[LMB] Winterfair Gifts

[Mark A. Mandel]

From: Ed Burkhead <edburkhead at insightbb.com> wrote:

By choice, I'd normally first send you to Baen Books to buy books
 online,
but they don't have "Winterfair Gifts" as a separate title. <sad sigh>
  I'd
prefer to buy from Baen because his books are DRM free (Digital Rights
Management) so there's no worry about it not working some year in the
future.

So, you can buy it here for $2.49 (or $2.12 if you're a member of the
'club').  Download it and you can be reading in five minutes.  Well
 worth
the cost.  I like the story a lot.
http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/eBook29885.htm?cache 

It's the wedding story for Miles and Ekaterin with armsman Roic and
 Taura
having important roles in the plot.  It comes after ACC and before DI.


Here's a little song I wrote about it (no spoilers) before it came out.* This and several other Bujold filks are listed at 

http://filk.cracksandshards.com/filks.html#Bujold



Winterfair Gifts



 Mark A. Mandel Copr. 2003


ttto Simple Gifts







'Tis a gift in the winter,

'Tis a gift at the Fair,

'Tis a gift for the wedding of Vorkosigan's own heir.

Milord and his beloved are joyously to wed

But someone is planning a funeral instead.





Sharp eyes to see what can't be seen,

Honor and wits that are equally keen.

These are the gifts that together save the day,

And milord and milady fly safely away.



http://filk.cracksandshards.com/WinterfairGifts.html

*How,
you may ask. Owing to a change of personnel at the publishing house,
the collection containing this and five other "SF/romance crossovers"
was delayed a year, much to everyone's disappointment, irritation, and
confusion, not to mention the disruption of the carefully planned
publicity campaigns leading up to the scheduled Valentine's Day
release. But a licensed translation had already been released in
Croatia, and some of us had bought copies through the Bujold
list. Then a Croatian fan back-translated the story into English, with
the help of a couple of other listies, and with Lois's approval the
back translation was printed up as Winterfair Gifts: A Comedy of
Translations and offered for sale only to those who had bought the
Croatian edition. And that, children, is how your grandpa was able to
sing this teaser, or trailer (guaranteed spoiler-free), at Arisia
and/or Boskone 2004 (grandpa's memory is a little fuzzy) before the
book was published. (And that is how your loquacious host
manages to write a description that is several times longer than the
song it is about.) 




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