Out now —

Of course you know this, but NO FOREIGN SKY dropped today!

Releasing a new book is always exciting, and this time it’s a little nerve-wracking as well, as after all, this is my first SF novel! Kind of a big deal!

If you beta read this book and enjoyed it, I hope you will leave a brief review, or at least a rating. If you read it in the next few days, ditto. This isn’t like the seventh TUYO book, which (a) I feel very (very) confident about and also (b) it is after all the seventh book in a series; anybody who gets that far in a series is not going to care all that much about reviews, probably. (Though I still appreciate them!). But this is different. It’s a standalone, at least for now, plus a departure from fantasy, and I’m sure reviews are going to make a big difference for readers browsing for space opera.

I will, of course, totally understand if you picked it up but don’t get around to reading it for three years, because that’s pretty much how things work for me a lot of the time. (Almost all the time.) Still, if you do read it, please take a moment to leave a review (or at least a rating).

Meanwhile!

Here are Morgan’s two boys, with a lucky snapshot catching a particularly cute moment. They get their first vaccinations today. They are SO HUGE for their age that they may not have any vaccine reaction at all, though usually puppies are a little ouchy the next day and might run a fever. I don’t generally wait to see. I just give them Carprofen that evening to head off any potential reaction. I’ll do that here too, but seriously, these guys are bigger right now than my smaller Papillon was full grown.

I have decided to place the Blenheim! Oh, I will be sorry to let him go! But I don’t think I will be showing enough to do him justice. AND the little girl in his new family loves the idea of showing him! Probably in Rally, maybe in the Breed ring, who knows where it might lead? I don’t know if she’ll go on and do it, but wouldn’t that be wonderful? This could be a great, great puppy to get a kid into showing. Super confident, super motivated. I hope his bite stays good so he can show in every possible venue. I would even place him with an unrestricted registration, which I wouldn’t for a female puppy, but for a boy, if he’s really nice, yes.

I will have both these puppies for several weeks yet, which is fine with me, especially since that big Blen puppy can now come up stairs on his own! I will take a stab at teaching both these puppies to go up AND down so that I don’t have to heave them up and down myself. I do wonder what their adult weight will be. Honestly, probably not as high as it seems.

You know what’s particularly funny? The Tri boy’s new owner took the above photo. She doesn’t want to bring him home yet, not for another ten days or so, which is fine, but she was visiting. Now, the Tri boy hit the basic shift to independence a few days before his Blen brother, and for ME, the tricolor tends to dash off and play keepaway. But he went STRAIGHT to Kathy and climbed on her lap. What a good puppy! She’s been waiting for a tricolor for some time. Her current dog is a Blenheim and he is going to be so, so happy to have a little brother join the family.

Man, I’m going to miss these two when they leave me.

Also, here’s a super cute picture of Leda’s Girl Two.

Isn’t she a character! This puppy is funny and cute and confident. She has a nice shape to her head. All Leda’s puppies do have pretty heads regardless of markings. The standout right now — they are just going to be seven weeks in a few days, so they are still young to make the call — but the standout for me at the moment is Boy 2. Every time I catch any of the little puppies standing in a great stacked pose, head up and lovely topline sweeping right down to his tail, it’s Boy 2. I think they are all nice, but I think he is perhaps the nicest. Confident, too. He can actually make the big puppies back up when they are trying to push the little ones around.

So can Girl 2 above. She’s definitely personality-plus.