Category: Short Pieces
More site updates and reminder re: buying Faerie Blood and short story
| January 8, 2012 | Posted by annathepiper under Faerie Blood, Housekeeping, Short Pieces |
I’ve done a bit more tweaking of the site layout and content tonight, trying to make the main page a bit less busy, but also still visually interesting. So I’m experimenting with the post layout–let me know if you think the columns work.
I’ve also removed a few of the sidebar widgets. The Links/Blogroll widget has been turned into an actual Links page, since I had enough links that I thought they might as well have their own page. I’ve also created menu items for my Facebook and Twitter accounts under the “Contact” menu to give those higher visibility, and I’ve provided a link off to my annathepiper.org blog for those of you who might care to follow that. (I’m a lot more prolific on that blog than I am on this one, which remains writing-related!)
Meanwhile, I’ve updated the FAQ, Faerie Blood, and Defiance pages to reflect the status of my former Drollerie works. Since I’ve seen a few folks on Goodreads have continued to add me to their To Read lists (hi, Goodreads folks!), I just thought I’d issue a reminder: Faerie Blood and Defiance are to my knowledge no longer for sale with any ebook vendor. (If they are, and you can point me at a link, let me know! Drollerie needs to take any further instances of the book down if they’re out there.)
But if you haven’t read the book or the short story and you want to, I’ll be happy to hand-sell a copy to you. For Faerie Blood, I’m asking five dollars for an EPUB or PDF copy (and I’ll convert it to other formats on request). For “The Blood of the Land”, I’m asking 99 cents. The best way to pay me for either will be via Paypal to my gmail address, annathepiper. If you’d like to discuss alternate payment arrangements, drop me an email to the same gmail address, or visit my Contact page.
These prices will stand until my plans to self-publish Faerie Blood and Bone Walker go through, as per my previous Kickstarter post. Anyone who’d like to go ahead and buy Faerie Blood now will receive the Drollerie release copy, though I will also provide updated copies to known purchasers of the book once the self-pubbed version is ready.
Note also that I am pursuing self-pubbing “The Blood of the Land” with new cover art and layout; what you’ll get now if you want to go ahead and buy it is my manuscript copy. Again, though, if you buy the story now, I will keep track of you and provide you a free copy of the self-pubbed copy later!
As always, thanks for your support, folks. Y’all on Goodreads, hope you’ll like my book!
Cyber Monday Faerie Blood
| November 28, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Faerie Blood, Short Pieces |
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Since Faerie Blood is no longer officially for sale anywhere (and what few places it’s remaining I’m not likely to see any money from), I wanted to remind y’all that if you haven’t read the book and you want to, I’ll be happy to direct-sell it to you!
And since it’s Cyber Monday, let’s make this easy!
I have three CDs left from my previous stock. These include both a PDF and an ePUB copy of Faerie Blood, and along with it, a PDF of my short story “The Disenchanting of Princess Cerridwen”. If you’d like one of these, five bucks to all comers, including the cost of shipping it to you if you’re not local to me.
ETA: All three CDs have now been spoken for. However, if you’d still like a CD copy of Faerie Blood vs. one just emailed to you, talk to me and we can work something out!
If you’d like to just buy a copy of Faerie Blood directly from me, let’s call that four bucks, and you should specify if you want a PDF or an ePUB copy.
If you’d like a copy of my short story “The Blood of the Land”, previously published in the anthology Defiance, you can have that for .99. Again, please specify your desired format.
And I’ll give you Faerie Blood and “The Blood of the Land” both for an even five bucks.
The best way to pay me would be via PayPal, addressed to my gmail address annathepiper. If you want one of the CDs, you should also email me directly at the same address with an appropriate address to send the CD to you!
I will keep these prices valid not only through today, but also through the rest of the holiday season. Please feel free to spread a link to this post around as well if you so desire!
Raising money for Japan relief efforts
| March 14, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Faerie Blood, Short Pieces |
Okay, folks, here’s the deal:
Like most of the rest of the world, my heart aches for what’s going on in Japan. As an American there’s not much I can do from here–but what I can do is donate my money, which I have already done. But as a writer, I can also donate what tiny profits I get from my labors. And I’d really like to do this. So here’s a few things I’m going to do.
One: I have six, count ‘em, six Lightscribe CDs left over of the discs I made of Faerie Blood, with the additional free story “The Disenchanting of Princess Cerridwen”, back in the fall of last year. Same price as before ($8 to local persons, $10 if I need to mail the disc to you), but I will donate 100 percent of that price to Doctors Without Borders so that they can do what they need to do.
I have four of these left in green cases and two in yellow. First come first serve. If more than six people are interested, I will burn more copies of the same disc and offer you your choice of case color.
Two: If at least twenty people are interested, I will do a commissioned short story in the Faerie Blood universe, 8-10 thousand words, and it will star Kendis’ kitsune housemate Jake, who is Japanese-American. It will likely feature his meeting and romance of his future partner Carson.
As with the CDs, I will donate 100 percent of any money raised to Doctors Without Borders. I won’t set a hard price; let’s call this a Pay What You Think It’s Worth effort. If people would like to buy in on this, I’m going to set a deadline of letting me know to be two weeks from today, March 28th. And I will commit to delivering the story by the end of April.
If you want to work with me on either option One or option Two, I can take Paypal at my pro gmail address, angela.korrati. If you’re not Paypal-enabled, talk to me offline and we can talk about arrangements to send a check or money order and a proper receipt in exchange by snailmail.
If neither of these options appeal, I wholeheartedly encourage you to please, please, PLEASE find a charity of your choice and donate what you can to those relief efforts. And if you would, please consider spreading the word of these two offers through whatever channels you have at your disposal. Thanks all.
And in addition to queries today
| January 30, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Bone Walker, Short Pieces |
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I have thrown just under 300 words into the still-untitled story of Elizabeth and Ross, and have accordingly finished its first scene. Elizabeth has agreed to help this desperate guy whose sister has been murdered. God help her. 
I’ve also thrown a few measly words into Chapter 11 of Bone Walker, but not much to speak of. The muse mostly wanted Elizabeth and Ross tonight.
Let’s see what I can do tomorrow. Bed now.
200 words ain’t much
| January 12, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Short Pieces |
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But it’s better than zero!
Mostly nicely tired from going out to play music at tonight’s session, and didn’t get home until ten or so. Which didn’t leave much time to write, so I opted for just a couple hundred words of something. That something’s gone into the still-untitled Elizabeth/Ross story, and in them, our heroine gets to flip out as our hero begs her to have another go at the vision that just clued her in about the murder of his sister.
Suffice to say Elizabeth ain’t havin’ NONE of that.
There will be movie watching tomorrow night, but I’m going to aim for a similar small chunk of effort afterwards, just to keep to the Do Something Every Day Dammit resolution. Twelve days in on the year and so far so good!
More planning for Oscar
| January 11, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Short Pieces |
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No brand new words tonight; instead, I’ve been taking down notes about the Oscar story and trying to get some idea of the other involved characters, and what the plot might be.
After my chat in email with my editor 
serasempre
I have only the beginning picture of the Warder in question, but I’m pretty sure she’s somewhat older than Oscar. Old enough that she is established in her power, but young enough to be still in her prime. Old enough though that she might look askance at Oscar as a potential romantic figure–and that’s okay anyway because if there’s any romance in this story, I actually want to downplay it hard. Touch more on the hint of potential rather than state anything outright, and focus instead on these two characters reaching out to one another because of their common love of music; hey, if it works for Aubrey and Maturin, it should work for Oscar and this Warder.
The setting is rural and coastal, although I haven’t nailed down where yet to my satisfaction. Nor am I a hundred percent sure that it’s set in “current day”; still thinking about that. (Since the trio of stories I have proposed to Deena will have one period piece and one current day, this one could I think be either.)
The plot that’s starting to take shape is that a migration of Big Creatures–some form of sea-based dragon–is violently interrupted when one or more of them are hunted and killed. My Warder woman is all about putting a stop to that, but it’ll turn out that it has to be Oscar who’ll be challenged to the musical duel, with the stakes being the lives of the remaining dragons. And my antagonist, not being an idiot, will be clever enough to yoink Oscar out of a Warder’s territory first. Muahaha.
More than that I don’t think I’ll get into, because then I’ll start getting spoilery. Suffice to say that the story is beginning to take shape.
Oh hey look Chapter 20!
| January 9, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Bone Walker, Short Pieces |
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I’ve finally pulled through the end of Chapter 19, and now I’m in Chapter 20! I’ve noticed that Chapter 19′s the only one in this draft of Lament thus far to have actually gained a couple hundred words, but that’s okay–I’d actually pulled in content from Chapter 17, after all. Given how much I’ve edited out of the chapter to make up for that, winding up with only a couple hundred extra words works for me.
Chapter 20 is one of the smaller ones in the last stretch of the book, so I’m not sure yet how much I’ll edit out of it yet. But it’s good to get the momentum going again.
Meanwhile, I’ve pinged my editor serasempre
Which leads me into thinking that Oscar’s story may well wind up in the FB universe now, and and that it could wind up being a novella. That’d work quite a bit for me. I’m thinking that Oscar’s story, Elizabeth and Ross’s story, and Millicent’s origin story would be a lovely trio of things to have in one book.
More on this to come!
No words accomplished tonight…
| January 3, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Short Pieces |
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But that’s okay, because I’ve been doing planning on the Psychic Chick of Size story. Y’all remember that one, right? The one with Elizabeth, the Psychic Chick of Size, and Ross, the brother of a murdered Warder?
The muse demanded I give that story some hardcore thought tonight to see if I can actually get it properly planned out, and figure out whether it’s going to be a short story, a novella, or a proper novel. I also needed to identify the culprit, and nail down what his or her motives are. And I’m pleased to report that while I have to finish writing out the rest of the outline notes, I do actually now have the plot nailed down!
I won’t tell you too much about the story for fear of spoilers, but I will say this: the culprit hasn’t just murdered a Warder. He or she is aiming for bigger prey–and the Sidhe are about to be very, very NOT AMUSED.
Also: I’m pretty sure this is going to wind up novella-length or so, based on the rough notes I’m getting and how much I know about my own tendencies of word count. But I’ll be better able to tell once I get some actual scenes sketched out. I still need a title, though, not to mention some idea of what I’ll want to do with this story once it’s actually finished.
For my own reference, just to remind myself, the current word count on the piece is at 1,981 and I’m not out of the first scene yet. Like I said: this smells like a novella.
And yay, three days in a row of doing Things That Further the Writing!
2011 says HIYA! And also, bring it
| January 1, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Bone Walker, Child of Ocean Child of Stars, Lament of the Dove, Mirror's Gate, Queen of Souls, Shadow of the Rook, Shards of Recollection, Short Pieces |
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So by and large, 2010 went pretty well for me on a personal level–but not quite so much on a writing level. I’d like to change that this year, and that means getting Seriously Back on the Stick. Here are various goals I’m going to aim for this year. Sooner is better, but I’m not going to nail time frames down to these because really, the overall goal boils down to this: Get Back My Writing Discipline. Anything above and beyond that will be cake.
In general order of priority, these are the main goals:
- First and foremost: finish the edit pass on Lament of the Dove and get the revised manuscript back to Carina Press. Current status: Chapter 19 of the word count reduction pass.
- Follow up with Drollerie as to whether Bone Walker will actually be feasible for Drollerie to pursue this year, and if so, what they need from me to make it happen. Either way, I should go ahead and finish it. Current status: still in chapter 11, and I’m about to the point where I need to plan out what’s going to happen for the rest of the book.
- Review where I left off with editing Queen of Souls and get that into queryable shape. Current status: still pretty much on Chapter 2 of the second draft.
Everything above and beyond these things is a stretch goal, right now. This includes all of the current notable works in progress, which are:
- Shadow of the Rook. Current status: Made it into Chapter 4 before serious edits to Lament made it clear the beginning of Shadow will have to be heavily reworked as well. Therefore, Shadow will remain on hold until Lament‘s edits are done.
- Mirror’s Gate. Current status: Chapter 2.
- Child of Ocean, Child of Stars. Current status: Interlude between Chapters 3 and 4.
- Shards of Recollection. Current status: Chapter 1.
- Still-untitled Faerie Blood-universe piece starring Elizabeth the psychic, and Ross the brother of a murdered Warder. It’s still not clear to me whether this piece is going to be a novella or a novel in its own right. Review of it must occur.
And oh yes: I DO still intend to do the last couple of How to Read Ebooks posts, as well as any further ones that occur to me. If anyone has specific requests about ebook-related things you’d like to see me post, please let me know!
Tonight, I can safely say that editing of Lament has happened. I doublechecked Chapter 18 and realized there was another minor scene with Celoren that I could completely nuke–partly because it didn’t really advance the plot much, and partly because removing it also addressed one of the various issues from Carina’s editor. And I’ve headed into Chapter 19, where I’ve re-discovered that I did leave this chapter in a bit of a mess after cleaning up the tail end of 17. Now I get to clean that mess up.
It’s also become clear that I will indeed be swinging back around for a sixth draft once the word count reduction draft is done. It’ll have to be the sixth draft where I go back in and put in significant new content.
And since I’ve made it a couple of pages into Chapter 19, about 20 minutes shy of midnight, I’ll call that today’s writing-related activity. More tomorrow. DAMMIT.
Edited tonight: Quite a bit, actually
Chapter 18 revised total: 3,750
Chapter 19 revised total: 5,815
Lament of the Dove revised total (fifth draft): 105,783
Word count metrics update
| August 29, 2010 | Posted by annathepiper under Bone Walker, Mirror's Gate, Shadow of the Rook, Short Pieces |
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I’ve been in another prolonged writing funk, which has been frustrating–so tonight I tried another round of throwing tiny bits of words at stuff. Got up to just over 200 by throwing small words at four different things, so I’ll take that!
So we’ve got 51 words into Chapter 4 of Shadow of the Rook, which is currently in the middle of an Enverly scene–his first since the events at the end of Lament of the Dove. Let’s just say Father Enverly has had his first actual religious experience, shall we?
Mirror’s Gate is still in Chapter 2, with Yevanya going to have a friendly little chat with her dead husband’s former teacher and colleague, which should set her up nicely to learn some disturbing things about what’s going on in the city of Istra. 57 words to that, and I gotta say, I rather like this fragment:
Genrek was a great hulk of a man, towering over her by many inches, and yet she had never found him anything but amiable in his gruff fashion. She always supposed it was not because he found her fragile and dainty; next to Genrek many things were, such as carriages, hills, and the smaller varieties of bear.
Over in Bone Walker, I’m still in Chapter 11, with Kendis and Christopher about to get hugely distracted from the question of whether Christopher can, in fact, cross Lake Washington. ‘Cause something is about to give them a disturbing little phone call. 52 words there.
And last but not least, in the still untitled Warder-universe story of Elizabeth and Ross, Elizabeth is realizing that she has no business snarking on a man who’s just told her his dead sister was the magical defender of the city. Not when she is, herself, a psychic. 67 words here.
So yeah. 227 words total. Not much overall, but something!
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