Month: December 2010

It is one of the er… interesting aspects of a writing career that moments of heartbreak and the most fallow, dark years are inextricably linked to the moments when something clicks.

Perhaps it’s true of life, anyway. Human beings are creatures of habit. If everything is going along fine – or even tolerably – nothing changes. This in terms of society explains why wars and revolutions tend to change the world in scientific and innovation terms as well as in political and social. Because once everything is made “wrong” or “uncomfortable” and a mass of humans are broken out of their routine, then you can reestablish your quotidian life using new information/science.

In 1997/8 I’d come to the conclusion I’d never sell, not at the professional level. This required I rearrange my entire life, which had been geared towards my learning the craft and trying to get published for over a decade and strongly geared that way for at least six years.

I realized early on that I couldn’t actually give up writing. It’s an ingrained habit that long predates any dreams of publishing for pay. I make up stories and I write them down to get them out of my head. I finished my first “novel” (Okay, so it was forty pages) at ten AND wrote it during finals week in fourth grade (which actually determined what kind of secondary school I would attend, so it wasn’t as unimportant as it sounds.)

So, in 98, first I tried to write just for myself, but that didn’t work. When you’re writing for yourself, there’s no reason to make sure you are understood or understandable. There’s no reason to affix the details to paper. What you write ends up sounding like memories of dreams – things that come out of the subconscious and submerge again. After a while it feels pointless.

I needed to write FOR someone, but I had no audience. These days I might have written for online. How that would have turned out is anyone’s guess, and I truly have no clue. Perhaps I’d have attracted no readers, studied, and ended up about where I am. Or perhaps I’d have attracted a couple hundred, just enough to keep writing at the level I was.

As it turned out, though, self-publication at the time was – at best – silly. So I thought I’d keep writing just as a hobby and to get readers, I’d write for fandom. Finding a fandom was something else again. My dad used to introduce me to people with “this is my daughter, she doesn’t like television” – making sure people knew my handicap up front.

I’m not going to be high and mighty here and say I picked the one fandom that was out of copyright on purpose. If Anne McCaffrey hadn’t stomped so hard on all fanfic related to her work, I’d probably have fallen into dragonworld fanfic. Hard. As it was all the traces of those that I could find were long since shut down.

Other than that, my tastes verge on the fuddy-duddy. I wasn’t going to attempt Heinlein fanfic, (I’m not that crazy) or the rest of the genre. Dumas fanfic is the ONLY fanfic that runs to foursomes. Er… same gender foursomes. And I didn’t want to write erotica, anyway. I wanted to write stories.

So I fell into Austen fanfic at Derbyshire Writers Guild and The Republic of Pemberley. I got myself kicked out of the Republic of Pemberley in short order. No, I didn’t want to write erotica, but I reserve the right to make stupid jokes. Apparently, that wasn’t allowed at RoP.

This left me with DWG. And because I had learned to write for publication – even if I hadn’t been published – I studied the market first. What I found was so surprising that it took almost a year for it to penetrate.

You see, partly because I am foreign born and an ESL speaker, I paid a lot of attention to words, always. I think I’ve shared that my idea of how my work was received at publishers when I first started writing – I thought people sat around laughing at my misuse of idiom and wondering where I was from.

Because of this, I obsessed on words for many, many years. In fact, when I went to the Oregon writers workshop, Dean Smith STILL had to order me to not think about the words. (For which I can never thank him enough.)

But DWG taught me how truly unimportant words are. If you start writing a story that puts Darcy and Elizabeth in a perilous situation, you can have malapropisms in every line and grammar mistakes in more than half the text, and you’ll still have a lot of comments and a large following.

I’m not saying that people don’t care about entries, and I’m not going to say that most fanfic authors are illiterate – both would be false. At DWG though there are writers from all over the world and from all avocations. People write in their spare time and don’t spend hours polishing for the best word.

Most of them are still easilly on a par with published work. One or two are startlingly bad with words. And there is one who, for a while, had a “fandom” of this author’s own, devoted to analyzing and making fun of the tortured sentences.

And yet, even this language-slaying author had a real fandom, that followed the posted serials with bated breath and gave the author much love in comments.

Why? Well, because the plot of these series were almost unbearably tortured. There were kidnappings and murders and mad wives in towers, and men pining away for love, and women who were despoiled and… Yeah, I know, you’re laughing “all the elements of cheap melodrama.”

I will remind you that this melodrama sold more than any of our more plausible and restrained novels sell. I’ll also say that while the lack of internal logic annoys me – personally – a lot of people LIKE these extreme situations. Why? Because the extreme situations bring forth extreme emotions.

And in the end, people read to follow the emotions, to fee what characters they care about are feeling.

What I found at DWG is that the words mattered far less than characters people could love and situations that enthralled them or made them empathize.

What do you think? Should an author shamelessly play with the audience’s feelings? Do you read for the feeling of it? What makes you return again and again to an author?

A lot of my daydreams — probably a sign I’m getting old — involve “if I went back in time I would do this or I wouldn’t do that.” For almost every beginning, even those that have brought their share of happiness, as most of my novels have there are regrets and qualifications. Even at a more mundane level, if I could go back, I’d keep most of our cats, but I’d probably have given Randy a pass — not being sure we were the best for him, or he for us.

Life is like that, though, you make the best decision you can at the time and then you stand by your commitments and you life with the consequences.

Two things I wouldn’t change if I could go back. One is the kids. In fact, if some mad scientist or supernatural being offered tomorrow to send my mind back to the past, they’d have to promise me I still would have the same kids at about the same time, and they’d be about the same. OTHER kids optional, but I like the ones I have.

The other would be the event on December 28, 1985. The only thing I can say is if I knew how nice it is to be married, I’d have married Dan four years earlier, instead of going back to Portugal and college. :) But then I might have other kinds of regrets.

As is, twenty five years in, I’m pretty happy. Will report back in another twenty five.

As we’re about to begin a new year, may all our new beginnings be as good.

*This is set in the world of Draw One In The Dark and Gentleman Takes A Chance.*

Three Matches

You shouldn’t cry when it’s snowing. Besides, crying wasn’t going to do me a bit of good. Not on New Year’s Night with a blizzard blowing in low and tight over the city of Goldport, Colorado and turning everything further than two inches from my nose into vague shapes that I no more than suspected might exist.

I abandoned my car on Fairfax Avenue. People say Fairfax is the longest straight street in the western states. Perhaps it is, since it runs from one end of Goldport to the other and clean out of town on the other side. Which makes it a very easy street to follow, even in pitch dark night and under the snow. But not when your car was low on gas and the street was coated in ice.

As I got out of the car, pulling my gloves on and wishing I were wearing my snowboots and not the tennis shoes, I thought mom might have been right at that, when she said dad hadn’t left her so much as he’d left Colorado. You see, my father was a meteorologist, and mom said the Colorado weather had driven him insane being completely unpredictable. You could start the day with eighty degrees and bright sunshine and end up at noon in a hard frost and subzero temperatures. I’d always suspected dad had other reasons for leaving, but now I wasn’t so sure.

I’d left Denver, three hours ago, in eighty degree weather and bright sunshine and look at me now.

Blinking, because it felt like my eyes would be frozen in their sockets, I walked carefully along the street, heading for the sidewalk. There should be a space near the buildings where it was relatively warmer and perhaps not quite so icy. Also there was a chance – okay, a chance in Hades – that a coffee shop or restaurant or something had left its door unlocked. And that would be good, even if no one where there, because then there was the chance I wouldn’t die.

The thought surprised me, because I had been thinking of it in terms of stupidity and annoyance. Stupid, stupid Rya had left home without her snow boots, or her emergency kit in the car. Stupid, stupid Rya had blown past the small towns on the way here without thinking to get her tank filled up. Now the thought came, stark and naked. Stupid, stupid Rya is going to die.

Which stopped my mind from spinning on the track it had been playing since I’d left Denver – how to tell one’s mom and step dad about one’s little embarrassing problem. Particularly when said embarrassing problem is of a bizarre enough nature they’ll consider having one committed?

In the sudden blankness of thought, I patted my pockets, suddenly wondering if I had what it took to survive this, if perhaps there would be a reprieve from my fatal idiocy. This was when I realized my stupidity was greater than it seemed. I’d brought my mom’s jacket instead of my own. Which meant I didn’t have my cell phone, or my lip balm – so I’d die with cracked lips – or the mini candy bar I’d put there after grandma’s holiday party. On the other hand, I had a matchbook, that mom must have picked up somewhere and put in there. I brought the matchbook out, wondering why people even gave them out considering that there was no smoking in bars or restaurants in Colorado anymore. It was black, with a name and address printed on it.

I blinked. The George. On Fairfax Avenue. In Goldport. That didn’t even make any sense. I’d come to Goldport to University, but I didn’t think my mom had even bothered to visit since the first weekend of my freshman year. It was all “Rya, won’t you come home.” And “Rya, darling, grandma is having a party.”

Grandma wasn’t really. She was my stepdad’s mom. Not that there was anything wrong with her. Or with Mark, my stepdad, except I always got the impression that they were more interested in having me there so they could show what a great family we were than in me, as such.

How long had mom been carting this around? On the one hand the matchbook looked barely creased. On the other hand, there were only three matches in it. Right. Three matches.

I found the edge of the sidewalk next to the buildings. I was right there was less ice there, except for little patches there the water had melted and run or perhaps run before it froze. I could watch for those, as I moved along, looking at the numbers. From the numbers, the George was about eighteen blocks that way which, of course, gave me plenty of time to freeze to death.

But hey, I had three matches. I flashed on my favorite holiday story as a kid, The Little Match Girl. My dad had read it to me on Christmas every year, with a bunch of others – which was kind of odd since The Little Match Girl takes place on New Years. Even odder since – as far as I knew – my dad didn’t have anything against little girls, and a holiday story where the happy ending is that she froze to death while dreaming of her grandma seemed kind of strange.

I patted the pocket of my jeans, on the off chance I had anything useful there. This was Colorado. We read about people who survived blizzards on three cough drops and snow melt all the time. Not that my big issue was hunger – even if I hadn’t eaten since breakfast – but more cold. And that… well… I’d just have to keep walking.

I stomped my feet, to make sure I could still feel my toes.

As though in answer to my stomping, there was a weird sound to the right, like a muffled hiss/growl.

“Who? Who– ” I said, sounding exactly like a very enthusiastic owl. The hiss/growl came again. All I could think was that someone’s dog must have got out of their yard, but if that was a dog, then it had laryngitis problems. Scare it away with something flashed through my mind which, unfortunately neglected to tell me what I should scare it away with? My keys? The way my lanky brown hair must be all messy and now getting crusted with snow? The matches?

As the hiss/growl came again, I figured what the heck I might as well try, right? I mean, what was the worst that could happen? I’d use up the match and that would seriously cut down my possibilities of smoking three cigarette…which I didn’t have. Right.

And besides, maybe if I lit a match I would see angels or get a great dinner. Right now an hallucinatory dinner seemed preferable to dying out here knowing how cold and how alone I was. I lit the match as the hiss/growl, followed by a slithery noise, dragged closer. And there, in the middle of the snow stood… I blinked. Okay, I was hallucinating, but this was no angel known to man. It was an alligator. A very old alligator, its hide scarred and marked by past fights.

The thing is that, though it was walking through the snow, straight at me – and were alligators supposed to even be alive in the snow? Weren’t they cold-blooded? Shouldn’t it be comatose or dead or something – clacking its teeth, it didn’t look dangerous. It looked like a happy alligator, out for a jaunt. Like… something out of a live animation movie about animals who move to the city, or perhaps what happens to discarded pets.
I blinked, but he didn’t suddenly sport a little jacket or a jaunty bowler hat, so I was at least not that far gone. Or perhaps he – for some reason I was sure it was a he – was real.

The idea had me backing up, feeling tentatively with my feet, till my back hit a street lamp and I stopped. “Please don’t hurt me,” I said, as the match burned down towards my fingers. “Please don’t… I’m not… I’m only out here because I couldn’t explain to mom I was a shape shifter. I kept trying to tell her, and she kept asking me if I was gay.” My fingers burned, and I dropped the match, and it was all dark again, except for the snow swirling around. I snorted, a snort half laughter-half panic. “As if that would be such a big deal today. But how do you say Dear mom, I thought I was dreaming of turning into a fox, but my roommate told me she’d seen a fox, and dear Lord, it was running in the gardens, where I’d dreamed of being. And then I started following footprints in the snow, and I think I am a were fox. My mom would have me committed.” From the darkness came a clack-clack that could be the alligator’s mouth opening and closing. “And then I had to storm out, with nothing and without filling the gas tank. Because I didn’t know how to talk to my mom. I am so stupid.”

The clacking of teeth somehow seemed like someone saying tut-tut, and then the alligator’s nose was so near I could see it, despite the darkness and the snow. He… sniffed delicately at my jeans and my shoes, and then looked up, his eyes contriving to look very amused and strangely human. Right. Now I was going nuts.

Fine if it was going to bite me, it could bite me as I was walking towards the more populated areas of town. I thought around that address on the matchbox there were apartments. Someone was bound to find me, right?

The alligator didn’t try to follow me, as I walked on, which was good but also, inexplicably, felt really lonely. Yeah, because you know, a girl and her gator was infinitely better than being alone.

I walked another three blocks, and it felt like my head was going to freeze solid by then, when I heard a weird flapping ahead and a little to the left of me. It sounded like someone was flapping sheets in a really high wind. And while the wind was there all right, the only thing blowing around in it were snow flakes. I tried to see ahead and could see nothing, and reached for my matchbox, because maybe these were magic matches, since they could scare away gators. if I hadn’t dreamed up the whole thing.

I paused, and tried to light my match, then realized there was a parking lot to my left – leaving a space without buildings, but somewhat sheltered, since the parking lot was bordered in warehouse walls on all three sides. I lit my match, then looked up.

The snow was less thick here, and the match did give a good amount of light.

None of which explained what I saw. I’d almost have preferred angels.

Right in front of me, looking like it had just alighted on the parking lot was a dragon. Not just any dragon, no. It was a red Chinese dragon, cute lion face and all.

Okay, I thought as I blinked at it in the light of my match. I’ve gone completely around a bend.

I registered that it was holding something in its right paw. And then it started coughing. I couldn’t move if I wanted to. The match burned towards my fingers, as it coughed and spasmed. it looked like what it felt like when I transformed into the fox. But… a dragon? Dragons didn’t exist, did they?

Of course, neither did shape shifters.

As I dropped the match, I could barely see the naked young man in front of me. Which was probably good, as he seemed to be trying – simultaneously – to cover his privates and put his clothes on.

I had glimpsed enough to see he looked Chinese and about my age. He had a red dragon tattoo on his arm.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice an unexpected surprise as not only did he lack any foreign accent, but he had a southern drawl thick as corn bread and slow and molasses. “Did I scare you? I didn’t mean to. Only old Joe called and said you were one of us and you were lost in the snow.”

“One of… one of … us?”

“Yeah, a shape shifter,” he said.

“I’m not a dragon!”

He smiled. He was now dressed and very close, and he had a sweet smile. “No,” he said. “Dragons rarely get caught like this in storms. We fly. But Old Joe said you needed help. Where do you need to go? I’ll shift again and give you a ride.” The smile again. It was impossible not to trust him when he smiled like that.

I thought about it. My dorm would be good, but it was in the middle of campus, and someone would see me arrive on dragon back. I took the matchbox out, “I wonder,” I said, speaking as much to myself as to him, “If the George has a parking lot where no one would see you land.”

He blinked. “The… Why the George?”

“I don’t know. My mom had this matchbook with the address. I just found it in her jacket pocket.”

He gave me a half-evaluating half-puzzled look, then smiled. “The George it is, then. If you’ll just let me change…”

Modestly, he stepped just far enough away from me that he could shape shift without my seeing him naked, which was reassuring. Then the coughing started, and the sort of odd sound that suggested flesh being compressed and twisted and… a red dragon walked through the snow towards me. When it scrunched its face and let down its wing, it looked exactly like the young man’s expression when he smiled. I climbed the wing, carefully, hoping not to hurt him, and sat astride him then, because he seemed to be waiting for something, and because dragons – apparently – don’t come equipped with seatbelts, I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around his neck.

It was oddly intimate, but also very warm. Blessedly warm. I had to fight to keep awake, it was so… cozy and also because the relief of being rescued hit me.

In almost no time, we were flying over a diner. I could see even through the snow, a neon dragon flipping pancakes, and neon letters proclaiming The George.

My dragon friend flew over the dragon, to a parking lot at the back and let me down. I went around the front door which – surprisingly – was open. And the George was lighted and filled with groups of people. A young man with long dark hair, tied back, was at the grill. He turned and gave me a curious look as I came in, but I didn’t care. I was so exhausted. Of course, I didn’t have any money, but perhaps they’d just let me sit down and make a phone call.

I collapsed into a seat and closed my eyes and next thing I knew, I heard the southern drawn, “Kyrie this is the young woman that Old Joe called about.” I opened my eyes to look into the familiar face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I never even asked your name.”

“Rya Stevens,” I said.

“Ah. I’m Conan Lung,” and then as though he feared I’d laugh, “My parents used comic books to study English. They thought it was a good American name.”

“Sounds like a lovely name. And you were a hero. I mean, you rescued me.”

I swear he blushed bright red. “Oh, it was nothing.”

The young woman he had introduced me to – Kyrie – grinned at me. “You poor thing must be frozen. Relax and I’ll get you coffee. Do you want a clam chowder?”

“I don’t have any money on me. I–”

“Oh, never mind that, we’ll just get you warmed up. You can pay some other time.”

She bustled away and Conan said, “that’s Kyrie. She and her boyfriend Tom own the diner.” I felt ridiculously relieved she wasn’t Conan’s girlfriend. Like I had some claim on him, or something.

“You said Old Joe told you about me?” I said.

“Yeah.” And at my look. “Alligator shifter. He said you were nice.” The blush came again. It was fascinating. I’d never met a man who blushed like that.

To stop staring at him, I looked around the diner. So many people, and none of them seemed very interested in us. In the next table over, there was a man scribbling in a notebook. He was probably fifty and he had… I stopped. He had hair exactly the color of mine. And I knew him. Oh, I hadn’t seen him since I was five, but a girl knows her own father.

“Dad,” I said.

He turned around, and he was dad. His mouth dropped open. “Rya!”

“Dad.”

“You… did your mom tell you where to find me?”

I shook my head. “My mom knew where to find you?” She’d told me he’d left the state. She’d told me he never wrote.

He nodded and frowned at me a little, then squinted. “Are you… the one they called about?”

I nodded.

“So you’re one of us?”

“Us?” That again.

“Most people who come to the diner, and all here today are shape shifters. This is our safe place. The owners are shape shifters too. You… shift?”

I nodded.

“Fox?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Your mom was afraid… she wanted me to leave. She made me leave and she told me never to contact you or she would… She has pictures. I didn’t…”

“Oh, dad,” I said.

Later on I said a lot more, as we talked over the sixteen years of my life he’d missed. He’d been living in Goldport all along, but mom hadn’t told him I’d gone to college there. Now I understood why she’d tried to convince me to go to UC Boulder – because Dad was living in Goldport, retired and writing a novel. She’d been trying to convince him to move. She’d met him at the George just last week.

“Well,” I said. “She won’t want to ruin me and herself by implication. I mean, she’s my mother.” Though she might cut me off completely now she knew I too was a shape shifter. But I didn’t care. It wasn’t like I’d be left without any family now.

When the chowder came, I noticed there was an unlit candle on the table, and I struck my last match and lit the candle from it.

This time, the story of the little match girl did have a happy ending.

I have not abandoned this blog. I am, however, taking time off from writing, which means blogging will be semi-regular, every few days until the first week of 011. (012 as I put it in originally was the result of my not knowing what the year is. Which will tell you how awake and well I am.)

Mostly because, having got my head off writing, I’ve started noticing stuff around the house that has been waiting for a good day to get done. Like… my bathroom. For seven years we’ve been living with LARGE floral wallpaper in a very small master bathroom. For three years, we’ve been living with very large floral PEELING wallpaper — see thing about small bathroom used for showers, sometimes morning and nighttime. Yeah. I’ve been meaning to paint it. Every morning when I get up, I look around and go “Oh, heavens, must strip this wallpaper and paint it.”

Also, since the people who did up the house for selling used the cheapest possible workarounds we had a pedestal sink and almost no storage. In a bathroom that, being the master bathroom, stores all the stuff anyone in the family might need in the middle of the night — cough medicine, antacid, as well as our stock of shampoo and soap (look, if we give it to the kids they lose it. No, seriously.) For three or four years we’ve made do with two very small bookcases, which also take whichever books I’m reading at the time. But I’ve dreamed of mounting glass shelves on the wall and had bought one large and long enough to serve as a counter.

Well, on Friday I started cleaning the bathroom and looked up at the peeling wallpaper and something snapped. So… I spent the next three days painting it — weirdly? Cantelope. No, that’s the color’s name. Should be overwhelming, but it’s very pretty and “sunny” — and doing two griffin stencils, one on each facing wall. Yeah, it would only have been two days, only having virtually no visual reasoning, I did one of the griffins face down. (I know, I know.) Then we got three more glass shelves, smaller, and I mounted them under the other one. Other than the fact I had to buy another hamper, it worked out fine. I’m glad it’s done.

When I have time, I’ll do the other upstairs bathroom. The downstairs one is our steampunk bathroom. (You don’t want to ask, right?) Meanwhile there are things that MUST be done. Like, we REALLY should put the basement back together, now that the freezer is in place. And I must do something about my craft corner. And I must re-cover the sofa in the movie room. All of these things have been waiting for years, and it’s time they were done.

And sometime in there I want to write a couple of very not commercial (at least not under my own name!) things.

Oh, yeah, and our anniversary is on the 28th. Silver anniversary, so I’d like to kidnap my husband and go somewhere. And we always make a big deal of New Year’s with the kids.

So, blogging will be irregular. But I have a story for you guys for — probably — New Year’s. And other stuff. I will be back intermittently. So, check this channel now and then. Back full time and for sure around the 3rd.

Also unfortunately he had drunk a bit more than he meant to and, as he stumbled again in the blinding white fog of snow, he kept getting the feeling that he’d left the normal world behind.

Which was strange.

He’d been to a restaurant with a few friends, in Denver, and he was still in Denver. At least, the street was one of those broad, offensively straight streets of the American west, the red brick facades of shops and restaurants looked familiar.

And the blizzard looked all too familiar too. And yet, none of this looked right. He was fairly sure that Denver didn’t have a castle right in the middle of Colfax, but he could see the outline of a castle against the snow. Not much of a castle, granted, more of a valley of Loire thing, but still like nothing in Denver. He was sure of it. He’d lived in town for over ten years.

And then in front of him, obscured by blowing gales of snow, he saw the outline of a a neon dragon flipping neon pancakes. Underneath, fat neon letters spelled The George. Only it was more Th Georg as two of the lights were too covered with snow to show properly.

He blinked. He’d heard of diner with that name, but it only existed in books. Or perhaps, also when you were a little drunk and a lot confused.

He approached it, slowly, hesitantly. If he opened the door, would it all vanish?
(To be continued.)

Sometimes you get caught in a certain pattern and don’t realize you’ve got trapped.

I’ve been working too much and getting just about nothing accomplished. Part of this is that I tend to do this when there are to many demands from disparate locations coming at me. I want to do everything and end up doing nothing.

In this case, it’s trying to get things setup for the holiday and my official (we have two anniversaries. Long story) Silver Anniversary coming up while trying to finish a book. Nothing is set up and the book was just not progressing at all. But worse of all, I felt like all joy had gone out of my life.

So I called my editor – I’ve worked for her for eleven years, she knows the book will come – and asked her if I can send it in in January, on the tenth. She said sure.

I hate doing this, but I don’t think I would survive this next week otherwise, and I suspect the book would still be not done.

So I’m taking a vacation for two weeks. It is the first vacation I’ve taken for a long time. Mind you, the next two days will be cleaning and setting up so the house is ready when the guys come home for the holidays that start on Friday for them. BUT it’s a change of pace. I’m going to sleep late, and then clean tomorrow and then maybe go visit my friend Charles at the bookstore and get a bunch of truly trashy books (Yay!).

What are you guys doing in the next two weeks? Do you try to write when you have vacation? Or is it free time? And do you ever get in the frame of mind that you’re trying to do everything and don’t realize you’re killing yourself?

Crossposted @ Mad Genius Club

Cats. I think twice in our whole lives as cat owners (though there is some doubt as to who owns whom) we went out of our way to get a cat. First, when we bought our first house. We finally could have pets (before that we had a remote controlled jeep we called Fido and took for walks. Freaked out the neighbors) and I held out for a marmelade cat. We heard of a friend whose daughter, living in a college dorm, had unwittingly given refuge to a female marmelade (it’s so rare, she assumed cat was male) in what the victorians called an interesting condition. This girl cat, Tiffany, had delivered herself of four bouncing baby kittens and the dorm didn’t even allow pets, much less five cats in one room.

So we went out and fell in love at first sight with this bouncy little ball of fat and fluffy orange fur whom they called Garfield – and we called Pixel. Problem was Pixel was still nursing, at eight weeks, and eating no solid food. Also, he was very attached to his identical, somewhat thinner, twin whose original name I can’t remember but whom we named Randy.

My husband who had never had a cat in his life told me “you know, they’ll need company while we’re away at work. If we take the twins it will be better.” So, we promised to pick them up when Pixie started eating solids and we went home.

This is when the cat-gods intervened. You see, cat gods are… well… cats. They hear your willingness to host one of their minions, and they … see an opening. In the next week, my husband went for a drive and rescued a scrap of a black kitten, whom he named Petronius the Arbiter before we ever met him. (Pete earned the nickname “Cat from Hell” on his own.)

Suddenly and through no fault of our own we found ourselves with three alpha males. (Pixie did start eating solid food. At sixteen weeks. No, I’m not joking. For the longest time he’d run away if there were more than three pieces of dry food on his dish. I have NO idea why. I think he thought they were preparing for revolution? We had to feed him three bits at a time. But he grew into a lovely and headstrong cat who “spoke” the closest to human I’ve ever heard including starts of freaky internet talking cat videos. The other cats used to have him talk to us when there was a problem, (like lack of food or water) earning him the family title of Speaker to The Humans.)

But the cat gods weren’t done with us – oh, no. Over the next year we rescued a couple of twin orphans, DT and Zebbie.

And then it stopped raining kittens – or at least being at maximum capacity, (though we lost Zebbie a year in) we were more careful about you know… attracting the critters – for about twelve years. At which point, I thought “all our cats are going to get old. We should get a new kitten to cheer us up.”

My husband said if we got any more cats, we’d have to get a Cornish Rex. I THINK he thought this would stand in the way of the mad feline divinities. Lo and behold, there was a litter for sale half an hour from our house. We acquired Miranda with part of the advance for my first book. (She rules the household with an iron paw.)

The problem is – apparently – we’d attracted the attention of the cat gods. The next year, when Pete died, through a combination of factors too weird to explain, we rescued Euclid (aka Pythagoras in the mysteries, aka, the world’s most neurotic cat.) A year after that we lost Randy and two years later, D’Artagnan waltzed into our kitchen in the middle of a snow storm. He was a little 8 week cat all fluff and meows. We couldn’t find anyone who admitted to knowing him (though we found out whose he was eventually. Yes, we did. They threw him out. During a snow storm.) What could we do? He’s been with us ever since.

And I thought that was it, even though we lost Pixie. Turned out I was wrong. You see – sigh – I thought it was perfectly safe to go minigolfing on a warm summer night. Only, there was this incredibly fuzzy white and grey cat (other than the patches being grey, he looks EXACTLY like a Turkish Van. Same personality, too) starved and covered in grease and with a broken tail. He came to my younger son and… yeah. His name is Havelock Vetinari, Havey for short or – appropriately – Absurd. He was a great comfort to DT in her last year of life. She’d lost all her friends and none of the three new cats were friendly, but Havelock liked to cuddle and groom her.

And that’s it, right? We’re safe now, right?

Only Robert says when he goes to med school he’ll probably take D’Artagnan. And Marshall says if he gets into the college he wants to – away from town – he’s taking Miranda. (They’re inseparable.) And we’re thinking… is the cat gods attention activated by our wanting cats, or by a cat family being a few cats below par? Maybe we should get a dog instead? Is there such a thing as a dog god?

Today and tomorrow I’m REALLY trying to get A Fatal Stain to the editor, either before she leaves for the holiday break, or so she can get to it as soon as she gets back. Besides, the guys come on vacation at the end of the week and I’d like to be able to hang out and be silly with them, as opposed to working through it as normally happens.

However as you know — or possibly not — I’ve been reading OLD regency romances (no, not Heyer. I’ve read those. These are from the seventies and eighties) while exercising in the morning. Several reasons: First, I don’t want my kindle balanced up on the treadmill as I use it, because I’m afraid it will fall and crack. Second, I don’t want to read something so riveting that I can’t put it down and work the rest of the day. Third, I don’t want to read anything with such a powerful voice it will influence my final of AFS.

I want to say a couple of times I’ve been shocked — not that way. Most of them have less sex than just about anything now — with the quality of the book, in a good way. Or perhaps bad, as sometimes I have to take another hour to finish the book, since it engaged me.

Also, for those like me who grew up as “other genre fiction snobs” who didn’t read romance, it’s enlightening to see most of these books — from imprints that were written “by the yard” and usually under flat fee contracts — are eminently readable and a few are actually very, very good. (As I said, good enough to make me sit down and read them.)

On the other hand, sometimes you hit the appallingly bad. I don’t care how rushed a novel is, or what terms the contract let me say this — there is NO excuse — none — for not doing minimal research. Particularly not when writing regencies, where you can practically do your research (except for fine details) by reading Georgette Heyer.

This novel started out rubbing me wrong, in subtle ways. For starters there was the feeling that this was a parallel world regency, where “the Carlton house set” was a safe place for a young matron and in fact, something society wives aspired to. Also, that dancing with the Prince Regent was THE way to launch an innocent young debutante into society.

Then, there were the subtle ways that the language was wrong and the — not just regency — confusion of capital with capitol. (Hint, when you ride through the Capitol in a phaeton, DC police get REALLY upset.

And there was the whole “the main character is an American heiress” which to me had more of the feel of the late nineteenth century, not early. Let’s face it, if she were an American heiress, early in the century, her parents probably owned tobacco plantations in Virginia or were wealthy Boston blue bloods, likely cousins of British aristocracy in either case or the like not “she comes from the middle of the country, where she grew up in a cabin and her father was a cobbler.” (WHAT? How MUCH did shoes cost in the early-settled Midwest? I mean, I heard the streets were paved with gold, maybe the cobbler just scraped the soles before replacing them?)

Then there is the way that the character thinks of adultery as A Scarlet Letter sin — yes, capitalized, because she obviously knows it’s a literary work in the future, and wants to be properly respectful — because the author is apparently under a kindergarten sort of hazy impression that everyone at that time in America were puritans and very strict. (Sorry, several very hazy impressions. And wrong ones. Strict puritans were a limited group amid settlers, and — if the hazy impressions of my own reading are true — by that point they had started becoming more main-stream protestant than the theocrat-like early settlers.)

But then came the crowning time-space disorientation. The prospective mother in law hates Americans, ever since those Californians bought her ancestral estate.

Ladies, Gentleman, Children, puppies and carrots — California at the time was part of Mexico. Even granting you some Mexican grandees might have bought the woman’s estate (wouldn’t they have bought one in Spain, instead? Never mind) why would this make her resent an American from New York City?

California did not in fact become a part of the US until 1848, following the Mexican American war, by the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. And I don’t think — even though I’m not going to look now — “rich Californians” were much in evidence until the Gold Rush in 49 and even then there weren’t many of those who decided to buy English estates. Certainly not to qualify as a “Stampede” which the author calls it. At the end of the nineteenth century, California was still largely agricultural and rural. In 1811-20 I doubt there was even a stampede of ONE Californian buying a British estate.

I went back and checked, to make sure I hadn’t got the time period of the book wrong because the feel of it, from dialogue to the character history reminded me more of the situation in Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Cracked. Nope. References to the Prince Regent, the Carlton House Set and Rotten Row all present and still largely unaccounted for.

The characters are middling to interesting. The story is not bad by the standards of “something I can read while working up a sweat” but I don’t think I CAN read anymore because now — to me — the background is all weird and I keep looking for more tells that it’s a parallel world or perhaps that time is melting or something, and have to keep reminding myself it is NOT Science Fiction. Way too much work.

What’s frustrating about this is that I think the book is only ten years old, so they COULD have done an internet search. But even barring that, there’s the fact that they COULD have read a book. And by they I mean — the author, the editor, the copyeditor, the assistant editor, the mail room tea-bringer at the publishing house.

Oh, yeah, that’s the other thing I forgot to mention: This book was not one of the written-by-the-yard, oh, no. It was published by a reputable house… and it was a bestseller.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, dragons and germs, is — depending on how you look at it — a hopeful or a dispiriting thought to take with me into a day of writing.

I choose to see it as hopeful :)

*This story was written for a steam punk extravaganza on a website. The location was dictated. The story had to be in the voice of the main character of Heart Of Light the first of my Magical British Empire Trilogy. It is a world in which magic is the basis of civilization, but shape shifters are outlawed and condemned to instant death throughout most of the civilized world. (For fun, a friend and I wrote what Pride and Prejudice would be like in this world. The story A Touch Of Night is for sale at Naked Reader Press.) I don’t know if this short story stands up on its on, but I hope so. Enjoy!*

Mama was in a bad mood before they ever got to the station. She hadn’t wanted to take this trip. “A shocking way of traveling,” she always said of the trains. “So very mixed.”
But papa had been firm about the family taking the Devonian express to London. “My dear, I regret to subject you to it,” he’d said. “But indeed, this is not a normal train.” As he spoke – with the whole family assembled in the drawing room of their house at Inklefield, the six girls embroidering, mama hemming handkerchiefs – he’d given his little sniff, which he always did when he was sure Mama would disapprove of what he had to say. “This is a chartered train, m’dear, and only the very best people will be allowed on board.”
He’d helped himself to brandy from the sideboard decanter, and after two swallows warmed to his theme, “You see, the thing is, the foreign office has asked me to visit the fair with my family. Not supposed to be particular or anything, but there’s all the new machines brought in run with foreign magic and… well, it is important to make sure no impious black magic is being used.”
Since it was for Papa’s work – though of course Mama never referred to his position with Foreign Affairs as a profession because though Papa had first been in the army and now worked for the government he was a gentleman and a gentleman’s son – Mama could not refuse it. But she did not have to like it. And she meant for everyone to know it.
The everyone, as almost in every case, was Emily. In the midst of Mama’s very fair daughters Emily, with her nutmeg skin, her dark, dark hair, looked as incongruous as a black swan in a flock of white ones. This was no great surprise, of course, since she was the daughter of Papa’s first wife, who had died on the carpetship on the way from India. Mama was Papa’s second wife.
However, the fact that Emily didn’t look English at all drove Mama to distraction. Almost anyone they met while on an outing, was bound to address Emily as though she were at worst the maid and at best a poor relation. “Which I’m sure,” Mama was fond of saying. “Is no fault of mine, since I always make sure she’s as well dressed as the girls, if not better.”
In fact, Mama always made sure that Emily had the prettiest dresses and the best cut. She was not unkind, Emily thought, not like the stepmothers in stories. It was just the way she casually referred to the girls as though Emily were something quite other – a strange being dropped into mama’s cozy family that made Emily want to burst into tears, or run away, or perhaps never talk to Mama again.
She lowered her head, and did her best to march steadily behind Mama – with her sisters duckling-like behind her – as they entered a crowded station, roofed over in glass. Only the magic of the large factories, run by a group of bourgeois, each of them with a little bit of magic, could produce panels of glass that large or that sturdy. Of course the same magic ran the trains. Which was probably another reason Mama hated them so. She would have preferred society to remain as it had been in the middle ages, when only kings and their relatives had magic. Unfortunately for Mama’s hopes, kings relatives were not always those conceived in holy matrimony. With the result that now, centuries later, most people in Europe had at least some degree of magic. And a few inventive men, possessed of enough magic, could run factories.
From this great things had resulted. The looms in the magic-powered factories had covered the world in the cloth of the British kingdom. Carpetships – buildings atop magical carpets, sustained and run by half breed magicians – transported Europeans everywhere in the world in the greatest degree of luxury. And within Europe herself, and in the isles, trains ran, carrying people with much greater ease and safety than horses and carriages had ever managed.
But this of course would not calm Mama’s sense that something precious had been lost when poorer people could mingle with noblemen.
“Emily!”
Mama’s yell served notice to Emily that she’d almost walked into one the magic-powered humunculus – androids the tradesmen called them, though Emily was sure she didn’t know why – who was carrying luggage about. She checked, holding still, while the creature, made of metal and ceramic, clicked by, walking with the stiffness of magic-animated joints, carrying in its arms a pile of luggage that would crush a living a porter. Like the living porter who now approached mama and, bowing obsequiously, asked her if she needed help finding her compartment and seeing her luggage conveyed aboard.
Mama did. Though Emily, who had seen the tickets, knew very well that she and her mother, and her sisters, were in the third compartment in the second carriage and therefore Mama must know so as well, Mama would say it wasn’t proper for a lady to be too forward with her reasoning. And so she let herself be led by this short man with ginger hair. They cut through a throng of people, until he halted at the door to the carriage and doffed his cap – emblazoned with Devonian Express as he let them in. Mama paused at the door to give her last instructions on how he could find the carriage and Jennings, their man, with the bags that should be loaded into it.
“You see, Emily,” Mama said, always addressing herself to Emily as though Emily had disputed Mama’s words. Which Emily hadn’t, not being stupid enough to speak her thoughts. “It is always best if you can procure human help. All these newfangled magical machinery will bring you nothing but grief, you mark my words.”
Emily inclined her head and did not tell Mama that, more than likely, at this moment, a mechanical porter would be carrying the bags to the luggage train. Instead, she looked about their quarters in some pleasure. Since she’d traveled to England from her native India, she’d not left Papa’s manor house except by carriage. Their compartment looked like a little drawing room, containing even a little tea table with its own cloth. It was easy enough to overlook that the table and the overwrought chairs were bolted to the floor, to avoid a lurch in the train movements. Next to this compartment was another, equally small one, which contained beds, three on each side, stacked to the ceiling. Yet another compartment had a wash basin, already containing jars of water in stasis fields, so they would stay hot.
The inspection completed there was nothing for it, but to sit back in the compartment, where Mama was giving orders to Emily’s next older sister, Jane, to ring the bell for tea. And then it was exactly like an evening at home, save more suffocating with Mama and Emily’s sisters and Emily in close confines, embroidering and talking. Fortunately Emily could not be requested to play the piano, as there was none available. Though piano music filtered in from somewhere in the train and Emily wished she were there.
Looking out the window, at the sun setting over the Highland gorse, she thought that she would rather be anywhere at all but here. Somewhere there was high adventure. Somewhere people were discovering new things. Somewhere, other continents sprawled where she might be happy.
They went to bed at the appointed time, and Emily lay in her bed a long time, awake, listening to Mama snore from the berth above, and feeling now and then the slight shake of the train beneath her. It was too like the shake of the carpetship, where she’d been scared and alone, while her real Mama had been locked in her cabin, dying.
At last, unable to sleep, she threw back the covers and put on her dressing gown, and stepped back into the little drawing room, to look out the window.
If she had not already been awake, she would have slept through the rattle and groan that echoed through the carriage as the train came to a stop. Emily looked out. They stood in the midst of wild country, with crags all about, and pouring rain was falling, cut now and then by lightening. Emily had never heard that lightening disrupted magic on trains, but she could just imagine the scene Mama would make. She opened the door of her carriage, cautiously, conscious it was indecent to do so in her dressing gown, but wondering if someone was about who would tell her what had happened.
As it chanced, a conductor coming down the hallway, holding a magical glowing lantern smiled at her, “It’s all right miss. Just a spot of bother with the Royal Were Hunters. They say there is a wild were lose on the train and they came on flying rugs and stopped us so they could inspect. I think it is all nonsense and I bid them proceed quietly, so as not to disturb the passengers. Go back to your bed, Miss, we shall be on our way now and now.”
Emily obeyed. Except she didn’t go to bed. Instead, she sat in the little dark sitting room, wedged between the table and the chair. She didn’t turn on the magelight because the door between the sleeping quarters and the sitting room didn’t seal properly, Mama might see the light and wake up. And Emily didn’t wish to explain why she was awake, much less what was happening to stop the train. So she sat in a chair in the little room, her hands demurely folded on her lap.
Now and then a ray of lightening starkly illuminated the landscape outside, revealing snatches of unexpected action. One of those flashes allowed her to see – for just a moment – a company of gold-attired men carrying vicious looking power-sticks. Another and she saw one at the door of her carriage, seemingly standing guard.
Of course there would be a guard at the door to every carriage. And the Royal Were-Hunters were, Emily supposed, to be admired for taking on the task of keeping the kingdom free of dangerous magical creatures who could shift their shapes into animals then back again to humans.
The history books were full of examples of these creatures, unchecked, wreaking havoc on the lives of all around them. Richard the Lionhearted had in fact been more lion than man and when, returning from the crusades, he’d revealed his true form, he’d brought half the court down before he was stopped. Which was why from that day on, any were found under the rule of the English monarch, was condemned to death without a trial.
Even the small wares were of such a slippery nature – witness Anne Boleyn who was a were hare – they could hardly be trusted. And besides, their magical fields, particularly when transformed, were such that the flying ones could bring down carpetships and the others could stop entire mills. Why, only last week there was a story of a were-mouse in Sussex who had stopped manufacturing in an entire town.
She knew all this, and she tried to feel admiration of the were hunters, but she could not. Perhaps she was naturally wicked – Mama certainly had told her so – but she could all too vividly imagine what it would be like to be born with the capacity to change into another creature. Surely it was neither something you wished for nor something any sane being could relish. What special power could it give you? Oh, surely, animal strength. But what was that to losing the ability to control yourself as humans did?
And for this to be hunted down and persecuted – for something you had no control over…
Emily got her luggage down from the top rack, the only thing that gave away this was not in fact a small sitting room, and from within her work trunk – where she brought the embroidery and such that Mama thought proper for a lady of quality to engage in – she pulled out a shawl. It had been her mother’s and was vividly embroidered in silk, with the exuberant flowers that, Emily imagined, must be common in India.
She barely remembered India, not having seen it since she was six. Her real Mama had been a half-Indian beauty, the daughter of a British officer and his Indian mistress. The shawl was all that Emily had from her, and wrapping herself in it made her feel what she imagined other people felt from a maternal embrace. How many times, since coming to Great Britain, had Emily felt as though everyone stared at her because she didn’t look like any proper English Miss? And her magical power was odd too – much larger than the amount of it she could use. Her teachers at the boarding school she’d briefly attended had told her that it was alien power and they could not work with it. And all the while, they’d treated it as though it were al her fault. Just like weres. Perhaps that was why she felt such sympathy for the were being mercilessly hunted down.
Emily heard feet in the hallway, disciplined feet, walking as if they were on parade. The Royal were hunters were in the train. She cowered nearer the window and wrapped the shawl tighter around her.
There was silence for a while, and then she heard a snuffling, like a large dog at her compartment door. She started up, with fear, ready to sink into the seat, or perhaps to run into the sleeping compartment and wake mama and demand protection.
But before she could move, the door to the compartment moved. Through the narrow opening, she saw a paw, claws, and, above it, a large, golden-yellow eye.
For a moment in the glare of that baneful eye, she thought her heart would stop. And then she realized that the eye looked… frightened and pleading. And her heart resumed beating. An overwhelming surge of pity overrode her fear and carried her to the door, led her to open it.
The large cat on the other side was massive and black and – as a flash of lightening illuminated it – cowered against the floor for all the world like Tabby, back home, when she was afraid of being punished for stealing the dinner fish.
Emily reached forward and, tentatively, touched the great head of the creature that looked like a black panther. The animal let her touch him – there was no doubt in her mind it was a him. There was something very masculine in the set of that large head, in the muscled hunch of those massive shoulders – but he did not look less scared. Instead his eyes went one way, then another.
“They’re after you, of course,” Emily said, and as she said it, heard the stomp of the feet from the other side of the carriage again. It was more than she could bear. She would not have this magnificent creature slain in front of her. Quite sure she was sinking herself below reproach, as well as courting the worst penalties of law, she stepped aside. “Quick,” she said. If you understand me. If you curl up beneath the tea table, I shall lay my shawl on it, and it will hide you most completely.”
The beast hesitated only a moment then darted in, curled tightly under the tea table. Emily lay her shawl on it. The shawl was long enough it dragged on the floor, hiding the animal from view. Just as quickly, Emily pulled her current embroidery out of her work box, and the smallest of magelights out of Mama’s own work basket. Mama often used it to read or work by. Of course, even touching Mama’s work basket was sacrilege. Taking her light… But Emily was in much worse trouble now. She must save this person there, under the table. His very actions showed him to be human. She must save him.
When the scratching at the door – in lieu of knocking so as not to startle the passengers – came, she was prepared. She left the little magelight on the table and her work on it, and she opened the door with every appearance of fear and reluctance.
The men on the other side wore gold uniform. There were five of them. Beside them was the fatherly conductor she’d seen before.
“If you pardon me, Miss, these men would like to assure themselves the Were is not hiding in your cabin.”
“But… I’m the only one awake and mama and my sisters…”
“Did you see a panther, madam?” the leader of the Were Hunters asked. “A large, blackish cat?”
“Oh, no, never.” Emily answered. “I would have screamed.” It seemed to her she could hear the breathing of her visitor, beneath the tea table.
The man frowned. He lifted a gadget that looked like a golden compass wheel and that, when held in front of the compartment, gave off a glowing golden light. “And yet, my indicator says there’s were energy from there.”
Emily was never quite sure how her magic worked, but now she wished very hard that the little compass wheel would malfunction. She concentrated on it pointing the members of the were hunters, themselves. Normal magic would be detected, but she had always been told hers was not normal magic. She wished and wished with all her might, as she said aloud, “I see. I would not for the world stand in the way of your completing your duty. You’re ever so brave and I–” She blushed and looked away, all the while throwing all the magic she could use at that cursed instrument. “And I will not dare… But is it possible it’s malfunctioning?”
At the same moment, she heard an exclamation of dismay. “But… it must be!” the man said. “It’s now pointing at my squad. Useless implement. Miss, are you quite sure–”
“Quite,” she said. “Oh, quite.”
“Well, we’ll take our leave, then.”
Emily closed the door and resumed her embroidery. Her visitor did not move or make a sound. Emily was cheered it was smart enough not to do anything of the kind. It could be a trap.
But after a while she heard the sentinel outside the carriage called off and heard a conversation as they passed the window, “It appears some magical disturbance made our instruments indicate a were here, but there really wasn’t. I grant you, we thought Lord Ilsidor was a were panther, but those anonymous letters must be wrong.”
“Yes, but shouldn’t we have found Ilsidor, if he’s not a panther and is a passenger?”
“Ah, well, old man, if he’s not a panther, the instruments wouldn’t find him, and you know what goes on in these trains. All the sleeping compartments. I’d say other than a panther Ilsidor is a knowing dog.”
They passed out of her hearing still laughing. She saw a large black paw come from under the table and touch her foot gently.
After a while the train started moving and after another while something like a long, low groan emerged from under the table, and the paw became a human hand, well shaped, with long, sensitive fingers. After a while more, a hand tugged at the little white table cloth beneath the shawl. Emily, understanding his purpose, lifted the shawl and allowed him to pull out the cloth.
When he got out from under the table, he held it in front of him for modesty’s sake, which did not hide the broad, muscular chest. She looked away, her cheek’s glowing.
“Thank you,” he said. “I beg you to believe I’m not guilty of more than being born a were. Thank you. You have the compassion of angels.”
“Not… not at all. But how are you…”
He smiled. He was a dark man in his middle years, with an aquiline nose and crisply curling dark hair. “I will be fine now,” he said. “I am quite used to…” he sighed. “Finding myself in this sort of situation. And my sleeping compartment is not too far off. Thank you again. I can never thank you enough.”
He opened the compartment door, quietly, and was gone.
She closed the door, put away mama’s magelight, her own work and the shawl. The train must be moving away from the storm or the storm from the train, because the thunder had diminished. And the excitement of the last few moments made Emily very tired indeed. She crept into her bed and was sound asleep when she woke in the morning to the sound of Mama berating one of the maid who waited on passengers for stupidly losing the white tea cloth that had been on the table the night before.
By the time she reached London, she was much inclined to think the whole thing a dream. And she put it all behind her when Papa told her he wanted her to meet a young man called Nigel Oldhall with whom he hoped she would contract an alliance.
But one night, returning to her lodgings, she found a small parcel and a note on her dressing table. The note read, “To the brave Miss who was an angel in my time of need.” The parcel contained a small gold pin in the shape of a panther led by an angel.
Emily blushed at the impropriety of it, but from now on, no matter how Mama raged, she could not dismay Emily. For Emily had found that no matter how strange her magic, how odd her appearance, both her heritage and her odd power had allowed her to save a life when no one else could.

And I can self promote if I want to. I’d like to remind you that Darkship Thieves is available in mass Market Paperback at Amazon. And still available in trade paperback, if you want to impress someone.

And, oh, yeah, this is what Jerry Pournelle had to say about the book in March:

The light reading of the month is Sarah Hoyt’s Darkship Thieves from Baen Books. Hoyt has a knack for story telling, and the ability
to blend elements of science fiction and fantasy into believable worlds. Darkship Thieves is the story of Athena Hera Sinistra, a
princess of an Earth that has continued to evolve and build structure until there is very little freedom left in human life, who
meets a hero from a society that might have been developed in consultation with Ayn Rand. Both societies have developed space
travel, but this isn’t a technological novel; it’s a classic adventure romance, and very readable.
Update: Email from Jerry — he’s re-reading it and still enjoying it the second time around. (Yes, I AM incredibly flattered.)