Smiley

My Google Alerts have been busy lately, and it is so cool to know that there are Silksingers and Lips Touches out there with bent spines. People might even be reading them right now! So far, what I've seen has been very positive, which makes me smile. A lot.

A lot lot lot. I'm smiley.
Here are some Silksinger reviews:

From Elizabeth Vail at Green Man Review, whose lovely review of Blackbringer was a favorite of mine. She says of Silksinger:

"With this novel, Laini Taylor demonstrates that she's just as capable of continuing a dazzlingly inventive series as she is in starting one, which bodes extremely well for future books."

Read her review for a terrific non-spoily synopsis of the book.

Some other new reviews from Sheila Ruth of Wands and Worlds and the Parrsboro Regional Elementary School Library. There are other blurbs at my website.

So there are some things that are making me smile. Another thing making me smile: Professor is an acrobat. Last night Jim and I were reading to my belly in bed (it's never too soon to start :-) and you should have seen the shifting topography! Seismic. I think she likes books! We were cracking up -- Jim has likened Professor's movements to "a shoe in a dryer," if that gives you any sense of the tumbling going on.

In our birthing class yesterday the teacher was talking about fetology and the awareness and interactivity of babies in utero, and she had lots of neat stories about parent-baby interaction pre-birth, like a dad who would touch his baby's foot (which was generally to be found resting near mom's ribs) and say the same thing each time (I think it was, "Hey chicky chicky.") -- and after the baby was born, when he'd say that, she'd stick out her foot! Isn't that cool? So I thought it would be neat to read the same bedtime book every night (in addition to other stuff); maybe she'll remember it later. You know, and drop right off to sleep. Ha ha.

Things not totally making me smile: The Massive De-Cluttering of 2009, which is just beginning. Our friend/contractor arrives any minute to start the wee remodel of the weird unfinished space that was discovered behind the wall (former extraterrestrial hiding place, I think, where an alien anthropologist lived in secret and took notes on humanity) into a nursery. While the work is underway, Jim and I shall be: de-cluttering. My half of the art studio became, when I basically stopped doing art, a repository for all things that will not fit in the closets. Which is basically everything, since in 1924 people weren't too keen on closets. My mess has spilled over into the rest of the studio, and Jim has a mess of his own going (though nothing compared to mine), and contemplating it is exhausting. I've taken pictures, but they're way too humiliating to show. Little by little, it will be tamed. I so wish I could just blink it into an alternate dimension and then blink it back some day in the future when we have a bigger house. Does anyone know how to do that? I'll pay you.

The silver lining is, of course, that it will be lovely once it's all done! Is there anything quite so satisfying as a newly de-cluttered house? A freshly painted room? The nesting phase will follow soon, and that is something that does make me smile. Like I wrote about here.

Cheers!