Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 451

Why I haven't posted lately

It's been an intense month, as Adora's litter turned out to be one premature half-sized little puppy who embarked immediately on a roller coaster: He'll be fine! Wait, I think he's going to die! Oh, whew, he's okay. No, what? What? Aspiration pneumonia?

Aspiration pneumonia happens when a neonatal puppy breathes milk into his lungs, and it is always very serious.

Well . . . after putting the poor little guy on every safe and at least one risky antibiotic and tube-feeding him every four...

What's been going on lately?

1) Puppies! Bree, though suffering through an excessively dramatic whelping, presented me with a tricolor male puppy (bottom) and two absolutely beautiful girl puppies (side by side), one tricolor and the other blenheim. 'Blenheim' is what we call the red and white color in Cavaliers. Here they are!

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2) In a week, I'll be able to x-ray Adora to see how many puppies she is carrying. She isn't very large. I'm thinking I'll be lucky if she has more than one. I am just the archetype for...

Recent Reading

Still working on the stack o' books. I read Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner, the fourth book in her series — excellent, and what a fascinating series this is if you're interested in writing technique! I have NEVER seen anybody switch like this in one series, from first person, to third person omniscient, to third person restricted, and back to first person. And always effective choices for what the author is doing! I'm so impressed!

Plus all four are just really excellent, fun b...

Reading Through the Backlog

The enormous backlog of books is not shrinking very fast. I kinda bought a bunch more YA fantasy, which did not help to shrink the pile. But I haven't read any of them yet because The Thief, The Queen of Attolia and The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner and A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb were all so good that I really hesitate to read any more YA fantasy right now. Anything else is pretty likely not to be as good, that's one thing, and then I'm still sort of savoring the e...

Quick Catch-Up and Work-in-Progress Report

It's spring break, so I'm not at work this week, which is GREAT. I should be able to start seeds and dust everything in the house — well, to a rough approximation of 'everything' — and finish getting this website updated and update the Puppy page at the other website. I hope. More of the links from this page should be working now. Still working on others! All the book covers should link to Amazon, now, except the last one, which won't be out until next year. But isn't it a beautiful...