Monthly Archives: March 2009
Not to be distracted by the blog tour or anything
| March 31, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Faerie Blood |
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But editing of Faerie Blood RC1 does continue! Two chapters knocked out tonight with reasonably little pain; in particular, I was really rather satisfied to observe that the sequence at the beginning of Chapter 18 where Kendis and Christopher jam was almost entirely untouched. A little bit more tweaking needed to be done in 19, both from my editor and from stuff I noticed myself. I’ve found myself yanking out a lot of ellipses and adding in contractions–a result, I think, of me having spent so much time these last many months editing the hell out of Lament.
I won’t significantly reduce Faerie Blood‘s word count, I think, but fortunately I don’t have too. We’re holding pretty steady around 97K, which is a nice fast read! If I do say so myself.
Edited tonight: Up through Chapter 19; four more chapters to go!
Drollerie Blog Tour master post is up!
| March 31, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Drollerie Press, Faerie Blood |
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If you liked the piece I did with Joely featuring her character Herakles, you should go check out the rest of the March 2009 blog tour posts, linked in now on drolleriepress.com.
And I would be remiss if I didn’t encourage you all to in particular note the piece hosted by the fine David Sklar, featuring my very own favorite (fictional) bouzouki-playing Newfoundlander, Christopher MacSimidh, bumping into David’s hero Tam from Shadow of the Antlered Bird. Because Seattle is just chock full of fey like that, and a young Warder-to-be cannot help but find the fey even if he would really rather not!
Go! Enjoy the goodness, folks, and tell ‘em I sent you!
Drollerie Blog Tour: Joely Sue Burkhart's Herakles from Beautiful Death
| March 31, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Drollerie Press |
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For this month’s Drollerie Blog Tour the theme is Character Interviews. This is the piece that resulted with my working with Joely Sue Burkhart on an interview of her character Herakles from the novel Beautiful Death. Enjoy!
Only when she is safely behind the protection of her closed and locked apartment door does Iris let herself explode. She can swear with impunity; her domicile, after all, was the best that the salary of one of New Olympia’s top news anchors could be. The walls are very well insulated, both to keep any urban din without, and her own temper within. For good measure she seizes a few expendable and satisfyingly fragile trinkets, and takes vicious pleasure into hurling them into her fireplace. Each one shatters, and one, a slender glass bottle filled with potpourri, sends sharp bursts of fragrance into her living room as its contents burn.
Faerie Blood RC1, and Blog Tour tomorrow!
| March 30, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Drollerie Press, Faerie Blood |
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Only one chapter tonight, but that’s okay, because some of my writing-related time this evening went into finalizing the next post I’ll be putting up for tomorrow’s Drollerie Blog Tour! Y’all be sure to come by and see what I’ll be posting on behalf of Joely Sue Burkhart, giving y’all a glimpse of Marshal Herakles from Beautiful Death.
Went through Chapter 17 tonight, as well as tweaking a couple of small things in previous chapters to clear up things that niggled at me through this edit pass. And it has occurred to me, after all the yammering I’ve done about writing a book being a lot like doing a software release, that this is pretty much RC1 for this book. This brings me lulz.
Hopefully I’ll be able to pick up the pace tomorrow evening. I’m feeling a little off-kilter and am really hoping I’m not coming down with whatever crud is going around at work. Now is really not the time. Besides, I’ve got Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Season 4 DVDs to look forward to as my incentive for getting done with this edit pass! I can’t keel over now!
Edited tonight: Up through Chapter 17. Six more chapters to go!
Tonight's editing report
| March 29, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Faerie Blood |
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The Editing Marathon of a Whole Bunch of Editing continued through most of today. I didn’t get all the way to the end of the book–but I did make it about two-thirds of the way through.
Most of the changes my editor’s asked for continue to be small. Amusingly, though, a couple of the side characters have now been tweaked a bit. Jude’s ethnicity has changed a bit and Carson is now a Seattle native; I decided I needed a bit more representation of Seattle-born characters in the cast, in no small part because both of Seattle’s Warders in this book aren’t from Seattle at all.
Out of general technical interest I tried briefly to load my revision version of the manuscript into Open Office, just to see whether it would handle all the change-tracking stuff. The answer to this question, for those of you who might be interested, is “somewhat”. I did notice that the program had noted various changes that had been done, displaying the old text with strikethrough and the new text in blue. But it wasn’t nearly as cleanly handled as it is in Word.
So I guess when any future manuscripts of mine go into beta reading mode or (fingers crossed) being edited by actual editors, I’ll need to stick to Word for change tracking purposes. It’s just too damned useful that way.
Edited today and tonight: Up to the end of Chapter 16. Seven more chapters to go!
Editing!
| March 29, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Faerie Blood |
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I have now successfully navigated through revisions for the first six chapters of Faerie Blood. So far the experience has been very easy; it’s pretty much just like getting feedback from beta readers, especially given that most of my editor’s requested changes are quite minor. I’ve only found a couple that seem weird to me, so I’ve been able to spend some time thinking about those and coming up with possible compromise alternatives.
This is really rather fun!
And okay, yeah, fine, Word is a Microsoft product, Microsoft is evil blah blah blah blah–but I gotta say, Word’s Track Changes mode is super-useful. The ability to just drop in suggested changes and have another reviewer of the file accept or delete them is unbelievably helpful. So’s the ability to put in commentary. It does make me wonder whether non-Word word processors can interact with this feature at all. I’ll have to remember this for the next time I open up anything for beta reading.
Time for bed. More editing tomorrow.
Edited today and tonight: Up through Chapter 6! 17 more chapters to go.
Quick editing update
| March 25, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Faerie Blood, Lament of the Dove |
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Last night I did get in another paragraph in Lament which should be accounted for here. But now that I’ve gotten in the changes for Faerie Blood finally, Lament just dropped hard down the priority queue. We’ll see how this changes over the next couple of weeks, but at least through the weekend, I expect to be spending all my energy on FB.
Lament of the Dove:
Edited last night: +75
Chapter 19 revised total: 5,743
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 122,442
Faerie Blood:
Edited tonight: Reviewed changes for one chapter! 22 chapters to go.
Wait, what? There's Faerie Blood news? There IS!
| March 25, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Faerie Blood |
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Ladies and gentlemen, as of tonight I received from my editor her requested edits on Faerie Blood, and I have commenced sweeping through them. Furthermore, for icing on the cake, I have reviewed photos of several young women who might be potential inspiration for what my heroine could look like; think cover art here, people. And now, let me take a moment to stand back and admire this entire concept.
I’m reviewing changes. And cover art possibilities. From my editor. For my forthcoming book.
Aheh. Er. Sorry. That little squeeful squeak noise you just heard was me.
I just finished reviewing the changes on Chapter 1, of which there were not many. I’m going to see how fast I can plow through these over the weekend and get them back to my editor, and then we can see what happens next. I can’t guarantee Faerie Blood will be out by the end of April… but folks, we’re getting closer now.
I did edit a bit more of Lament as well last night, adding in about a paragraph. But Lament just dropped down the priority queue now that I’ve got these changes to review.
And we’ll see if Kendis winds up on the cover. I told my editor that I’ve always rather envisioned her as the child that Leetah and Rayek never had in Elfquest, and pointed her at the panel where Leetah and Rayek first come on camera in the online EQ archives. Maybe between that and one promising actual photo in the lot I’ve reviewed, we can come up with what Miss Kendis Thompson actually looks like.
Cross your fingers, folks, and watch this space for further updates!
Bottom of the page for victory! And 200 more words!
| March 23, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Lament of the Dove |
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Hit the bottom of page 13 in Chapter 19 of Lament tonight, and have finally gotten to a point where all this nice new content I’m throwing into this chapter can re-weave in with what’s already there. Which hopefully means that as of tomorrow night’s editing, I can start pulling this chapter’s unruly word count back under control. The word count I need to kill is back up to 5,500 or so, which is just not acceptable given that I’m still aiming at 117K.
Heh, “tomorrow night’s editing”, she says. Feeling pretty optimistic about holding to that, actually, now that my brain seems to pulling out of sleep dep mode. We’ll see what I can do.
Edited tonight: +209
Chapter 19 revised total: 5,668
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 122,367
Good lord, I actually wrote something!
| March 22, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Lament of the Dove |
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Not that I’m making any promises or anything–I’m still coming back online after that last round of surgery–but tweaking my thyroid meds intake has had the happy, happy result of giving me back some brain. Which in turn has been giving me back some sleep.
Some of this is coming in also from my old Pern fan group making noises about resurrecting itself, a possibility that has made my muse suddenly perk up; I’ve got a bunch of old characters from that group whose stories I never finished properly telling. I’m finding myself wondering whether I could use the prospect of rewarding myself with working on some of those old stories if I make good progress on finishing up Lament of the Dove‘s edit pass so I can get the damn thing queried again. Right now, I’ll take any inspiration I can get.
And this weekend, over yesterday and today, I actually made some progress on Chapter 19, so some kind of inspiration is happening. The word count is still going up–but I’m adding a lot of new content to this chapter. I suspect I’ll be balancing out this increase though once I plow into Chapter 21, the next Kestar chapter, which is quite long.
Cross your fingers for me anyway, folks. I may, just may, be back.
Edited yesterday and today: +536
Chapter 19 revised total: 5,459
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 122,158
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