Posts Tagged by Blog Tour
Drollerie Blog Tour: Faerie Blood Foolery
| April 1, 2010 | Posted by annathepiper under Blog Tour, Faerie Blood |
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This month’s Drollerie Press Blog Tour theme is Foolery: April Fool’s Day, playing jokes, pranks or mishaps or mischief that occur in your writing, and anything else our participants could think to come up with.
My contribution for the tour is a new character snippet upholding the theme: what happens when Jude Lawrence meets her new officemate Kendis Thompson, and discovers that she’s coming onto a team with a lively sense of humor. (This is what Jude gets for having a birthday on April 1st!)
Hope y’all enjoy! I figured it was about time Jude should have a character vignette!
Drollerie Blog Tour for April 2010: Foolery!
| April 1, 2010 | Posted by annathepiper under Blog Tour |
Hi there all and welcome to another edition of the Drollerie Press Blog Tour! If you’ve had half an eye on the Internet at all today you’ve probably seen a lot of clever things going around (in no small part what the fine folks at xkcd did to their site, as well as the many amusing posts tor.com had up), and in a similar spirit, we’d like to bring you a few posts on the theme of Foolery as well.
Anna Kashina expounds on why she finds the Fool an irresistible character type to work with.
I’ve got a new Faerie Blood character sketch up, about what happens when Jude Lawrence shows up for her first day at work.
David Sklar ruminates on how finding the Fool in yourself is more difficult at forty than at twenty.
Angelia Sparrow has some things to say about the Holy Fool, including a reference to a fine song by S.J. Tucker.
Please come around to all our posts and say hi, you guys! Bonus points if you bring with you a bit of Foolery of your own–and be on the lookout for what we’ll get posted next time. As always, thanks for coming by!
My February blog tour guest: Hamish MacDonald
| February 14, 2010 | Posted by annathepiper under Blog Tour |
This month for the blog tour, I’m hosting Hamish MacDonald, a fellow member of the Outer Alliance. Many people turn up their noses at the concept of self-publishing, but Hamish avoids all of the usual issues with that–he not only writes his own books, he designs, prints, hand-binds, and sells them, too. He is, in short, a true self-published author.
If you’d like to read the rest of the blog tour posts for this round, point your browsers right here.
And without further ado, here’s Hamish! I’ve put in a More link where he mentions a spoiler warning for the ending of his book, but you can get most of his post without it. Enjoy, all!
The Boomerang of Revelation
My best experience with a work in progress isn’t a particular event, but a kind of experience. It happens at some point with every book, but I first became aware of it when writing my second novel, The Willies.
I’m a huge fan of outlining. Before I start a novel, I plot out the whole arc of the story. It’s like taking a map on vacation: You can still wander all you like, but you won’t get lost or fall off a cliff. Some people start at Page One and that works for them — most notably Stephen King, as he claimed in his book, On Writing — but I find I can let go more when I can trust that I know where I’m going. Having a map of Paris is completely different to walking through its streets, so I don’t think it spoils the fun at all; in fact, it makes sure you don’t miss the best sights.
Isn’t outlining everything in advance like opening your Christmas presents early? No, because unlike a Christmas present, the stakes with a story are different: There might be a dead chicken in the box, and it’s best to know that before you’ve committed a year or two to the project.
That said, there’s always a point with every book when I discover some piece of the map is blank: I thought I’d filled that in, but something here doesn’t connect. With The Willies, that happened at the end, and the whole story fell into a pothole in the road. How does it end?
The Willies is a science fiction/thriller/comedy story about two friends who discover they’re clones. The lead character, Hugh, has a perfect memory: everything he’s ever seen and heard is stored up in his head. He and his childhood best friend, Simon, were products of an experiment and were never meant to be born, and now someone wants them dead. So by the end, they’ve been on the run for about 250 pages, wrestling as they go with the difficult friendship they’ve had. But how would it resolve?
(Spoiler warning: I’m going to talk about the ending here, in case you might consider reading the book.)
Update on blog tour/blog exchange
| January 22, 2010 | Posted by annathepiper under Drollerie Press |
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Hey folks, just to followup on my earlier post seeking authors for a blog tour/blog exchange, I just wanted to get the word out that I’m going to go ahead and work with the folks who’ve signed up on the mailing list I’ve set up. So that’ll be round 1 of these efforts. If you’re not already signed up, and you’re still interested, fret not! I’ll be taking more interested names for February’s round!
Organizing a joint Outer Alliance/Drollerie press blog tour
| January 6, 2010 | Posted by annathepiper under Drollerie Press |
For lack of anyplace better to do it, this is a post I’m going to use for organizing a joint Outer Alliance/Drollerie Press blog tour. Parties interested in participating in this, please check behind the fold! Everyone else, keep watching this space, I’ll have more details as this gets organized!
Seeking authors for blog post exchanges
| January 5, 2010 | Posted by annathepiper under Drollerie Press |
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Those of you out there who’ve been with me a while will know I’ve been hosting the semi-regular Drollerie Press blog tours. My fellow Drollerie authors and I have had some fun doing these, but in 2010, we’re seeking to expand the scope of our efforts. We’d love to find some non-Drollerie authors with whom we could do blog post exchanges. So far our little tours have been monthly (although we’ve canceled a couple of times for various reasons), but the interval in question would be negotiable depending on how many authors wanted to get involved and what their commitments would be like.
We are of course writing in a mix of genres at Drollerie: urban fantasy, romance, SF, horror, etc., and we’re predominantly in electronic form, although a few of us have our work available in print as well. Ideally I’d like to find other authors who are e-pubbed and/or who share our genres, but print-based authors are of course very welcome as well.
Drollerie of course lives here, and if you’d like to check out an example of one of our recent blog tours, check out the December master post I put up on Drollerie’s main blog. If you’re a writer reading this and you might be interested in setting up an exchange of posts, let me know! Drop me a comment, message me on LJ or DW, fling me email, whatever works. I look forward to hearing from you!
Special bonus Drollerie Blog tour post: Elisa Diehl!
| December 23, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Drollerie Press |
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One of my fellow Drollerie authors, Meredith Holmes, unfortunately was in the hospital this week with a pulmonary embolism. So she was unable to participate in the Blog Tour this time around, and since she was scheduled to host Elisa Diehl, I’m going to take care of hosting Elisa’s post instead. Check it out, folks!
And also, stop by Meredith’s place and wish her well. ‘Cause hospitals are never fun, especially this close to Christmas.
Take it away, Elisa!
December Drollerie Blog Tour: Imogen Howson on Hades and Persephone
| December 21, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Drollerie Press |
Those of you who know about my completed but unpublished novels will know I’ve got Queen of Souls, a Persephone and Hades story on the queue to be edited into queryable shape. So it should surprise none of you that I’m quite interested in checking out Frayed Tapestry, by my fellow Drollerie author Imogen Howson. In fact, as the cool kids like to say, her post for this month’s Drollerie Blog Tour, on the topic of dangerous writing, is Relevant to My Interests indeed.
Check it out, folks! Here’s what Imogen’s got to say.
And now, the October 2009 Drollerie Blog Tour
| October 21, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Drollerie Press |
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We had a bit of server trouble on drolleriepress.com this evening, so this is a mirror copy of this month’s blog tour post! Enjoy, all!
Hey all, and welcome to the October 2009 edition of the Drollerie Blog Tour! This month’s theme is the lesser-known holiday of Sweetest Day, and we’re taking the opportunity to touch upon the general theme of what the day stands for: those who are encouraging to us. Some of us will be addressing this in terms of our writing, and others? It’ll be our characters.
And without further ado…
Sarah Avery is hosting Heather Ingemar’s post about how her first writing mentor helped her get serious
Nora Fleischer has my own little character vignette about a moment of encouragement in the early life of my heroine from Faerie Blood
On Meredith Holmes’ blog, Heather Parker talks about how a pair of cats and one well-timed remark from her husband gave rise to Middlewitch
Jessica Howe has a guest post from John Rosenman, who wants to give credit to several people who have helped his writing career
Imogen Howson is hosting Catherine Schaff-Stump, who describes her reaction to Sweetest Day
Heather Ingemar has a visit from Fraser Sherman, who sings the praises of people who may surprise you–or not, if you’re a writer yourself
I’ve got Sarah Avery, who tells us about one of the nicest things her husband ever did to assist her writing
At Heather Parker’s blog, Nora Fleischer gives thanks to the first author who ever gave real praise to her work
John Rosenman hosts Meredith Holmes, who thanks several people important to her and her writing efforts
Catherine Schaff-Stump has a post from Jessica Howe, who wants to tell us about the land where her muse has gone to play
And last but not least, Fraser Sherman hosts hosts Heather Ingemar, who finds that Sweetest Day has something in common with her own writing efforts
Thanks again all for reading all our posts. Which, we daresay, is all part of the theme this month!
Drollerie Blog Tour: Sarah Avery on the Sweetest Day
| October 21, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Drollerie Press |
Hey there all, it’s Drollerie Blog Tour day again, and this time around we’ve chosen as our theme an October holiday. No no, not the one you’re thinking of; we’re writing about Sweetest Day, and by extension, people who have been helpful, kind, or encouraging to us about our writing, or as the case may be, to our various characters.
I’m hosting the inimitable this time around, and without further ado, I shall turn the floor over to her!
The living room looked as if a Babies-R-Us had exploded in it. On the dining table, three baskets of clean laundry waited for someone to fold them. The kitchen floor was still smeared with finger paint, how many days after the painting incident? We weren’t really sure anymore. And our son wanted to experiment with the potty, which meant somebody would have to spend the next hour reading him those same damn potty training picture books. Between my students’ return from vacation, Dan’s work deadlines, and Gareth’s obsession with wearing big-boy underpants, we had completely lost our grip on the chores.
It was the fourth night in a row that I’d planned to get out of the house and write, only to conclude I had no right to the time. Yet again, I rolled up my sleeves and headed for the sink. The pile of dishes threatened to topple down onto the counter at any moment.
“Go write,” said Dan. “I’ve got it under control.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “Under control?”
“All right, nothing is under control. Go write anyway.” He picked up the picture books I could not stand to look at one more time that day. “Gareth, give Mommy a good-night hug. She needs to go to work now. Sarah, I don’t want to see you back here until they close up at Barnes & Noble.”
Nothing was under control, of course. Three hours later, I came home to a house Dan had been working on ceaselessly since the moment he tucked our son into his crib, and the place still looked like it merited a visit from a reality television crew from the Home and Garden network. It’s amazing how effort disappears into the vortex of parenthood.
I’d written my five hundred words, like a person or something, like a writer, like the self I remembered being. It was the sweetest day.
Many thanks to Sarah for sharing this lovely moment with us! And if you’d like to continue checking out the blog tour posts, go visit Heather Parker and check out Nora Fleischer’s post there!
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