Monthly Archives: June 2010
Site update and domain name redirect
| June 28, 2010 | Posted by annathepiper under Housekeeping |
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Folks, just wanted to note that as of this evening, I’ve moved angelakorrati.com into the small network of blogs I’m now running off the same install of WordPress 3.0. I’ve done this to allow myself to use just one code base and common pool of themes and plugins, and hopefully it’ll make my life a little easier!
The domain name angelakorrati.com should now redirect to the new version of the site. Both angelakorrati.com and www.angelakorrati.com should work–if they don’t, let me know!
I think all my posts and tags and categories have come over, and if you’ve commented on a previous angelakorrati.com post your comment should still be here. So should your ability to leave comments without me having to moderate you. If you see any problems with that functionality, again, let me know.
About the only thing I know doesn’t work correctly yet are the polls. I haven’t done a proper export of that data yet, and it may take me a bit to get that transferred over. I know you’re all aching to tell me who your favorite character in Faerie Blood was, I know. 
Anyway, long story short, I’m updating things.
Yesterday's writing metrics
| June 27, 2010 | Posted by annathepiper under Bone Walker, Child of Ocean Child of Stars, Mirror's Gate, Shadow of the Rook, Shards of Recollection, Short Pieces |
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I’ve hit another dry spell lately, which is annoying, so yesterday I decided to try to do something about that. Throwing small chunks of words at everything I have in progress seemed to help. I did at least over my usual desired target quota of 500, even if those 500 words were scattered across six works in progress.
It all means no real major progress in any of it, but at least there was small pointer advancement! We’ll see what I can do today.
Written on Mirror’s Gate, Chapter 2: 157
Written on Bone Walker, Chapter 11: 174
Written on Shards of Recollection, Chapter 1: 150
Written on Child of Ocean, Child of Stars: 26
Written on Shadow of the Rook: 30
Written on Untitled story about Elizabeth, psychic chick of size, and Ross, brother of a dead Warder: 34
Total words written yesterday: 571
Safe Upon the Shore of Faerie contest reminder!
| June 18, 2010 | Posted by annathepiper under Contests, Faerie Blood |
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Hey folks, I’ve gotten in a couple entries now on my Safe Upon the Shore of Faerie contest, but I’d really love to get more! Don’t forget, I’ll be taking entries until the release date of the new Great Big Sea album, which is July 13th!
Looking forward to seeing what other creative little snippets might show up on the post! And y’all should come over anyway and see what Jess and GutterBall have already submitted, ’cause they gave me some lovely little bits of prose, too!
The Safe Upon the Shore of Faerie contest!
| June 9, 2010 | Posted by annathepiper under Contests, Faerie Blood |
Y’all know what banishes the sting of two rejection letters in one week? A CONTEST, that’s what!
If you’ve hung around my other blog or its LJ or Dreamwidth mirrors for more than five minutes, you’ll have figured out fast that I’m a raving fangirl for Great Big Sea, a high-energy Celtic/folk band out of Newfoundland. I love these guys with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns. I particularly love them right now, because on July 13th, they’re going to put out a brand new album.
And this is where you guys come in! When they announced the album’s release date, they also released a shot of the cover art. The very first thing that popped into my head when I saw it was “gosh, that looks like the cover of a novel, I wonder what the story of those two people is!” And I want all of you to tell me!
You can see the cover art right here, since the album’s available for preorder on Amazon. Go take a look. Then come back and give me one of the following:
- A hypothetical title for the novel this scene might come from
- A caption describing the scene
- A drabble-length description of the scene (that’s 100 words, for those of you not familiar with fanfic terminology)
Bonus points will be awarded for clever humor, use of any element of the Faerie Blood universe, or anything referenced in the titles or lyrics of Great Big Sea songs. Extra bonus points will be given for use of more than one of these!
The winner of the contest will receive either a copy of the album, a copy of Faerie Blood, or a copy of Defiance, their choice!
If the winner chooses the album, I will either buy them a copy directly off of greatbigsea.com, or else send a gift certificate to the vendor of their choice from which they may purchase it themselves. If the winner chooses a physical CD, I will require a snailmail address to which to send it.
If the winner chooses either of my books, I will provide an electronic copy of same in the format of their choice.
Here are the official rules and other important things you need to know:
- I will accept entries up until the album’s release date, July 13th.
- Please submit entries on the angelakorrati.com original post, NOT on the LJ or DW mirror posts. This is so I can track all the entries in one place!
- Please enter only once.
- I am the final judge for who gets to win!
- Please keep the entries worksafe.
- This contest is not in any way officially connected to greatbigsea.com, although I did contact them about it and received the blessing of their site admins. I am running this contest purely as an exercise of my fandom for the band, and will be buying the winner’s copy of the album at my own expense.
- If you’re already a GBS fan and you plan to buy a copy of the album anyway, don’t let this stop you from participating! Albums make excellent gifts.
- Ditto for if you already own either or both of my books!
(And oh yeah: if you haven’t heard GBS before, or if you want a taste of the new album to help you decide whether you want it, scamper up to greatbigsea.com and look for their streaming player. Three songs from the album are currently available there. The title track, “Safe Upon the Shore”, is my current favorite; it’s full of tasty, tasty harmony! Go check it out.)
Unexpected character brainstorming FTW!
| June 2, 2010 | Posted by annathepiper under Bone Walker |
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Determined to write a couple hundred words for Bone Walker tonight, I lamented to that I had a logistics problem to solve as I started the new chapter. The issue with writing several characters who don’t normally drive, you see, is that when I have a situation that requires them to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible and magic is not immediately an option, and I’ve sent what members of the cast who are established to have vehicles off to do off-camera things, I’m kind of screwed!
I explained to Dara that I needed to get Christopher and Kendis from her house in Sand Point over to the East Side, and that time is of the essence for reasons on which I shall not elucidate, because of spoilers. She wryly suggested that in the Faerie Blood universe, maybe we do actually have the Mosquito Fleet of boats on Lake Washington, or that I could make a faerie/ferry pun of some sort, which might bear investigation later if certain long-term plans come to fruition for the future of these characters. More immediately, though, the best solution seemed to be just have them take Millie’s car.
Those of you who’ve read Faerie Blood may note that at no point in that book did I ever mention that Millicent Merriweather actually owned a vehicle. So when I mulled what sort of vehicle she might drive, Dara promptly started throwing me all sorts of amusing suggestions about cars for a woman of her age and history. As a result, I have decided that Millie has a 1982 brown Volvo, which used to belong to her husband and which she now drives as little as possible because 1) a Warder should walk her city’s streets, not drive them, 2) the car makes her miss her husband, and 3) driving is annoying in general. Especially in Seattle.
This will explain why the hell Kendis has spent the last two months in Millie’s company and never realized she had a car at all. It will also give me an excuse to have her and Christopher get into her car and take enough of a moment to double-take over how wait, what, Millie listens to Nirvana?
I’m tellin’ ya, Millie just keeps unfolding like a flower. Also, character brainstorming with your spouse rocks.
Meanwhile back on my still untitled story
| June 1, 2010 | Posted by annathepiper under Short Pieces |
My Psychic Chick story is still germinating in my brain, and tonight its heroine, Elizabeth ‘Ealasaid’ Breckenridge, who hides actual psychic talent behind a seemingly sham psychic-and-Tarot business, demanded I give her more words. So I gave her 547 of them, enough to move her first scene far enough along that she has now discovered two things:
- The story’s male lead, Ross Taggart, knew the instant he triggered her into having a vision that she’s the real deal, and
- Something very, very wrong has happened in connection to him.
I’m still mulling what that actual something very wrong is, but as of tonight, I’m pretty sure it has to do with the murder of his sister, who was the last Warder of the city of Providence, Rhode Island. Ross isn’t an active Warder himself, but he’s shall we say Aware of the Lineage, and therefore aware of magical things in general. So he ain’t gonna bat an eye at a psychic chick. All of which is going to be quite the eye-opener to Elizabeth. Muahaha.
I have also figured out by way of character development that Elizabeth has had to vehemently refuse to undergo any weight-loss surgery, despite pressure from her family and particularly her mother to do so. When you’re psychic and your visions can be triggered on casual contact, undergoing a major medical procedure which involves all sorts of contact all over your body just spells all kinds of trouble. I strongly suspect traditional anesthesia doesn’t work very well on her.
Eventually, I’ll give this thing a title! But it’s good to know that it’s a Faerie Blood universe story, that it’s set in Providence, and that my two lead characters are starting to come to life.
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