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- Sat, 17:01: Wearing my hair loose today. We will see how long that lasts.
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Mar. 16th, 2014
Half-Off Ragnarok, and full-price snakes
Mar. 16th, 2014 07:00 pmYet another Seanan book launch party!
I arrived comfortably early (having decided that BART was the way to go, then scheduling my nap early) and soon found myself settled in with book, bagel, and hot chocolate. I had been planning on one of their nice meat and cheese plates, but in the interim the cafe has been overhauling their menu, so that didn't exist anymore.
Yay book! Half-Off Ragnarok is a nice sturdy addition to the saga of the Healy-Price family. Alex is Verity's brother, and I was happy to be introduced to him and let him show me around the various perils of life as a cryptobiologist (and also cryptozoologist) who enjoys his job. There are snakes. If snakes are not your thing, proceed with caution. If snakes are so very much the opposite from your thing that you have leaped on top of your chair at the very mention, this book is not for you. You will possibly miss the mice, but there. are. snakes.
( Cover )
( series )
( Snakes and other contents )
Some of Seanan's books leave me feeling profoundly affected and like I need to get as many of my friends as possible to get this into their brains ASAP. This was not one of those, but if you like mystery-y urban fantasy with snakes in, I think you should read this, because it's good.
The party was fairly standard for a Seanan event, which is to say always great fun: door prizes, music, cupcakes, signing, Q&A. I spent most of the music reading: not that it wasn't good, but the book was better and also new. Paul Kwinn had a song about how Seanan might solve problems. It was the best. The Bohnhoffs played The Actor, which was new to me (despite having been released in 1999), and hilarious. Logistically, combining the line for the signing and the cupcakes was an excellent decision, since both require queueing. If you are planning on going to these events and have dietary restrictions, contact Seanan through the contact form on her website and let her know, some time in advance. That will let her let Cups & Cakes know what to make. I got the lemon this time. It was delicious.
I need to remember to collect my random questions about the books for the Q&A sessions, because sometimes there aren't quite enough questions to go around. Seanan can and will entertain the audience in other ways if there are insufficient questions. This time she threatened to unleash The Chaos upon us. We learned that no battle plan (outline, first draft) survives first contact with the enemy. I asked a follow-up: did that mean that Toby was "the enemy"? In point of fact, Seanan explained, everyone except for Cagney and Lacey (Toby's ancient Siamese, if you please) was "the enemy". And there are characters everywhere who were never meant to be there: Quentin was originally there to appear and then die, and Danny was a publisher's addition because there was no way that amount of blood would have flown at all well with a human cabbie.
Seanan's hair was in excellent form. Apparently the version that we had seen at FOGcon was in fact in the faded state. It looked like a candy corn rainbow there. Here, it proceeded from blonde to yellow through screaming orange and vivid pink down to a really assertive purple at the ends. Seanan's hairdresser is also her sister, and I fully intend to arrange an appointment at some time when I am both awake and have the budget for turning my hair the color blue that it was always intended to be.
I had passed the calendar appointment along to Purple when I realized it was happening, but he had other plans for this weekend (plus it is up in the city, and that's a ways). Tif showed, and we caught up a little. Burger Joint across the street had a sufficient non-gluten offering that we wound up eating there and catching up a bit. We are due an Epic Shopping Escapade soon.
Unfortunately for me, I had just hit the high point of the book when my train arrived at Daly City. So I had to decide whether I was going to read in the car, or drive home and then read in bed. Bed won out. By that time, the amazing crowd I'd seen earlier on the Millbrae/SFO platform had dispersed. I'd seriously thought there was some sort of protest or riot brewing, but then I saw all the green and realized that it was some sort of horrifying Saint Patrick's Day/spring break sort of thing, and it was just that many chuppers all together and chupping. Alcohol may have been involved. I drove home, put my hair up, got a snack, finished reading, and went to bed without bothering to actually brush and rebraid my hair. Consequently I have been painstakingly detangling all my hair while writing this up. All of the elastics have been removed, and it is time for the ylang ylang oil. But I had a great time. Whee!
I arrived comfortably early (having decided that BART was the way to go, then scheduling my nap early) and soon found myself settled in with book, bagel, and hot chocolate. I had been planning on one of their nice meat and cheese plates, but in the interim the cafe has been overhauling their menu, so that didn't exist anymore.
Yay book! Half-Off Ragnarok is a nice sturdy addition to the saga of the Healy-Price family. Alex is Verity's brother, and I was happy to be introduced to him and let him show me around the various perils of life as a cryptobiologist (and also cryptozoologist) who enjoys his job. There are snakes. If snakes are not your thing, proceed with caution. If snakes are so very much the opposite from your thing that you have leaped on top of your chair at the very mention, this book is not for you. You will possibly miss the mice, but there. are. snakes.
( Cover )
( series )
( Snakes and other contents )
Some of Seanan's books leave me feeling profoundly affected and like I need to get as many of my friends as possible to get this into their brains ASAP. This was not one of those, but if you like mystery-y urban fantasy with snakes in, I think you should read this, because it's good.
The party was fairly standard for a Seanan event, which is to say always great fun: door prizes, music, cupcakes, signing, Q&A. I spent most of the music reading: not that it wasn't good, but the book was better and also new. Paul Kwinn had a song about how Seanan might solve problems. It was the best. The Bohnhoffs played The Actor, which was new to me (despite having been released in 1999), and hilarious. Logistically, combining the line for the signing and the cupcakes was an excellent decision, since both require queueing. If you are planning on going to these events and have dietary restrictions, contact Seanan through the contact form on her website and let her know, some time in advance. That will let her let Cups & Cakes know what to make. I got the lemon this time. It was delicious.
I need to remember to collect my random questions about the books for the Q&A sessions, because sometimes there aren't quite enough questions to go around. Seanan can and will entertain the audience in other ways if there are insufficient questions. This time she threatened to unleash The Chaos upon us. We learned that no battle plan (outline, first draft) survives first contact with the enemy. I asked a follow-up: did that mean that Toby was "the enemy"? In point of fact, Seanan explained, everyone except for Cagney and Lacey (Toby's ancient Siamese, if you please) was "the enemy". And there are characters everywhere who were never meant to be there: Quentin was originally there to appear and then die, and Danny was a publisher's addition because there was no way that amount of blood would have flown at all well with a human cabbie.
Seanan's hair was in excellent form. Apparently the version that we had seen at FOGcon was in fact in the faded state. It looked like a candy corn rainbow there. Here, it proceeded from blonde to yellow through screaming orange and vivid pink down to a really assertive purple at the ends. Seanan's hairdresser is also her sister, and I fully intend to arrange an appointment at some time when I am both awake and have the budget for turning my hair the color blue that it was always intended to be.
I had passed the calendar appointment along to Purple when I realized it was happening, but he had other plans for this weekend (plus it is up in the city, and that's a ways). Tif showed, and we caught up a little. Burger Joint across the street had a sufficient non-gluten offering that we wound up eating there and catching up a bit. We are due an Epic Shopping Escapade soon.
Unfortunately for me, I had just hit the high point of the book when my train arrived at Daly City. So I had to decide whether I was going to read in the car, or drive home and then read in bed. Bed won out. By that time, the amazing crowd I'd seen earlier on the Millbrae/SFO platform had dispersed. I'd seriously thought there was some sort of protest or riot brewing, but then I saw all the green and realized that it was some sort of horrifying Saint Patrick's Day/spring break sort of thing, and it was just that many chuppers all together and chupping. Alcohol may have been involved. I drove home, put my hair up, got a snack, finished reading, and went to bed without bothering to actually brush and rebraid my hair. Consequently I have been painstakingly detangling all my hair while writing this up. All of the elastics have been removed, and it is time for the ylang ylang oil. But I had a great time. Whee!
