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!
RIP Anne McCaffrey
| November 22, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Other People's Books |
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Like most of the rest of the net, I’m seeing the news today that Anne McCaffrey has passed away. The initial link I was given is here, and another early report link is here. They’re saying she had a massive stroke.
This one hurts, people.
I remember the Pern books being among the very first SF/F books I read as an adolescent. In turn, they influenced other books I went in search of–notably, Sharon Shinn’s Samaria series, which always struck me as Pern-like in flavor. And as I’ve mentioned in the past, I get huge echoes back to Pern through the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik, as well.
PernMUSH is one of the three MUSHes that formed the bulk of my online roleplaying history, and almost at the same time I joined PernMUSH, I also joined the offline group Telgar Weyr. Like many in Pern fandom, I had my share of issues with many details of Anne’s world, and eventually I actually enjoyed Pern fandom in many ways more than I did the original canon material. But I cannot deny that she created a world that had a massive, massive influence on me. To this day I have friendships that were forged because of Pern fandom.
PernMUSH established my ability to roleplay–and by extension, to write–from a male point of view, since F’hlan was the first significant male character I ever played. F’hlan taught me a great deal about the kinds of male characters I liked to play, and how to keep a long-running romantic relationship lively. (Melora, I am looking at you.)
I must also give mad props to the Crystal Singer books, since a significant bit of my roleplay history was on CrystalMUSH as well. Killashandra Ree, I loved you. You led me to roleplaying Kevlan Sharr, Tance Vokrim, Jerrik Rawn Deegan, and Tamber al-Acorrin (who had the distinction of being the first gay character I ever played on a MUSH).
Because of all the writing I’ve done for Pern fandom, McCaffrey’s influence on me as a writer has certainly also been profound. I have characters that still vividly live in my head, and make sad faces at me that I haven’t ever properly finished their stories, or otherwise adapted them into characters I can put into my own work. McCaffrey’s been a template for me on how to do strong female characters–and, since I always took issue with her penchant for setting up strong female characters only to have them eventually play second fiddle to their men, she contributed to my resolve to never do that with my own heroines. Similarly, as I was always unhappy that she gave queer males a presence on Pern but never queer women, that has set a goal for me to achieve in my own work.
I even met Ms. McCaffrey once, way back in the day when 
solarbird
John Scalzi has a post up for her here. The Fandom Lounge on JournalFen speaks for her here. And Tor.com has an announcement post here.
The sound you hear, O Internets, is every single dragon I have ever written or roleplayed for keening. Gold Timbrith. Bronze Tzornth. Bronze Valreth. Brown Trollith. Blue With. Green Yfandeth. Likewise, all of my characters at Far Cry Hold must mourn.
RIP, DragonLady, and thank you so much for your works and how you have molded my life. You will be missed.
ETA: lyonesse
Also, io9 now has a post up.
ETA #2: GeeksAreSexy.net chimes in here. Suvudu has a post up here.
More Drollerie authors re-pubbing
| November 15, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Other People's Books |
C.G. Bauer, who wrote the excellent little horror novel Scars on the Face of God, has reissued his book as a self-pubbed ebook to Amazon and Smashwords. I’ve actually read this one, and can attest it was quite good; my old review post for it is here.
Meanwhile, Rachael Olivier has reissued her book The Holly and the Ivan as a self-pubbed paperback via Lulu.com. You can find that over here.
I’m hearing rumblings from a few other of my fellow former Drollerie authors that they’ll be reissuing their works in self-pubbed form, too; in particular, keep an eye out for Joely Sue Burkhart’s Shanhasson trilogy. If you liked Faerie Blood or Defiance, do consider finding and supporting these other works! I will keep posting links as I find them.
Drollerie authors finding new homes
| November 14, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Other People's Books |
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Drollerie may have fallen out from under us, but I’m relieved to see the first wave of my fellow Drollerie authors finding homes for their work elsewhere. With that in mind, I’d like to commend to your attention my fellow ex-Drollerie author John B. Rosenman, whose book Alien Dreams has gotten a new home at Crossroad Press. The book, if you are so inclined, can be found on that site here.
Give John a look if you’re SF-inclined, and tell him I sent you, won’t you? Thank you!
Canceling feed from annathepiper.org
| October 29, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Annathepiper.org, Housekeeping |
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Decided I didn’t like the duplication of posts from annathepiper.org over to angelakorrati.com. It works as advertised, but I’ve decided that as spread as I am across various social networks, another layer of spreading wasn’t really necessary.
I will however be exploring other options to make it easy for people who visit the angelakorrati.com site to see the annathepiper.org content as well if they so desire. I’ll also be putting some serious thought into just merging the two blogs anyway, which would reduce the amount of WordPress housekeeping I have to do. Which would be nice.
That said, though, if you find you have a need for a WordPress plugin that can syndicate content for you, feedwordpress seems to work splendidly.
Closure of Drollerie Press
| October 21, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Drollerie Press, Faerie Blood |
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Sadness. My editor Deena Fisher has now officially announced the closure of Drollerie Press. I’ve already been working with assistant editor Selena Green on the reversion of rights for Faerie Blood, so this comes as no real surprise. But still, it is a moment of sadness.
I’ve been off of Amazon for a bit already, but I’m seeing now that I’m off of B&N’s site and off of Google’s ebooks site as well. Fictionwise and Mobipocket and Scribd and eReader.com still have me, but I expect I’ll be vanishing off of them eventually. Moving forward, I will be willing to direct-sell copies of Faerie Blood to interested parties until I find it a new home. For now I’m not going to repost it anywhere myself. Once the reversion of rights is complete, I do want to re-query it to what markets are still available, most likely in conjunction with Bone Walker once I finish writing that. So until that time, if you’d like to read it and you haven’t already, please feel free to contact me directly and we’ll talk.
And if you know other Drollerie authors, especially if you’ve purchased their work, please consider giving them virtual hugs–and express to them that you did in fact buy and enjoy their work. Drollerie authors have written some wonderful things, and I hope that all of us will be able to find good places for our work in the future.
Most of all I’d like to express my appreciation for the work Deena has done, as well as Selena and JoSelle who have worked tirelessly with us authors to try to get all of our books back into our hands. As one who has suffered her share of medical difficulty, I very much feel for how Deena’s health issues have impacted her, and I am hopeful that she will have as easy a recovery as possible.
As always, thank you all for your support!
Trying an experiment
| October 3, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Annathepiper.org |
I’ve been thinking for some time that it’s a little weird that most of my blog posts are on my personal blog, annathepiper.org, while angelakorrati.com remains fairly inactive. Two reasons why this is weird:
- If somebody casually visits angelakorrati.com, they may miss my far more frequent posts on annathepiper.org, and therefore miss more of what I’m generally like online, and
- The vast majority of writer blogs I’m familiar with don’t differentiate between just writing-related posts and personal ones.
So I’m trying an experiment. I’ve found a plugin that lets me syndicate posts off of one blog into another, so I’ll be using it to try to roll posts from annathepiper.org onto angelakorrati.com.
Note: if you are reading me via Livejournal or Dreamwidth, you are already seeing my direct mirrored copies of the posts on both blogs. This new plugin should NOT echo over onto LJ or Dreamwidth, if I understand it correctly. It’s ONLY for people directly reading on angelakorrati.com.
So if you happen to actually be reading angelakorrati.com directly via RSS, and you’re also reading annathepiper.org, you might try dropping the latter to avoid duplication of posts.
Let me know if you see any problems, people. If this works out I’ll leave it be. Otherwise I’m going to consider just merging the blogs, since I’m finding it also just slightly weird to be splitting up my posting efforts anyway.
The state of Drollerie Press (and Faerie Blood)
| September 23, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Drollerie Press, Faerie Blood |
This has started getting talked about in a few public places, so I’m going to go ahead and address it here. Long story short, Drollerie Press is in a slow state of collapse, pretty much due to the ongoing serious health issues our senior editor, serasempre
There are rumors that Drollerie may be sold, but at this time they are only rumors. I have however taken the step of asking for the return of my rights to Faerie Blood. I don’t have a confirmed date as to when this will happen, given that it (like all other outstanding things that editor Deena needs to take care of) is dependent upon her ability to get to it. But given that this is now in the queue, if you want Faerie Blood, you should go ahead and get it from the site of your choice. Drollerie’s own site is your best bet as that’s the source most likely to get me any payment for it.
Or, if you are so inclined, I have a small number of CD copies of Faerie Blood still available. If you’re local to me, you can have one for $5. If you’re not local, you can have one for $7.
What I will do with the book once I have it back remains to be seen. Much will depend upon whether Drollerie is in fact sold (in which case the possibility exists that new management may be interested in keeping it), or on whether I can find a home for it where the book hasn’t already been queried. I have received Good Advice that one way to go about that may well be to finish Book 2 and query them together. We’ll see.
Bone Walker remains the most likely means through which I could query Faerie Blood anywhere else, since that’ll wind up being a full novel. The current novella-length pieces I’m thinking about for the Warder universe (the Oscar story, the Elizabeth/Ross story, the Millicent origin story) will also have to be considered.
More on this as I know it, all.
Hiatus report
| September 10, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Lament of the Dove |
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Here I am on Saturday, so I thought I’d go ahead and tell y’all about what progress I’ve made on Lament of the Dove. Short form–not as much as I would have liked. Chances are high I’m not going to be finished by tomorrow.
But, and this is the important thing: I’m really happy with what I’ve achieved. I made it into Chapter 20, only to discover that I had to rewrite pretty much 2/3rds of the entire chapter in order to accomplish one of the last remaining changes on the Carina editor’s request list: i.e., giving Faanshi a better path of development, and demonstrating to the reader that she begins to progress in getting a handle on her power.
For the last few days I’ve therefore been inching my way through rewriting Chapter 20. I’ve made substantial progress on it, and I think the result’s going to be a much more dynamic chapter overall. It’s not only aiming for the Faanshi goal I mentioned, but also to raise the stakes on her link with Kestar, as I’m trying to demonstrate that yes, it is an active danger to both of them.
This means I’m likely going to have to rewrite some of Chapter 21 as well, since that’s the next Kestar chapter, and he’ll have to react to some of this new stuff I’m writing in Chapter 20. We’ll see how far I get by tomorrow night, and if I can keep up the momentum over the next couple of weeks. I still want to get Lament squared away soon, ideally with enough time to let beta readers look over this hopefully final draft before solarbird
Wish me luck, all!
Sometimes, bigotry doesn’t pay
| September 6, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Other People's Books |
I know, I know, I’m supposed to be rigged for silent running this week. I’m waking up again to post this, because it’s important.
As y’all know I’m a member of the Outer Alliance, and the word broke today over the OA’s mailing list about a particularly noxious little adaptation of nothing less than Hamlet, by Orson Scott Card. Those of you who’ve been following this issue already, or who already know about Card’s rampant homophobia, you know where I’m going with this.
According to this review, his big shocking change to the story is that Hamlet’s father was not only gay, he was also a child molester. That he molested Horatio and Laertes and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, thereby turning all of them gay. And, as a cherry on top of the bigotry sundae, Hamlet’s dad’s ghost is looking forward to his “beautiful son” joining him in Hell.
Folks, I’m not inherently opposed to adaptations of the classics. Modern popular culture is full of excellent adaptations of many of Shakespeare’s works, and SF/F certainly has its share of them. But I’m opposed to them when they go out of their way to perpetuate lethal stereotypes about queer people. And even aside from that, if the reviewer’s description of the prose tasting like “saltines without salt” is any sign, this particular adaptation is wretched even aside from its being a hatefest.
Another member of the OA mailing list has, however, pointed out a gem of hope and light here: i.e., that the small print run of this novella has not in fact sold out, indicating that not too many have elected to throw their money at it. Ditto for how the previous Tor release in which Card’s work appeared isn’t selling too well either on Amazon.
So to all of you who never knew about this work, I’m a bit sorry to have brought it to your attention, and can only hope you will continue to not only not buy it, but will specifically not buy it because bigotry is not okay. To those of you who already knew about it and elected not to buy it on that basis, I thank you.
To counter its existence, I’d like to commend to your attention the Lethe Press anthology Time Well Bent, in which catherineldf
And now I’m going back on silent running, because I need to finish my edits. But while I’m gone, I invite y’all to share with me in the comments any queer-positive adaptations of classic stories, of any genre!
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