Monthly Archives: July 2009
One more week on the name my iPhone poll!
| July 19, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Faerie Blood |
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I think probably all of y’all who will be voting on it have already done so, but just in case there are any of you who haven’t voted yet, the poll to name my iPhone is still open and will be running until the 27th.
Those of you who have names in the running, be sure you yourselves have voted! And feel free to put forth shameless campaigning in the comments to sway any last minute deciders. Be creative. I may well be tempted to give a consolation prize to the most creative campaign attempt!
New story in progress
| July 19, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Drollerie Press |
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So as of Friday I started slowly poking away at the new story I’ve been asked by my editor to write: the Civil War one set in the Faerie Blood universe. Only a tiny pittance of words so far, but it’s a start, and I have a soft deadline of August 10th and a hard deadline of August 30th to shoot for.
I do at least have the rough sketch of the plot worked out, so hopefully this should just be a question of whipping through the words. (She said, being long out of the habit of actually producing regular new words, and seriously needing to get back into it… so here’s hoping this thing will get me back in gear.)
The story is tentatively titled “The Blood of the Land”, which ties into the whole Warder thing with making blood ties to the land they’re protecting. And it’s a tie that can be broken or tainted, which is something I didn’t get into in Faerie Blood. This promises to be a darker and spookier story. I’m going to have fun with it.
Written Friday night: 90
Written today: 79
The Blood of the Land total: 169
The poll to name my iPhone is now OPEN
| July 13, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Faerie Blood |
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!
Faerie Blood around the net
| July 12, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Faerie Blood |
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The magic Google Alert gnomes have informed me that Faerie Blood is for sale on at least three different Mobipocket partner sites: The Plot Thickens (where I am apparently one of the books of the month), CyberRead, and a site in the Netherlands!
This is really kind of cool. Sort of the online equivalent of seeing my work on the shelf in a brick-and-mortar bookstore!
And yet, there’s no sign of me on Amazon yet. Gah!
Hey, Lament beta readers?
| July 12, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Lament of the Dove |
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I haven’t heard anything out of anyone besides , 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!
Since I've been asked, a contest addendum!
| July 8, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Faerie Blood |
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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. 
I'm getting an iPhone! And celebrating with a contest!
| July 8, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Faerie Blood |
So has himself a shiny new iPhone 3GS, and has gone and given his old first-gen iPhone to . 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!
Mobi-format Lament of the Dove
| July 7, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Lament of the Dove |
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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. 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 ! 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!
Y'all like chocolate, right?
| July 7, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Drollerie Press |
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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.
My word, I think I'm done
| July 5, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Lament of the Dove |
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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
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