Squee!
“Squee!” is the sound that Skull the troll from the webcomic PVP makes when he is delighted with something. (Edit: I am informed that Skull actually says “Glee!” and that “Squee!” is a noise that Howard brought home from a convention. This error in no way affects the correctness of the rest of this post.)
Howard and I have adopted the term. It is primarily used for the times when we have contact with someone we admire. It is the fanboy/girl sound of delight upon meeting the object of admiration. For example Howard had a squee moment when he first met Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games. Another squee moment was when we realized that Baen author John Ringo was a regular reader of Schlock Mercenary.
Today a package full of squee arrived in the mail. Okay, it didn’t actually contain squee. What it contained was books, but the books made me go squee! Baen author Ryk Spoor is also a fan of Schlock Mercenary. Not only is he a fan, but in his forthcoming book Boundary, Ryk directly references “The Tayler Corporation” as makers of “carbonan.” He sent us an autographed copy of this book. He also sent us an anthology which contains a short story by him. Two free books. Yay!
But I have to confess, the part that made me happiest was the fact that he didn’t just send them to Howard, my name was on the package, letter, and inscription as well. This makes me extra happy because his prior book Digital Knight is one of the few books that has inspired me to write the author to say how much I enjoyed it. It makes sense for people to send free books to Howard who will read and review them, but it was pure niceness that caused him to put my name there.
Squee!