Valor of the Healer

Valor of the Healer giveaway #3: Trivia Hunt!

It’s now time for Valor of the Healer‘s third giveaway, you all, and this time I’m going to do something a little bit more entertaining–which will hopefully be of particular interest to those of you who RPed with me back in the day on AetherMUSH! (And, it MUST be noted, I have listed Faanshi’s AetherMUSH origins right in the book’s acknowledgements AND have given all hail and praise to Astra Poyser Laughlin who created the game. Because THANK YOU ASTRA! <3 ) Namely, I'm going to pay a bit of homage to Faanshi's origins by asking participants to answer the following trivia questions about her AetherMUSH incarnation. All answers may be found in my archive of Faanshi roleplay logs from AetherMUSH!

Here are the questions:

  1. Who was the halfbreed character who freed Faanshi from her original slavery?
  2. What was the name of the race Faanshi served?
  3. Who were the rulers of the race Faanshi served?
  4. In which roleplay log did Faanshi and Julian both appear? (I’ll be looking for log title AND date, here.)
  5. Name, in chronological order, Faanshi’s love interests. (I will accept two possible answers.)
  6. What was the name of Faanshi’s dog?
  7. A particular gladiator character was a recurring guest in several of Faanshi’s RP scenes. What was that character’s name, and how many logs did he appear in?
  8. Name at least two of the Warlord characters who were of importance in Faanshi’s history.
  9. Name the Atlantean character who had a scene with Faanshi, but with whom I primarily roleplayed as my other character, the princess Kaiulani.
  10. Name at least one of the Sylvan tribes visited by Faanshi in the course of her roleplay history.

Since I’m asking you all to do some work here, I’m raising the stakes on the rewards! I will hand out five, count ’em, five copies of Valor of the Healer to participants who get the highest number of answers correct by the deadline of midnight, Pacific time, Sunday March 24th!

Additionally, to the person who gets the highest number of answers, I’ll hand out a $25 gift certificate to the bookstore or online ebook vendor of your choice. In the event of a tie, the winner of the gift certificate will be randomly selected!

Answers must be posted in comments to me on this post (for values of ‘this post’ meaning ‘the original WordPress post’ OR the Livejournal or Dreamwidth mirrors)!

Ready? Set? GO!

March 20, 2013 by
Valor of the Healer

Four weeks and counting till Valor of the Healer!

And as of today, I see that people are starting to add it to their To-Read shelves on Goodreads. At least one person there has it on an arc-2013 shelf, which means HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS! People are indeed actually pulling it down off of NetGalley!

That sound you just heard is the sound of my head exploding at the notion that not only do I have a book coming out in four weeks, it’s a book coming out on a big enough scale that there are ARCs for it, and people are actually looking at them. Yeah sure fine I’m digital-only on this release, but this is still a way bigger deal than the release of either edition of Faerie Blood. And now suddenly I’m all nervous and thinking, “Seriously?! People I don’t even know want to read my book?! REALLY?” (Imagine me saying that last “REALLY?” about an octave above my normal voice, too!)

If anybody out there is actively interested in reviewing the book–for Amazon, or Goodreads, or B&N, or anywhere else where reviews can be publicly posted, including book review blogs–you can indeed now pull it down off of NetGalley. Or talk to me directly. I will be overjoyed to provide review copies to anybody who wants to help me get the word out!

YOU GUYS! I’M GOING TO HAVE ANOTHER BOOK!

March 18, 2013 by
Guest Posts, Other People's Books

Guest Post – Geekiness and Writing

Hey there Internets! One of the fun things about being a Carina author is the very strong community I’ve joined–and in particular, the community of Carina authors who write fantasy, urban fantasy, and paranormal romance. We’re all on an author blog called Here Be Magic, and I’d like to start introducing you to my fellow writers who post there. Starting today with Tia Nevitt! So y’all grab a chair, raise a jar, and give Tia a listen, won’t you? — Anna

Hi, there. I’m usurping Angela’s blog for a day. With her permission. She actually gave me an account here so I can write up my own blog right here in her site dashboard. I don’t know if that was uber-cool or uber-lazy, but I’ll be returning the favor for her about when her latest book,  Valor of the Healer, arrives on my Kindle in April.

In trying to think about what y’all would want to read about, I thought about what Angela and I have in common. Quite a bit, actually:

  • we both know our way around webservices, a linux command prompt, and general geek tech.
  • we know what muds, mushes and moos are, and how Diablo was a ripoff of a game called nethack.
  • we both write.
  • we both like fantasies and romances all mashed up together.
  • we both have a lot of writer friends.

So I thought I’d write a geeky writer post.

To be a geek is to be somewhat eccentric, and to be just fine with that. Geeks are nerds with aplomb. Nerds were ostracized. Geeks are celebrated.

To be a writer is also to be somewhat eccentric. After all, writers are kind of rare. If you’re not a writer, how many writer friends do you have? Hmm? If you are a writer, how many writer friends do you have, who you did not meet through a writer group of some kind? I can count the number on one hand, and several of those are wannabes who don’t actually write.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Even if you do have writer friends, you probably don’t know it. Writing is very much a closet activity. It’s kind of like being a geek without the cool.

Oh, you think being a writer must be cool? Well, maybe once you’ve been published, but not until then. Here’s how it goes.

Acquaintance: “Oh, you are a writer? Well, what have you published?”

You: “Well, nothing yet.”

Acquaintance: “Oh …”

And the conversation fizzles. And once you’re published? Well then, you’re just trying to sell people something.

I did write a book (or two), but instead of trying to sell you something, I’ll assume you guys are writerly geeks too, and I’ll share some of my favorite writer geeks from history.

Mark Twain

OMG, was he ever a geek. He not only write A Connecticut Yankee in King Author’s Court, which was a very geeky book to write, but he wrote the steampunky Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective. Plus he wrote an autobiography with strict instructions that they were not to be published until a hundred years after his death, and he actually managed to pull that off. Plus he was born and he died while Halley’s Comet was in the sky.

What a geeky way to go!

Jane Austen

Jane was a bookworm who tested out her novels by reading them aloud to her family. I think most of Jane’s personality shines through in Northanger Abbey, where she puts a spirited defense of the reading of novels into the mouth of her hero, Henry Tilney. It is easy to imagine that Jane’s contemporaries saw the reading of novels as something slightly disreputable in a geeky kind of way, like the playing of role playing games.

Louisa May Alcott

Young Louisa was a writer geek among writer geeks. I had the opportunity to tour one of the Alcott family homes once while in Concord, Massachusetts, which is a literary town that also included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. If you’ve read her book, Little Women, you probably know that she is basically Jo.  She was raised by transcendentalists and they lived in a commune for a few years while she was growing up.

Groovy, man.

~*~

I always love to chat with other writerly types, so consider this an invitation to stop by my blog. You’ll find some other geeky writers there as well.

Till then, a question for you. I tend to think that every girl’s got a little geek. What is your geeky proclivity? I’ll be by after work tonight to read and share as well.

 

March 15, 2013 by
The Internet

Dammit, Google! I was using that!

For those of you who haven’t heard already, Google has announced that as part of a “spring cleaning”, they are shutting down Google Reader.

My previous solution was to use the RSS in Mail on OS X. But Apple yanked that out as of Mountain Lion (another instance of “Dammit, I was using that!”).

So now I’ve been doing a two-pronged solution of NetNewsWire parked as my local reader on my computer, which is where I keep up with authenticated feeds–and that synced in turn up to Google Reader, where I was keeping up with everything that wasn’t authenticated. That way I’ve been able to read things at work in between doing, well, work.

I tried feedHopper on my iPad, since it was the ONLY RSS app I was able to find that’d do authenticated feeds at all; all of the rest I looked at were strictly Google Reader clients. And I’ve also tried Flipboard, but honestly, the ‘magazine’ type layout doesn’t do anything for me. Yes, it’s pretty, but it’s not at all helpful in keeping track of what things I’ve read and what things I haven’t. Which is the whole point of me trying to aggregate all the things I want to follow in one or two places.

But now that Google Reader’s going away I’m going to have to rearrange things AGAIN!

What will have to happen now: find out whether NetNewsWire, my current frontrunner for RSS apps, will implement any kind of syncing solution between computer, devices, and web, maybe via iCloud. If they do that, I will happily throw them my money.

Alternately, if anybody out there wants to recommend me an app that will a) specifically handle authenticated feeds, and b) sync between computer, devices, and web, I’d LOVE to hear about it.

If you want to go hunting for a new RSS solution yourself, I’ll also point you at these links:

  • Feedly has a transition plan in play
  • ExtremeTech proposes 8 alternatives
  • Slashdot to the rescue!
  • Marketing Land proposes 12 alternatives (many of which are also in the ExtremeTech article, but)

ETA: Apparently there’s a petition to ask Google to keep Reader active. As of this ETA, it has nearly 75,000 signatures.

March 14, 2013 by
Music

Hey look, I made a MUSIC!

Internets, I cannot tell you how much I needed to forget dealing with computers for a couple of hours, and go play me some music with the local Quebec session crowd. We had a pretty tiny group tonight, and things were relaxed and groovy–all the better for a newbie player like myself to try to figure out how to play along with unfamiliar tunes, while not making too much of a nuisance of herself in the corner.

This time, however, I had the distinct pleasure of being able to ask for specific tunes. Namely, the ones Alexandre of Genticorum had taught me! (6/8 d’Andre Alain, and Gigue du Père Mathias!) I wasn’t able to play through them perfectly at speed, but I got within range of it–and it’s worth noting that a couple of passes through where I had to drop out was because I had to get my breath back, not because I’d forgotten what I was doing. Such is the peril of being the only flute player in a room full of fiddlers and accordion players!

I also asked about playing Ciel d’Automne, a.k.a. Autumn Sky, which has the distinction of being the first Quebec tune I fell in love with ever. This is because it’s the loveliest instrumental on the La Bottine Souriante album Rock and Reel (as it was called when it was released in the States), and to this day, stands out for me as one of my favorite slower tunes. I was particularly happy recently to learn that OH HEY it was written by André Brunet–so no wonder I like it–and so naturally I was determined to learn it. Bonus points to me for figuring out that I could practically whistle the whole thing from memory, which helped a lot in figuring out how to play it.

And I’m here to tell you, when you’re a session newbie facing a room full of musicians WAY more familiar with the material than you are, and the phrase “you’ll have to teach it to us” gets winged at you, that’s SCARY. Maybe only slightly less scary than “HEY ANNA! Get up and play this for us, will you?” However, that scary was leavened with a generous dose of AWESOME. Particularly when I was able to point people at thesession.org’s writeup of the tune!

Also notable: recognizing Réjean Brunet’s “Maison de Glacé” and being able to jump in on it, even though I had title server failure and only confirmed later that OH RIGHT I actually knew that tune.

(Yes, folks, I’m apparently slurping up All The Slow Tunes By the Brunets. There are worse ways to be spending my musical time. ;D )

So that was three whole tunes I was able to more or less play along with. And there was a fourth tune I recognized by ear once they hit the B part; I’d heard the session group play that one before. I could even sorta kinda pick up on the B part, though the A part was harder for me to parse. I asked about that one and was informed it was called Hommage à Edmond Parizeau. Not long after that, another fun-sounding one called Reel Ti-Mé was played–though I have to stop myself from thinking of that one as Reel Timmain. Which is what I get for being an Elfquest fan!

And now I have two more identified tunes to add to the list of Things Played in Local Session. I have homework to do!

Many many thanks to the Legers for giving me a ride home, and to our hostess Pascale, who gave me guidance on how to get to her place by bus (even though I had to leave work late and THEN had bus fail that wound up getting me there half an hour late)! A lovely little evening of music all around!

March 13, 2013 by
Great Big Sea

Great Big Sea at the Moore in Seattle, 3/8/2013

It has not escaped my attention, O Internets, that I never did actually finish the series of posts about our Great Canadian Adventure this past summer–and of course the highlight of same, the Great Big Sea show at Torbay in Newfoundland. Given that it is now several months after the fact posting about that would be anticlimactic. Especially given that we did just have ourselves the pleasure of Great Big Sea right here in Seattle, and oh my yes, it was good to have them back again.

Maybe not quite as awesome as seeing them on their home turf, but pretty damned awesome nonetheless!

All the usual suspects were on hand for the show, and in my particular case, this meant meeting up for dinner beforehand with friends for Mexican food at Pacific Place. My friend Geri came down from Vancouver since our show was cheaper than theirs, and I was happy to offer her crash space–in no small part since she’ll be reciprocating for me next month when I come up for Le Vent du Nord! Had we had time, we might have enacted a Cunning Plan, since I’d been hearing amusing rumors of a 20th anniversary cake brought to the B’ys in Portland–but! Even without such, it was almost universally an excellent show. (The one exception was my poor friend Jenny whose dinner disagreed with her, but thankfully she made it through the entire concert!)

Arrival at the Moore as per usual put me right in smack dab sight of the merch table. Which I promptly raided for my latest GBS shirt–this one, in fact. And I started running into quite a few folks I know from the original OKP as well as its current Facebook group incarnation, since people were on the lookout for my hat! Much love and many hugs to Angela R. and Helen and Julie and Martha and Lynda, all of whom I said hi to at various points during the show.

And without further ado–and a ONE! And a TWO get up now! ONE, TWO, THREE, JUMP AROUND!

Continue Reading

March 12, 2013 by
Valor of the Healer

Winners of the Valor of the Healer giveaway #2!

And now, ladies and gentlemen of the Internets, I am pleased to announce that the following persons have won a copy of Valor of the Healer!

Shawna T, who commented to me on my main blog
Eveshka, who commented to me on Livejournal

Winners, please contact me ASAP with your preferred format! Your options are EPUB and PDF, and remember, since it’s a DRM-free file, you can convert the EPUB to any other format you may need if you have Calibre.

Thank you all for playing and I will be doing at least a couple more giveaways before the book’s released! Stand by for the roundup post on all the various awesome answers I got about people’s favorite musician characters!

March 11, 2013 by