truepenny | Entries tagged with i like fluffy!

1. I swear to god I was going to stop, but then I looked at the window this morning.

1392127579957

2. The bidding for Unnatural Creatures has reached $75, and the bidding for The Goblin Emperor has reached $100 (!). Y'all are awesome.

3. Apparently, I will be at C2E2 this April.(I say "apparently" because I can't quite believe I agreed to anything that terrifies me as much as a convention with 50,000 (FIFTY THOUSAND) attendees.) I will provide more details as I am able.

4. In case you missed it yesterday, the first two chapters of The Goblin Emperor are available for free download at katherineaddison.com. And, no, I am unlikely to put up more. That's why they call it a teaser.

5. This really is the best picture of a wildlife photographer ever taken. EVER.

So anyway, in my THIRD POST TODAY:

1. Publishers Weekly reviews The Goblin Emperor

2. Goodreads & Tor are apparently conducting a sweepstakes for The Goblin Emperor, which I know about because I know how to use Google.

3. My beloved friends Lynne and Michael's daughter Caitlin has Aicardi Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that causes all sorts of problems, including potentially life-threatening scoliosis (spine gets too far out of whack, lungs can't work properly). Caitlin just had surgery on her spine, in which she nearly died, and one of her Aicardi sisters, Annie, is now fighting one of the worst possible outcomes this surgery can have. Please keep both Caitlin and Annie, and their parents, in your thoughts.

4. I have started watching The Magnificent Seven TV series on Hulu. I will probably make a post about it when I've finished, but for now I will just say that every single episode I have watched would be improved by MOAR EZRA.

5. Via @UrsulaV, a picture of baby Eastern Screech Owls and from @EmergencyKittens this really quite remarkable Persian in midair plus some kittens. (Because when in doubt, add pictures of (a) baby animals, (b) cats, (c) both.)

Fum i Gebra

(It becomes very clear as you watch the video that, no, the cat is not trying to hurt the owl.)

may it be very happy!

Also, as a sort of Whatever-You-Celebrate-If-Anything present, episode 19 of the SF Squeecast, Delicious Delicious Sin, is live, in which, as the Very Special Guest, I inveigle everyone into talking about Sherlock Holmes.

Also, ZooBorns has posted their Top 25, which includes a link to the flickr stream of In Cherl Kim, which includes a flourish of fabulous fennec fox photographs.

So anyway. Happy whatever! from the Upper Midwest where we are currently snowed in and listening to the Lumineers.

1. We have a new car. The elderly psychotic Swedish car had devolved into panic attacks (the car started setting the car alarm off randomly--and silently, so it was like panic attacks IN MIME) and we finally just said fuck it, and bought a new (used) 2009 Subaru Forester. With all-wheel drive, which I am going to be loving come next winter, I tell you what.

2. The University of Wisconsin-Madison has a hawk cam, which as I type this is showing three fluffy baby hawks. (Ooh, and a parent just showed up with a small dead thing. Rock on.)

3. And speaking of fluffy!cams: Kitten Cam! (via

heresluck)

4. Not a cam, but to complete the fluffy trifecta: Clouded Leopard cub getting some really primo chin skritches.

5. Neil Gaiman likes my Sandman essay!¹ This is the first time in my life I've written an analytical essay about a work by someone who's still alive to have an opinion. And he likes it! I have some cognitive dissonance, but it is the most awesome dissonance in the history of things that jar your brain when you put them together.

---
¹@neilhimself For the record CHICKS DIG COMICS contains the best SANDMAN essay I've read & I've read too many. http://bit.ly/GT3TLe Well done @pennyvixen²

²Oh, come on. How could I not footnote at a time like this?

1. You know the faces people make when they're about to sneeze? Horses do that, too.

2. Sold "Coyote Gets His Own Back" to Apex Magazine & reprint rights for "The Watcher in the Corners" to Ghosts: Recent Hauntings, edited by Paula Guran.

3. Also, because I failed abysmally to blog on the actual launch day, Chicks Dig Comics is out! I contributed an essay on revenge tragedy and Sandman.

4. If arthropods give you a wiggins, DO NOT CLICK THROUGH to the story about the Cincinnati Zoo's Emperor Scorpion and her twenty-five babies. Seriously. Don't. Instead, may I suggest Point Defiance Zoo's unbelievably charming clouded leopard cubs?

5. Speaking of things I failed abysmally to mention, congratulations to all the 2012 Hugo nominees!

I'm not going to make it to five, but have a couple things that are better than my virus:

1. Lightspeed Magazine's free ebook sampler includes my story "The Devil in Gaylord's Creek."

2. The Taronga Zoo, which continues to have the world's most awesome animated logo, has a video of their three Sumatran tiger cubs (plus mom) which put some color back in my world.

1. I'm seeing a sleep therapist now, because I would like to get off the potentially addictive hypnotic that is currently holding my insomnia down. She told me what I really already knew, that I need to get on a fixed schedule of going to bed at the same time every night and getting up at the same time every morning. Which means getting up at 6:30 on weekends. I HATE THIS. I have always been a night owl, and mornings are my favorite time to sleep. But I am determined to give this fixed schedule a fair shot, so here I am, awake and fed and medicated and dressed at 8:30 on a Sunday morning. (Nobody says I have to move fast on weekends, just that I have to get up.)

The fixed schedule idea also means that I have to go to bed--as in, in bed, lights out, eyes shut, at 10:15. And ideally I need to try to decrease my computer usage in the late evenings, because of light issues (photosensitivity plus glow of monitor equals confused circadian rhythms). Which means I have even less time to get computer things done, and I am still trying to finish this goddamn book. Ergo, as little as I have been an online presence in recent months, I'm going to be even less of one, at least for a while. Which is Teh Suck, but I have to find a way to keep the insomnia chained in the basement, and long-term drug usage is just not the way I want to go.

2. So, when I was making my whirlwind trip to Boston, I discovered that O'Hare has a Field Museum store. This is a brilliantly terrible idea on the Field Museum's part, but it did mean I could take

matociquala meerkat socks as a hostess gift (because seriously--meerkat socks). And I bought for myself a pair of tiny Sue earrings. They have become my favorite earrings--for the one set of holes I don't just leave rings in all the time--for days I don't have to dress like an adult.

3. Two really nice capsule reviews of The Bone Key: (1) and (2). And Somewhere Beneath Those Waves got a starred review from Library Journal (here if you're interested) and a very kind mention from Lesley Hall over at Aqueduct Press's blog.

4. These fossa pups, Ingrid, Heidi, and Gretchen, show that Madagascar really knows how to work the charismatic predator* angle.

5. Have a picture of Milo and me:

(Stepping Stones Studio 2011)
---
*

ursulav came up with that useful designation.

First! Publishers Weekly gives Somewhere Beneath Those Waves a starred review. (OMG ELEVENTY-ONE!!!1!1!)

ETA: since a couple people asked, and since apparently I am drifting along, lonely as a cloud, without a clue as to the correct answer: YES, this book will have both paper and electronic versions, and the e-book should be available near to the release date for the paper book (which is November 22).

!UBC:
Lukacs, John. The Hitler of History. New York: Vintage Books, 1998.

( There's a bit of a rant behind the cut-tag. )

Fountain pen geeks, what do you think about Pelikan inks, particularly the ones available in cartridges? I have been very disappointed in the royal blue, which is a nice enough color but fades horribly--and since I want my inks dark and vivid, this drives me nuts. Should I try any of the others, or should I just give in to my own geekiness and take a bottle of Noodler's Squeteague to live in my desk at work?

A reminder:

matociquala and I will be reading at Pandemonium Books in Cambridge MA at 6 p.m. on Saturday, November 19. Free and open to the public, so please come out!

And, for a fifth thing and happy Friday, have some lovely pictures of wet fishing cat kittens

1. (via

cmpriest) The search and rescue dogs of 9/11. These are wonderful photos of wonderful dogs, and they damn near make me cry.

2. The Tempering of Men launches today! (It's the sequel to A Companion to Wolves if you need that info.)

matociquala is having a contest.

3. Speaking of

matociquala, she made a post yesterday about the cunning ways PTSD encourages self-sabotage. And, I think, about the importance of telling the people you love that you care about them. Because they may really need to hear it.

4. Ariel the dolphin and her baby, which you may file under omg cute! or omg dolphins are awesome!.

5. First successful use of laparoscopic(!) artificial insemination with Pallas' Cats.

(Yes, I like animals. Frequently more than I like people.)

1. It is disgustingly hot today. Thank goodness for air-conditioning.

2. Think good thoughts for me tomorrow at 11; I'm interviewing with a temp agency.

3. These caracal kittens are just stunningly beautiful. (Watch the video to see their even more stunning parents.)

4. So I'm behind the curve (as per usual), but I have finally discovered Hyperbole and a Half (origin of "CLEAN ALL THE THINGS!"). My favorite entry is probably The Alot Is Better Than You At Everything (it also makes me wonder if alots live in alotments), but The God of Cake is a close runner-up, and the better pain scale made me cry with laughter. (Also, an honorable mention to one of her older posts, "Thing of the Day: Uterus. Rating: NOT AWESOME," for obvious reasons.) But I love the alot. I want to give it cookies, and oh believe me, I will be thinking of it in bad English-usage situations from here on out.

ETA:

jenavira has alertly pointed me toward instructions for making your own alot.

5. And finally, a passage I have had to excise from an essay I'm working on, but which I love so much I have to SHARE IT WITH THE WORLD:

The difference between a murder ballad and a revenge tragedy goes like this. In a murder ballad, Johnny does Frankie wrong and Frankie shoots Johnny; in a revenge tragedy, Johnny does Frankie wrong, and when Frankie goes to shoot Johnny, she misses and kills the brother of Johnny's new girlfriend instead.

And Wacky Hijinks Ensue.

Thank you. I feel better now.

1. Not to be gross, but the snotbergs in my head are calving.

2. Milo <3 June

3. Since a couple people have asked, Somewhere Beneath Those Waves is a short story collection. It will be published by Prime in November, and will collect all the non-Booth stories I've published up until 2010. (I.e., "After the Dragon" will be in it; "The Devil in Gaylord's Creek" will not.)

4. There is no number four.

5. Bat-eared fox kits! They're going to grow up to look like this, so you can see that it takes a while after birth before the ears deploy. In honor of my love for critters who can use their ears for drag chutes, have some more pictures. (Plus a bonus fennec fox.)

1. Simon's Cat has a website. Also, a new cartoon.

2. Life on White does absolutely stunning photography. All kinds of animals, vertebrate and invertebrate. (

oursin, I commend to you the hedgehogs.)

3. The Indianapolis Zoo has a baby dolphin. I recommend the video, especially if your own species is getting you down today.

4. Sadly, Cinnamon, the doyenne of Disapproving Rabbits, has died. She was thirteen, which is a darn good run for a rabbit. All my sympathy to her humans.

5. There are snow leopard triplets (and their gorgeous mom) at Zoo Basel.

Technical Difficulties

Entries tagged with i like fluffy!

Navigation

5 things (at least my disorganization is better contained)

My complete disorganization, I shows you it

The Owl and the Pussycat

Whatever you celebrate, if anything, at this time of year

Eve tempted Adam with an apple, you know I ain't going for that

5 things

2 better things

5 things

!UBC plus 4 other things

let's see if I can get to 5

5 things, OH MY GOD I'M MELTING edition

5 things

Five for Friday

Profile

February 2025

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags