Books

Mixed-media book roundup

Picked up in print from Third Place:

  • Midnight Blue-Light Special, by userinfoseananmcguire. Book 2 of the Incryptid series. Bought for obvious reasons. 🙂

Picked up in print from the comic book store at Pike Place Market:

  • Zombie Haiku and Dawn of Zombie Haiku, by Ryan Mecum. Bought because I got the first of these to give to the team as part of this past Christmas’ white elephant gift exchange and I thought it was quite silly. So I went back and got both of these. Because yes indeed, sublimely silly!

Picked up in print from Comicon:

  • Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess, by Phil and Kaja Foglio. Second of the Girl Genius novels.
  • Anne Steelyard: The Gate of Dreams and Starlight and Anne Steelyard: A Thousand Waters, by Barbara Hambly. The second and third of the Anne Steelyard graphic novels, which I grabbed because a) Barbara Hambly, and b) I thought the concept of a story set in an Indiana-Jones-esque timeframe but with a female lead character sounded like fun, and c) I liked the look of the art. The table I bought them from had only books 2 and 3 though so I’m going to have to swing back and get book 1.

Grabbed for free off of B&N since it was a Friday freebie:

  • The Taken, by Vicki Pettersson. Book 1 of the Celestial Blues series. Grabbed because I liked the idea of a previously deceased P.I. from the fifties having become an angel and needing to keep a modern-day rockabilly fangirl from being murdered. Sounds like it might be a nice change of pace in urban fantasy, at least enough that I’m absolutely willing to give it a shot.

And, grabbed off of my Third Place Kobo account:

  • Mountain Echoes, by userinfomizkit! Book 8 of the Walker Papers. Grabbed because, well, DUH. 😀
  • A Turn of Light, by Julie E. Czerneda. Grabbed because as I’ve posted about before, Czerneda is one of my all-time favorite SF authors. This is her first fantasy novel!

35 for the year so far.

March 10, 2013 by
Music

Wow! New Julia Ecklar album!

Just to demonstrate to you all that every so often I do in fact listen to other forms of music besides “Great Big Sea” and “everybody in Quebecois trad”, I share with you the news that Julia Ecklar is finally releasing a new album! And it’s available for pre-order now!

For those of you unfamiliar with her, Julia’s the lead voice on a lot of the songs on A Wolfrider’s Reflections, the album of Elfquest music that came out in fandom in the late 80’s with the blessing of Wendy and Richard Pini. She was a seriously big name filker back in the day, and I adored her not only for the EQ tape, but also for her affection for Star Trek. She actually played Kirk in a couple of fannish productions of parodies of the second and third Trek flicks–preserved for posterity now by my own belovedest of Daras! Wrath Side Story and Spock Pacific, hee. Oh, Julia was an excellent Kirk.

Her song “Horsetamer’s Daughter” was a classic. And she was frequently beautifully parodied by userinfofilkertom–Tom’s “Temperature of Revenge” to this day remains one of my very favorite filk songs. And later on, she became the first filker to ever have orchestral accompaniment on an album when she released Divine Intervention, which features a heartbreaking song about Kirk reacting to the destruction of the Enterprise, yet another of her beautiful Trek songs.

Now, the new album has more orchestral work on it and I’m really looking forward to it. I heartily endorse y’all going to pick it up, since it’s gone over budget and Prometheus Music can use all the support it can get! Go support them and an awesome indie musician and filker as well!

March 10, 2013 by
Great Big Sea, Photos

Sneak peek: pics of Great Big Sea at the Moore!

The full show writeup is on the way, but for those of you who haven’t already seen me post these pics to the social networks, behold! My first attempt at getting a full shot of pics of the B’ys on my phone!

These were taken from Stage Bob in the second row, so we were pretty darned close to the stage. I was able to only get a small number of good shots, though–most of the songs were too brightly lit from my vantage point to get clear shots, especially given my newbie skill level. I don’t have a very steady hand yet either.

But! I did get several kinda okay shots during “The Mermaid” and one or two on other songs as well. The sparkly thing hanging off of Séan’s mic stand is actually a mobile saying “GBS XX”, which someone gave to the band as a gift before the show! Plus, there are quite a few shots of the crowd immediately around and above me, during the intermission between sets!

You can see all of the pics on my annathepiper.org site!

EDITING TO ADD 1/1/2019: Edited this post to point at the pics on annathepiper.org, as I have moved them from Flickr over to my own site.

March 10, 2013 by
Valor of the Healer

Last call for Valor of the Healer giveaway #2!

Hey you guys, the second giveaway for Valor of the Healer is still in progress!

Tomorrow I will hand out two free copies to randomly selected winners. EPUB and PDF are available! All you have to do is comment to me telling me about your favorite musician characters in books, movies, or TV–and all genres are welcome!

Comments are welcome on this post or on the original giveaway post.

You may also comment on the Livejournal mirror of the original post or the Dreamwidth mirror!

You may tweet to @annathepiper, or comment to Angela Korra’ti on Facebook OR Google+!

You have until midnight Pacific time tonight! Looking forward to your replies, and I will do a roundup post of all the musicians who get mentioned to me as well! So give me your best suggestions folks, and good luck to all who reply!

March 8, 2013 by
Music

A milestone achievement

Out of general curiosity I looked at the total number of tracks in my iTunes library tonight so that I could do some quick numbers.

I have a total of 8,473 individual tracks in my library. In most cases these are in fact songs, although some of the things I have in MP3 form are actually audio drama. This number does not however include audiobooks or PDFs that are also in my iTunes library.

Of this number, a total of 974 tracks are by Quebecois performers. This means, O Internets, that roughly 11% of my iTunes collection is now Francophone! To put this in perspective for you, only 677 of my iTunes tracks are by Elvis!

Quebecois music now outnumbers Elvis Presley in my music collection.

Elvis. Aron. Presley. Y’know, that guy whose music I grew up listening to and back to whom I can trace pretty much every single thing that makes me swoon about music EVER.

Some amusing sub-stats–a breakdown of track counts by my top groups:

  • La Bottine Souriante: 167 items
  • Le Vent du Nord: 92 items
  • La Volée d’Castors: 91 items
  • Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer: 81 items
  • Genticorum: 45 items
  • Galant, Tu Perds Ton Temps: 43 items
  • De Temps Antan: 25 items

(Those last few counts are going to get boosted soon, too! Galant, Tu Perds Ton Temps AND De Temps Antan are working on new albums. I hear rumors Genticorum has one on the way, too!)

I can only now conclude that Quebec must have passed a provincial resolution of some sort, perhaps La Loi du Colonisation des Playlists d’Anna Avec La Musique Traditionnelle. Either that or it’s a genre-wide conspiracy for every trad musician within a hundred-klick radius of Montreal to send me the following musical message:

“Bonjour, Anna! Nous entendrons que t’aime la musique traditionnelle. Nous avons des bouzoukis. Et des violons. Et la très, très belle podorythmie! Et avons-nous mentionné des bouzoukis? Nous avons des CDs pour toi. Tu peux apprendre un peu français, oui? Tu apprends le français, nous vendrons des CDs! Victoire pour tout le monde!”

I have to admit, they’re making one hell of a pitch. ;D Well done, entire province of Quebec. Well done, VRAIMENT.

March 6, 2013 by
Publishing

Eighty-nine kinds of BAD IDEA

Just about all of you who read me are very likely people who also read John Scalzi. If you are a Scalzi reader, you’ve probably already seen his post about Hydra, Random House’s new self-pub imprint.

If you haven’t, however, you should go over here and read it. Right now. Note also that he links off to Writer Beware’s post on the same topic.

Executive summary: if you’re an aspiring author, run far, FAR away from these deal terms or anything like them. Don’t let the allure of being published–and believe me, I get it, that’s a REALLY SHINY ALLURE–blind you to contract terms that would completely screw you out of getting any actual money. Go self-pub before you go Hydra. It’d be harder work for you but then you’d actually get to keep your money.

Spread the word. Boost the hell out of this signal.

ETA: Scalzi’s put up a followup post analyzing a contract from Alibi, the sister imprint of Hydra. (Hydra is the SF/F imprint in this clusterfuck, and Alibi is the crime/mystery imprint.) Go read his analysis of the contract terms if you haven’t already. And I reiterate: if you are ever faced with a contract of this nature, SET IT ON FIRE AND THEN RUN AWAY.

Obligatory disclaimer: yes, I’m aware that my current publisher is not an advance-paying publisher, which is the big opening beef Scalzi’s got against this contract. However, I also note that before I signed my contract with Carina, I read the hell out of that contract, and I landed an agent who also understood the contract and who negotiated with Carina on my behalf on the things that could be negotiated upon. And another agent also gave me feedback on what Carina’s contract terms were like, so I understood going in what I’d be doing.

So obviously, I do not have a problem with working with a non-advance-paying publisher. I do have a problem, though, with everything else Scalzi points out about that contract.

March 6, 2013 by
Carina Press, Other People's Books

Call for topics for visiting Carina author!

Hey all!

As part of increasing my general visibility as a Carina Press author, I’m going to occasionally have some of my fellow Carina people do some guest posts here on my site. You may expect that these will be people who are part of the Here Be Magic group that I’ve joined–the Carina authors who write fantasy, urban fantasy, or paranormal romance.

On Monday the 11th, Tia Nevitt will be doing a post here for you all to introduce herself and talk a bit about her two Carina novellas. But! We’d like to liven it up a bit, and so my question for you all is this:

What would you like to see Tia post about? Any questions you’d like to ask her? Talk to us, folks!

If you’d like to check out Tia’s work for an idea of topics, I highly encourage you to go visit Carina’s site and look at her titles on sale right over here!

March 5, 2013 by