Ordinary Day - Recent Entries

So we’re having us a lovely Turkey Day at the Murkworks tonight, and among other folks, we’ve got ypawtows, dpawtows, and epawtows as guests. They brought an extra friend this year, though. And Fred is NOT AMUSED!

Fred Vs. Robot

There’ll also be video of both cats reacting to the robot as soon as I can figure out how to post it!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

For the record: it’s pretty clear to me at this point that I’m not hitting that 50K, especially after not having written a word since this past Friday! A good chunk of the cause for this is of course because I scampered off to see my favorite band perform this past Saturday, and that blew any chance of getting any work done right out of my head! And for various reasons, I haven’t written anything since, either.

Tomorrow is of course American Thanksgiving, so it’s highly doubtful I’ll get anything done tomorrow, either. I shall see about resuming work on Bone Walker over the weekend, though, once we get past Turkey Day. I’m about to the point anyway where I need to take a step back and update the outline, and figure out how what I’ve written so far will affect the next several chapters.

Those of you still plugging away at Nanowrimo, good luck to you! Those of you who’ve crossed the finish line, congrats! And to all of you celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, may your companionship be fine and your dinner tasty, whatever that dinner may be!

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t invite you folks to pop over to Fictionwise and partake of their shiny Black Friday sale, going on all week, in which all MultiFormat books are 45% off and all Secure format books get you a 45% Micropay rebate. This means, ladies and gentlemen, that until Friday you can score a copy of Faerie Blood for $3.82 if you’re not a member of the BuyWise club, and $3.25 if you are!

And of course all other Drollerie works in the Fictionwise database are included in this same sale, so this would be a lovely time to get not only my book but choice selections by my fellow Drollerie authors as well. Our latest releases, including the Defiance anthology, aren’t up there yet–but you can score a bunch of our earlier stuff. Go check it out, folks!

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

This past Saturday was my second Great Big Sea show of the year, and stands out for being the first time I’ve ever seen them in the Admiral Theater in Bremerton–which is very possibly the most aptly decorated theater for a GBS show it’s ever been my pleasure to visit. And since this was in Bremerton, mamishka, technoshaman, jennygriffee and I actually went over and back on the ferry, which was kind of fun!

Picoreview of the show itself: the crowd was fairly heavily laced with GBS regulars, but there was also a big presence of older folks who were clearly not part of the fanbase. The B’ys were in high spirits, though, and highlights of the show include Séan discovering Cosmos, two brand new songs, a rendition of “Gallows Pole” that knocked me nearly dead, and “Old Brown’s Daughter” coming back to finish me off.

Let’s do this thing then!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Yes, folks, it’s time for another book roundup! Titles recently purchased by me include:

Print books: Lilith’s Brood, by Octavia Butler. SF. Because I had me a 20 percent off coupon from B&N, and I have a sad relative lack of Butler in my library, and this is a nice big volume of three of her novels.

E-books (a whole mess of ‘em, a good number of which were because Fictionwise did an indie publisher sale and I wanted a bunch of Juno’s harder to find books):

• Written on Your Skin, by Meredith Duran. Romance. Because of a post by sarahtales over here that referenced this book, and which made me LOL.
• Black Hills, by Nora Roberts. Romance. Because apparently I just don’t own enough of this woman’s books yet.
• Soulless, by Gail Carriger. Fantasy. Because I’ve heard all sorts of good things about this one.
• Nights of Sin and Blood Magic by Matthew Cook. Fantasy.
• A Mortal Glamour, by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. Fantasy/Horror.
• Beyond the Hedge, by Roby James. Fantasy.
• Wind Follower, by Carole McDonnell. Fantasy.
• Riversend, by Sylvia Kelso. Fantasy.
• Jade Tiger, by Jenn Reese. Fantasy. (This one’s actually a re-buy of a print book copy I sold to Third Place. Liked it well enough that I wanted to keep an e-copy around.)
• New Tricks, by John Levitt. Urban fantasy. (Another re-buy of a print book in e-form.)
• Gordath Wood, by Patrice Sarath. Fantasy. (Another re-buy in e-form.)
• The Drowning City, by Amanda Downum. Fantasy. Because I’ve heard good things about this one too.
• Apricot Brandy, by Lynn Cesar. Fantasy.
• House of Whispers, by Margaret Lucke. Fantasy.
• Wraith, by Phaedra Weldon. Urban fantasy. Re-buy in e-form.
• Spectre, by Phaedra Weldon. Urban fantasy. Re-buy, not read yet, trading off for e-copy.
• Once a Wolf, by Susan Krinard. Romance, but a historical paranormal involving werewolves. Saw it linked in off the Fictionwise homepage and thought it sounded fun. ;)
• Shadow’s End and Grass by Sheri S. Tepper. SF. Mostly because I wanted to check her out, and Grass got recommended to me ages ago.

This brings me up to a grand total of 159 books purchased this year. I hope I just paid a few more publishing industry employees’ salaries!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

In much, much faster turnaround time, Amazon now has Defiance available for purchase!

So if you’d like to score yourself some period goodness from suricattus, joelysue, and myself, and you’re a Kindle owner or a user of the Kindle app on the iPhone, I invite you to go and make with the clicky! Thanks in advance for your support.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

Now I know several of you likely to be reading this are writers, either already published or aspiring to get that way. Among you, I know that several are specifically involved with the romance genre or the urban fantasy/paranormal romance genre. So you’re probably already aware of the huge debacle that’s exploded across the publishing blogs the last couple of days about Harlequin opening up a shiny new vanity publishing imprint.

I posted earlier this week about another new Harlequin venture, Carina Press. Which I thought was pretty awesome. Harlequin’s new vanity imprint? Not so much.

Here are a whole bunch of links expounding on the brouhaha:

• Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware (which you should be reading if you’re not already) gives an overview of the situation and why it’s of deep concern
• Pub Rants, the blog of agent Kristin Nelson, brings the news of the Romance Writers of America issuing a very strong statement against this, and what they’re going to do about it
• Making Light chimes in with news of the RWA statement and much discussion in the comments
• Smart Bitches Trashy Books addresses the issue, and a whole heckuva lot of heat about self-publishing vs. vanity publishing can be found in the comments
• Author Jackie Kessler does a breakdown of the concept of Harlequin Horizons and explains exactly why the various stunts they’re trying to pull are bad
• Writer Beware posts a statement in from the Mystery Writers of America, also strongly against this development
• Kristin Nelson breaks the news that Harlequin is now backpedaling on the “Harlequin Horizons” brand name on the imprint but no word yet about whether further retractions will occur
• Most relevant to my interests as an SF/F author, SFWA weighs in with a very, very strong statement of their own
• Inevitably, Fandom Wank has put up a post since there’s some sideshow wankery involved, featuring a flamewar in the abovementioned SB thread, and a very snarky article from the New Yorker

My take on the matter? Well, initially I was going to say that I didn’t really have a horse in this race, since I’m an SF/F author, not a romance author–but solarbird pointed out and quite correctly that actually, any writer of fiction has a horse in this race. The reason for this is that if Harlequin actually pulls off doing this imprint of theirs, it’s highly likely that other big NY-based publishers will follow suit. As Writer Beware calls out, a couple already have, although they’ve apparently taken pains to be less obvious about it in their branding.

And, the big sticking point for me is that according to the spin that was going around the Smart Bitches thread from a Harlequin rep, they will be including in standard rejection letters an upsell to the vanity imprint. Which essentially means that an author who comes to Harlequin via traditional publishing routes and who gets rejected would be getting told “we don’t think your book is good enough to be a Real Book, but if you pay us enough money, we’ll humor you and print it anyway!”

This goes against the unshakeable law of writing: money flows to the author. Always.

So yeah, this is huge and the furor is still ongoing. I’ll be very, very interested to see what Harlequin does now that they have not one, not two, but three professional writers’ organizations angry with them.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

Check it out you guys, Soleil Noir has some lovely things to say about Defiance over here.

About my story “The Blood of the Land” in particular, she says:

This is set in the world of Angela’s previous book “Faerie Blood”. A book I read and enjoyed. I have to say though, I actually liked this story more.

Go check out the review for the full text, and also what she has to say about suricattus and joelysue’s pieces as well!

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

I am now going to take time out of my wibblings over Nanowrimo to wibble over “Waters of Mars” instead!

Picoreview: Ye gods that was grim. Spoilers locked up in the dome beyond the cut!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

It seems that Fictionwise is having themselves an Indie publisher sale this week. All MultiFormat (read: DRM-free and downloadable in any format you want) books are 30 percent off!

And since Drollerie is a MultiFormat publisher on Fictionwise, that means, ladies and gents, that you could pick up Faerie Blood from that site for a cool $4.14.

If you pick it up TODAY, there’s even a coupon that runs until tomorrow, FANTASYNOW, which will knock 25 percent off any Fantasy novels! So you could get a total of 55 percent off of Faerie Blood that way!

Sharing this because, y’know, I care.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

Well, I’m at the halfway mark, and it seems apparent to me at this point that 50K by the end of the month isn’t too likely given how my daily rate has gone so far this month. But on the other hand, I’ve continued to write every day so far this month–and this weekend in particular, I’ve had a particularly good run with nearly 2,500 words yesterday and a K today.

This puts me at 13K and change. At minimum, if I make 500 words a day every day for the rest of the month, I should make about 22K–but I’m thinking 26K is not out of the question. I’m going to keep going, regardless. The Nano cred would be shiny, but finishing Faerie Blood’s first sequel? Shinier.

I’m about to finish up Chapter 5 as of tonight. Jude’s life has just gotten quite a bit more difficult, though she doesn’t realize it yet. And I’ve enjoyed writing a tender moment between Christopher and a very worried Kendis. More updates as they happen!

Written on the 10th: 584
Written on the 11th: 515
Written on the 12th: 537
Written on the 13th: 215
Written yesterday: 2,454
Written today and tonight: 1,019
Chapter 4 total: 2,882
Chapter 5 total: 2,442
Bone Walker total (first draft): 13,751

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

For those of you who aren’t following me on Twitter or Facebook, y’all be advised that we have a Wind Advisory up for today and tomorrow and a High Wind Watch for Monday evening and Tuesday. Looks like we have the potential for some nasty gusts. Cross your fingers that this blows over (aheh) without coming to fruition, hey? Not only would a decent windstorm be guaranteed to knock out power at the Murk, it’d probably put a nasty crimp in our ability to get a very important project done at work!

You can read both the Advisory and Watch data over here.

ETA 6:25pm: And oh hey, the Seattle Times has an article up now. The money quote here being “If projections play out, it will be the strongest windstorm of the season”.

So keep a sharp eye on the weather forecasts, people. This could get crunchy.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Finished up Chapter 3 tonight, and am closing in on the 8,500 mark. I should have written more–but hey, new release and site updates distracting me and all! So I think I can forgive myself.

I am amused to observe that despite the fact that I wrote out six chapters’ worth of outline for this thing, I’ve already gone off script. Carson and Jake muscled their way into the scene in Chapter 3, which is probably a damn good thing for Elessir, since that boy’s in sorry condition right out of the gate, and Jake is a retired EMT! That’s my characters for you, always willing to screw up plot plans for the greater good.

On a bigger picture level, one of the early plot points in my head appears to have shifted around on me as well, in terms of how I’m going to introduce it. I think it’ll still be in the next chapter, but there will be no buildup for it yet because everybody’s already being distracted by Elessir and Melisanda coming on camera. But once I have the next big plot ball in the air, that’ll be the last of the initial plot points, and then I can start working on complications on those.

And Elessir hitting on Kendis. Wait, did I say that out loud?

Written tonight: 524
Chapter 3 total: 2,963
Bone Walker total (first draft): 8,427

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

In honor of the shiny new anthology Defiance being released, I’ve updated the site to celebrate the new cover. Y’all should see both of my works listed on the sidebar of my site now, and the color scheme’s been flipped back to blue to go with the new banner.

Also, I’ve shifted all my works in progress off to a new In Progress subpage of Books, because I wanted to spruce up the Books page a bit now that there are two things on it!

Please to note that so far Defiance is only available via the Drollerie bookshop, but we have it in all our usual formats: PDF, ePub, Microsoft Reader, Sony, and Mobipocket, so any of these should hopefully suit your ebook-reading needs! I will of course post further link updates as the book makes its way out into the wild. I have added the book to Goodreads, but if any of you out there who are LibraryThing users want to add it on that site, please feel free!

And oh yeah–I’ve been sent my personal copy and have gotten my editor’s leave to do a promo or two. So y’all be out on the lookout for another drawing forthcoming!

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

My fellow Drollerie author thunderpigeon has cordially invited me to submit something for the pair of anthologies he is editing along with dr_pretentious, Trafficking in Magic and Magic in Trafficking. I will not be able to tackle writing something for them until after Nanowrimo is over, but December is looking potentially interesting! So all I need to do is figure out what exactly I’d like to write for them.

This is where you folks come in! I’m really rather liking the idea of using short stories to explore other glimpses of the Faerie Blood universe as I’ve already done with “The Blood of the Land”, but I’m not sure yet what sort of story might fit into the requirements for this pair of anthos. Want to help me decide? Then answer the following poll! (Readers on LJ or LJ-clones, please come on over to my Wordpress site to vote!)

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

Ooh ooh ooh, the anthology I’m in with suricattus and joelysue has just come out, people! Now available for sale on Drollerie Press’s store is the Civil War anthology Defiance, featuring our three pieces set during that time frame, each with supernatural elements in it.

My story’s “The Blood of the Land”, in the same universe as Faerie Blood. The slave woman Dorcas, who is gifted with healing powers, is escaping along with her beloved Caleb and fleeing north to Canada. But when they reach their first stop on the Underground Railroad, a farm owned by the Warder Elias Sutherland, they find Elias’ wife has been murdered by the men hunting them–and Elias’ Warder wife Jenny is not taking her slaying kindly.

Laura Anne Gilman and Joely Sue Burkhart also have excellent stories in this release, y’all, so I highly encourage you to check it out!

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

Word is going around the Net this morning that Harlequin, the grande dame of romance, is opening up a brand-new, electronic-only imprint that’s taking all genres. Points of interest about this:

• They are specifically DRM-free.
• If you write romance, they’re taking not only same-sex pairings, but also romances involving more than two people. All levels of sensuality are under consideration.
• They’re taking all genres, not just romance. More interesting to me in particular, they’re accepting SF/F submissions of several varieties. SF/F with or without romantic elements to the plot is mentioned in their guidelines.

So if you have any interest in being electronically published and if in particular you’re anti-DRM, you may consider checking Carina Press out. Props to the fine ladies of Smart Bitches Trashy Books for spreading the word!

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

So yeah… running short several days, but I’m still making a big point of trying to write at least a little something every night. A couple hundred words is the absolute bare minimum. Next level I’m okay with is my traditional non-Nano quota of 500 words. And, of course, there’s the actual Nano quota. Over the last three days, I’ve hit one of each of these. Which means I’m still dreadfully behind by the Nano count, but it also means I’ve written new words for each of the last eight days running. That’s a big improvement over most of the year.

Chapter 3 is a good way towards done at this point. Melisanda has dropped a little bomb on Kendis, who really does not care for her arrival in the slightest. Team Kendis is about to figure out in the meantime exactly what to do with the Unseelie bard who’s pretty much fallen back into their laps.

And speaking of whom, for giggles and grins and in particular for janne, I’m going to give y’all another snippet. But this one’s bigger and spoilery if you haven’t read Faerie Blood yet, so I’ll stick it behind the fold!

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

The last three days I’ve been running short on the word count–mostly because of the huge overnight release we had to run for work, which meant staying up until two last night. Tonight, I’m just running so short on brain that I’m lucky to get any words out at all, but I’m making a point of writing at least a couple hundred just to keep some momentum going. We’ll see how much I can make up over the weekend.

Good news is, though, Chapter 2 is done and I’ve brought another couple characters on camera. Millicent gets to make her first appearance, as well as another character who showed up in Book 1 and who will be back for more this time around.

Written on Tuesday: 777
Written yesterday: 901
Written tonight: 235
Chapter 2 total: 2,906
Bone Walker total (first draft): 5,464

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

As predicted, Chapter 1 turned out to be a bit short as my chapters tend to go. But that’s all good, because it also meant I was able to put a serious dent in Chapter 2 tonight as well. Elessir is now on camera, much to the consternation of Christopher and Kendis.

For amusement value, here’s a bit of a snippet from yesterday!

Christopher’s favorite band had come to town, and the audience was having the time of its life.

And I had to admit, so was I. The good humor and boisterous energy of the performers were infectious, and the music, irrepressible. I didn’t know the words to most of the songs, but on the strength of rhythm and melody alone, I was thrilled to clap and bounce along with everyone else. I didn’t mind that mine was the only brown face in sight, or even that half of the white girls in range were paying more attention to the man at my side than they were to the stage. Not that I could blame them. At six-two, clad in a black T-shirt emblazoned with the blue, red, yellow, and white of the Newfoundland flag and cheerfully bellowing lyrics he knew far better than I did, Christopher MacSimidh was difficult to miss. He’d spruced up for the concert, with a new shorter haircut that’d traded off his ponytail for front locks that dangled along his brow. For once he’d even shaved properly, baring an intriguing little dent in the line of his chin that I was certain was drawing the gaze of every straight woman and gay man at the show. It certainly kept drawing mine.

I am up a bit later than I like, but I did manage to meet tonight’s word quota and therefore preserve the small padding that I’d built yesterday. We’ll see if I can do this again tomorrow. And tomorrow’s plan? Finish Chapter 2!

Written tonight: 1,675
Chapter 1 total: 2,558
Chapter 2 total: 993
Bone Walker total (first draft): 3,551

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.