As brisingamen says, Ursula K. Le Guin is a very bad woman.

A Pillow-Book for Cats.

(Now that Ursula has distracted you from your Very Serious Business,* check out Cat T'ai Chi as well.)

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*oursin has some remarks on Very Serious Business which arise from her discussion of the idea that women make science fiction all icky and sissified when they write it. (WE R IN UR GENRE, TOUCHIN ALL UR THINGZ.)

The ninjas were good, brave ninjas at the vet. And they got a clean bill of health.

I have no doubt they will wreak hideous vengeance on me at some suitable moment.

Werewolf story finished, 6,000 words, except that (a.) it's turned into the first chapter of a novel on me and (b.) it's drivel. Utter damnable drivel.

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My aquarium has a new inhabitant, who was sold as a blue mystery snail, but who I believe is actually an apple snail, specifically a Pomacea bridgesii. The snail's name is Louise. (No, don't ask me, I don't know either. I put the snail in the tank, it opened its trapdoor to start looking around, and I thought, You go, Louise! You now know as much as I do. The fish, on the other hand, still does not have a name. He doesn't seem to require one.) Louise is fascinating and weirdly beautiful in a tentacled Lovecraftian way.

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Tomorrow the ninjas go in for their annual check-up. They would dread it more than I do if they knew, but they don't know, so I'm dreading it for all three of us.

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Piccadilly notebooks, while obviously Moleskine knock-offs, are (a.) cheaper, especially if you get them on clearance at Borders and (b.) use thicker paper, so--if you are a fountain pen user--there's less bleed-through than with Moleskine. Thus far, I certainly do not like them less.

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There was probably something else, but I've forgotten what it is.

Three of my four cats are rescues, and I am doing my best for the feral cats in my neighborhood (I've had up to five regulars at any one time for the food I put out daily on our porch, and got three of them in to be neutered and vaccinated this spring). So it is inevitable that I will post this link: City Kitties Art Auction, to benefit the homeless cats of West Philadelphia.

One of the items up for auction is this gorgeous print by Kyle Cassidy: Neil Gaiman and Zoe.

1. There's a short interview with me up at Grinding to Valhalla.

2. Serendipitously, I have found an example of omniscient which involves switching PoV within a paragraph and yet is quite distinct from head-hopping. These are the opening lines of Georgette Heyer's The Toll-Gate:

The sixth Earl of Saltash glanced round the immense dining table, and was conscious of a glow of satisfaction. It was an emotion not shared by his butler, or his steward, each of whom had served the Fifth Earl, and remembered, with a wealth of nostalgic detail, the various occasions upon which the State Dining-room had been used to entertain Royalty, foreign Ambassadors, and ton parties of great size and brilliance.

The entire first chapter is told in this panoramic omniscient, moving from viewpoint to viewpoint, and she does it with beautiful smoothness.

3. Even more serendipitously, as I was writing item #2, I got email telling me that another interview is live, this one at Suite 101.

4. When I went to sleep around midnight last night, the Elder Saucepan was loafed on my hip. When I woke up at 6:25 this morning . . . the Elder Saucepan was loafed on my hip. My inference is that there's about six hours in there where I didn't move.

It is perhaps not to be wondered at that I'm feeling a little stiff this morning.

5. The Wii keeps trying to use me against mirrorthaw. I find this highly objectionable--although not as objectionable as the house centipede that was lurking up near the ceiling in the corner behind the TV last night.

Another half hour last night with the Wii. Was completely thrown off by suddenly having the male trainer "filling in" for my female trainer on the first exercise of the evening. Mercifully, he went away after that, but it was the worst halfmoon pose I've done in quite some time. wtf, Nintendo?

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Thank you to everyone who has commented with support for and love of my books on the previous post. I appreciate it a great deal more than I can express.

Thank you also to casacorona, who stepped up to the plate to explain how things look from the publishers' apex of the triangle. A thankless task--for which I thank you!

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Also pursuant to the previous post, the April Locus has a review of Corambis by Faren Miller, which includes phrases like "Monette displays both wicked powers of invention and something like sly wit" and says the ending "should satisfy even the rare cynical reader who hasn't already been won over by Monette's gifts for character, voice, and great prose." So I'm feeling better.

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Catzilla got me up this morning by sitting on my pillow and draping his incredibly fluffy tail across my face. I hope that this was a mere accident and not actually, you know, planned. Because if it was planned, I am so doomed.

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I regularly tell Catzilla (he whom we rescued from the flower bed) that he doesn't know how lucky he is, and given the size and scope of his brain, it's true. One of the feralistas who hangs out on and around our porch is a long-haired brown tabby (named Hilary in honor of Sarah Caudwell's Hilary Tamar, because I have yet to figure out what sex s/he is), and poor Hilary has, I noticed this morning, a mat large enough to be mistaken for a kitten on his/her right haunch. S/he also has dead leaves matted into his/her tail, and in general needs the kind of grooming help that s/he is much too skittish to allow.

It's hard to be a fluffy kitty. This is something even Catzilla knows.

So last night as I was sorting out my blankets (this is a complicated process, as anyone who has ever shared a hotel room with me can attest), I discovered under the bed one of my new winter boots. The right one, to be exact. The left boot, as I determined this morning, is in the front hall where it ought to be.

I have no idea how my right boot ended up under the bed. Goodness knows I'm absent minded, and I do have a tendency to leave things where they fall, but I really do think I'd remember walking UPSTAIRS and INTO THE BEDROOM in ONLY ONE BOOT. And we won't even go into my possible motivations for such a performance.

The other option is that one (or more) of the cats absconded with my boot and stashed it under the bed like a leopard with its prey. But this is equally difficult to believe, as it is not a small boot--well, it is a small boot, comparatively, since I'm only a size 7, but it's a waterproof, insulated, Upper-Midwest-we-take-this-snow-thing-SERIOUSLY boot, so as an object it takes up nearly as much space as the smallest of the cats, and even the largest of the cats would have some difficulty carrying it, not to mention the whole UPSTAIRS part. Also, while the ninjas, particularly in their kittenhood, had a tendency toward kleptomania, their prey was always SMALL objects (contact lens cases, prescription bottles, pens, etc.). Not boots.

And, you know, I'm home all day. I would have heard the inevitable ruckus attendant on such an undertaking.

So yeah. I got nothin'. Except a boot under my bed.

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The internet is truly full of things this Friday, particularly amazing photographs.

(via oracne): selenak went to Tanzania and has posted her pictures of African wildlife. The pictures taken with a telephoto lens are especially impressive.

(via coffeeem): High speed photographs of various objects being shot with an air rifle.

1. Thank you to everyone who has expressed enthusiasm for the podcast of Chapter 2. I was surprised and very pleased at how happy it seems to make people.

2. I would be more impressed with the Oxford World's Classics collection of M. R. James stories, and with Michael Chabon's introduction thereto, if someone had noticed that Chabon gets the name of the main character of "'Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad'" wrong.

2a. Someone could probably do something interesting with James' "The Malice of Inanimate Objects" and Robert Benchley's essay on the same theme. Same starting point, and even some of the same tone, but radically different effects.

3. Two short story rejections in two days, both for very good reasons. I am baffled and disheartened at how easily I seem to have slid from writing good short stories to writing short stories that don't work--if I manage to write short stories at all. Also, I am trunking the zombie coyotes until they give me more story in their story.

3a. "Baffled and disheartened" is a pretty good description of how I feel about my writing and my career in general these days.

3b. Don't mind me. I'll just stand here in the rain and eat thistles.

4. As John Scalzi points out, Carl Sagan's Cosmos is available on Hulu.

5. I can't even think of a fifth thing, so have two videos of cats being, well, cats. The first is cute (and with extra bonus fennec!); the second is hilarious. My heart belongs to Bag Cat.

Page proofs: page 127 of 421
Fish: nom
Scrabble: yes
Bathrobe: yes
Burning question: What is it about cats and stacks of paper?

TRUEPENNY, having taken a hot bath (The high today was like twelve. Fahrenheit.), is putting her clothes on. The bathroom door--which opens into the room--is shut to keep the heat in, but not latched. TRUEPENNY and MIRRORTHAW have both learned not to latch the door while taking baths, as both CATZILLA and the SECOND NINJA take exception to being unable to get the door open, and that's hard on the woodwork.

Somebody scrabbles at the bathroom door.

TRUEPENNY pulls on her shirt.

The door does not open, and the scrabbling continues.

TRUEPENNY opens the door and discovers CATZILLA in the hallway, poised in front of the door over by the hinges.

CATZILLA: Dude! About time!

CATZILLA sashays into the bathroom.

TRUEPENNY cracks up.

CATZILLA: Dude, what? You made the magic work. What's so funny?

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Some cats are smart enough to figure out doors, as heresluck and I both know. This cat is not one of them.