Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Wow - Etiquette and Espionage + Update!

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Breaking the Spine.
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I found this amazing-looking book on an author update on Goodreads... a feed off of Gail Carringer's blog.  I love the colors & the similarity to the Parasol Protectorate Series... but the title. Oh MY!!  This sounds like a book I can't wait to get my hands on... only I'll have to. Wait, that is. It doesn't come out 'til next February!!! What's up with that?!

 
Etiquette & Espionage

It's one thing to learn to curtsy properly. It's quite another to learn to curtsy and throw a knife at the same time. Welcome to finishing school.

Fourteen-year-old Sophronia is the bane of her mother's existence. Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper etiquette at tea--and god forbid anyone see her atrocious curtsy. Mrs. Temminnick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. She enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.

But little do Sophronia or her mother know that this is a school where ingenious young girls learn to finish, all right--but it's a different kind of finishing. Mademoiselle Geraldine's certainly trains young ladies in the finer arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but also in the other kinds of finishing: the fine arts of death, diversion, deceit, espionage, and the modern weaponries. Sophronia and her friends are going to have a rousing first year at school.

First in a four book YA series set 25 years before the Parasol Protectorate but in the same universe.

Update:  I brought my laptop out to my brother today (an hour away). He's a programmer and my dad, a professional tech supporter, zipped over with his computer tools and something that will suck info off my hard-drive.

The prognosis is that my hard drive did, indeed, crash. I'm not sure whether I should pull my hair out that I haven't backed anything up for a year... or whether I should count all my blessings.

'Cause I had started rewriting my book... so all my previous drafts are on my Nook to read and I hadn't written much, yet, compared to next month, even. (Which will be backed up!!!!)  And I posted so many of my favorite pictures somewhere. All my books are all retrievable, if they aren't already on my Nook... which leaves my blog. If Blogger will just behave 'til I get my other duckies all in a row, I shall be so careful to back up everything everywhere.

Of course, the biggest blessing is having family that will leap to my rescue, saving me a lot of money in repairs for the time (and care!) involved in this rescue.  Greater yet is the undistracted quality time I've been spending with my family, since it's so awkward to get online.

I wish I could claim extra reading time, too, but I've been running around like a maniac. I'll see if I can't add that to my Thankful List while my laptop is painfully far away getting worked on.

Since I did not get my post up for Shadow on the Wall today, I will have an author interview with Pavarti Tyler SOON, which will be even better!!!

If only I pre-wrote my posts a week in advance!!!!  Yea... right.