Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 380

A difficult Valentine’s day

You know, I would not have taken you all on this fairly immersive puppy-rearing journey if I’d expected it to be such a downer. I just wouldn’t have mentioned anything about it until or unless I could post pictures of bright-eyed eight-week-old puppies.

Well, I’m sorry. Because on February 13th, Girl was perfectly normal. But she suddenly stopped nursing yesterday before dawn. A few hours later, she started having seizures. By early afternoon, she was having a seizure every fifteen minutes and the interval was getting shorter.

Of course I had her euthanized.

I can’t tell you what this was like.

It wasn’t just the loss of this one puppy. It was the loss of everything. Even if Boy 1 doesn’t suddenly die, too, I don’t dare breed him now, even if he is the most beautiful Cavalier ever whelped. I don’t expect him to be affected, though at this point nothing bad could surprise me. On the other hand, what is he carrying? I don’t know. I can’t know. So how can I breed him?

My plans for working toward a family of Cavaliers free of heart defects? Those plans are dead, too. Because I can’t take this. This is worse than just having my plans set back by two years, which before yesterday was the worst I thought could happen.

I said to someone yesterday that this was my fifth disastrous litter in a row. But actually, once I counted them up, it’s more like my seventh. I thought Whelpwise would solve my problems. And maybe it would, for my next litter, if I planned to breed another litter. Because this neonatal death thing, this is something else. There’s no reason to expect this to happen again.

But it doesn’t matter. Because I’m done. I have been physically sick since Giedre started having premature labor. I feel better when things start going well, but actively nauseated when bad things happen. And bad things keep happening, worse each time. And I can’t take it. This is it.

If I hadn’t already bred Folly, I wouldn’t. As it is, I think I will take her puppies — presuming she has any — via a C-section / spay. I don’t care if she is carrying a nice normal litter of four. I don’t care. I am going to place her out as a pet, though it will take some attention to find the right pet home for her because she is so sensitive and very active, with a lot of prey drive. But good homes do turn up. I will keep an eye out.

I am thinking of placing all of her puppies out as pets, too, and keeping nothing. I wanted a little black-and-tan girl to show. But now I’m thinking of quitting showing, because what’s the point? For me, showing is all about breeding, and I’m done. I may not even bother finishing championships on Kenya and Honey. Though it seems a shame to stop short for those two, when they’re all but there. But showing means yet more expenses and time, and I don’t know.

I can tell you for sure, I will place Giedre out as a pet rather than breeding her again. At least, unlike Folly, she would be perfect for many, many pet homes.

Next year I was going to breed Kenya and use Whelpwise to ensure that I got living puppies. But I think now, no. In three or four years, maybe I will breed Honey because she is just too superb to spay. Or maybe not. Because I am tired of watching every damn backyard breeder who doesn’t even bother with heart checks for her structurally unsound dogs get five-puppy litters, when all of mine die. Of every show breeder who cuts corners with health checks, who gets a six-puppy litter.

I am sick of people asking me what I feed my girls, or if I filter my water, or about my vaccination schedule, as though somehow this is my fault. I’m tired of people telling me I should stick with it, or that I should buy a bitch with a better reproductive history, when they are not the ones having to cover three or five or eight thousand dollars of losses every single year.

I’m tired of it. Of the time, and the expenses that I keep having to eat all but whole, and most of all of the unbelievable stress, worse with every litter that turns into a nightmare. Even if Folly’s litter is perfectly fine, I’m done.

I won’t post about puppies again until Boy 1 is six or eight weeks old. I won’t post about Folly’s litter at all, until and unless her puppies get to that age.

I should probably hit “save draft” instead of “post.” But the hell with that, too. This is not going to be a day for sounding upbeat and cheerful. Check back in Monday and I will be upbeat then.

Recent reading: JINX and JINX’S MAGIC by Sage Blackwood

I used to say I didn’t really read Middle Grade, until the exceptions kind of piled up and I had to start trying to sort out what kind of Middle Grade it is that I do read, an ongoing project.

Like, Diana Wynne Jones’ Chrestomanci books. Those are MG, right? Now, is The Power of Three MG, or is it Young Adult? How about Dogsbody? How can you tell?

I very much enjoy Merrie Haskell’s stories, which are MG. I happen to know that she wrote the first (The Princess Curse) as YA, but the manuscript sold as MG and she revised it to suit her MG editor’s expectations. And the Magic Thief series by Sarah Prineas (btw, did you know there was going to be a fourth in the series?), those are MG as well. Aside from getting cool little drawings in her books, an occasional perk of MG, what makes them MG rather than YA?

Agent Kristen Nelson says that to her, in a Young Adult story, by the end of the story, the protagonist(s) have taken inextricable steps out of childhood and toward adulthood – that they can’t go back to a child’s life. In Middle Grade, the protagonist(s) are still fundamentally children at the end of the story. I’m not sure that’s uniformly true, but okay, at least it’s a start.

Someone else (sorry, don’t remember who) posited that the protagonists of a YA story are fundamentally self-absorbed, that the internal emotional life of the protagonist trumps any wider plot events. This is the idea that conflates YA with stories that feature a central angsty teen romance. In contrast, MG stories are supposed to have more of a save-the-world plot and a lot less angst.

I don’t know, by the way. I’m just throwing these ideas out there.

As you probably know, my tolerance for angst, especially agonized does-he-love-me angst, is relatively low; unless it’s done extremely well, I greatly prefer a plot that pulls the protagonist out of him- or herself, not one that curls inward. So you’d think I’d prefer MG. But actually I seem to only like MG that is at the high end of that age range, the kind that intergrades into YA. Certain kinds of implausible worldbuilding; too many moments where the author substitutes handwaving for a real grasp of science, history, or realistic motivations; protagonists who are just plain silly and get themselves into embarrassing situations because of it — those things are all major turnoffs for me. I could name examples — should I? — because those aspects of some MG books aren’t necessarily defects. There is a legitimate place for stories written at the low end of MG, where none of that is going to bother the intended audience. I am just not in that audience.

It’s actually just like animated films. You know how “Up” is the kind of movie that adults as well as kids can enjoy, all that clever subtext that the tots are going to miss? “Up” and “Wall E” and “The Incredibles,” right? Compare those movies to the Disney version of “Sleeping Beauty” – there’s just not much there in the latter. Little kids are going to enjoy “Sleeping Beauty,” but adults sans kids are only going to line up to see “The Incredibles.”

Okay, now, with all that buildup, let me say that JINX and JINX’S MAGIC are, like Diana Wynne Jones, the kind of MG that anybody can enjoy.

For the same reasons, too: the characterization, worldbuilding and actual writing are all top-notch, and as icing on the cake, there’s a good bit of biting commentary on what I hesitate to call the human condition because doesn’t that sound stuffy, but still.

“What it [the Urwald, the enchanted forest] isn’t, good Jinx, is a nation. And that means it’s waiting to be taken over by anyone clever enough to try.”

That really caught me, because it’s quite clear from real history that one of the first and most important roles of a nation as it gets established is to defend its own people against conquest or slave raids by outsiders. I didn’t expect to see a line like that in a MG fantasy.

And let me just add that Reven is one creepy guy and I was personally rooting for the nixies, but we’ll see how that plotline works out, I guess.

Jinx himself is a great character with unique strengths and definite weaknesses – he’s interesting as well as sympathetic. I really enjoyed not only the way he can see people’s feelings, but also the way that this ability interfered at first with him learning to judge people’s intentions the way the rest of us do – by reading subtle body language and stuff. That was really clever.

The writing is clever, too, on so many levels.

So this was the Bonemaster! The wizard of horrible tales and bottle-shaped fears. He looked almost kindly. The things boiling in clouds around his head said he wasn’t, though. The pink clouds had knives in them. Jinx had never seen anyone whose feelings came out in cutlery before.

And later –

“But the Bonemaster’s evil,” [said Elfwyn.]

“I know that,” said Jinx. “But he can tell me what Simon’s done to me. I mean, he’d know if anybody would, right? He’s the expert.”

“But the Bonemaster sucks people’s souls out with a straw.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“He sucks the marrow from people’s bones and stacks them up crisscross.”

“I know.”

“He pries people’s eyeballs out and strings them to make necklaces.”

“He what?”

The Bonemaster really is evil. He actually does suck out people’s souls and stack up their bones crisscross, as you might guess since we already know he has thoughts like cutlery.

But is Simon actually an evil wizard, too? I mean, Simon is the wizard who saves Jinx from being abandoned in the forest and eaten by trolls . . . but *is* Simon evil? I love Simon; he’s my favorite character. He may or may not be evil, but he’s certainly brusque and irascible and self-absorbed. Also kind at unexpected moments, and the bit after Jinx falls off the cliff, well.

And I love Simon for the way he nails down uncomfortable truths: “Well, if you never in your life find yourself making excuses for things you know are wrong, wonderful.” And again, later, “What, you’d rather be admired than useful? Plenty of people are neither.”

There, you see what I mean about capturing truths about the human condition? Simon is cynical enough to deliver lines like that. Oh, yeah, I’m a big fan of Simon. Even though he may be a little bit evil. You know, I just realized, if Simon is evil, it’s something he knows about himself; if Reven is evil, it’s because he is totally oblivious to everything and everyone that doesn’t line up with his own personal ambition — Reven is totally the hero of his own tale because he’s never been wrong about anything in his life. I really dislike Reven, if you can’t tell.

You can see how interesting and complex the secondary characters are. Readers could debate for ages about the nature of evil after reading these books. Or the role of knowledge in a society — I haven’t even mentioned the world of Samara. I’m starting to think these books should be assigned in school; there are great jostling hordes of discussion topics embedded in the stories.

Did I mention everyone in this story seems to be suffering from a permanent curse of one kind or another? (I’m exaggerating … I think.) It’s obvious to the reader what Elfwyn’s curse is; hers is my favorite: she has to answer any question she’s asked, and she has to answer it truthfully. This could be played broadly, but in fact it’s handled with unusual subtlety. I just love how Elfwyn takes control of her curse and uses it to her own advantage. You probably know how much I like a character who is coolly practical. So it’s no surprise that I love Elfwyn, who is all, “Well, I have to get him used to taking a hot posset at bedtime in case I decide to poison him.” Hah!

I don’t want to belabor this because it would take forever to go through them all, but there’re a lot of important secondary characters in these books and they’re pretty much all well-drawn and complex and a real pleasure to encounter.

There are also an increasing number of loose threads as we go through the second book – the werewolf Malthus (entertaining name for a werewolf). Those spooky elves and whatever they’re up to. Reven’s plans are just really alarming. The Preceptress; is she really going to simply accept that Jinx shut the Urwald away from Samara? And MOST OF ALL, that thing with Simon. To me, that part reads as a cliffhanger – a rather slow-motion cliffhanger, granted.

My personal suggestion is, read the first book now to decide whether you’re going to like the stories (I bet you will). Then pick up the second book and set it aside until the third comes out, or else you will be fretting over that third book.

Do remember – I don’t want to harp on this – but please keep in mind that an intention to buy the second book later, once the third comes out, is perceived by the publisher as a straight-up failure to buy the second book. That drop off in sales kills series. It really is best, if you like the first book of a series, to make that clear to the publisher by picking up the second as soon as it comes out.

BLACK DOG blog tour –

Here’s an interview at Closet Geeks and Slow Mo

And a brief review at Book Lover’s Life.

Plus another review over at Royal Reviews.

This one is interesting because the reviewer felt the book ended on a cliffhanger — I don’t think most people feel that way? Although I would agree there are definitely plenty of loose threads hanging out all over the place, so that could give the feeling of a cliffhanger.

Incidentally, no one warned me that JINX’S MAGIC ended on a cliffhanger. Jeez. Now I want the third book SO MUCH.

I ought to write a review of JINX and JINX’S MAGIC. Soon. Got this dratted statistical report I’m working on at home in order to make up for taking a zillion hours off to stay home with the new puppies, and that is eating my free time, but on the other hand it is deadly boring so maybe I will take a break and write this review tonight.

AND POST IT ON AMAZON as well as Goodreads.

I need to collect all my reviews from Goodreads and cross-post them as reviews on Amazon, because lately I’ve been hearing over and over about how important Amazon reviews are to authors. There are only 11 reviews of BLACK DOG at Amazon right now. Just sayin’.

A sad puppy update

I’m sorry to have to tell you all that Boy 2 died yesterday.

I was becoming more and more uncomfortable with how quiet Boy 2 was compared to his littermates. A normal puppy, if you disturb it a couple of hours after nursing, will immediately turn right side up and creep vigorously forward, cheeping and swinging its head from side to side until it finds mom. Boy 2 would stretch and yawn and go back to sleep. I believe he was becoming less active, not more active, even though he was gaining weight well and should have been strong enough to act like a normal puppy.

I was also disturbed by Boy 2′s decreasing rate of twitching. A normal puppy twitches randomly several times a minute while sleeping, which is how tiny puppies develop muscle tone. My initial impression was that Boy 2 was twitching at something like half the normal rate. On Sunday, I calculated his actual rate of twitching and found it was about one-seventh the rate of his siblings.

So on Monday, when Boy 2 sudden regurgitated milk for no reason and aspirated and started gasping — essentially always a prelude to pneumonia — I decided not to try to get him over the pneumonia. A puppy that was clearly normal would have been a different story. But I did not think there was enough of a chance that Boy 2 was normal to make it reasonable to let him suffer through that. So I had him euthanized.

Yes, that was hard.

Boy 1 and Girl are just fine, of course. There is no reason they shouldn’t continue to be fine, but I’m still hovering pretty close, if only because I’m upset at losing Boy 2.

BLACK DOG news –

Charlotte’s review is here. Yay!

Charlotte says: “Natividad really truly step up to the plate with her magic; she is one of the bravest heroines in YA I can think of, not because she is “kick-ass” but because she sees what she alone can do, and does it regardless of how scary it is because she is a good person.”

I’m happy to see this. Natividad and Alejandro are both getting picked as the favorite protagonist by various reviewers, which makes me happy. And I got a suggestion for a short story from Miguel’s pov, which is cool — I like Miguel a lot. I’ll write that, if I can.

And here’s another review from In Bed With Books, and thanks to Charlotte for the tip, ’cause I missed that one.

Liviania says, “BLACK DOG is super cool. I don’t even know where to start. It’s such a rich world with such intriguing characters and I just want to read it again or have a sequel or something so I can roll around in it some more. It struck me as something like a Maggie Stiefvater novel. I want to talk to people about what they think certain scenes meant, or how they interpret certain actions, or what they think will happen next. (I mean, I adore stand-alones and want more, but at the same time, I wouldn’t kick Rachel Neumeier out of publishing for writing a sequel.)”

Which is funny and flattering, what could be better? I love it when readers compare my books to those of an author I really admire.

Cool early mammals

Over at tor.com, the promised post on seriously cool early mammals. Honestly, you really should click through and take a look. Anybody with their images of “mammals, normal” shaped by modern fauna ought to really enjoy the weird things early mammals did as variations on the theme.

I’ve always loved the prehistoric elephants, who came up with lots of weird ideas besides the trunk. Hard to imagine a jaw like that being a good idea for an elephant, but I guess it was.

One I’d never heard of is Thalassocnus. An aquatic giant sloth, really?

Ordinarily my favorite extinct mammal is always Paraceratherium, because hey, giant rhinos trying out for the giraffe role in the ecosystem, what’s not to love? But today my favorite has to be Amphicyon, because it’s a bit like what one of my black dogs must look like, only of course black dogs are a lot shaggier and, you know, black. And even bigger. And have fiery eyes and black fangs and stuff. Still, this bear-dog type of thing is what I had in mind.

Click through an enjoy! Which one is your favorite?

A BLACK DOG soundtrack — and various updates

But the soundtrack is the coolest. At least the beginnings of a soundtrack, over at Syntax Reviews.

This is a unique guest post — all about the music I listened to while working on BLACK DOG — and Saruuh, who is seriously into music, put together a handful of songs to capture the black dog / Pure dynamic of the story. Isn’t that cool? You really should click through and listen. The link is right at the end of the interview. It really makes me want to make a full CD soundtrack to go with the novel. If I can find the time, I should really do that.

Also, Saruuh became one of my favorite people ever by writing this: “I am so excited to be a part of the Black Dog blog tour. You have no idea. I may have been screaming into a pillow to vent my excitement. I’ve been in love with Black Dog ever since I read it. The world, the characters, the diversity, the complex and unique magic and ‘werewolves’. *swoons* Just read it already!”

Talk about flattering! I do love enthusiasm!

Saruuh’s review is here.

Also, check this out — Laura Florand is planning to read BLACK DOG next. That actually makes me nervous. But happy.

Laura says: “She [meaning me, of course] has said some really wonderful things about my own books, and a lot of reviewers who like my books love hers, too, and I know that probably seems shallow or self-centered but in my experience it’s often a really good sign that we just like the same kind of story and I’ll respond to hers as well.”

Which, are you kidding me? That doesn’t seem shallow at all; it seems thoroughly sensible. I often start following a new-to-me blogger because she raves about one of my books — thus establishing that she has excellent taste. Or, yes, I know, technically it just means that my taste is likely to overlap with hers. Hey, same thing.

PURE MAGIC update: Just sent the ms off to my editor. Woo hoo! I hope she likes it — I am pretty sure she will, since Caitlin did.

Now, if I take a week off to read before (finally) finishing that HOUSE OF SHADOWS sequel . . . what shall I read? I have a short list of candidates:

JINX by Sage Blackwood.

CHAMPION OF THE ROSE and BONES OF THE FAIR by Andrea Host.

STOLEN MAGIC by Stephanie Burgis

I will probably read all those. And more than likely the sequel to JINX. That will probably be enough for one week! But which shall I start with? Choices, choices…

Puppy update: Girl is fine. Today it was Boy 1′s turn to demonstrate that any puppy, no matter how fat, can stall out for no special reason. It felt weird to tube feed a little hippo like Boy 1, but I don’t like to see a puppy go from vigorous, aggressive nursing to barely bothering. I tube fed him 10 cc twice at three hour intervals and poof! Now he’s fine. He’s up to nearly 24 ounces, btw.

Boy 2 is no longer nursing at all, which is my doing and not an emergency. I got tired of watching him struggle, taking in only 2 cc of milk at a time, and started simply feeding him the full orphan amount. That killed his nursing instinct, which is not unexpected, since many puppies figure why bother going to all the effort of nursing when food just appears in their stomachs. I’m simply going to tube-feed him right through weaning, the way I might do with a puppy that had a minor cleft palate (I’ve never seen that — so far — but I know people do hand raise those puppies and they have essentially normal lives once they’re weaned).

I wish I thought Boy 2 would wean at three weeks the way books say puppies will, but in my experience Cavalier puppies are not that eager to try real food. Still, hopefully he will have at least started on solid food by four weeks and be weaned by five weeks or so. Usually I do not push weaning, just letting the mom dry up naturally. Boy 2 is going to get a lot more encouragement to be weaned and usual!

As soon as Boy 2 is weaned, I will start to seriously evaluate him in comparison with his sibs. By the time the puppies are six weeks old, I sure hope I will know for sure that he is actually a normal puppy — just too weak to nurse effectively at first, which snowballed into the situation he’s in now.

Sorry, we’ve had some cute moments, but my phone wasn’t handy, so no picture today. I’ll definitely post a picture on Tuesday — two weeks in this world, whew, I can’t wait for it to be MARCH and my puppies to be up, playful, and CUTE.

Oh, and btw, I did get Folly bred despite the uncertain weather — so sometime in early March, I’ll know whether she’s pregnant.

Continuing the BLACK DOG blog tour –

Okay, today there’s a guest post over at Spec-Fic Romantic.

This one isn’t about BLACK DOG per se, because I think I’ve written enough of those guest posts to last me for awhile. No, this one is about ten great books that have fallen under the modern radar, so to speak. Some are old (not Tale of Genji old, but old). Some are not quite that long in the tooth, but nevertheless old enough to have become invisible to most readers today. A few are current works that came out in the last few years, but haven’t necessarily gotten the widespread attention they deserve. Plus, I was sort of trying to include several titles that are perhaps outside the reading range of many SF readers, because it’s a shame to miss out on truly great books because you “don’t read contemporary”, or whatever. Click through and let me know what you think about my perhaps rather eclectic selection.

Let’s see, what else? Okay, I don’t think I’ve posted this interview from My Bookish Ways here yet? I particularly like this one because Kristin was good enough to take time to add some of my book covers to the post. I have to admit, picture do dress up a post. Also, she asked, “If you could experience one book again for the very first time, which one would it be?”

Isn’t that a great question? I actually did answer it, but I’m amazed I could think of any one title when faced with a question like that!

And over at My Shelf Confessions, there’s a guest post on designing the black dogs and their world. Plus, another giveaway!

Puppy update: Same old holding pattern with Boy 2. If I don’t mention puppies for a day or two at this point, you can assume nothing much is going on. They will be two weeks old this coming Tuesday. Their eyes should open right around there! Then it will take about another week for them to suddenly develop actual behavior and start to be cute. My real hope is that Boy 2 will be the first one up on his feet and teasing his fatter siblings. I’m betting Boy 1 will be sloooow to get up on his legs, because he honestly is a little hippo of a puppy. Well, we’ll see!

Ooh! Ooh! For some reason tor.com has a post about the synapsids!

I admit I am not quite clear on why Brian Switek felt it was keen to post about the ancient pre-dinosaurian mammal-like synapsids at tor.com, but hey! It’s a great post!

Anyway, linking to the synapsid post gives us a break from BLACK DOG-related news, probably a good thing.

My favorite is Inostrancevia, which I can totally see why it was used as the inspiration for a villain on Primeval, something I did not know until now. Now I kind of want to go watch a few episodes of Primeval.

Go on and click through. It will make today’s mammals look so . . . normal, in comparison. Though of course that is just familiarity. Don’t you think a rhino would fit right in with these distant, distant relatives?

Yet another interview, plus (of course) a puppy update –

I hope you’re not too bored with all these interviews and things. Mind you, I am only linking from here to the very best reviews, because hey.

Anyway, lots of interviews and posts and reviews are kind of the point of a blog tour, so –

Here: a new interview, over at The Speculative Post.

Boy 2. I hope it’s not too blurry. I thought it was cute how Giedre is hovering over him.

He is still hanging in there, as you can see. I will be aiming for weight gain today, I think, and just encourage nursing this afternoon so Boy 2 doesn’t forget how. I found yesterday that if I fed 7 cc of formula, then three hours later 4 cc, then one or two hours after that, Boy 2 is hungry enough to nurse several hours in a row with just a little more tube-feeding to keep him going. That worked twice. I think he may be showing more vigor in nursing, but my scale shows he is not taking in anything like enough milk when left to his own devices. When he’s a little bigger, I hope that will change. Hence, I would like to see him go up a full ounce today.

Yesterday Girl modeled the perfect puppy crisis: a sudden lack of vigor in nursing and failure to gain, followed by me supplementing her with 5 cc of formula (she is 14 ounces) at 10:00 PM and 1:00 AM. I was tube feeding Boy 2 anyway, so it was no extra trouble. This morning Girl is back to normal. I hope Boy 2 was watching.

It’s not clear to me what produces this brief crisis. I’ve seen it in one puppy in almost every litter, any time before three weeks of age. Something prevents a puppy from nursing for a few hours, or maybe it gets just a tiny bit chilled, and you get this little pause. IT took me four days to get a puppy going again the first time I saw this. Now I know to weigh a puppy before and after nursing the very hour I suspect a problem, so I can supplement right away and lift them back up to proper vigor.