And now, a Books Released by Awesome People roundup!
annathepiper
9:12P Tuesday, 21 February 2012

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Acquired because I supported its Kickstarter YAY!:

• Matchbox Girls, by Chrysoula Tzavelas. Because Willowholt writers FTW! I have no idea what it’s about and I’ll look forward to finding out, because Soula is Tribe. I have the ebook edition already, and the print edition should be on the way.

Bought from B&N as ebooks to add to the “repurchased as ebooks” list:

• Cry Wolf and Hunting Ground, by Patricia Briggs. Urban fantasy; books 1 and 2 of her Alpha and Omega series.
• Indigo Springs, by A.M. Dellamonica. Fantasy (I think this is more fantasy than UF, anyway, but I don’t know for sure). Book 1 of the Astrid Lethewood series.
• Instruments of Darkness and Anatomy of Murder, by Imogen Robertson. Mystery; books 1 and 2 of her Crowther and Westerman series. I’ve already read Book 1 and found it excellent! Book 2 just came out.

Bought from Carina Press, because they sent me a coupon code and because of general awesomeness on the part of Zoe Archer:

• The Last Night, by Nico Rosso. SF/romance. Picked up because Nico Rosso is the husband of Zoe Archer, and I want to see if his writing is as fun as hers!
• Chain Reaction, by Zoe Archer. SF/romance. See previous commentary re: general awesomeness.
• Lesserblood Lies, by Ainsley Davidson. SF/romance. Detecting a general genre theme here, folks?

And last but not least, oh my no, picked up in print from B&N tonight:

• Frenchman’s Creek, by Daphne du Maurier. Because 1) French pirate hero WOO! and 2) apparently, after reading Rebecca, I continue to need more du Maurier in my library.
• Raven Calls, by C.E. Murphy. Because it goes without saying that I’ll be all over a new Walker Papers from mizkit on Release Day. :D

36 for the year!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

conversation over dinner
lyonesse
7:57P Tuesday, 21 February 2012

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"The paper had gotten halfway through the peer-review process when it was noticed that it was not in fact a paper, but an octopus." -- elf my elf

the dog
lyonesse
5:22P Tuesday, 21 February 2012

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the dog has had a pretty miserable day, where she direly wanted something but turned down everything i could offer.

eventually she accepted strained chicken (coincidentally acquired yesterday at wegman's) over kibble, and is finally resting quietly.

she has another round of chemo scheduled for thursday.

wegman's
lyonesse
6:37P Monday, 20 February 2012

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drglam and i went to wegman's grocery out west of the city today. i think she described it well as "the jordan's furniture of food" -- MASSIVE is the word that springs to my mind. but not uncomfortable or intimidating or poorly laid out.

i got a bunch of interesting teas, one new-to-me kind of citrus fruit (some tangelo-like thang), a peach sorbet that drglam recommended, a pile of tasty-seeming salad fixin's.... yum :)

future plans include h-mart! :)

New cover art for Faerie Blood on the way!
annathepiper
9:49A Monday, 20 February 2012

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I’ve already noted this on my various social networks, but to note it again here in greater detail: I’m pleased to share with you all that I’m in talks with artist Kiri Moth to do new cover art not for Faerie Blood, but for Bone Walker and Book 3 as well! I very much like her light, airy style, and cannot wait to see what she does with Kendis. Big, big props to tiggymalvern for recommending her!

We’re at the stage of Kiri doing some preliminary sketches, and when she has some to share with me, I’ll see about posting one so y’all can get an idea of what the future cover for Faerie Blood is going to look like. Stand by for the shiny, all!

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

riding log
lyonesse
4:35P Sunday, 19 February 2012

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still haven't been doing these, but worth noting as a milestone -- a full time-and-a-half around our (small, slanty, crooked) ring on left-lead canter. yay! :)

gossip
lyonesse
8:59A Sunday, 19 February 2012

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my pi approves of the physicians i'm talking with at the eldercare facility. this is a relief, actually, since it seems that physicians are incredibly gossipy and judgmental about one another. i had to out myself as pi's associate to the eldercare folks for obvious reasons (and got a polite reply, which was pleasant if not necessarily interpretable). but going the other way was harder than you'd expect -- not that pi would do anything but support me in any collaborations (he's awesome that way :) but he can be *extremely* snarky, and i'm just as glad we don't seem to be going there.

(that said, my pi is also an incredible vocal mimic, and his snark often totally cracks me up :)

the daily dog
lyonesse
9:32P Saturday, 18 February 2012

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. her white blood cell count is low, but not crashed, so that seems all right. everything else about her blood is okay.

. she was very low-energy today and required a lot of support. elf my elf contributed muchly.

. things she ate:

.. six or seven handfuls of kibble, mostly fed directly but a few from her bowl
.. a few ounces of a pralines-n-cream ice cream soda
.. an apple core
.. about 10cc of low-sodium chicken broth, by syringe
.. water from her bowl (after the above)
.. metoclopramide and baytril (antiemetic and antibiotic)

with those last three it seems she can skip sub-q fluids hopefully safely for today.

she and the elf are now out on walk #2. she trotted (albeit slowly) about a third of walk #1, which was good to see.

Plan of action for Faerie Blood, second edition
annathepiper
9:27A Saturday, 18 February 2012

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For those of you who may be wondering what the status is on my plans for Faerie Blood and Bone Walker, there are a few new developments I’d like to share!

First and foremost, I’ve been doing a bit of judicious Googling and also asking around to get a sense of whether I should use one of the services available to deploy a new version of Faerie Blood out into the wild, or whether I can save myself some money and just do it myself. The answer to this question appears to be the latter. I had a lovely little email exchange with romance novelist Courtney Milan, who kindly advised me on how she got her recent self-pubbed Unraveled out: i.e., she deployed directly to Amazon, B&N, and Apple herself, and used Smashwords to hit a couple other services like Kobo and Sony. Moving forward, I’m going to be looking with more depth into how to do these things.

Secondly, I also asked Ms. Milan if she had preferred software for creating her ebook editions. She pointed me at this excellent guide by Guido Henkel about how to do ebook formatting, with a focus on epub and mobi versions. Boil it down to its essentials, and what you get is “do a bit of tweaking to your original manuscript file, throw in some HTML and CSS, and then fling it through Calibre”. As y’all know, I’m a professional techie. HTML and CSS? Not a problem. So yeah, I can totally do this formatting myself.

(Mad, mad props both to Ms. Milan and to Mr. Henkel, by the way. If you’re a romance reader you should totally go read Ms. Milan’s Turner series, the first two books of which I have reviewed here and here! And if you’re not already familiar with the ebook creation process and you want to be, you should go read Mr. Henkel’s guide and thank him for his work!)

Third, in commencing the tweaking of Faerie Blood‘s previously released RTF file, I’m finding some things that need tweaking. After several hard rounds of editing on Lament of the Dove, my older tendency towards ellipses, which is still present in Faerie Blood, is standing out hard. So I’m going to clean those up.

Also, since this book was originally written in 2003, its ‘present day’ setting is in fact 2003, and that now reads a bit weird to 2012 eyes–especially in regards to things like my mentions of older-style cell phones and passing references to pay phones as well. I’m going to tweak these things a bit since it won’t impact the story any, just incidental details to give a better ‘present day’ feel to any new readers who may pick me up. I am aware that this will require me to adjust my perceptions on ages and timing of certain things that took place before this novel; that’s okay. None of those things are actually in released work yet, so they’re still flexible!

And! I was sad to have realized that the first edition of Faerie Blood didn’t have a proper dedication or a proper acknowledgements section. I will be correcting both of these problems, along with an Author’s Note that will mention the changes I’m describing here.

Fourth, I will definitely be pursuing working with Third Place Books (and possibly also the University Bookstore) to engage their espresso book machine to generate any print copies of Faerie Blood–about which I am more excited now that I’ve learned that these machines are not restricted to trade paperback size. So step one here is going to be to get solarbird to do a proper print layout for a PDF version, and step two will be arranging to hand that off to be printed.

Fifth, I am investigating a particular artist recommended to me by tiggymalvern, and have had a hopeful initial email exchange with her, including sending her a review copy of Faerie Blood‘s Drollerie edition to see if she wants to commit to doing new cover art for me. More on this as it happens!

Last but not least, please note that all of these plans do not preclude proceeding with a Kickstarter for Bone Walker! Before I move forward with that, though, I’d really like to nail down a cover artist, since it will be important to me to have professional-looking art that can give all three books of this projected trilogy a unifying style. More on this as it happens, too!

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

more about the dog
lyonesse
7:04A Saturday, 18 February 2012

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so last night was also one of her prednisone doses (we're now down to 5mg/every other day).

roses is an exceptionally mellow dog. she has the classic sighthound personality (can run REALLY FAST for a short period, otherwise likes to lie around looking art nouveau) to the nth degree.

she finds prednisone really agitating, even at this level (remember that we started at 20mg/2xday). she spent three hours dragging her bed around the room (not a trivial task for her), digging frantically through my bedclothes, asking to be walked but then not wanting to go out, whining and barking, not wanting to eat or drink (one of the useful effects at the higher dosage was increased thirst, which helped stave off dehydration, but that doesn't appear at this level). after those hours, i was able to get her to concentrate on chewing a greenie, and then she kind of crashed.

cancer sucks :/

dog update
lyonesse
8:55P Friday, 17 February 2012

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today we went for the complete blood count, ended up getting sub-q fluids (which did perk her up some) and some to take home. for some reason my current vet oncologist is anti-ringer's solution for cancer, but i couldn't find out why via the receptionist over the phone. so the dog just got saline, and i have to remember to find out.

she's also to stay on the antibiotic, partly in case it's helping the eye and partly prophylactically, in case her white blood cell count turns out low.

tomorrow i should have the results of the cbc, of which i am of course frightened.

meanwhile her heart rate seemed good, and we finally can't palpate any of her lymph nodes. so that's the good parts.

busy with business
solarbird
12:19A Friday, 17 February 2012

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It’s all been fair and venue applications and maintenance and junk this latter half of the week, I don’t have much to say. So if you’re in Seattle, go to Leannan Sidhe’s show on Sunday, it’s her last Seattle show for a while. If you’re in Boston, Heather Dale has a show TONIGHT, at Boskone, so you’re in luck!

If you know any good venues for, oh, me, drop me a note! As always I’m looking for house concert hosts, I swear it’s easy, talk to me, but not just those. (All these applications are for events and fairs and such.) Plus don’t forget my show in Portland on the 26th!

And if you want to plug somebody else’s show to my audience this weekend? Do it here, in comments!

From said comments:
Vixy & Tony, Saturday night, 8pm, Wayward Coffeehouse, Seattle
The Doubleclicks/Adam Warrock/Kirby Krackle, Friday night, 6:30pm, Mt. Tabor, Portland

I have a couple of things in progress but I’ll talk about those more when I have enough to make a post about. Have a good weekend!

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

Echoed via dw:ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん. comments at Dreamwidth.

2011 Book Log #46: The Thirteenth House, by Sharon Shinn
annathepiper
9:34P Thursday, 16 February 2012

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I read Sharon Shinn’s first book in her Twelve Houses series, I found it a bit shaky in its initial chapters, at least till it got its feet under it. I was very pleased to discover that I had no such problem with Book 2, The Thirteenth House.

This book continues the adventures of the overall cast of characters established in Mystic and Rider as they pursue the greater plot arc of anti-magic sentiment sweeping their kingdom and threatening to plunge them all into outright war. However, the focus shifts now from Senneth and Tayse over to the shapeshifter Kirra, whose participation in the rescue of their king’s kidnapped regent, Lord Romar, leads to a stormy affair with said regent. The catch: Romar is married, and Kirra is impersonating her own half-sister. Between that and Kirra’s need to keep her true identify and her talents secret, the affair is perilous to them both. Kirra’s soon swamped in intrigue–and comes under the threat of the ringleaders of the growing potential rebellion.

Overall I liked this book quite a bit, despite the fact that as a character, Kirra is definitely more flawed than Senneth. She’s impulsive to a fault, and at first this is frustrating. Yet she did well riding the line between “I want to smack her for her choices” and “I am nonetheless sympathizing with her”, and she shows some admirable development when faced with the consequences of her actions. (Even as she’s ultimately forced into a difficult and ethically shady choice indeed, about which I shall not elaborate, because spoilers.)

I did also like Romar, and was relieved to see that Shinn did not go the too-easy route of making his wife unlikeable. Some readers may find the fact that Kirra’s carrying on with a married man ethically shady all by itself; if you’re one of those readers, this book won’t be for you. But for what it’s worth, I did appreciate that Shinn didn’t make it easy on either character.

On the bigger level of the overall story arc, I liked the advancements in this one quite a bit. After I finished this one off as a library checkout, I went ahead and committed to buying the series, and I’ll look forward to finishing them off. For this one, four stars.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Book roundup time again
annathepiper
9:08P Thursday, 16 February 2012

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Recently purchased in print from B&N, one in-store and the other by mail order:

• Unbroken, by Rachel Caine. Urban fantasy, Book 4 of her Outcast Season series.
• In the Dead of Winter, by Abbey Pen Baker. Mystery. This is a Holmes-universe novel that’s proposing that the daughter of Irene Adler is herself a famous detective, and has a loyal partner who helps her solve crimes and chronicles their adventures. So essentially, “gender-flipped version of Holmes and Watson without actually being Holmes and Watson”. Saw a review from Laurie R. King (who knows something about Holmesian novels, I daresay) speaking well of this, so I wanted to check it out. Ordering was my only option, though, since local libraries were for once not terribly helpful in tracking it down.

Meanwhile, picked up electronically from B&N, all re-buys of books previously owned in print:

• All three books of the Sign of Seven trilogy, by Nora Roberts. Paranormal romance. Y’all may recall I was a little wibbly on how much I liked this, but I do like me some Nora in general and I wanted to keep these around even if I didn’t want to retain print copies.
• The first three books of the Mercy Thompson series, by Patricia Briggs. Urban fantasy. Shifting Briggs over to electronic buying since she’s got a lot of work at this point, which translates to a lot of shelf space, and I think I want her electronically instead.

This brings me to 25 for the year.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

the opposite of stage fright
lyonesse
4:52P Thursday, 16 February 2012

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it turns out i really enjoy talking to physicians about my inventions and ideas. but afterwards i want to eat ice cream and sleep for about a year.

Status update re: plans for Bone Walker, and also, questions!
annathepiper
10:43A Wednesday, 15 February 2012

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Wanted to do another post to let you guys know what I’m up to in regards to getting Faerie Blood repubbed, and getting Bone Walker finished up and ready to go out in its wake.

First and foremost–still trying to find out whether the cover artist I’m looking at can do a commission for me for art for Faerie Blood and Bone Walker both. In the event that that doesn’t work out, though, does anyone out there have recommendations for artists you like that might suit? I would prefer people who do drawn or painted art vs. photo manipulation, but I’m willing to consider people with decent photo manipulation skills as well.

Link me up with your recs, people! Bonus points if the people in question have previous experience doing cover art and a prior history of commissions.

Secondly–I’m still planning the Kickstarter idea but I am also strongly considering BookBaby. BookBaby is a sister brand to CD Baby, and from what I’m seeing, they could potentially provide not only the ability to deploy ebooks to all the major ebook vendor sites, but ALSO printed copies. Most importantly, they claim they give 100 percent of sales back to the author. Now, since these are the same people that do CD Baby and I know of several musicians (including my very own beloved spouse) who are happy with that, I’m inclined to look on BookBaby favorably. But does anyone out there have any direct experience with using them, or know people who do? Let me know!

Right now my highest priority is finishing the last round of edits on Lament of the Dove so that I can fling that back at Carina Press, finally. I’m hoping to get that done by February 25th so that I can have it off my queue before Dara and I run off to Canada for a grand four-day weekend of awesomeness! After that, my next priority will be spending as much of March as possible finishing Bone Walker so that I can then get it edited.

More as I know it!

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

something about tunes
solarbird
12:25A Wednesday, 15 February 2012

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There’s a funny thing about Irish tunes.

I’ve been going to an Irish/Celtic Session, down in Renton, with Anna, for a year now, and playing. Actually, it was a year last month, and we had an anniversary party of the session’s founding. (Wednesdays, A Terrible Beauty, Renton, 7pm. C’mon by!) There’s a big picture of one of the session meetings up on the wall; I’m in that photo. Anna and I are session founders; Anna heard about it starting up and said, “Hey, let’s go!” and I thought it sounded fun.

I should explain; “tunes” are different to “songs.” “Songs” have lyrics; tunes are instrumental, with a primary melody, played on melodic instruments, with maybe one person playing chorded instruments along as well, and maybe a drum. Lukey is a song; Road to Lisdoonvarna is a tune. Search on those if you want, you’ll have a zillion hits. There are thousands of tunes, some of which are centuries old; they’re both dance music and a conduit for parts of traditional Irish culture. They attract attention, they’re accessible, people react to them positively, and enjoy them.

I’ve been trying to learn the language of of these things for over a year now. I’ve learned some of the tunes pretty well; I’ve learned some others not as well. I recognise a lot of the tropes and rhythms.

But as much as I hate to say it, emotionally, Irish session tunes still mostly don’t make sense to me as music. It’s not that they aren’t melodic, and of course I’m not saying they aren’t music, because of course they are. But for me – they’re like particularly melodic but ultimately arbitrary exercises. Where you’ve just been says little or nothing about where you’re about to go.

I thought by now I’d start to get it. But I don’t. I enjoy going down and hanging out with everybody; it’s a nice place, it’s fun, people come out specifically for it, to listen. A lot of the time, we’re pretty good.

But in a way I’ve never run into before – at least not so clearly and not after so much effort – they aren’t music. They don’t make that connection in my head. They’re streams of notes to me in the same way that sheet music is an ocean of dots to me. Something just … doesn’t connect.

And I don’t know what.

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

Echoed via dw:ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん. comments at Dreamwidth.

happy new year to the dog
lyonesse
9:45P Tuesday, 14 February 2012

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fourteen years old, and NOT DEAD YET.

gratitude (as well as love!) to waket and elf my elf for doing so much to keep the good dog alive.

A modest announcement :)
annathepiper
7:49P Monday, 13 February 2012

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For those of you who have not already seen this breaking across Facebook, Google+, or Twitter tonight, solarbird and I would like to announce that on March 2nd, we will be getting a Canadian marriage license!

We were already planning this before today’s Washington state law signed by Governor Christine Gregoire. In fact, we are planning this as part of a Grand Four-Day Weekend of Marriage and Music, starting off with seeing these handsome boys perform on the night of March 1st! On March 2nd, Dara and I (and two other friends of ours who I will not identify publicly so as to respect their privacy, but who will be joining us for a dual ceremony) will be taking the appropriate steps to get legally married in Canada! On March 3rd, we will have yet more music as we attend Festival du Bois!

Mad props to gerimaple who has very kindly agreed to put Dara and me up for the weekend!

I have been asked as well if Dara and I are planning anything with the new law being passed in Washington state. To this, I note that to the best of our knowledge, if we are legally married in Canada, then that will count in the state of Washington–assuming that the law is not shot down in November. So for now we will be focusing on Canadian marriage fun, and getting in a boatload of awesome Quebecois music to go with it. :D

And! And! And! This being my and Dara’s 25th year of being together, there’s a whole extra layer of anniversarial awesomeness to celebrate here as well! So if you’re so inclined, raise a jar on March 2nd and think of us!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

in honor of st valentine's....
lyonesse
9:40P Monday, 13 February 2012

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one of the journals i read asks, quite reasonably i think, if anyone is ever actually *surprised* by valentines. i have the impression that nowadays in school you are supposed to get one for every classmate, and i like to imagine most grownups speak for themselves on a routine basis.

y'all's opinions on this topic solicited, with a verse from the old folk song "katy cruel". let's have 1 be "i have no idea" and 10 be "i am absolutely dead certain".

for kicks, let's do this twice: in the first poll, speak for yourself!

Poll #1818837
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 22

i know who i love

and i know who does love me

i know where i'll go

and i know who'll go with me

say what ya gotta say

and in this second poll, speak for how accurate you think lyo's perceptions of her (that is, my) love life are :)

Poll #1818838
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 17

i know who i love

and i know who does love me

i know where i'll go

and i know who'll go with me

say what ya gotta say

entmusic
solarbird
12:26A Monday, 13 February 2012

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This sounds like a joke, but it’s not. A while ago, when the Web was young, this guy built a hamster-controlled MIDI cage. Notes would be set off by the hamster movements, where they went, and what they did. He released a couple of particularly good sample results online; I still have one. It’s called HAMSTERS! and it’s by HAMSTERS!

This is kind of the same thing, only with tree rings and an optical scanning turntable, controlling a MIDI piano. And it’s kind of awesome:

Turning Tree Rings Into Music

Of course, the human is making lots of artistic judgements about what kinds of things can happen, when building the device. That was true for the hamster music as well. But even with those caveats, I still think of the result as Entmusic.

I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t agree

Still looking for house concert venues! Know any?

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

Echoed via dw:ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん. comments at Dreamwidth.

on walking the dog, or not.
lyonesse
2:56A Monday, 13 February 2012

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apparently this time she just wanted me to put on my coat and her leash, and stand there while she finished the dinner she couldn't eat at dinnertime....