Alex Bell - fantasy author

Moose is generally a fairly lazy dog:

She doesn’t really get the concept of chasing frisbees or balls. But she really loves it when I blow bubbles for her. I have special doggy ones that are peach flavoured, and she runs around trying to catch them:

It’s a lot of fun, as long as I take a quick enough step back - otherwise Moose takes a flying leap at my face, and, well, she is much to big to fly at my face now. I’m apt to land flat on my back with a very anxious Dane slobbering on top of me. As I spend much of the day hunched over a keyboard somewhere, it’s quite nice to take a break from the writing sometimes and go have some bubble fun with Moose. There is, however, one drawback to this, and that’s that Moose has never had enough. So it doesn’t matter how long I play with her - as soon as I start to walk back towards the house she does her sad face:

What can I do? I’ll give her anything she wants when she looks at me like that. I’ve forced myself to go back into the house before, only to look out the window fifteen minutes later to find that she is still stood there with the same expression. This causes me to bang on the window like a crazy person, shouting ‘I’ll be right back, Moose!’, and then rush out with the bubbles, whereupon she starts leaping about all happy and joyful once again. Whoever said Danes were stupid? Mine has me wrapped around her little finger (or, at least, she would if she had a little finger).

They say that little things amuse little minds. If this is truly the case then I must have a phenomenally tiny mind. Little things amuse me no end. For example, last week I took Moose out for her first ice cream:

I don’t know what it was about the experience that amused me so much. Perhaps it was just the fact that Moose has very floppy chops (she hasn’t really grown into her face yet), and it was funny watching her trying to get her mouth around this ice cream. Needless to say, there were continuous peals of laughter from our bench. Anyone nearby must have thought: “Wow, that girl is so easily amused! It’s just a dog eating an ice cream!” But there you have it. I probably enjoyed it more than Moose did.

The other great thing about Moose is her eyes. They’re different colours:

I mean, seriously, could she be any more special?

Now that I have some photos, courtesy of Danie Ware and Neil Ford, I shall ramble a bit about the signing I did in Southampton last week with fellow Gollancz authors, Jaine Fenn and Suzanne McLeod.

First of all, Moose got to come, which was nice. She very much enjoyed being fussed by everyone:

Plus Suzanne and I both brought a tin of Hot Wasabi Peas, so there was no danger of running out:

We very possibly scared away more potential buyers than we lured with these, but I think we might have got a few more people into the fold. As Danie Ware is now referring to the Cult of the Pea, I think we can safely say that she is one of the converted. Welcome to the cult, Danie, I knew you’d like it here. For the record, the Hot Wasabi Pea thing was my idea. I first blogged about it here. It all started with me . . . I want everyone to know this because I’m just petty like that. And I think, perhaps, I should be earning commission or something.

Here the three of us are getting very excited about the peas:

So much joy from such a little thing . . .

As for the signing itself, well, it was intense. People were crying, screaming, asking us to dedicate books to their unborn children and- Oh wait. No, that wasn’t us. That was Patrick Rothfuss at his recent London signing. I don’t think anyone cried at our signing, although depending on how many peas any one person may have consumed, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility. This was a quieter signing than the one I did in London. The Abercrumbles was not with us, after all. And I don’t think even Hot Wasabi Peas could compensate for his absence. But people did come and ask us to sign books, even if they didn’t weep as they asked. So thank you very much to those of you who came. And special thanks to Ruth, Paul, Audrey, Joanne and Jackie - it was tremendously cool of you all to come, especially as it was such a sunny day outside.

Here’s a final snap of us with our books. Go out and buy ‘em (but if you weren’t there on Saturday, you’ve missed your chance with the peas):

Yes, indeed, my Great Dane puppy can sing. Here is the YouTube link to prove it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj25i6Gzl3I&feature=channel_page

I swear at one point she even tries to say a word. It sounds like meh-meh which, I guess, isn’t strictly speaking a real word. But it’s still pretty impressive nevertheless. I was crying with laughter when I filmed this. Given that, I think I did quite an impressive job of keeping the camera steady. Naturally Moose and I are going to enter into Britain’s Got Talent. I think Simon Cowell would really like her act.

The reason, by the way, that Moose is making those noises isn’t because she’s clinically insane, but because she was trying to coax Loki into playing with her. Loki, however, had been playing with her for a couple of hours by then, was worn out and wasn’t having any of it. The phone goes when she’s making these sounds sometimes. It’s no wonder people think I live in a madhouse. Between Moose and the Siamese it is rather like a madhouse much of the time . . . Which is fine because I don’t think I would do very well somewhere that was calm and normal.

This weekend I am in Cornwall with Moose. My parents were going off to stay at their house in Looe and asked us to come so I decided that me and the Dinky Dane would go along so she could get a bit of a seaside holiday.

It was quite a long drive but Moose was fine apart from being sick about an hour after we set out. I’m sure the shriek of: ‘Ew! There’s puke everywhere!’ probably wasn’t the sort of thing my Dad wanted to hear coming from the back seat - especially as it was his car we were driving in.

But a fine time was had by all once we finally got there. It’s taken us ages to get anywhere because most of the people we’ve passed wanted to give Moose a fuss. I’d say about half of them recognised that she was a Great Dane. The rest thought she was some kind of Dalmatian cross, or even a Dalmatian. This always surprises me because Moose doesn’t just have black spots, but big black (and some blue) splodges all over her coat. Besides which, there would have to be something very wrong with a Dalmatian puppy for it to have a head that shape, and paws that big. One woman actually had the audacity to suggest that she was a ‘little bit of everything’! A mongrel no less!

‘Madam,’ I replied coldly, ‘I’ll have you know that this dog is fifteen hundred pounds worth of pedigree, show standard, harlequin Great Dane!’

But, these slurs on her breeding aside, Moose has had a lovely time. She walked on the beach and came into pubs with us, and met lots of people. There’s something nice about the fact that people will always come up to you if you’re walking a puppy. I’ve answered so many questions about Moose during the last week. And the fact that people want to come up and see her makes me warm towards humans more than I would usually.

Before we came I went to the pet shop to buy her some new things to take on her first holiday. I came out with a whole load of new chewy bones and some toys, including an evil looking crocodile, and a big fluffy rope monster, of which I’m rather fond. I love buying Moose stuff. Especially when I get a new thing out of the bag, and she hears the rustling, and looks up at me with that sweet little face. She’s also becoming a bit of a lap dog, which I suppose could be a problem when she’s big . . . But what the heck - Loki sits on my lap just fine, and he’s a fully grown Doberman. Besides, I’d sooner cut my own hand off than tell her she can’t get on my lap for a cuddle when she’s tired - even if she does happen to be covered in sand at the time.

Whilst walking around Looe, Moose met a fully grown blue Great Dane called Hamlet. Even for a Dane he was a very big boy - and extremely handsome with it. But although he was just five years old he was already starting to go grey around the muzzle. The one downside of Danes is that they don’t live very long. Eight years is the average but some only live to six. When I look at Moose I can’t bear the thought of her living such a short time. But for now I’m taking comfort in the fact that when we went to visit the breeder we saw Moose’s great-grandmother, and she was eleven years old. Moose has to be long-lived too, because I love her so much. She’s the best thing to happen to me in quite a while. She makes up for all the bad stuff - as animals very often do. And I will love my publishers, Gollancz and Headline, until the day I die for enabling me to buy her. Ditto for every single person who bought a copy of The Ninth Circle - even if they thought it was shit. Doesn’t matter so long as the book was bought (but obviously I would prefer that they didn’t think it was shit). Still, I got a Dinky Dane out of the book deals. Can’t complain at that.

If you would like to help keep Moose in toys and dog food, or, possibly, contribute to the next animal in my menagerie (I really want a sphyinx called Gretel and a bull terrier called Daddy), then feel free to buy a copy of Jasmyn, and Lex Trent Versus The Gods, when they come out. Heck, buy copies for all your friends and relatives too, and then perhaps I will be able to get Gretel and Daddy!