Ordinary Day - Recent Entries

As promised, this is the first of the writeups of our Disneyland trip, giving a bit more detail than what y’all got off my Tweets from the park. This will I fear be a purely textual writeup, since I didn’t yet have the still-to-be-named iPhone on this jaunt; solarbird, however, got a boatload of pictures. Those of you who are on Facebook have probably seen her post them already; those of you who aren’t, keep an eye on her LJ and she’ll probably be posting pics there too.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

It is perhaps indicative of how little impact The Ionian Mission had on me that, writing this review several weeks after I actually read the novel, I can barely remember what happened in it. Which isn’t really fair to the novel or Mr. O’Brian’s writing, to be sure, since this is after all an Aubrey-Maturin novel and by definition comes with a certain default level of Awesome. Also, a lot of the events in this book naturally inform what comes next in Treason’s Harbour.

Unfortunately, the book did indeed make little impact on me. I do recall Jack’s encounter with his old flame Mercedes (who goes clear back to Master and Commander), and his later being called on the carpet by Admiral Harte, and the general sucktitude of the Worcester as a ship when compared with Surprise. Other than that, though, the book’s primary virtue for me is serving as a lead-in to the superior Treason’s Harbour. Three stars.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

And now that I’ve blown an entire evening, some initial thoughts on the shiny, shiny iPhone goodness!

The interface is a win although I will need to take a bit to get used to typing on the virtual keyboard. I’m still kind of slow and pokey at it. I don’t think this’ll be a problem even if I remain slow and pokey at it, just because when I write, I oftentimes get ahead of my fingers when trying to compose the prose. Being forced to type slowly may well help me think things through better.

Definitely grooving on the variety of apps available. I installed a lot of them tonight and very much like QuickOffice’s ability to let me mount the device as a drive over Wi-Fi and drag and drop files across. Not as elegant as an actual file sync, but the various options I’m aware of for that don’t appeal to me right now. So I’m pondering if I can do something clever with rsync whenever I have the device connected. The one minus to this app is that I discovered it doesn’t actually do RTF format, just DOC, so I’ll have to jump back to writing in DOC format. But that’s okay.

Meanwhile, I also installed Amazon’s mobile app as well as the Kindle one (and tested the latter by buying an actual Kindle book I was thinking of getting just because the new style of cover on the series annoyed me and I didn’t want to look at a physical copy of it), the Facebook app, the Touchterm SSH app, the Wordpress app, and Stanza.

Stanza turns out to be a bit of a problem, I fear. Most of the ebooks I currently own are in PDF format, and Stanza is not terribly clever about rendering PDF files. Fortunately, however, QuickOffice turns out to solve this problem for me quite nicely because it can read PDF files. Which means I can finally read all the Drollerie Press ebooks I’ve bought. Yay!

I got all my music and podcasts and audiobooks and videos and such synced onto the thing, and broke it in as is right and proper by playing “Ordinary Day” as well as my video of Russell Crowe’s surprise GBS show encore of “Folsom Prison Blues”. <3

All in all I do believe this device and I are going to get along nicely. Now I just need an appropriate icon to convey my feelings of “oooo shiny”.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Ladies and gentlemen, with the acquisition of my iPhone as of today, I hereby declare the poll for what to name it OPEN. I am posting it here on angelakorrati.com so as to be friendly to non-LJ users as well as LJ users.

You may still comment on any of the LJ-mirrored versions of this post, but I will be counting votes only on the main poll, so do please follow the cut over and vote there!

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

Shiny new iPhone goodness is mine! I picked up the lovely thing this morning and am endeavoring to keep from playing with its shiny, shiny, candylike buttons while I’m at work. This is not, however, keeping me from pondering what apps I want to slap onto it the moment I get home.

I know I’ll need QuickOffice, for compatibility with Office files and ability to write on the device. The ability to mount the device as a drive over Wi-Fi and then to drag and drop files back and forth will be very helpful.

I will also need an ebook reader of some sort. Stanza seems highest priority on this, as that’s the one I keep hearing about, but I’m willing to be swayed to other suggestions if folks want to chime in? Note that almost all of the ebooks I have right now (free ones yoinked from various places) are in PDF format, but I have a couple of Microsoft Reader ones as well. Chances are high that I’ll probably buy further books either from Fictionwise or from Amazon’s Kindle store, and I know Stanza in theory talks both of those formats. Anybody got any counterarguments on appropriate apps?

And I’ll need a Sudoku app. Just because I use the old iPaq pretty much only for playing Sudoku these days and I will clearly need to be able to do that on the iPhone. Although I am wondering how you’ll do a proper Sudoku game with the iPhone’s touchscreen.

Just about everything else I’ll be doing on the iPhone will be functionality that comes with it. But talk to me, people; are there other cool apps out there that you cannot live without? If so, tell me about them!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

The second Sebastian St. Cyr mystery is a decent episode in the series, following up on Book 1 by giving us a nice juicy politically motivated murder–and a side helping of expounding upon the background of Sebastian, revealing all sorts of intriguing secrets about his mother. It seems that the lady did not in fact die when Sebastian was eleven, as he’d been told, and that furthermore, a certain necklace that’s cropped up in the case he’s trying to solve ties back to her. Meanwhile, we learn more of why Kat, the actress Sebastian loves, steadfastly refuses to marry him: she has political intrigue in her own background, a life she’s desperately trying to abandon.

All in all the murder’s fun enough, set up intriguingly and giving an interesting portrait of Englad at the time, and in particular the popular opinion of the Prince Regent. But what really drove the plot for me here more is the background on Sebastian’s mother as well as the background with Kat. I’ll be very interested to see how this progresses with Book 3. Four stars.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Steve Alten’s The Loch was a grocery store impulse buy for me, and I have to admit I was drawn in by the promise in the blurb of a scientist guy haunted by a drowning experience in his childhood and being driven back to Loch Ness in Scotland to investigate whether the monster is really real. Sounds like fun, I said to myself.

Problem is, as grocery store impulse buys often do, the book just didn’t work for me over all. Our hero’s father is one big reason; the man’s an abusive prat, and constantly maligns his son’s manhood, calling him “lass” and randomly chosen feminine names practically every time he addresses him. And yet this is apparently all for the altruistic purpose of making Zach face his childhood fears. Um, what? Really? I gritted my teeth practically every time the character opened his mouth, and when Zach actually finally called his dad on his abusive asshattery, it really was too little too late for proper emotional satisfaction, even if it does shut dear old Daddy up.

Also, although this is less the fault of this book in particular and more the fault of being a general trope: I am generally crankier these days about romance plots that equate strong lust with actual love at first sight. I did sympathize with our hero getting dumped by his annoying fiancee after his initial accident, but wound up losing a good bit of that sympathy as his romance with his Actual Love Interest played out. Too many overused romance cliches, there.

Now, all this said, I did at least like the book well enough that I kept reading to the end, and it was doing interesting things with tying in the history of the Loch Ness monster to a centuries-old Jesuit conspiracy and a secret order. And it did have at least a bit of decent suspense. So overall, I’ll give it two stars.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

I haven’t heard anything out of anyone besides eveshka, so if any of you all have anything to say to me about the novel, do please let me know tonight if possible. If you don’t have anything you think is a shipstopper, I want to get the thing sent off to Ms. Fox tomorrow!

Thanks again for all your help, folks. It is very, very much appreciated!

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

Folks, I am off to Disneyland in the morning! Don’t nobody burn down the Internet while I’m gone. Talk amongst yourselves–and be thinking of what I ought to name the iPhone I will be acquiring most likely on Monday! And when you’re done thinking, drop a comment over here or here!

I may or may not Tweet from the park, but either way, rest assured there will be tales of Mousey goodness upon my return.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

seattlesparks pointed out to me that y’all may find it useful to know my history of naming electronics I’ve owned if that’ll help you decide what to nominate for a naming choice.

I’ve had no formal naming scheme for my personal electronics, across the history of my buying stuff, aside from loose association with one of my fandoms. In my time I’ve owned:

Amiga 500: Elvis
NEC laptop: Aron
Sharp laptop: Garon
Compaq Presario #1: Garon
Compaq Presario #2: Garon
Fujitsu Lifebook: Newstar
MacBook: Winnowill
iPod #1: Allegro
iPod #2: Allegretto
HP iPaq: GIR

Overall themes here: musical fandom (i.e., Elvis, Elvis’ middle name, middle name of Elvis’ stillborn twin brother); Elfquest (Newstar and Winnowill), music (musical terms). Our servers here at the Murkworks are all named after objects in Elfquest (Newmoon, Lodestone, Door), and our media server is also named after an Elfquest character (Kimo). I have a thumb drive named after Fallberry, one of the Preservers I used to play on Two Moons MUSH.

So anything that invokes any of my fandoms is certainly fair game, and Elfquest is certainly one of my longest-running fandoms. Anything invoking MUSH alts I used to play or characters I’m writing now, also fair game, as are appropriate musical terms. I will further add that anything that refers to an assistant-type character, computer, or AI, especially if it’s connected to any of my fandoms, is a Good Idea.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

So spazzkat has himself a shiny new iPhone 3GS, and has gone and given his old first-gen iPhone to solarbird. Dara futzed around with the device some last night to get it all set up and activated and stuff, and then let me play with it some to get the final bit of critical information I needed: i.e., could I use the virtual keyboard on the thing well enough to write on?

Survey says, YES. I quite liked the virtual keyboard that came in with the 3.0 version of the iPhone software, especially in landscape mode. This doesn’t leave much screen room, but that’s okay; for my purposes, all I really need is to be able to whip out a few paragraphs here and there (such as when I’m at a con or something), which I can then sync up onto my laptop later.

Knowing this, I stopped in the AT&T store this morning and ordered me a shiny new iPhone of my own. I asked for one of the 32G white ones, and the girl who rang me up said those are coming in pretty fast. So I should get the device sometime in the next few days–it may even come in before I get back from Disneyland!

And, folks, this is where you come in, because I also need to settle the vital question of what to name this incoming iPhone. Drop your suggestions in the comments! The strongest contenders will then go head to head in a poll.

To sweeten the deal, I will heretofore announce my very first author contest. The winner of the poll will get one free e-copy of Faerie Blood in the format of their choice (options: PDF, Mobi, or Microsoft Reader). Or, if you already own a copy of Faerie Blood, I’ll give you a copy of any Drollerie Press book of your choice from the Drollerie bookstore!

So spread the word far and wide, people, and start winging those suggestions at me! You have until Monday, when I get back from Disneyland, to submit your nominations for the poll!

ETA 4:47pm: A couple of quick addenda to stick in a couple of rules!

1. Multiple nominations will be allowed but I reserve the authorial right to allow only one nomination per person to get into the final actual poll.

2. If you’d like to endorse someone’s nomination, you may do so by dropping a comment in support of it wherever the nomination originally showed up (which is to say, angelakorrati.com, LJ, Dreamwidth, Facebook, or Twitter, since I doubt anybody’s actually reading this post from InsaneJournal or JournalFen). If a nomination receives at least two comments in support, it’ll go into the poll!

And again–y’all have until Monday the 13th to either get in your nominations or support somebody else’s! So let me hear from you, folks!

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

So if you happened to be thinking, “Hey Anna, I’d love to beta read Lament of the Dove for you, only I don’t have it on my Kindle/Sony Reader/iPhone running Stanza or some other appropriate Mobi-friendly reader app”, worry no more. seattlesparks has your back!

She’s kindly converted my RTF file for Lament into Mobi format and informs me that it can be “just drag-and-dropped into a Kindle’s ‘documents’ directory, or sync’d onto a Sony Reader, or used with Stanza on the Mac or on an iPhone, etc.”

All props to seattlesparks! And if anybody wants this version of the file, sing out and I’ll fire it your way. Formatting may not be perfect but it should be readable!

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

Chocolate. It’s a good thing. So are contests!

Drollerie Press is having a contest in honor of Celebrating Chocolate Day! Cindy Lynn Speer’s The Chocolatier’s Wife is on sale for 20% off, and if y’all go drop a comment saying where you’ve linked to the post about the sale and contest, you’ll be put into a drawing for a $25 gift certificate for tasty, tasty chocolate.

Go for it. Buy the book! Enter the contest. Because, dude, CHOCOLATE.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

All in all, not quite to the full 20K edited out, but I did make it down to 118K or so. So I’ll take this and run with it!

This means, folks, that Lament of the Dove’s fourth draft is now open for beta reading. As I’ve mentioned, I only need people to read through it and make sure that it holds together. In-depth proofreading is not required (although sure, if you see any typos or anything, call them out).

If at all possible I’d like to send the manuscript off to Ms. Fox by Monday of next week, so if you can read over the story this week, sing out. Throw me an email at my annathepiper gmail address, and let me know where I can send you the RTF to read. Thanks in advance, all!

Edited today: -467
Chapter 24 revised total: 5,925
Postlude revised total: 1,185
Lament of the Dove revised and final total (fourth draft): 118,358

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

I know I’ve been neglecting personal posts as of late, but in the interests of literary thoroughness, here’s the roundup of books I’ve picked up as of late:

A Kiss Before the Apocalypse, by Thomas Sniegoski; this is the first book of the series touched on in the Mean Streets anthology, about the angel who’s trying to pass as a human PI

A Red Heart of Memories, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman; I’ve been looking for this for ages and managed to find a used copy at Third Place

Smoke and Ashes, by Tanya Huff; third of the Smoke trilogy featuring Tony Foster

Why Mermaids Sing, by C.S. Harris; this is the third of the Sebastian St. Cyr mystery series

A Spell for the Revolution, by ccfinlay; second of the Traitor to the Crown series

And, mentioned already in my post about Vancouver, but noting for the count: Salt Fish Girl, by Larissa Lai

This brings the grand total of books purchased in 2009 up to 41. I’m still ahead on books read, but only just; I need to get caught up on my book review posts, too!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

The Patriot Witch, first installment of ccfinlay’s Traitor to the Crown series, sets up the story of young Proctor Brown, who’s inherited the ability to scry from his mother. His only wish is to marry his sweetheart and prove himself to her father by making a fortune on his farm… except that the stirrings of rebellion are beginning in the countryside, and Proctor’s sympathies are with the local militia with whom he’s enlisted. When he encounters a British officer carrying a powerful protection charm, he’s set onto a path that leads him deeper not only into the brewing revolution, but also into understanding his own power.

All in all this was a fine little tale. Proctor’s an engaging young hero, and Deborah, the girl he eventually meets after his initial sweetheart abandons him, is his equal in spirit and his superior in magic. Some interesting threads are laid down about the greater role that magic plays in this version of the history of the American colonies; I’m quite intrigued to see where this will be going.

If anything my only beef at all with the book was that it felt a little too light. But that’s okay for the first book of a series, with Proctor as young as he is. It’ll be fun to see how Books 2 and 3 progress. Four stars.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

As y’all know, I am a longstanding fan of the fine ladies at Smart Bitches, and thus, I was delighted to finally finish reading their shiny new book Beyond Heaving Bosoms. Which is by the way totally worth reading, not only for their very own brand of Smart Bitch humor, but also for the intelligent things they have to say it in about the development of the modern romance genre. I will of course have a more formal review post coming.

But this post is more about the fact that Smart Bitch Candy Tan is going to be at Third Place Books tomorrow night! I will be popping down there to hopefully get my copy of the book signed. So if any of you local folks might also be there, keep an eye out for me!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

My editor serasempre has asked me if I would be interested in submitting a piece for a new Drollerie Press anthology set during the years of the Civil War. I’ve told her yes, and am playing with an idea set in the same universe as Faerie Blood, with a working summary that goes something like this:

A young slave woman who’s gifted with healing magic and who’s on the run on the Underground Railroad comes across a Warder who’s been driven off his territory by the war (possibly due to being forcibly conscripted into either army, but more due to battle on his Warded ground tainting his connection to the land and driving him around the bend); she’s trying to escape slavery, he’s fleeing from the army as well as his own madness. They are driven out onto Roanoke Island, which has been haunted ever since the disappearance of the colony there nearly three hundred years ago–by the ghost of its last Warder, who has been lingering there ever since the colony was wiped out. My hero and heroine have to join forces to not only cleanse the island, but also to defend it against a resurgence of whatever nasty supernatural thing wiped out the colony–and my heroine has to choose between continuing her flight north, and accepting her own magic and helping the Warder soldier establish a new bond to the island so that both he and the ghost can find some peace.

I’m going to look forward to writing this out.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

… I emailed agent Diana Fox, who y’all may remember I last approached this past fall regarding Lament, to ask her whether it’s still okay for me to submit the revised version of the manuscript to her for consideration. She says yes.

This means I am now setting myself the goal to not only finish the edit pass on the fourth draft but also get it beta-read before solarbird, spazzkat, and I head to Disneyland on the 9th. I have four more chapters and an epilogue to finish editing, and thankfully at this point, I think I’ve passed all the bits that need major surgery. So it should be down to a question of word count reduction.

Y’all consider this an early warning then that I’m going to need a beta reader or three to sanity-check this thing for me before I fire it off at Ms. Fox. The level of effort required here would simply be to read over the manuscript and make sure it hangs together coherently–since I’ll have killed 20,000 words out of it, and in some places significantly tweaked events, I’ll need to make sure all of these changes have made it an overall leaner and meaner story. Significant tweaking in particular has been done with Faanshi’s portrayal, trying to strengthen her as a character, and I need to make sure that works too.

General proofreading will also be welcome but not required.

So if anybody thinks they may have free cycles in the week or so before July 9th and will have time to chug through about 117K worth of novel, let me know!

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

The second Sirantha Jax book by Ann Aguirre didn’t strike me with quite as much awesome as the first one–but that’s not to say that I didn’t like the book, because I did. Wanderlust picks up in the aftermath of Grimspace, with Jax and her beloved March being interrogated while the Confederacy scrambles to reorient after the shock wave of what happened in the first book. Now out of a formal job, Jax is offered the highly unlikely position of Ambassador to Ithiss-Tor, only to discover that there are powerful parties who will stop at nothing to keep her from pulling it off.

Here’s the thing though: once Jax actually accepts this job, much of the rest of the book isn’t about it at all. Rather, it’s about getting her to it, and revisiting the world that much of Book 1’s events took place on so that March a plot-relevant excuse to actually bail on Jax for a while. Which is all very action-packed and exciting to be sure, but that whole part of the plot worked a little too hard to convince me that March had torn apart his own soul because of the Horrors of War and Oh Noez! He’s Going to Have to Do It Again! Also, Oh Noez! There’s a new gorgeous guy who has Romantic Rival for March Written All Over Him! And, Oh Noez! March is going off to war because he thinks Jax doesn’t actually need him!

So all in all there was a little bit too much Oh Noez! for me, this time around. But it wasn’t badly written and I’m still absolutely interested in seeing how Jax manages to pull off working her way into actually knowing what she’s doing with this ambassador gig, which one presumes will start happening in earnest in Book 3. For this one, three stars.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.