Fur-Face is a delightful little novel by Jon Gibbs. Aimed for the younger audience, it doesn’t quite have the character depth or plot twists of stories for the older readers. However, for the target readers, I think it is a perfect match. The novel tells a story of a young boy moving into an area and finding out he can speak with one of the local cats. What follows is a tale of cats, foxes, and evil scientists. Mr. Gibbs brings technology and combines it with a little bit of Secret of Nihm and Dr. Doolittle.
I like how he creates the personalities of the characters, some of them with delightful absurdity while the others fit more with stereotypical mindset you expect with the various animals. However, the detail he puts into the animals isn’t really done with the human characters of the stories. I found the humans to be relatively shallow, more like puppets with predictable roles that I figured out pretty much from the beginning.
I enjoyed reading this. I could easily see myself reading it again when I want to have a couple hours and I’d encourage it for most of my family.
I wanted to finish FOTS before EDM was born. A week before his birth, I realized that I had to focus on Fluffy more than the novel, so I set it aside. Well, until those long hours of labor when I got to work on a chapter. In the first week we came back home, I used EDM’s naps to finish what I call the “first sketch” of the novel.
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Reviewing books is a hard thing. On one hand, it is a great way for people to learn about books or games they might not have played otherwise. On the other, reviewing a review of one of your books, games, movies is a brutal thing since you put so much love and passion into it, you don’t want to read about someone ripping it apart.
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I skipped the writing group yesterday because they moved the inducing up a day. I figured I’d have a nice couple of hours to work on chapter 25 and 26 (stuck on the teenage angst of 25). And then, I would still be in the running to finish the book before EDM is born.
Didn’t happen.
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It hasn’t really hit me that I’m going to be a father soon. I mean, I know I’m going to be, but I can’t really picture what is going to happen. Of course, I think that is a good thing since I won’t have preconceptions of the next few weeks. A number of my co-workers are alternating between the horror stories and the, I guess, encouraging me. In the end, I know that EDM is going to be his own person and walking into it without any idea is probably better than assuming he’s going to be a devil or angel.
We do have a date though. The doctor is tentatively planning on inducing Fluffy (SMWM if you use initials) on the evening of August 14. That means I have about 1.5 weeks left before that unknown event does or does not change my life.
Naturally, I haven’t quite finished my novel but I have to finish a commission (due on the 13th) and a story writing contest entry (I’m in round 5 and its due on August 12).
We are going to sit down and figure out what we need for the first few weeks of EDM’s emergence. And probably go buy things like, I don’t know, diapers? They’re important, right? Mostly, we’re going to go through our baby registry stuff and pick up the remaining criticals this weekend.
One of the writers over at the Nobel Pen started asking me questions about DocBook 5, mainly because I’m doing so much with the `mfgames-writing-python` toolchain. It was nice being a somewhat knowledgeable source for stuff, but they were doing relatively simple stuff and it didn’t really push the limits of my skills. Still, nice to be considered. Speaking of the toolchain, it is moving around quite nicely. I got it so it will be idempotent while converting between Creole and DocBook formats. I also made it easy to create converters for DocBook and other text-based formats, like Markdown. It also now converts subject terms into DokuWiki tags, something I use fairly heavily.
Beyond the programming and working on a commission, I’ve just been doing “life” thing. Fluffy’s car broke down and we had to return it to get it fixed right. They are keeping it over a few days, so we are down to one car again. *sigh* At least it isn’t anything really critical.
I also got a chance to play the demo for Revenge of the Titans, a RTS tower defense game. I actually liked it; I normally like TD games but I haven’t really warmed up to RTS games. This one… I could enjoy. They have a special right now, 50% off ($13) for pre-ordering and I decided to pick it up. Amazing how many fun games you can get for under $20.
It was an interesting weekend. Fluffy and I went back to Illinois for the second (and last) baby shower. We got back pretty late on Sunday with a car full of pastels, an exhausted dog, and a $100 electric bill.
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So, a lovely little writing contest for a book from an awesome writer. This is being done by Merry Sisters of Fate, who have some really cool writing.
http://community.livejournal.com/merry_fates/95549.html
Oh yeah, and Linger is coming out. It has a beautiful cover.
The Princess
“So, all I have to do is pretend to be uncomfortable and they’ll think I’m a princess?” She spoke with a southern accent with just a hint of whiskey and smoke. “What if they don’t buy it?”
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Pretty good weekend, I would have to say. And it wasn’t doing everything I planned on doing. I played a lot of games, wrote a good chapter, and rewrote part of my writing tool chain. Oh, and cleaned the house.
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No, I’m not interesting in finding out the One True Programming Language™. After talking to my dad two weekends ago, I decided to give Python another chance and see if I could get over the purely mental hangups I had over it. Most languages are just syntax for me, just a matter of putting the braces and letters in the right place, do you use “&&” or do you use “and”?
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