I did manage to get the podcast up. (Give it a listen! I read an excerpt from Kyra Halland's Beneath the Canyons -- a mix of fantasy and western.)
Since my progress on everything else was hit or miss, I decided not to write an update. I was going to talk about a writing discovery I made. However, it turned out to be more interesting and complex than I thought, so I'm saving it for a rewrite.
I was looking through old pulp children's books at Project Gutenberg. Precursors and competitors to syndicated series like Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys. I have a hate/love relationship with these books. As a kid I really wanted to love these books (including Nancy Drew) but I found that I had to be truly bored before I could abide them at all.
And last night I realized why. It has to do with banality. And that's a problem I have with a lot of modern books in my favorite genres as well. I happened across and opening for a book which gave me some insight into what I'm looking for, what I did right in one book, and what I might consciously want to do with some future books.
But that's for later.
For now, I'll just say farewell to Miss Rita, who waltzed into our lives about seventeen years ago, became fat and sassy and loud. (Very very loud.) But in later years she shrunk down to a fragile pile of bones. Let's hope she's somewhere that's like the words of a song Garrison Keillor wrote: Where the mice are slow and the birds fly low, and cream runs in a fountain.
See you in the funny papers.
6 comments:
Sorry about Miss Rita. Seems the Oriental cats (Siamese, Balinese, etc.) are louder than most cats. She was a lovely old girl.
Yes, we've had a lot of Siamese, so we're used to talky cats, although Rita was more "American long hair" than Siamese in anything but color. We think her loudness issue was actually due to being deaf. However, we can't be sure. It's possible that she was simply unusually good at ignoring everything.
I'm sorry about your cat :( She was gorgeous, and sounds like she was a wonderful kitty.
Thank you for the reading of Beneath the Canyons. You did a fantastic job with it!
She was a sweetie, in her own strange way, and I'm sorry to say she was kind of the extra cat -- she was a stray and didn't have great social skills.
I feel I should add, as a warning for others, that I think one of the things that destroyed her health was onions. She loved things like sloppy joes, and I suspect she managed to steal some onions once in a while. Not enough to cause renal failure, but enough to give her a mysterious illness once in a while.
On a happier note...
I had a good time with your book. I hope the podcast gives it some exposure!
I'm just catching up and saw this post...so sorry! It's so devastating to lose a pet. I almost hate to even use the word 'pet,' since they're more like human members of the family. Hope things start looking up soon.
Yep, It's kinda sad when I give out the treats before bedtime.
Thanks.
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