It's true. White rhinos, the largest of all the extant species, used to live north of the equator in Africa.
These were the forebears of the northern white rhinos, who have become famous recently because there are only three left. (Their demise and one man's desperate efforts to save them are chronicled in The Last Rhinos. There are more southern white rhinos in the world.)
The ancient Romans were always on the lookout for fierce beasts for the gladiatorial arena, and the look of a rhinoceros is plenty fierce if you have no idea what you're looking at. "After the Arena" is my imagination of what it might have been like to witness a "fight" between a rhinoceros and and elephant, with a nod to The Story of Ferdinand. Strange, mysterious, and based in fact, in under four minutes. Please enjoy this narration while you await the release of Tree/House in audio.
I hope everyone had a beautiful Thanksgiving. Here's to a great December.
Here's another video that's meant mostly to be listened to. It's the shortest of the flash fictions in the series Five Species Forever, each of which celebrates on of the surviving species of rhinoceros.
The little rhino in this video is the cutest stuffed animal on the planet, I believe. My husband named him creatively: Rhiny. He's lived with us since before we were married and he's our favorite pet.
The black rhinoceros is the smaller of the African types and there are also fewer of them. Some 4,500 are left on the planet.
This story isn't really very fictional, unfortunately.
Enjoy! And look for the other four species soon.
As you know, I'm proud of the new edition of Tree/House. I want to disseminate it as widely as possible. On November 20, when you're not watching the final Hunger Games movies, you can have Tree House from just about any venue you like!
I love preorders so much that I have a few of them going for the much-anticipated wide release of Unpredictable Worlds. As you know, at first it was in Softcover, Softcover at Indiebound, Softcover at Amazon, and Softcover at Barnes and Noble, but only in Kindle for ebooks. Now, it's ready for you on Nook! Those amazing preorders are being taken at Apple iBooks and Kobo, so you have something downloading to your device while you're waiting for the next showing of the final Hunger Games movie on November 20. Many other retailers will have it on November 20. If you feel like shopping at your favorite ebook retailer, it will be waiting for you!
Unpredictable Worlds contains "Safari" and many other rhinoceros stories. As you think about the holiday season and what gifts would be best for the readers in your life, please consider authors you've never tried before. At the very least, you'll be supporting a labor of love, and in the best case, you'll help your reader friend discover a new author he or she loves to read!
Last October, I was seized with a desire to go to Cincinnati. It's the site of the last Sumatran rhino in the Western Hemisphere, you see, so if I didn't drag my husband on an autumn road trip, neither of us would probably ever see a Sumatran rhino. I had a feeling he would be headed back to the nature reserve where all his living relatives reside. And now it appears I was right. It's the right decision for him. Such a sweet rhino shouldn't be alone. But oh, how we'll miss him. Safe travels, Harapan!
There was also bad news for Sumatran rhinos this week, the kind of news that shakes one's faith in humanity and makes on wonder what it's all about. Previously, we could say that Harapan's relatives had a small enclave in Malaysia as well as their main home in Indonesia. That spread is no more. The Sumatran rhinoceros has been declared extinct in Malaysia because of human greed. The species is utterly dependent on the population living in Indonesia now. It's hard to even say how many are left at this point.
On the brighter side, Harapan's new home hasn't had a poaching incident in years because of aggressive protections in place. He and his species have a fighting chance. It's far from time to give up.
If I had known that each of these stories takes a different point of view on human relationships with animals, I would've picked up Love in Infant Monkeys sooner. Shocking and sensitive all at once, Lydia Millet delivers in a concentrated short story format all the impact of her novels. Each story is a memorable mixture of fact and fiction and each gives the reader something new to think about, some aspect of the way humans act in the world and how our behavior affects the other residents of this planet.
I was appalled to learn that the title story was inspired by a real-life study and intrigued by the possibilities of Edison's obsession with his film of an elephant execution (which is now digitized for anyone to view). A story about a Komodo dragon who attacked Sharon Stone's husband becomes a meditation on the meaning of celebrity and the relative value of life.
My favorite story is "Girl and Giraffe." Here Millet presents a realistic version of the humans who worked with the lions in Born Free and what they think and feel about the animals they work with, and then proceeds to bear witness to some lion behavior that no human can understand. For me, the behavior isn't below human experience, but transcends human comprehension.
Love in Infant Monkeys is not for faint-hearted readers, surely, but is an exquisite book. But everyone else knew that already!
