Anne McCaffrey? (Dragons are animals, right?)

On second thought, no.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I thought of Andre Norton, but she died in 2005. I also thought of Joan D. Vinge, but I don't think she wrote anything quite like this, and she doesn't write a lot of books.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

No, I said no dragons. However, the horses/birds/etc. of this woman's books tend to be similar to McCaffrey's dragons in a lot of ways.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Another wild stab in the dark:

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough?

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The quarrelsome oarsmen were rowing,
The great violinist was bowing;
But how is the sage
To tell, from the page:
Was it pigs or seeds that were sowing?

Where you by chance or design thinking of:
That contest already exists, sorta-annually since 1983.

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"God bless thee, my son; I will give thee the greatest jewel I have ...
"The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible."Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Nope.

It's odd; I thought the woman was more popular than this. I own roughly two dozen of her books, and my collection is smaller than that of several of my friends.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Train of thought here - is it Storm Constantine?

No, though she's another one where both her first and last name are familiar as words, not human names. (Though, of course, the first name is familiar as something else because it was initially a human name.)

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

That's interesting.

I once had occasion to phone her. I am embarrassed to admit that I could not bring myself to address her by her first name.

I have to say, though, that Constantine is generally regarded as a human name. Unless the old Roman empires are still thought of as gods. (Hey, politics AND religion!)

Well, you do have me there. However, he did give his name to a city--and the person who shares a first name with this author gave her name to a car.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Mercedes Lackey!

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

That's the author. Anyone have a guess on the book? (It's not a classic; it never will be. But I really like it!)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I've not read any. TBH, I found her name a bit unappealing, which is of course unfair, but I am often influenced by author names. This is a recognised thing. Stephen Baxter used to write under the name S.M. Baxter but his agent suggested he change it.

Incidentally, Mercedes isn't the only female name that has become almost completely associated with a car. Cortina is another one.

And my first girlfriend was called Jaguar Jenkins. (No, I made that up.)

She's pretty mindless, though I think the series our selection's from is a little more thoughtful than the majority of her stuff.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Mercedes Lackey has had almost nothing at all published in the UK...

__________________
The quarrelsome oarsmen were rowing,
The great violinist was bowing;
But how is the sage
To tell, from the page:
Was it pigs or seeds that were sowing?

She does a lot of collaborations, and I've read some of those, but I'm not familiar with the stories mentioned here. Looking at a list of titles, there are at least a couple that might fit, but I'll guess Phoenix And Ashes.

__________________
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

That's the one!

It's the best of its series; in the newest, she gets back into the whole hyperintelligent familiars thing, which doesn't really fit the rest of the series.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Well, yes, the name Mercedes is associated with cars, but only because Herr Benz named the car after his daughter, and the marque subsequently became extremely successful.

And I thought Cortina was a place: see Wiki's entry here.

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The quarrelsome oarsmen were rowing,
The great violinist was bowing;
But how is the sage
To tell, from the page:
Was it pigs or seeds that were sowing?

Should I post the next clue then? (I feel like I had half credit, since Noclevername got the author's name.)

Anyway, to get the thread going, here's a bit of text from the start of a novel:

Wind howled over the rolling, sparsely wooded hills of the lands in the care of the Marat, the One-and-Many people. Hard, coarse, flecks of snow fled before it, and though the One rode high in the sky, the overcast hid her face.

Kitai began to feel the cold for the first time since spring.

What's the author and book title? That text has some big hints if you are at all familiar with the book.

__________________
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser