Monthly Archives: November 2009
Sorry, Nanowrimo, just not happening this year!
| November 25, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Bone Walker |
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For the record: it’s pretty clear to me at this point that I’m not hitting that 50K, especially after not having written a word since this past Friday! A good chunk of the cause for this is of course because I scampered off to see my favorite band perform this past Saturday, and that blew any chance of getting any work done right out of my head! And for various reasons, I haven’t written anything since, either.
Tomorrow is of course American Thanksgiving, so it’s highly doubtful I’ll get anything done tomorrow, either. I shall see about resuming work on Bone Walker over the weekend, though, once we get past Turkey Day. I’m about to the point anyway where I need to take a step back and update the outline, and figure out how what I’ve written so far will affect the next several chapters.
Those of you still plugging away at Nanowrimo, good luck to you! Those of you who’ve crossed the finish line, congrats! And to all of you celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, may your companionship be fine and your dinner tasty, whatever that dinner may be!
Faerie Blood once again super-cheap on Fictionwise
| November 25, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Faerie Blood |
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I’d be remiss if I didn’t invite you folks to pop over to Fictionwise and partake of their shiny Black Friday sale, going on all week, in which all MultiFormat books are 45% off and all Secure format books get you a 45% Micropay rebate. This means, ladies and gentlemen, that until Friday you can score a copy of Faerie Blood for $3.82 if you’re not a member of the BuyWise club, and $3.25 if you are!
And of course all other Drollerie works in the Fictionwise database are included in this same sale, so this would be a lovely time to get not only my book but choice selections by my fellow Drollerie authors as well. Our latest releases, including the Defiance anthology, aren’t up there yet–but you can score a bunch of our earlier stuff. Go check it out, folks!
Meanwhile, hurray, Defiance is on Amazon!
| November 20, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Defiance |
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In much, much faster turnaround time, Amazon now has Defiance available for purchase!
So if you’d like to score yourself some period goodness from , , and myself, and you’re a Kindle owner or a user of the Kindle app on the iPhone, I invite you to go and make with the clicky! Thanks in advance for your support.
Harlequin founds vanity imprint; Internet asplodes!
| November 19, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Publishing, The Internet |
Now I know several of you likely to be reading this are writers, either already published or aspiring to get that way. Among you, I know that several are specifically involved with the romance genre or the urban fantasy/paranormal romance genre. So you’re probably already aware of the huge debacle that’s exploded across the publishing blogs the last couple of days about Harlequin opening up a shiny new vanity publishing imprint.
I posted earlier this week about another new Harlequin venture, Carina Press. Which I thought was pretty awesome. Harlequin’s new vanity imprint? Not so much.
Here are a whole bunch of links expounding on the brouhaha:
- Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware (which you should be reading if you’re not already) gives an overview of the situation and why it’s of deep concern
- Pub Rants, the blog of agent Kristin Nelson, brings the news of the Romance Writers of America issuing a very strong statement against this, and what they’re going to do about it
- Making Light chimes in with news of the RWA statement and much discussion in the comments
- Smart Bitches Trashy Books addresses the issue, and a whole heckuva lot of heat about self-publishing vs. vanity publishing can be found in the comments
- Author Jackie Kessler does a breakdown of the concept of Harlequin Horizons and explains exactly why the various stunts they’re trying to pull are bad
- Writer Beware posts a statement in from the Mystery Writers of America, also strongly against this development
- Kristin Nelson breaks the news that Harlequin is now backpedaling on the “Harlequin Horizons” brand name on the imprint but no word yet about whether further retractions will occur
- Most relevant to my interests as an SF/F author, SFWA weighs in with a very, very strong statement of their own
- Inevitably, Fandom Wank has put up a post since there’s some sideshow wankery involved, featuring a flamewar in the abovementioned SB thread, and a very snarky article from the New Yorker
My take on the matter? Well, initially I was going to say that I didn’t really have a horse in this race, since I’m an SF/F author, not a romance author–but pointed out and quite correctly that actually, any writer of fiction has a horse in this race. The reason for this is that if Harlequin actually pulls off doing this imprint of theirs, it’s highly likely that other big NY-based publishers will follow suit. As Writer Beware calls out, a couple already have, although they’ve apparently taken pains to be less obvious about it in their branding.
And, the big sticking point for me is that according to the spin that was going around the Smart Bitches thread from a Harlequin rep, they will be including in standard rejection letters an upsell to the vanity imprint. Which essentially means that an author who comes to Harlequin via traditional publishing routes and who gets rejected would be getting told “we don’t think your book is good enough to be a Real Book, but if you pay us enough money, we’ll humor you and print it anyway!”
This goes against the unshakeable law of writing: money flows to the author. Always.
So yeah, this is huge and the furor is still ongoing. I’ll be very, very interested to see what Harlequin does now that they have not one, not two, but three professional writers’ organizations angry with them.
First review in for Defiance!
| November 18, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Defiance, Short Pieces |
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Check it out you guys, Soleil Noir has some lovely things to say about Defiance over here.
About my story “The Blood of the Land” in particular, she says:
This is set in the world of Angela’s previous book “Faerie Blood”. A book I read and enjoyed. I have to say though, I actually liked this story more.
Go check out the review for the full text, and also what she has to say about and ‘s pieces as well!
Faerie Blood is super-cheap on Fictionwise today
| November 16, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Faerie Blood |
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It seems that Fictionwise is having themselves an Indie publisher sale this week. All MultiFormat (read: DRM-free and downloadable in any format you want) books are 30 percent off!
And since Drollerie is a MultiFormat publisher on Fictionwise, that means, ladies and gents, that you could pick up Faerie Blood from that site for a cool $4.14.
If you pick it up TODAY, there’s even a coupon that runs until tomorrow, FANTASYNOW, which will knock 25 percent off any Fantasy novels! So you could get a total of 55 percent off of Faerie Blood that way!
Sharing this because, y’know, I care. 
Nanowrimo catchup: Up to Day 15
| November 15, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Bone Walker |
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Well, I’m at the halfway mark, and it seems apparent to me at this point that 50K by the end of the month isn’t too likely given how my daily rate has gone so far this month. But on the other hand, I’ve continued to write every day so far this month–and this weekend in particular, I’ve had a particularly good run with nearly 2,500 words yesterday and a K today.
This puts me at 13K and change. At minimum, if I make 500 words a day every day for the rest of the month, I should make about 22K–but I’m thinking 26K is not out of the question. I’m going to keep going, regardless. The Nano cred would be shiny, but finishing Faerie Blood‘s first sequel? Shinier.
I’m about to finish up Chapter 5 as of tonight. Jude’s life has just gotten quite a bit more difficult, though she doesn’t realize it yet. And I’ve enjoyed writing a tender moment between Christopher and a very worried Kendis. More updates as they happen!
Written on the 10th: 584
Written on the 11th: 515
Written on the 12th: 537
Written on the 13th: 215
Written yesterday: 2,454
Written today and tonight: 1,019
Chapter 4 total: 2,882
Chapter 5 total: 2,442
Bone Walker total (first draft): 13,751
Nanowrimo Day 9: Another chapter down
| November 10, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Bone Walker |
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Finished up Chapter 3 tonight, and am closing in on the 8,500 mark. I should have written more–but hey, new release and site updates distracting me and all! So I think I can forgive myself.
I am amused to observe that despite the fact that I wrote out six chapters’ worth of outline for this thing, I’ve already gone off script. Carson and Jake muscled their way into the scene in Chapter 3, which is probably a damn good thing for Elessir, since that boy’s in sorry condition right out of the gate, and Jake is a retired EMT! That’s my characters for you, always willing to screw up plot plans for the greater good.
On a bigger picture level, one of the early plot points in my head appears to have shifted around on me as well, in terms of how I’m going to introduce it. I think it’ll still be in the next chapter, but there will be no buildup for it yet because everybody’s already being distracted by Elessir and Melisanda coming on camera. But once I have the next big plot ball in the air, that’ll be the last of the initial plot points, and then I can start working on complications on those.
And Elessir hitting on Kendis. Wait, did I say that out loud?
Written tonight: 524
Chapter 3 total: 2,963
Bone Walker total (first draft): 8,427
Site update, and more on Defiance
| November 9, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Defiance |
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In honor of the shiny new anthology Defiance being released, I’ve updated the site to celebrate the new cover. Y’all should see both of my works listed on the sidebar of my site now, and the color scheme’s been flipped back to blue to go with the new banner.
Also, I’ve shifted all my works in progress off to a new In Progress subpage of Books, because I wanted to spruce up the Books page a bit now that there are two things on it!
Please to note that so far Defiance is only available via the Drollerie bookshop, but we have it in all our usual formats: PDF, ePub, Microsoft Reader, Sony, and Mobipocket, so any of these should hopefully suit your ebook-reading needs! I will of course post further link updates as the book makes its way out into the wild. I have added the book to Goodreads, but if any of you out there who are LibraryThing users want to add it on that site, please feel free!
And oh yeah–I’ve been sent my personal copy and have gotten my editor’s leave to do a promo or two. So y’all be out on the lookout for another drawing forthcoming!
Now taking requests for next FB-universe short story
| November 9, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Drollerie Press, Polls, Short Pieces |
My fellow Drollerie author has cordially invited me to submit something for the pair of anthologies he is editing along with , Trafficking in Magic and Magic in Trafficking. I will not be able to tackle writing something for them until after Nanowrimo is over, but December is looking potentially interesting! So all I need to do is figure out what exactly I’d like to write for them.
This is where you folks come in! I’m really rather liking the idea of using short stories to explore other glimpses of the Faerie Blood universe as I’ve already done with “The Blood of the Land”, but I’m not sure yet what sort of story might fit into the requirements for this pair of anthos. Want to help me decide? Then answer the following poll! (Readers on LJ or LJ-clones, please come on over to my WordPress site to vote!)
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