Political (not really), The Being Nice To People Party (it’ll never catch on), Gratuitous Arya

I love this from a recent post by Neil Gaiman, about how he’s not very political:

“… if there was a party whose main platform was being nice to people, freedom of speech and supporting libraries I’d sign up for it …”

Me too, Neil! Me too. Actually I’d settle for just the libraries bit, they’re so important and they never get enough money.

Kind of a thing going on over here about ‘strong’ female characters in YA:

http://www.aimeelsalter.com/2011/05/ethics-in-ya-strength-vs-stupidity.html

I considered commenting then kind of thought, “I’ve never encountered this anywhere ever, and my characters certainly don’t act like that, so, well, yes.”

Speaking of strong female characters, yep, you guessed it, another totally gratuitous Arya pic!

 

No I SHAN’T shut up about Arya, shan’t shan’t shan’t!

Wow, a review for The Boy & Little Witch already! I wasn’t specifically asking for reviews with this giveaway, but getting one is always nice. Also, I’ve sold three copies of Birds of Passage over the last few days. Coincidence? Considering the absolute dearth of sales over previous weeks, I’d say ‘probably not’. It’s interesting, far more people requested a PDF of the book than the Mobi file, so my feeling is that perhaps–just perhaps, and just a feeling–some people who received the PDF version then went and bought the Kindle version, just to be, well, brilliantly lovely. I know it’s only a dollar, but it’s a dollar they didn’t have to spend, and I appreciate that.

In any case, I feel good about the LibraryThing giveaways. It’s a really practical form of promotion, actually getting my books out there to people who are interested in them. To be honest I’m just happy that so many people WERE interested, whenever I do something like that I’m always a bit nervous that I’ll get no response at all.

Since that last post I’ve watched the Arya swordfight lesson four more times. Still nowhere NEAR bored of it. I love the two ‘shifts’ in the music, just so perfectly done. And Arya’s amazing little grin, how could you not love that?