About Me

Oh look yet MORE medical fun

And this time, it’s Dara’s turn.

Dara was experiencing some weird vision problems, an uptick in the number of floaters she was seeing in her right eye, and so she scheduled an appointment with an ophthalmologist yesterday to get herself checked out. The verdict: she’s got retinal tearing. JOY. Which means that today, she gets to go in for emergency eye surgery, because if they leave this untreated, it could lead to blindness in that eye.

NOT AN OPTION, so yeah, we’re dealing with this NOW. With LASERS. Because that’s what a supervillain and her right-hand girl do: solve problems with lasers!

From what Dara learned, this is very old damage resulting from childhood abuse trauma (Dara talks some about said abuse on her link, trigger warning as appropriate). A weak spot in her eye finally gave way, and there are a couple other spots that are also in danger of tearing, so while the surgeon’s in there, he’s going to secure those too.

Today I’m going to work from home so that I can accompany Dara to the surgery. I need to be there since a) she’s my wife f’r chrissakes, and b) I’m also the one authorized to make medical decisions for her if need be, since we are each other’s PoAs, with appropriate paperwork saying so. I’m likely going to be chugging through the line edits on Vengeance of the Hunter while I’m waiting, and then I’m going to come home with her, jump on the VPN, and do day job work.

All hail my team at work who are being VERY understanding with this sudden outbreak of medical adventures on my and Dara’s part, too. Gods, we’re tired of this. And between this and my fun still coming up next month, we’re sad that this’ll mean we probably won’t be able to make Worldcon in the UK next year, just because we’re going to be paying off medical bills over the next several months. AGAIN.

But I’m still going to see Le Vent du Nord in Victoria next March. And very likely De Temps Antan in Vancouver the weekend before. Because after all this shit, I’m here to tell you, people, gonna need me some music.

I’ll be posting updates on how things go on the social networks today, so for those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook or G+, be on the lookout for further bulletins as events warrant.

October 22, 2013 by
Music

New big carbon fiber flute!

The first of my two new flutes has arrived from Carbony Celtic Winds! This is the bigger one in D, since they aren’t going to send me the fife in D until next month. But that’s TOTALLY okay, since this one will be fun to play with until then.

The new flute is just about 23 inches in length, about 58.4 centimeters–just a scooch longer than Norouet, my wooden flute in D. I can’t weigh them both but unsurprisingly, the carbon fiber one feels slightly lighter than Norouet does. Norouet has a slightly wider inner diameter, at just over half an inch; new!flute is just about half an inch.

However, and this is a big however–the spacing on the holes, at least for my left hand, is a bit wider than I’m used to. Not out of the question, but it’s a bit of a stretch; I’m going to play around with it for a few more days and see whether I can comfortably play this instrument. But there are concerns here, I think. I’m okay on this instrument if I try to play something slow, like, say, “La Fée des Dents”. But if I go to something fast, like “Manteau d’hiver”, I start missing holes because I have to stretch to hit them and my hand may not be able to do that for long. This will require some experimentation.

The nice gentleman at Carbony who acknowledged my order in email says that they have another model in D with holes slightly closer together, but which sacrifices a bit of power. So worst case scenario is, I send this one back and he sends me the replacement when he sends me up the fife.

Check out the hole spacing in this comparison pic. This is the new carbon fiber next to Norouet.

Fingerholes on Flutes

Fingerholes on Flutes

This is, I suppose, the risk I take when ordering instruments online–I couldn’t have handled this particular flute beforehand, so I had no way of knowing until it got here if I was going to be able to play it. But hopefully this will be a solvable problem. I’ve sent the above pic to the guy at Carbony and asked him to tell me what the hole spacing is like on the other D model they have. It’d be a shame to lose power but that’s an acceptable tradeoff if it means I don’t risk my hand cramping up when I’m trying to play.

(The tone’s REAL nice on this one, though. Somebody with bigger hands than me could probably rock the hell out of this flute! And even given the uncomfortable hand stretch for me, I can get a cleaner and crisper tone out of it than I can out of Norouet.)

October 20, 2013 by
Great Big Sea

The most important thing about the Great Big Sea show tonight

Internets, my usual full concert report will be coming about tonight’s Great Big Sea show in Edmonds real soon–but before I post that, I have to post this, because THIS was the high point of the evening and I’m still trying to ramp down from the outburst of ZOMG in my system.

As you all know, I’m a novelist. I’ve completed five novels, in fact. Verbosity is my primary superpower. I have a LOT of words in me. So you’ll know that if other people’s pictures are worth a thousand words, this one, coming from me, is worth an entire trilogy. This happened after the GBS show in Edmonds tonight, when I and several other fangirls were hanging out by the band’s tour bus!

Anna and Alan Doyle

Anna and Alan Doyle

Thirteen years. THIRTEEN YEARS I’ve been in this fandom and I’ve finally scored not only the opportunity, but also the gumption to ask Alan Doyle to his face if I could have a picture with him. He promptly said “sure!”, invited me to get in close, and put his arm around my shoulders. I handed my phone off to my friend Helen, who then needed me to unlock it for her ’cause duh right access code. THEN she had trouble finding my camera app, so she made cracks at me about how “should I draw this out a little longer?”–’cause Alan was standing there with his arm around me the whole time. I chirped, “I’M GOOD!”

There was laughter, and the picture was finally taken. One other girl in the group also snapped a pic which she promised to send me, so this wasn’t even the only one!

(ALSO! There was bonus Murray! Most of the group wanted pics with Alan, so after I got my turn I turned to Murray and asked him about his fundraising efforts for his Cocksure Lads movie–his mockumentary about a fictional 60’s British rock band. Great fun. I was in on round one of that fundraising and I’ll be chiming in on the second one too. Because Murray is awesome.

Also, mad props to Foster when I told him I was annathepiper on Twitter and that we’d chatted some about Tolkien. He remembered that. YAY!)

So yeah. This was a TRIUMPH. Making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.

Also note: I neither confirm nor deny any rumors of high-pitched squealing and a victory dance as soon as we were out of range of the bus.

October 19, 2013 by
Music

Album review: Autio Huvila, by Kardemimmit

Let me tell you about Kardemimmit, Internets!

Kardemimmit

Kardemimmit

Kardemimmit are a group of women from Finland who do folk music featuring the kantele, which is apparently Finland’s national instrument. I first heard of them via De Temps Antan, since Éric Beaudry of that band was posting on Facebook about having had the opportunity to learn about this group while De Temps Antan was recently on tour in the States. Then they shot straight onto my listening queue thanks to a kind person giving me their album Autio Huvila as a gift!

So I promptly did the appropriate thing and listened to that album ASAP (well, after thanking that kind person in email, because awwwwww :~) ). Because pro tip: giving me surprise music that features unusual instruments is an excellent way to get my musical attention. I looked up the band, went “ooh” at the instruments in their splash page pic, and then looked up the kantele at the Wikipedia link above. From that, I learned from that that it’s an instrument of the dulcimer family, and from Kardemimmit’s site, I learned that they play it in 15- and 38-stringed versions.

Then I listened to the album itself.

Now, I don’t speak a lick of Finnish, though I’ve gotten pretty good at coaxing halfway coherent meaning out of Google Translate (coupled with judicious actual Googling) if I’m trying to figure out bits of a language I don’t know. But since the band has no lyrics posted on their site, not even in Finnish, I have no earthly idea what any of these songs are about. These girls could be singing the names of all the streets in Helsinki, in alphabetical order, for all I know. But I did note with interest that iTunes tags several of the tracks on this album as “Explicit”, which made me make the O RLY? face. And if there’s anything I’ve learned from Quebec trad, it’s that the most innocuous-sounding song can have very bawdy lyrics. (Le Vent du Nord’s “Les métiers”, I’m looking at you. 😉 )

Just by sound and style alone, though, this isn’t stuff you’d think would earn that particular rating. The women of the group all have lovely voices, and between their harmony and the chiming of the kantele they play (note: kantele is both a singular and plural noun), the album’s all very bell-like and beautiful. There’s energy, make no mistake. Right out of the gate, listening to the lively first track, I decided this was very compatible with my rampageous affection for Quebec and Celtic trad. I was particularly amused to hear the singers break into something that sounded a lot like a turlutte, even–though I suppose they call it something else in Finnish! And I kept finding myself totally wanting to give them a podorythmie rhythm track, or maybe a bodhran.

I’m not a hundred percent convinced the album’s instrumentation is all kantele–I could have sworn I heard a bass or extra percussion in there every so often, but if there were any other instruments at all, they were scarce. Mostly, this album’s all about the women’s voices, and about the kantele they play. And I found it highly enjoyable. I’ll be exploring the rest of their work.

Kardemimmit live over at kardemimmit.fi, and you can find them on Facebook as well! If you like Finnish folk music and/or the kantele, or even just think you might, go give ’em a listen.

October 17, 2013 by
About Me

More medical thoughts

This post is going to get introspective, people, and it’s going to get medical, so you can skip this one or not as you like. I’m going to put the majority of it behind the fold, ’cause if you don’t actually personally know me, this may be a bit more information about me than you want to know.

But. I need to vent. So.

Continue Reading

October 15, 2013 by
Faerie Blood

Want to see me with Amusing Hair sooner rather than later?

As of this writing, I am a scant eleven sales away from breaking the 300 mark for sales of the current edition of Faerie Blood! And since I have a couple of people asking about this as well as expressing high amused interest in seeing my threatened pictures of what will happen to my hair, I note for official reference that I cheerfully endorse any and all efforts to get my book into the hands of anybody who doesn’t have it already!

I DO have a few more print copies available, as well as CDs that contain both editions of the book (the original Drollerie edition as well as the current shipping version) in a variety of formats, if you’re an ebook reader but want something signed. I will happily send those out to anyone who wants to buy ’em, whether for yourselves or others.

Also, I’ll happily hand-sell extra ebook copies to anybody who wants to give them as gifts to fellow ebook readers.

You don’t even have to deal directly with me either if you want to give the ebook as a gift! The Kindle edition will let you do so directly from Amazon, as will the Nook edition and the version on Smashwords.

So if you want to see me do amusing things to my hair, likely in shades of blue and/or green and/or purple, consider giving Faerie Blood as a gift to somebody today! Kendis, Christopher, Elessir, and the rest of the cast will thank you, and so will I! As always, full details on where to get the book can be found right over here on its official page!

October 15, 2013 by
Bone Walker, Carina Press, Faerie Blood, Other People's Books, Vengeance of the Hunter

A few promo things make a post

Item the first: Debut Carina author Sonya Clark would like y’all to know she’s having a giveaway for her forthcoming release Trancehack, which is futuristic paranormal romance. Call it PR with a side helping of SF, if you like! Deets can be found right over here.

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Item the second: speaking of my fellow Carina authors, the awesome Joely Sue Burkhart and Raelyn Barclay are running Coyote Con, a virtual convention, all this month! What’s a virtual convention? It’s a series of online chat discussions on various interesting topics, pretty similar to what you’d find at an actual convention in person.

I’ve been in a few of these panels now myself, and there are more to come as the month progresses! And for those panels you may have already missed, Joely and Raelyn are posting transcripts too, so you can catch up on those here.

The panels I was in in particular were Epic Fantasy, Self Publishing, and LGBTQ/Diversity.

There are a couple more panels today, and there’ll be more the remaining weekends of the month. And one chat room’s also dedicated to just general hanging out too! The full schedule is here!

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Item the third: I will be going to Orycon from November 8-10–the weekend right before my forthcoming surgery, in fact. So unless you’re one of the people likely to show up for the annual Murkworks Thanksgiving Day Homeless Waifs Turkeyfest, this is going to be the last chance to spot the elusive Wild Anna outside her natural habitat. If you’re going to be there, find me and say hi, mmkay?

Likewise, I am going to GeekGirlCon this coming weekend, right after I go see Great Big Sea in Edmonds. I’m going to be REAL busy this weekend. 😀

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Item the fourth: This is your friendly reminder that I am down to three print copies of Faerie Blood, so if you’d like a print copy of this book, talk to me! Getting it directly from me remains the only way to acquire it since I currently have no way of selling it online. I ask $15 if I’m going to hand deliver it, $20 if I need to mail it to you.

I also have a small stock of CDs that contain the various formats of the ebook edition, both the original Drollerie release AND the current Second Edition as well. For these, I ask $5 each.

I will have both of these items with me at GeekGirlCon and Orycon as well!

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Item the fifth: Kickstarter backers, just so y’all know, I have totally had my brain eaten by Vengeance of the Hunter edits. I ran behind on it, and am scrambling along with my editor (who is made of solid gold awesomeness, All Hail Her Name) to get the manuscript finished up so that we don’t impact the schedule. We’re in the middle of line edits now. I will be jumping back to Bone Walker the instant we sign off on this book.

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Item the sixth: I have not forgotten the series of posts on advice on self-publishing; these too have had to be paused while I charge through edits on Vengeance. They will resume soon. Thank you for your patience on that; I’ve seen quite a few hits on these posts, so I do want to finish the series up.

October 13, 2013 by