So last night, I attended a Kelley Armstrong/Melissa Marr signing at Borderlands Books here in San Francisco. And I'll talk more about that later, I'm sure. But for right now, I have something far more enthralling to talk about (at least, it's more enthralling when I'm not entirely awake):

Evil-looking naked alien suede kitty!

Yes! The store has a resident Sphinx. No, I have no idea why the store has a resident Sphinx, but let's be serious here: I really don't care. They have a NAKED ALIEN SUEDE KITTY. That is, really, justification enough. Her name is 'Ripley,' after the character in Alien ('cause she looks like one) as much as the television show ('cause nobody believes what they're seeing). And she's awesome. She came out and graced the signing with her glorious presence, at which point, the famous people really lost the bulk of my attention, as there was a NAKED ALIEN SUEDE KITTY in my lap. My needs in life are simple but well-defined. They include cuddling with anything that looks like it would like to nest inside my ribcage.

Now, the store is aware that NAKED ALIEN SUEDE KITTY pretty much = awesome, and so they have come up with what may well be the Best Marketing Scheme ever: they've made attractive postcards with Ripley on them. You can buy them. For a dollar. Yes: you can pay a dollar for a picture of their cat. Being me -- have you met me? -- I, of course, bought one. Now I have NAKED ALIEN SUEDE KITTY to look at any time I want to. I'm going to add her to my corkboard. I'm just thinking, why should NAKED ALIEN SUEDE KITTY get all the action? I have a hyper-intelligent tail-free Siamese cat and friends with cameras.

Lilly Kane: camwhore.

Just sayin'.

I tend to develop a somewhat...familial...attachment to the stores that I frequent on a regular basis, to the point that they monitor the status of my projects, warn me when things that may upset me have happened (my comic store guys are hysterical on days when certain X-titles come in), and generally know exactly what they're dealing with when I walk in the door. We argue, gossip, chat, and generally just have a good time together. It's pretty awesome, and I appreciate it.

My normal comic store, Flying Colors, is very much a family establishment, and the owner, Joe Fields, doesn't order anything of an 'adult' nature. This is a good thing, as there are a lot of unsupervised kids browsing at just about any given time. This is a bad thing, because when they advertised the new Hack/Slash special issue -- a crossover with the Suicide Girls -- it got listed as 'adult,' and was consequentially not ordered. (Believe me, I made sad noises when I got to the store on Wednesday and discovered this dismaying fact. I sort of figured that the existence of the title 'Hack/Slash' would make it an automatic order. Sad cat...is trekking to her alternative comic book store in Berkeley.)

Luckily for me, I have a backup comic store: Comic Relief, which has the added bonus of being located right next to the Other Change of Hobbit. I stopped in yesterday, and was gratified to find that yes, they had the issue in question, even as I confused the heck out of the on-duty staff, who see me about once every three months (when Flying Colors either sells out of something or, as in the case of my Hack/Slash-with-boobies issue, fails to order it). If they didn't know me from local comic conventions and geek meets and forums, they'd probably think I bought six comic books a year. Tops.

With the latest installment of the adventures of Cassie Hack (more on this later) firmly in my possession, I went next door to let Will know that I'd been assigned a cover artist. He and I (and some random store patrons, that being the way at the Other Change of Hobbit) had a fairly vigorous discussion of cover design about a month ago, which covered everything from 'marketing,' 'eye-catching design,' and 'current trends' to 'yeah, but that looks stupid' and 'I just can't understand why all these ass-kicking heroines have nothing better to do with their time than go around crouching on rooftops while wearing uncomfortable-looking latex catsuits.' (My ass-kicking heroines -- I'm currently working with three -- wear, respectively, jeans and T-shirts, track gear, and whatever she can manage to grab before the goddamn flying monkeys break her bedroom window again. Note the lack of inexplicable latex catsuits.) Anyway, as a consequence of this conversation, I wanted to tell him who the Toby cover artist was going to be.

Pathetically, as soon as I finished waving my hands and going 'we got a cover artist and he's awesome!', I forgot a) his name, b) Jim Butcher's name, and c) the name of the series Butcher writes and McGrath draws the covers for (IE, the Dresden Files). We eventually managed to fix this, and then there was much joyful dancing in the Other Change of Hobbit.

I was sitting down to spend some quality time with the two loaner kitties that the shop cat-sits for during the week -- Clearsword and Patch, a Siamese and his Oriental shorthair brother -- when Patch went Very Still And Quiet. I turned around to find myself looking at...

...a dog. A truly awesome dog, of a breed that I had never seen before. She was short-haired to the point of seeming to be made of suede, except for the ridge down the middle of her back, dark blue in color (which, for non-pet-people, means she was a very pretty sort of gunmetal gray), and had a long, intelligent face that made her look a lot like artistic representations of Anubis. I promptly threw myself upon the altar of dog-worship, and grilled her owner about her origins. Turns out she's a Thai ridgeback. So. Cool.

Yesterday, I got a new comic book, a happy dino dance party, and a new dog breed.

How was your Thursday?

Being as I am currently in New York, while my cats remain at home in California, I miss them dearly. You know what that means. That's right.

Time for cat pictures.

( Cut because kindness says 'do not force others to look at your cats without actually agreeing to the activity.' Also because there are several graphics here.Collapse )