Q: What's cuter than a puppy?

[timeripple]

A: A puppy that tries to leap into your zipped hoodie, while you're wearing it, in a frantic joyful search for more cuddles. While you're already petting said puppy.

One of our office-types at work brought her new puppy down to the sales floor for a few minutes, where it happily snuffled around and was petted and cooed at and cuddled. So soft! So tiny and wet-nosed and perfect! It made me so, so happy.

Which was good, because sales for my co-written staff rec Young Miles (The Warrior's Apprentice, The Mountains of Mourning, and The Vor Game) continue to be sad, despite Vericon and several helpful suggestions aimed at customers of the target demographic. I have decided that I shall henceforth describe the Vorkosigan books as “Robert Heinlein and Georgette Heyer walk into a bar...”

Speaking of Vericon and Vorkosigans, I talked to Holly Black for about 15 minutes while she ate her pre-signing sandwich. I had on my Hat of Vaguely European Mystery and was lounging in the break room with a copy of Cryoburn and hopefully I did not terrify her too much with the awkward and the crazy. She was wonderful, at any rate, and said many smart and interesting things about books we both like very much.

Later in the day, this happened:

BOOKSTORE MUSIC: *is some slow, kind of rock-y wistful song about spring and feelings and sadness, with whistling*
ME: Huh, nice song.
ME: Wait, why is this song in Japanese?

XD

It was snowing as I walked to the library and Trader Joe’s the other day. There were some crocuses out, as there are this time of year long before the trees realize it’s spring. The snow wasn’t really sticking, but a few patches in the shade of walls and bushes were frosted over, the white snow stark and cold against the yellow and purple of the flowers. Poor, brave little things.

And now I must take another look at my taxes.

Comments

[a4yroldfaerie.livejournal.com]

one of my favorite pictures is of a flower in the snow.

puppy!

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

PUPPY!

[satakieli.livejournal.com]

Hah! I am amused by the coincidence. I'd just finished rereading the Vor Game when you posted this (actually, just finished reading Young Miles as a collection instead of individually for the first time). Indeed, I'd spent the evening before trying to muddle some of my thoughts down on paper. Most of them are rambling and tangential and poorly structured, being not intended for public consumption, but here's a snippet (after ranting about the easy-to-remember reasons I don't like it, aka the struttingly, uncomplicatedly evil villains):

But then there are the conversations. I'm thinking of one in particular between Miles and Gregor, with seven layers thick of tangled issues of honor, duty, despair, and desire, with long and well-developed character on both sides driving it and backing it up, and crackling humor to top it all off. But there's lots like this. Stuff like this is why I read Bujold. Rereading early Bujold, it's surprising to me how well she does it from the very beginning. Perhaps better than now. The inner conflicts of some of her more recent characters have been pretty dull to me (Fawn, for example), and sometimes feel like self-conscious character development. When she does it well, it's completely invisible, and it just feels like people, vivid and real, or realer than real.

I'm sorry sales are not strong; I just bought my own loaner copy to foist on people as an introduction to the series, or I might try to do my part to remedy that. (Actually, that's why I was rereading; because I'd never read them as a unit before, and I wanted to see what the experience was like.)

And now I am going to internet-hunt for your co-written staff-rec, because I am dying to read it.

eta: back to grump in my cranky kids-these-days dinosaur way... review was easy to find, but harder to read. Sites that require one to enable javascript to access text content irritate me.

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

I think I actually need to re-read the collection properly, as the joint staff rec came out of my gleefully foisting Bujold on my co-worker, with The Warrior's Apprentice as a starting point. And then we couldn't talk about anything else for weeks, and finally said, hey, we should rec something in time for Vericon. To my mind, Young Miles is the perfect Bujold starter kit, since The Warrior's Apprentice is pretty hard to find just by itself, and the Cordelia books are good but lack, well, Miles.

When she does it well, it's completely invisible, and it just feels like people, vivid and real, or realer than real. Yes to that, and everything else in that paragraph. When she's good, she's smokingly good. I haven't been as thrilled with the last two Vorkosigan books, and maybe it's just that I'm a more critical reader now than when I first read them, but things like nominal cultural appropriation really bothered me in Cryoburn. Grumpy critic is grumpy, but still wants more...

We weren't expecting it to be a bestseller, given that the cover is, um, um, but I'm hoping eventually it'll catch on. Until then, uh... we do this for the sake of Art and not Profit? ;)

I feel your pain. The new website can be clunky on several levels, no lie. Our web team does its best, but it is a very small web team and things change slowly...

...and now I'm going to re-read that part in Memory where Miles decides to go to the grocery store, because I don't know what it is about that scene, but it makes me ridiculously happy. :)

[edajaramsmom.livejournal.com]

How 'bout a cute little lab rat snuggling in your hoodie? Adrian just got a new pet. He posted pics on FB of his "hood rat." Very adorable... Now it needs a name. Got any ideas for a cute girlie rat? LOL

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

RATS ARE ALSO CUTE! I would totally let one snuggle in my hoodie. Awwww, adorable. :)