After To visit the Queen

[windcat]

In my opion, they were beautifully written, very funny, lots of good details (some of us obsessed folk like that) and I want more. I laughed so hard, Arhu is just a perfect exambple of a kitten, all of the characters are cats, not human characters in cat bodies. They think they cats, they act like cats, and they talk like cats. About the sick parts, sorry to say so, but that's how toms think, and it's why it's a, well adult book. Hauissh, is something real cats do, if not under that name, or with those rules (cat thought is generally guess after all). Their lanauage is wonderful, it's a great idea to have it be spoken in words that cats could actually say, and also shown in body lanauage. It takes someone who knows about cats to do that, and I think that's fantastic, considering all the books out there with 'feline' charcters that nod, think in human terms, and act like either a pack (that's canines) or completely aloof (that's our sterotype of them, cat's are social, just not like canines).

[Fox]

I agree with you Windcat (nice name ), I really liked these books, still I did not think they were as good as the SYWTBAW books but I think thats cause they forced me to think. But as I love cats and have two of my own, I understood all the body language stuff e.c.t. Was sad though when I found out there were going to be no more (bad sales I think someone said!).
-Foxy-

[Esthanya]

It truely is a sad thing. I wanted more...

They were written for an older audience with a more sophisticated sense of humour. If you didn't like the first time you read them, I suggest you try reading them again at least two years later, if not more. Umm, 8th, 9th grade, older for some, younger for others. (I was younger, but I've always had a more adult sense of humour, and I've apprecated them more as I got older). I found them very witty, the small details absorbing, the interaction of cats facinating and true, and the history of TVtQ intreguing. But, this is my opinion of them. Feel free to have your own. But take my suggestion.

<span class="ev_code_BLUE">what are the feline wizard novels? I've never heard of them
PATRICIA</span>

[Fox]

Hi,
the feline wizard novels are sort of a side series that was discontinued (even though they were very good!!!!). Anyway the books were called,
On her majesty's wizardly service and
The book with night with moon.

There very good, and even introduce not only cats that are wizards but dino wizards as well. Even Kit and Nita are in it (for about half a page!!). Give a whole new view to the wizard novels and gives us some info on 'gateing' thats mentioned in the other wizard novels. If you think these are good also try out 'the tale of the five' series or 'stealing the elf-king's roses', its not 'young wizard' related but is still good reading. hope this helps a little. oh and if you want to bye them try Amazon.co.uk/Amazon.com cause I got all mine second hand off there!!
Fox

[semiramis]

The second one, due to a not-so-uncommon glitch involving finicky publishers on either sides of the lake who don't agree with each other, is also called To Visit the Queen in the US. Just so you know and don't go looking for it under the wrong name if you're in the US. or something. Yeah. Semiramis is going to stop babbling now....

[Peter Murray]

The Young Wizards .com has a link to a site selling Ebooks of Book of Night with Moon and To See the Queen (boo hiss, wrong title!). Maybe, if the Ebook forms sell well, DD would think about writing more?

I've got a book "The Illustrated Guide to Fantasy" which claims the third book, the Big Meow, has been published - probably because they expected it to have been published before their book came out. Does anyone know how much of it DD had written? (Yes, she does.) If it's finished, it presumably wouldn't be difficult to publish the third one as an Ebook.

But I suppose that's just optimism.

[Birdhead]

And we have it with both titles here in NZ- so I'd guess that this would be the same if you live in a country that doesn't have a direct link to one or the other. So possibly Australia as well.

[Kathy Li]

I think it'd have to sell pretty darn well to make it worth her while, given the number of other projects she's got on her plate. There's the movie, the YW novels, the Star Trek novels, and the last Door novel, before she could start thinking of something else.

Unless, of course, someone creates a cat-wizard phenomenon as big as Harry Potter...

[Peter Murray]

Originally posted by kli6:
I think it'd have to sell pretty _darn_ well to make it worth her while, given the number of other projects she's got on her plate.

Yes, if not much of the third book was ever written, it wouldn't be practical. However, if it was cancelled late in the writing, turning it into an Ebook has to be easier than the traditional publishing route needed to get a printed book made and distributed.

[Kathy Li]

My guess, given this USENET article is that DD just shopped around an outline, and never actually started writing The Big Meow.

And one does wonder what happened to Short Circuit...

Ah. A few more bits and bobs searching through Google's USENET archive:

However, except for the Seniors and various other involved persons, I prefer that the cat books be for the cats as much as possible. Though here I go breaking my own "rules" again; in THE BIG MEOW, the projected third book of the series, there's a fair amount of "mixing" (much of MEOW takes place in just-post-WWII Los Angeles, and features a character who's already a favorite of mine even if I haven't written the book yet, Helen Walks Softly, a wizard/shamaness of an LA-area native American tribe: a wizard with a difference).

From this March 2000 article, and

...though an outline for "Feline Wizards 3" (THE BIG MEOW) exists, so far the book hasn't been purchased.

from this September 2000 article.

[Peter Murray]

Quoth the kli6:
My guess, given this USENET article is that DD just shopped around an outline, and never actually started writing The Big Meow.

Oh. It hadn't occurred to me there'd be anything relevant on Usenet. Phooey. Thanks for those three URLs, anyway.

It's not written yet: I haven't written a book without having a contract first for more than twenty years.

That makes sense. Oh well.

After all, I've still got almost two whole feline wizards books to read, having got sidetracked by quote hunting in the YW books while I was still only a couple of chapters into BONWM.

[Kathy Li]

Yeah, I know the feeling. And it's been, what, nearly 20 years I've been waiting to see if DD ever writes an "adult" Wizard novel? (The first time I heard of it, she said it was going to be a newscaster/journalist female wizard, but that's undoubtedly fallen by the wayside or transmogrified greatly).

And yup, DD posts on USENET and various other places pretty regularly. She's an old-time 'net person, after all, having once been a sysop on Compuserve in the days of yore.

[Peter Murray]

Originally posted by kli6:
And yup, DD posts on USENET and various other places pretty regularly. She's an old-time 'net person, after all, having once been a sysop on Compuserve in the days of yore.

And she had a Fidonet node, I believe. I've seen her post to various groups before, such as this quote I put in my sig quotes list...
And beware, for after all your critiques, the author still has one fairly
devastating question to ask in return, the eternal question of the
creator to the one who experiences the creation: "Where were *you* when
page one was blank?" -- [Diane Duane in rec.arts.sf.written]

and I like an old post to alt.callahans (not about Nita's family), where the regulars had set up a library containing any books from any period in time. One regular promptly took the last book in the Door series to read... and DD was second in line, as she wanted to know how some of it came out .

[Kathy Li]

Hee hee!! Thanks for the pointer! I remember alt.callahans! I hung around when it was created and helped boost the post count to keep it alive, but ended up leaving relatively soon. (for the newsbies: It's named after Spider Robin's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon).