For several days now, LJ’s feed of custom styles has been broken–which has meant that the custom style I set up to let it download a feed of my Friends list into my mail client hasn’t worked, so I’m totally behind on keeping up with all of you!

If anybody posted anything addressed specifically at me, can you link me up in a comment? Thanks! *^_^*;;

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Nookish goodness arrived at my house today! Therefore, as promised, here’s my overall initial review post.

First and foremost, y’all may have heard that the Nook comes with insanely complicated packaging. This is absolutely true. When you first get into it, there’s a little slip of paper that has–I kid you not–a seven-step procedure for freeing it from the various layers of packaging around it. This all had the advantage, I suppose, of making damn sure that it got to me intact. But when you have to have special instructions for actually unpacking the thing, I think they might have gone just a touch overboard, y’know?

My reaction on getting it out of the first layer or so though was “It’s a Microsoft Ship-It award!” Because it looked like this, you see:

I had to get spazzkat’s help to actually liberate the thing; he’d already done the same with his own nook, and his hands are stronger than mine, so he was able to do the last couple of steps to pry the thing out of its plastic support tray. Once that was done, I was able to do the fun part: powering it up, getting its updates on it, and most importantly, firing up the books.

Overall I like the design and look of it. Once I put it in its cover, it’ll be about the size of a small hardback book, and not so heavy that it’ll be onerous to carry in my backpack. I’m not much of a fan of the way the screen flashes when you turn a page, but other than that, I find the e-ink very readable, at least in direct light. It’s not as useful in low-light conditions, so this may be an issue when reading on the bus after dark. I may have to resort to the iPhone as backup reading device then. I am also amused that its default screensaver is the various pictures of authors that anybody who’s ever been in a B&N store will remember as being the artwork on the walls. I like that enough that I’ll probably keep it, for now.

It downloaded updates on its own, which was nice, and it cheerfully went and got all of the ebooks I’ve already purchased from the Barnes and Noble ebook store. This was I admit a trifle confusing UI-wise, since I’d set some of my books as “archived” because I’d already read them, and got confused because I had to tell the thing to go ahead and download those–but I didn’t have to do that with the rest of them. But it was all good in the end.

Getting all my non-B&N content onto it was super easy. You can plug it into a USB port and have it mount as a drive, which is lovely. You can then dump as many files as you like in whatever directory structure you like onto it, which is also lovely. But there are several organizational issues with how the device actually shows you the files, to wit:

1. Whatever directory structure you use is entirely irrelevant, because the actual device will just do a flat display of all the files it finds; it doesn’t care about your folder structure.
2. There is currently no way to organize your titles past “sort by author” or “sort by title”, in the “My Documents” section; in the “My Library” section, where the B&N content resides, it’s a little nicer and you also get “Most Recent” as a sort option. But what I would really want to see here is the ability to mark a book as Read somehow, whether that be by a tag or by moving it into a Read folder or what.
3. After looking at the lovely lists of titles and cover thumbnails in the iPhone’s various reader apps, the black and white file list is really kind of boring to look at. But this is only a mild objection on my part since the tiny cover thumbnails would lose something on this display and not really be worth displaying.
4. A lot of my PDF files are coming through with really weird mangled names. I don’t know why that is, if it’s a metadata problem on them or what. I may have to see if I can fix those in Calibre or something.

Tomorrow I’ll give it a good test run with actual reading, and report back on that. So far at least I’m favorably inclined to it, but man, I hope they improve the organization of files on the device in future firmware releases.

And oh yes, I also had to take a picture of this, because Kendis says hi:

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Did some work this afternoon and evening during the Super Bowl to clean up various bits of annathepiper.org as well as the journals it mirrors out to. This included:

• Deleting my InsaneJournal account; don’t really need it since I’m on both JournalFen and Dreamwidth, and nobody ever answers my posts on IJ
• Un-mirroring a lot of older posts from annathepiper.org off of LJ, DW, and JF
• Changed my theme on LJ just because I was tired of looking at the old one
• Finally bought a paid account on Dreamwidth, just because of their general awesomeness
• Updated my sidebar links a bit on JF just to link off to the other sections of my little web of journals
• And, on annathepiper.org, fixed some broken links by instituting a Wordpress plugin contact form on my re-instated Contact page; also, re-instated my long-missing Nethack page, which is mostly there to commemorate my still one and only Ascension

Slowly re-instating a bunch of old missing content on annathepiper.org as well, just for giggles and because I can. The GBS, TOFOG, Filk, and Sonnets sections are on the way back eventually.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Several of you who read my journal in whatever iteration already know this since you were actually there, but hey, Conflikt! That was fun.

This was the first year that solarbird and I got to attend the whole convention, which was nice. We still pulled a commuter con, which was not quite so ideal; next year, I think we’ll be getting a hotel room, just because driving all the way back to Kenmore at 2am or later is crazytalk. Especially when things like the Jury panels happen around 10:30 in the morning!

Dara did of course do more active music playing than I did since she has a CD in progress; me, I mostly hung out and beat on one of the novels in progress. And a nice lady I hadn’t met before even told me she quite liked Faerie Blood, to which I double-taked hugely, and was all ‘wait, a complete stranger actually read my novel? Whoa!’ (Nice Lady Who Read My Novel, if you’re reading this, I have forgotten your name and LJ, but if you drop a comment I shall make sure to note it again properly for the future!)

I did periodically also whip out Rags and do impromptu jamming near the registration table, which was also good fun. Special shout-outs on that are due to doragoon and Jeri Lynn who was managing the registration table, and whose LJ, if she has one, I do not know! We managed to play a not too bad little pass through “Si Bheag Si Mhor”, a song to which I am partial of course from its connection to Mr. Crowe and the Grunts. (Mmm, “Judas Cart”, I should listen to that again.)

Also participated in the Band Scramble, which let me meet a few nice folks and play music with them; we did “Elf Glade”, which is a standard at the Murkjams, and it was an interesting musical exercise to try to follow somebody else’s version of the guitar line. Also fun to try to invent piccolo twiddles on the fly since I never play flute on this thing at home.

The main attraction of the whole shebang was filkertom, though! Since my original exposure to filk was in the Midwest and my and Dara’s housemate at the time, amethyst_dancer, was an old college buddy of Tom’s, I’m real familiar with Tom and fond of his music quite a bit. He’s a superb musician, and I was very pleased to see that he hasn’t missed a step in live performance since I saw him last. His voice and guitar playing are both very strong, still! It was with great glee that I plunked down money for three, count ‘em, three of his albums at the con–and furthermore picked up two more off of iTunes when I got home. Tom’s just that awesome.

Secondary highlight: seeing Alexander James Adams perform. I really want Alec to start writing more new stuff, just because as a long-standing Heather Alexander fan I have the original versions of a lot of his songs stuck in my brain and they don’t really want to be budged out by newer versions. He’s got a quite nice new vampire song though as well as a new one called “The Dance of Hoof and Horn”, and of course his fiddle playing is still sublime. Extra bonus points for Dara and I getting to sit near him in the big Sunday afternoon Jam, too. And I got to remind him of the incident in 1997 when he looked me in the eye at a room party and said “Play something!” and I squeaked and almost melted into the floor. Now? Now I can actually whip out a guitar and do something with it. He told me he was pleased to have inspired via terror. ;)

(Another shoutout to doragoon as well for whipping out that fiddle of hers and duo’ing with Alec on “Si Bheag Si Mhor”. Lovely and very well done!)

Alec has a work print of his next new album, so although it’s mostly reworked versions of Heather-era songs, I put down for that too since hey, again, awesomeness. And it may amuse damara as well that I bought a Heather Dale album–one of the CD vendors in the tiny dealer’s room had a whole bunch of her albums, so I got The Hidden Path and in fact listened to it tonight on the way home from work.

All in all a pleasant and relaxing way to spend the weekend. I may have been “hanging out on the periphery” girl for the most part, but it was a lovely periphery to be at. And “surrounded by musicians” is strangely conducive to getting actual writing done, not to mention guitar playing. <3 Looking forward to next year!

And maybe next year, I’ll actually have a proper chord line to “How Many Hugos?”, one of the few filk songs I’ve actually written. Not to mention, maybe I’ll finish that Doctor Who filk still haunting my brain, and also have that shiny green guitar!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

I may have shiny nookity goodness on the immediate horizon, but this ain’t stopping me from buying print books when the occasion calls for it. And the new release of Alcestis by Katharine Beutner warranted it.

This is a new retelling of the Greek myth about Alcestis–only in this version, when she winds up in Hades, she falls in love with Persephone. And since I do love me some Persephone, I felt it was vital to check this out. Plus, Ms. Beutner is a fellow Outer Alliance author, so there ya go!

Also picked up recently in print form:

• Unknown, by rachelcaine. Urban fantasy.
• The Reckoners, by Doranna Durgin. Paranormal romance.

Picked up in ebook form:

• Murder on the Cliffs: A Daphne du Maurier Mystery, by Joanna Challis. Mystery.
• Children of Amarid, by David B. Coe. Fantasy.
• Ariadne’s Web, Gods of Fire and Thunder, and Empire of the East, all by Fred Saberhagen. Fantasy.
• The Medusa Project, by Cindy Dees. Romance.
• Star Trek: The Original Series #42: Memory Prime, by Garfield Reese-Stevens and Judith Reese-Stevens. Self-explanatory. ;)
• Benighted, by Kit Whitfield. Urban fantasy.
• Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight, by mizkit. Urban fantasy.

Note please that Murder on the Cliffs, Children of Amarid, the Saberhagens, and the Durgin release are all Macmillan authors. Note also that Children of Amarid is as per earlier recommendation, as are the Saberhagens–though it is vexing to me that Saberhagen’s Book of the Gods series does not appear to be consistently available in ebook form!

I grabbed the Trek novel just because it’s one of the ones I read when I went through my obligatory Trek novel phase, and it’s one of the ones I remember fondly, so I wanted an ebook copy of it! And of course, Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight is mizkit’s new novella. Which y’all should go buy from her.

Total books acquired in 2010: 45. My quest to own every book in the universe: proceeding nicely.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

It occurred to me that if I was going to go around calling my LJ “Ordinary Day”, I should damn well have a default icon that reflects that. So for the benefit of those of you looking at this on my various LJ-flavored sites, check out the Alan and Sean loverliness. That shot is of course from the video for the song. The icon is by turple_purtle, who was the provider of just about all of the GBS icons I use.

And if you’re looking at this on annathepiper.org, here!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Ladies and gentlemen, now is the time for you to submit your nominations for the following vital question:

“What should Anna name her Nook?”

I shall accept nominations for the next two weeks, so you have until February 16th to submit your suggestions! On that day I shall open an official poll for voting, and the winner of same will receive one of the following, their choice:

1. A $25 gift certificate to the Drollerie Press bookstore
2. Free copies of both Faerie Blood and Defiance
3. A free print copy of the Drollerie book of their choice

So let’s hear your suggestions, folks! For convenience’s sake, if you’re reading this post on LJ, Dreamwidth, or anywhere else, do please click through to angelakorrati.com and drop your comments on the original post. Thanks and I look forward to hearing your suggestions!

ETA: LJ, Dreamwidth, or otherwise LJ-like site users, please do click through to the original angelakorrati.com post to leave comments with your nominations! I really do need all the votes in one place so as to better keep track of them all, and to also accommodate non-LJ users. Thanks all!

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

So the whole Amazon vs. Macmillan fracas has accomplished three things for me, as of last night:

One, I have bought a nook. The cost of said nook as well as a loverly cover to put it in is roughly about the same as the amount of royalties I have now received for Faerie Blood, and to a tiny degree, Defiance.

(Which of course means that this is the Nook That Faerie Blood Bought, folks. That you all helped me buy. And for this, I thank you all! Watch this space for a forthcoming new poll on what exactly I should name the Nook, and a likely giveaway for a randomly selected winner!)

Two, I’ve also bought five, count ‘em, five ebooks by Macmillan authors, up on Fictionwise.

Three, and because I’m really in the mood to show some love directly to awesome authors, I have thrown ten bucks at the current efforts of mizkit to sell her commissioned novella “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”. It’s set in her Old Races universe and features Janx and Daisani, and she’s selling it directly off her site for ten bucks a pop this month. Hie ye over here and show her some support, y’all!

“But Anna,” I hear you cry, “ten bucks a pop for a novella? Isn’t that more than I’d be paying for a paperback?” Yes. Yes it is. But the beauty of this is, since Kit is selling it directly, she gets every last penny, and since she has an established track record of about a dozen books’ worth of awesome, I’m pretty damn sure $10 for a novella full of her words will be worth the price.

Also, she’s Kit. So go, my Internet armies! And tell her I sent you!

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

But the Amazon vs. Macmillan brouhaha over the weekend has pretty much bumped up the priority on this: I just dropped my first round of shiny royalties on a Nook. The actual device and a pretty cover to put it in pretty much comes to roughly the amount of royalties I got, and that’s quite fine with me. Barnes and Noble thinks it’ll ship probably around the 12th, so it’ll be a couple of weeks before Nookish goodness actually reaches my house; this too is fine, since it ain’t like I’m lacking for things to read.

(Technically, I am not going to spend those exact moneys on the device, I think–just because it’ll be nice to keep them in the account they’re sitting in, quietly gathering interest. I’m actually paying for the thing out of my primary account. But I figure that as long as I have the money, I don’t really give a flying damn what account it comes out of. The important thing is, shiny candy-like buttons! And ebooks!)

I’m also feeling the need to show Macmillan authors some solidarity, so I think my next round of ebook buying is going to be all Macmillan authors! I need to round out my John Scalzi collection anyway.

Since the cover I wanted isn’t actually available yet (a nice leather green one with an embossed quote about how a good book is the best of friends), I have instead selected the punctuation-themed one with a big ampersand on the front and a question mark on the back. This has the added bonus of being nethack-y, and will likely make me do a double-take the first few times I read something on the thing, thinking “AIGH THERE’S A DEMON ON MY NOOK”. Or, if I look at it from the back, wondering if I’ve actually identified this scroll yet.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

I spent most of this weekend at the filk convention Conflikt, and that was great fun, but even as a bunch of geeky music was going on I kept an eye on the kerfuffle that exploded between Amazon and Macmillan. The issue at hand appears to be the pricing of ebooks, and as an ebook author, this is of course Relevant to My Interests.

The issue as I understand it is that Amazon and Macmillan are having a huge dispute about how much ebooks ought to cost. Macmillan is aiming for a variable pricing structure from $14.99 down to as low as $5.99, whereas Amazon is standing adamant about $9.99 as a price point. (Side note: since a lot of the ebooks I buy tend to run lower than even $9.99, even when purchased on Amazon, the nuances of the ebook pricing structure are still a mystery to me. But I digress.) They couldn’t reach an agreement, and so Amazon up and pulled all Macmillan titles out of its database, not only the ebooks, but the print titles as well.

To wit, whoa.

Amazon has since capitulated but as of this morning, Macmillan authors are still reporting that new copies of their works are still not available for purchase on Amazon. And the agents I’m seeing chime in on the matter are pretty sure this isn’t over yet by a long shot. I’m still thinking hard about what I want to do about this, if anything. I’ve seen a lot of people asserting that this has been the last straw for them, and that they will cease doing any further business with Amazon; I’ve seen several authors now go and pull all links to Amazon’s pages for their works off their sites.

It’s just one great big mess, and I’m hoping it’ll settle itself out soon. ‘Cause again, Relevant to My Interests. Drollerie is tiny enough that I can’t exactly tell people not to buy Faerie Blood or Defiance on Amazon, if that’s where they want to buy it–especially given that neither of these titles have shown up on Barnes and Noble’s site yet, and Fictionwise doesn’t have Defiance, either. But man, it’s making me inclined more and more just to point folks directly at Drollerie’s own store. Where we don’t have any DRM anyway!

Link roundup, for those of you who want to see more on the matter:

• Agent Nathan Bransford has a good summation here
• John Scalzi is less than pleased
• Tobias Buckell goes into the differences between what print books cost and what ebooks cost, which is good reading if you want a handle on why ebooks might not necessarily be as cheap as you think they should be
• Charles Stross is also less than pleased, but attempts to provide an outsider’s guide to the fight
• And agent Kristin Nelson does a quick overview of what exactly Amazon and Macmillan have themselves said on the matter
• ETA: Agent Jennifer Jackson chimes in with her own link roundup and reactions
• ETA: And a kerfuffle of this magnitude just wouldn’t be complete without a word (or many!) from Fandom Wank!
• ETA: Scott Westerfeld has a good summation, and I think that by and large I agree with his analysis
• ETA: An interesting counterargument suggests that even if Amazon is the one who had to capitulate here, they’re still going to win this fight

Again, whoa. This is me over here in the corner, munching popcorn and waiting to see how this all plays out.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted to report that as of this evening, I have received royalties for my writing for the very first time in my writing career. Actual money for my actual words is now in my possession. It ain’t much, I grant you–I am, after all, a micropress ebook author–but it’s evidence that somebody out there has in fact cared to put down a few of their dollars in exchange for my work.

Roughly 217 somebodies, in fact. If you’re one of those 217 or so, I thank you wholeheartedly and hope you’ll have enjoyed what I provided. Most of these sales are indeed Faerie Blood, although Defiance does have a tiny blip of presence on the statement. Also, it is a point of interest that the reported sales are for Drollerie Press’s own site, Fictionwise (by far the majority of the sales), and Mobipocket. Amazon sales are not represented and hopefully this will be updated as of the next statement received. Clearly, though, Fictionwise loves me. <3

There are more words on the way! And tonight's addition to that "more", tapped out on the iPhone at Conflikt while listening to the inimitable Alexander James Adams belting out his best (and then more typed after), was a few hundred more words into Chapter 1 of Mirror’s Gate. I know now that the lead characters are Aleksandr and Yevanya Morokev, and that Yevanya’s cousin who’d really like nothing better than to step into the esteemed position of “husband” with her is Antoli. The names are of course Russian-influenced, although I’ll be playing around with this some and thinking about how the elves of Vreyland would have affected the language and the naming conventions. Plus, I just want to throw in a few character names that aren’t direct real-world analogues.

Tonight’s efforts got paused though as I got to a point where I need to mention the name of the city serving as the primary setting here, and I’m not sure yet whether I want a short terse name or a long exotic one. Spent some time mulling the list on Wikipedia of Russian cities, but so far none of them have served as inspiration for naming the Vreyish capital. Potential elven influence may be called for here.

Written tonight: 316
Chapter 1 total: 546
Mirror’s Gate total: 546

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

It looks like Christopher and Elessir are suddenly going to have to fight with the male lead currently known as Aleksi for my word count love. Mirror’s Gate got its first official words tonight, since three chapters’ worth of outline is enough to get me started and this story really wants out of my brain. We’ll see how well I can keep it up.

I can say that I actually haven’t been this excited about producing something in a while. Maybe I just needed a brand new idea to play with, I don’t know! solarbird thinks that I must have been working on this under the hood and it popped out for attention when it was ready; if that’s so, I can forgive my muse for many months of silence!

And I’m looking forward to playing in Vreyland. I want to write about its snowy city streets and the colors its people wear, bright and bold against the long pale spans of their winters. There are elves in Vreyland, immigrants from the west, but most of the true-blooded ones keep to themselves. The elven blood has blended with that of Vreyland, though, and it is from that that the Vreylanders get their magic.

The Vreylander mages are as free with their powers as magic never is in Adalonia. There are magics to protect houses and light the city streets, to seek out truth and to protect the sanctity of an office of law. And there are greater magics a man may use if he has the talent–and some of these magics will be what drives this story.

I need more names for characters, and Aleksi still needs to tell me if that’s his full name or if it’s an endearment… but now he has sprung into his first few paragraphs of life. I’m going to like getting to know him.

Written tonight: 230
Chapter 1 total: 230
Mirror’s Gate total (first draft): 230

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

And now, for my answer to the question much of the rest of the Internet has been asking: will I buy an iPad? (y/n)

Immediate near-term answer: no.

I am of course an Apple user. Maybe not a hugely ardent Apple devotee per se, but I do quite like my MacBook and my iPhone, which still have plenty of useful lifespan left in them and which satisfy my current computing needs quite nicely. For that reason alone I’m not seeing any reason I need to get a third device.

The more pertinent question for me might be, will I buy an iPad when my current laptop eventually needs replacing?

Current answer to that, although possibly subject to change depending on how future generations of the device develop: no.

One: the size and shape of it would make me reluctant to carry it on my daily commute. While the weight is good, just 1.5 pounds, the size and shape do not convince me that I could safely carry it in my backpack. Plus, I would absolutely not put it in my backpack without a protective shell of some sort, which would add extra weight. Also, just the sheer shape of it makes me wonder whether it would fit into the size and style of backpack I carry anyway.

Two: While the lack of keyboard doesn’t bother me at all–I’m quite used at this point to the virtual keyboard on the iPhone and using one on the iPad would not be a problem–the lack of ability to multitask does. If it can’t let me run my usual suite of programs at the same time, it’s just not an effective home computing device for me.

Three: Lack of storage space local to the device is not a huge dealbreaker for me, but it is a point of concern. I’m used to syncing my iPhone with my laptop when I get home in the evening. But if the iPad were to be my home computing device, I’d clearly need some ability to sync it up with one of our household servers. Syncing my personal documents out to a third-party site such as Google Docs or MobileMe or whatever is not really a path I want to go. Those options are fine as off-site backups, but when it comes to working copies of whatever writing I’m doing, I want them local and on my house LAN.

Four: While as an ebook author I am very much interested in the iPad serving as a new way to get ebooks to people, I’d be way more interested if the iBooks store opens up to other Mac devices and ideally other platforms as well. Selling books in epub format is good. Selling them without DRM so that you could read them in whatever app on whatever device you wish would be better. Right now though the fact that the iPad has an iBooks store isn’t enough to make it nudge that Nook I’m eying out of the running for “e-reader device I’m most likely to purchase.”

Last but not least, since Sarah at Smart Bitches called Apple on this and it bears repeating: speaking as a female computer geek, I gotta say, seriously, ‘iPad’ as a name? Um, no. ;) While the issues I’ve touched on above might improve as the device develops, I’m sorry, the part of me that’s still twelve years old will be giggling over that name for some time.

But hey, we’ll see what happens. In general I’m in favor of shiny computing devices, so if this one finds its niche, more power to it. And I’ll be interested to see what people say once they actually get them into their hands.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Another productive round of brainstorming with kisanthe has let me flesh out several aspects of the main characters of Mirror’s Gate, although the proper names of most of them have not yet clicked into place. But I know quite a bit more about my hero and heroine now, and at least about their oldest child and what part she will play in the story.

I’ve also decided that this story takes place in the same world as Lament of the Dove, only in an entirely different country, clear over on the other side of the continent. I’m still toying with what I know about the country in question but I’m halfway suspecting that it’s called Vreyland, that it’s farther north than Adalonia and has proportionally colder weather, and that the people there tend to be of hearty and fair stock. I do definitely also know that they are magic-friendly and elf-friendly, and in fact, there is interbreeding with the elves in the national background, which is how magic got into their general gene pool.

And as of tonight, I just coredumped about three chapters’ worth of initial outline, covering the rough beginning of the story–as well as a later, almost complete scene that resulted from the brainstorm.

Man. If I can get a few more character names into place I think I’ll be able to start writing this thing. Bitchin’.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

That dream I had over the weekend hasn’t let me go, and thanks to some fine, fine brainstorming from kisanthe, I now actually have the working core of what’s promising to be a new fantasy novel for me to work on. The working title for now is “Mirror’s Gate”, and the core concept is this:

My hero is a mage who’s in service to the local royal court, and it’s six months since his death. He is survived by his wife and children, who are devastated by his passing–and who, like everyone else in the court and the city, believe that his death was an unfortunate magical accident since he was found dead in his spell-room amidst the shattered remnants of his scrying mirror and other magical implements.

Since then, his wife has striven to ward off her grief by focusing on caring for their children. But the mood of the city has turned dark and strange, for there are rumors of sightings of ghostly figures and creatures on the streets and even in the houses. People are seeing glimpses of loved ones both human and animal who were thought to be dead–only these glimpses are often warped and dire, and the people are beginning to fear.

Disturbed, our heroine retreats with her children to the shelter of her uncle’s church, in the hope that holy ground will shelter them. But that doesn’t stop her from discovering that someone else is wandering the city, a man who should not exist–a man with no memories, and her dead husband’s face.

I decided I wanted to do this as a fantasy novel, mostly because I’m kind of burned out on urban fantasy right now and would like to swing back into some traditional fantasy. Also, this will be a first for me: writing principle characters who are already an established family, which will be a nice switch.

This is going to be fun.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

This being the record of things lovely people gave to me to celebrate my birthday:

• From spazzkat, the DVD set of season 3 of MacGyver and the recently released Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora, mostly because the planet is way more interesting to me than the movie ;)
• From solarbird, a physical copy of the album Nomad Soul by Baaba Maal (which I had previously borrowed electronically from sksouth), two CDs by Afro Celt Sound System, and one by Altan which I actually already had and will be exchanging for something else
• From mamishka, a $20 gift certificate to Amazon
• From technoshaman, a $25 Barnes and Noble gift card
• And from brombear, who showed up for Jam this afternoon since he’s in town, a couple of gift certificates to Kinokuniya Bookstore, the bookstore next to Uwajimaya downtown. To wit, awesome!

Many thanks to you all! And me being me, I have of course already blown the Amazon and B&N gift cards on books, as follows:

• Storm Born, by blue_succubus. Urban fantasy. Re-buy in ebook form
• Septimus Heap, Book One, Magyk, by Angie Sage. YA
• Ragamuffin, by Tobias S. Buckell. SF
• Deader Still, by antonstrout. Urban fantasy. Re-buy in ebook form
• Devil’s Due, by rachelcaine. Romance. Buying in ebook form, previously read as library book
• The Visitor, by Sheri Tepper. SF
• The Hidden City, by Michelle West. Fantasy

And now the total of books acquired for 2010 is up to 33, and I’m not even done with January yet. Whee!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

I woke up around 6ish or so this morning, conscious of having just interrupted a dream I was having. This happens a lot, but what was unusual about this one was that it didn’t seem to involve me in any way. Rather, it was a bit of what seemed like it was trying to be a story playing out in my head.

What I remember about it is that it involved a guy who had lost his memory for some reason and was living homeless on the streets. He’s found by a woman who clearly knows him and who was probably his love interest or potential love interest–and who had been convinced that he’d disappeared on purpose. But when she realizes the state he’s in, she takes pity on him and takes him home.

Random bits I remember from the dream:

• The guy’s name was Alex or possibly Alec Chambers.
• The woman’s name was possibly Rachel.
• It wasn’t set in Seattle, or at the very least, the parts of Seattle I usually frequent. The place I remember Rachel finding Alex on was up on a hill and overlooking a lower area; the street was wide but lined with trees and seemed generally pretty. It’s possible that my brain might have been keying off of parts of West Seattle or maybe Capitol Hill, but I’m pretty sure not.
• Whatever street Alex is on when Rachel finds him, it’s not Fourth Street. Rachel asked Alex why he was where he was, and he said something like “On Fourth Street, they find you.”
• When Rachel takes Alex home, the place she takes him looks like a church and Alex comments to her, “You live in a church?” She explains that this is home. I remember them driving in under a walkway of some sort between two different parts of the building. I got the impression that part of the building had been converted to apartments, or something. There may be more story there as to why Rachel was actually living there.
• There were children, two or three of them. But it was unclear to me whether they were actually Rachel’s children, either by Alex or by the other guy who showed up, or whether they were younger siblings or cousins or something. They were nonetheless pleased to see Alex but distressed at the state he was in, and took pity on him.
• Another man shows up who was clearly a prior rival to Alex for Rachel’s affections. He has a lot of luggage with him and is clearly expecting to stay at Rachel’s place, and he snarks at her about where “he” (i.e., Alex) is going to sleep. Alex says mildly that that’s up to Rachel.
• There’s a dinner scene where Alex catches himself handling dishes in a certain way and he realizes in wonder that he’s left-handed, which is something he hadn’t remembered about himself. (My brain then tried to play with this, I think, because I remember replays of the same bit in which he also noticed he was right-handed, and then that he was possibly ambidextrous.)
• There’s a playground scene where the children are trying to get Alex to play hide and seek with them.

After that I think I was either waking up or dropping more heavily back into sleep, because I started getting more random dream-like bits such as Alex trying to fly, which made less sense. But I wonder if there’s a story here that I can play with. Maybe Alex is a Warder somewhere.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

I’ve been getting lovely comments dropped on my Facebook wall from folks who saw there what today is, and I’ve gotten the usual lovely email from stickmaker wishing me natal felicitations. What I did not expect however was to get a little email from the folks who run JournalFen, wishing me a happy birthday and inviting me to send in and/or post interesting birthday stories. That was awfully nice of them and makes me glad I’m continuing to maintain an account on their servers. So this is me sending out a shoutout to JF’s staff: thanks, folks! Thanks also to all of you who have already sent me comments. :)

Birthday Weekend 2010 for Anna will be involving a second viewing of Avatar tonight and probable sushi. There will be cake, but it’ll be tomorrow in conjunction with this week’s Jam, since I didn’t want to have cake and pie in the house at the same time and I felt it would be lame to offer partly eaten birthday cake to folks who show up for Jam. I will however have a fancy cupcake tonight as Birthday Cake standin, the thanks for which go of course to my lovely solarbird!

Also as part of this weekend’s laid-back fun, Dara and I listened to the first CD of one of the Big Finish Doctor Who audios I bought her for Christmas, and that was great! First of all it was fun to hear Paul McGann reprising the role of the Eighth Doctor, but even more fun was hearing a Dalek Supreme actually be–at least by Dalek standards–subtle. It’s not too spoilery to say that the general thrust of this plot is that Eight and his new companion Lucie wind up on the planet Red Rocket Rising, which has just been devastated by an asteroid strike. And oh hey, a passing alien fleet has just offered to rescue the human survivors from the planet–and OHNOEZ they’re Daleks.

What the Daleks are up to, pretending to be compassionate, is part of the great fun of this episode. In particular there’s an awesome bit where the Dalek Supreme first learns from the Acting President of the planet that the Doctor is around–and you can just hear the Dalek forcibly keeping itself from going ballistic. Later it pretty much orders the President to turn over the Doctor in exchange for Dalek assistance, and Dara and I lost it hearing it say “THE DOCTOR IS AN ENEMY OF THE DALEKS! HE MUST BE EX… TRADITED!”

Unrelatedly, more fun was had last night as I did indeed spend the rest of my Amazon gift certificate. Many thanks to you all for your extensive book and music recommendations! The things I wound up purchasing were:

• The Green Glass Sea, recommended by sutures1. YA.
• Mark of the Demon, recommended by alfvaen. Urban fantasy.
• Graceling, recommended earlier to me on Goodreads by rosepurr. YA/fantasy.

This brings the total of books acquired in 2010 up to 25!

Just about all of the rest of the recommended titles have gone onto my Goodreads Recommended shelf, and I’ll get to them as best I can! Some of them aren’t available in digital form so I may wind up checking them out from the library. Yay, books!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Y’all on Twitter and Facebook saw this already, but for all you blog and LJ and DW folks, I got me a nice little $25 gift certificate for Amazon, and I’m looking for things to spend it on! I plan to spend its entire balance on recommendations, so if you have a specific book you think I should read or an album you think I should listen to, lay it on me.

I’ve already spent $7 of the certificate balance on Mark of the Demon by Diana Rowland, thanks to a recommendation from alfvaen. sutures1 has also chimed in with some lovely recommendations, all of which I have now added to my “recommended” shelf on Goodreads, but I’m looking for more contenders!

You can see my Recommended shelf here, and you can get to the rest of my Goodreads list from there, if you want to doublecheck that your recommendation isn’t already something I have. Note also that my Goodreads list is not complete, so it’s still possible that you might recommend something I already have–but don’t let that stop you. ;)

Music recs are also welcome although something available for digital download on Amazon is to be preferred, since I’ll have a better chance of getting multiple things that way! Just as a refresher, anything that fits well into the sentence “If you like Great Big Sea, you’ll also like…” would work well here. Ditto for the Irish Descendants, the Fables, the Paperboys, La Bottine Souriante, Le Vent du Nord, Altan, Solas, Anam, Julie Fowlis, and the Chieftains.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

One of the nice things about reading a lot of ebooks as of late is the sheer number of older classic works available in public domain electronic copies. Among these is the Feedbooks ebook edition of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson, and I decided it was high time I read it.

We all of course know the basics of the story, but what I didn’t know was that the original story is not from Jekyll’s point of view at all, but rather from that of a third party. The lawyer Mr. Utterson is an old friend of the doctor’s, and is the keeper of his will as well–but he’s recently been given a newer version that names a Mr. Hyde as the beneficiary of all of Dr. Jekyll’s worldly goods should the doctor ever die or mysteriously disappear. This, coupled with a disturbing report from another friend that Hyde has been seen in the street causing cruel hurt to a child, alarms Utterson deeply and puts him on to finding out exactly what has befallen the doctor.

What follows is mostly not surprising, aside from a few particular plot details that I won’t mention in case someone else like me who hasn’t read it yet wants to take a peek. Like many works of its era, though, a lot of the storytelling is done via the device of letters rather than shown directly on screen. For me this dampened the impact somewhat of the events described–though on the other hand, Jekyll’s explanation in his final letter of the moral experiment that led him to create his infamous potion in the first place was interesting reading.

Overall this was a much shorter story than I’d expected, though, and very quickly and easily breezed through. Three stars.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.