounces a day, the greedy little hippo. Eyes are almost all the way open.