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About Me

Amazon Author Pages

Theory has it that it’s a good idea to have an Amazon Author Page. So since I write under two different names, I have two different Amazon Author Pages! I went ahead and claimed “Angela Highland” as my pen name, which necessitated the following chain of communication:

Me to Amazon: Hey Amazon, I’m Angela Highland too!
Amazon to Me: Okay, we’ll have to clear this with your publisher.
Amazon to Carina: Hey, is this her?
Carina to Me: Amazon pinged us, is this your email address?
Me to Carina: Yep, that’s me!
Carina to Amazon: Yep, that’s her!
Amazon to Me: Fabulous. Here, have an Author page.

There’s my original Author Page for Angela Korra’ti, and the new one for Angela Highland. Those are both easy ways to look up my work if you want to buy any title for the Kindle, or the audio edition of Valor of the Healer. Feel free to bookmark these for your own reference, or if you know Kindle people who might like my stuff, point ’em at the links, mmkay?

About Me

New shuttle in the landing bay

Those of you who follow me on the social networks know this already, but for those of you who missed it: Dara and I bought a new car!

We’ve been planning this for some time, with some scouting expeditions to local dealerships to do test drives and such. We were going to take a little longer and save up a bit more to add to our down payment–but our credit union wound up running a special Autos event this past weekend, which involved a bunch of tasty low interest rates. So we jumped on that this past Friday, and brought home a brand spankin’ new Honda Fit.

It’s silver–or, as the paperwork claims, “Alabaster Silver Metallic”. La-de-la. 😉 It’s also a four-door and a hatchback and manual transmission, six speeds, which’ll take a little bit of getting used to after having a five-speed stick in the Accord for so long. We decided to go with the Fit since it’s got VERY impressive cargo space as well as good mileage and Honda’s generally decent track record of reliability.

We were at the Honda dealer for almost all day Friday, and once we got far enough along that we were clear that yeah, this is going to happen, they advised me to warn our credit union that we were about to make a large transaction via our debit card. So I called up BECU and did that thing, which turned out to be the correct thing to do, because they had to temporarily adjust our daily debit transaction limits so we could actually make our down payment. Fun!

And it was very lollertastic to bring home a car that, at least as of when we signed the paperwork, said “9” on the odometer. By the time we got it home it said “10”. Dara took a picture, but was a little sulky that we weren’t able to get a single-digit snap of the odometer in time!

Saturday, we took it to the nearby Park-n-Ride so we could practice getting used to its controls. It’s significantly more maneuverable than the Accord, with a tighter turn radius–it doesn’t quite turn on a dime, but it does turn on a quarter, maybe. You can do a U-turn in three lanes in this thing. And yowza, the controls. Lots of fiddly bits on the dash, including all the various options on the touch screen that let you link up phones to talk to via Bluetooth. We figured out how to get it to talk to both of our phones, although at least for my purposes, this’ll mostly be useful for playing stuff over my playlists. We are NOT likely to use it to try to actually make calls or anything, although the capability for hands-free calls is apparently there. There are controls on the steering wheel to manipulate audio and calls, too, and to activate voice commands as well.

It’s also pretty nifty to have a car with modern safety features, too. Not only the airbags, but also things like the system that helps you out when you’re on a hill by holding the brake for you for a couple of seconds while you’re switching over to the accelerator. VERY handy for driving in Seattle. There’s also a system that kicks in if it senses the car is out of control, and slams on the brakes for you with better force than you can do all by yourself.

This car is complicated enough that I spent a good chunk of yesterday just reading the manual, so that I can have a general idea of everything it can do. Because yeah, all these fiddly bits? Let’s read the manual for once, shall we?

We’ve been asked if we’re going to name this vehicle. Historically Dara and I have not named our cars, although this is really only the fourth one we’ve owned together; we don’t go through cars very quickly at all. That said, we’ve decided it does rather look like a shuttle, particularly since it’s silver. Specifically, a Raptor-class shuttle from Battlestar Galactica. The Raptors don’t have names in the series, but they do have numeric designations. We’ll have to see whether this thing winds up being Raptor 1 or what.

And since it’s shorter than the Accord, we’ll have to get used to different parking clearances in our garage landing bay. Dara’s taken helpful steps to let us be able to measure where we need to stop when coming in for a landing!

New Raptor

New Raptor

So yeah. This is all exciting and a bit nervous-making and HOLY CRAP WE HAVE A NEW CAR. Now that this is a done deal, too, we need to sell the old car too. So if you’re local and think you might be interested in our Accord, go take a look at the Craigslist ad that Dara put up. Dara’s done a lot of work this past weekend to get the car cleaned up and ready for handoff, and we’re pretty happy to report that it’s in very good condition for its age. If you know any local-to-us people who might be interested, spread the word, too!

About Me

In other news: a present for ME!

YOU GUYS. Remember this blog post, in which I described how I had this picture in my head of all of my various fandoms over the years having a kitchen party in my head?

My friend Yngvar in Norway, crafty devil that he is, commissioned no less an august personage than Sonny Strait to sketch it for me, as a combination Christmas/birthday present! Sonny Strait, comma, who’s best known to me with his background in Elfquest! Behold!

The Many Fandoms of Anna the Piper, by Sonny Strait

The Many Fandoms of Anna the Piper, by Sonny Strait

And that’ll be Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer referenced in this sketch for my TV fandoms, as well as Great Big Sea and Elvis being the most obvious musical fandoms–but with the baby!me babbling in French being a callout to my Quebec trad fandom, not to mention my rampageous affection for learning French in general. 😀 I particularly like how baby!me looks a lot like the pic of baby!me I’ve posted before! Somebody was clearly given a reference source!

All hail Yngvar and Sonny Strait for making this happen! Thank you, gentlemen!

About Me

Help me out here, Internets

I’ve been bitching about this on the social networks, so a lot of you know this already–but here’s a post on the general theme of It’s Official, Surgically Enforced Early Menopause Sucks. By which I mean, the vicious hot flashes that’ve been swamping me for the last few weeks. My sleep’s been shot to hell, and I’ve been waking up at least three or four times a night.

Which has meant I’ve been pretty much thrashed, physically and mentally. I’ve been just functional enough to keep making it to work, but not much besides that, including getting any decent progress done on the writing or music. It’s very hard to write a book when you have an inner dragon doing this.

What Hot Flashes Feel Like

What Hot Flashes Feel Like

So what have I been doing about this? A few things.

One, I’ve been horribly snorky lately as well, so at Dara’s recommendation I’ve been hitting some first-generation antihistamines before going to bed. Specifically, the stuff in Benadryl, diphenhydramine.

Two, at the recommendation of my massage therapist, I’ve been taking an adrenal supplement to get my system to stand down out of crisis mode (due to having to recover from surgery), and decrease the amount of cortisol running through me.

Three, most significantly, reading around on the Internets (and in particular, skimming the forums on hystersisters.com) pointed me to references about how it’s common for Asian women to not have hot flashes nearly so badly, due to high-soy diets. I deemed this as requiring immediate investigation–and discovered, after ordering a tofu dish from the Chinese place near our house, that two nights’ worth of using that dish as dinner tamped down the hot flashes HARD.

I have since been able to replicate this with another tofu dish, and am therefore now deploying an emergency soy surge to my diet for the next few weeks until my scheduled physical with my primary care doc, and my followup with my oncologist as well. We’ll be discussing a proper game plan for dealing with these symptoms, as well as whether dietary changes are a feasible plan long-term.

For now though I’ve got some soymilk for putting on cereal and into my tea, as well as some soy-based yogurt. And I’ve been having miso in the morning AND in the evening. It’s helping. It scales down my inner dragon to this.

Really, the Dragon Just Wants a Soy Smoothie

Really, the Dragon Just Wants a Soy Smoothie

Either way, Internets, this is where YOU all come in. Tell me about your favorite tofu recipes! What are interesting things to do to tofu?

Also tell me about your favorite soy-based snacks as well! And thank you all in advance for any pointers!

About Me, Other People's Books, The Internet

A few things make a post

Some good reading on the Intarwebz today! First up, I bring you today’s Big Idea column over at the Whatever, where Mr. Scalzi brings word of Brad Meltzer’s new children’s books about Amelia Earhart and Abraham Lincoln. Parents of small children, especially daughters, go check this out. Especially if you’re fans of Calvin and Hobbes. The art for the Amelia book looks adorable.

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Meanwhile, Jim Hines has put up a good post today going over a writing advice question I hear time and again: i.e., whether you should try to write to the market. I said over there, and I’ll say here too, that even though “don’t try to write to the market” and “be aware of the market” seem contradictory on the surface, for me they’re actually kind of not. You want to be aware of what people who aren’t you are writing, so you aren’t writing in a complete and utter vacuum, and accidentally writing stuff that people lost interest in reading five or ten or even more years ago. Plus, you never know what awesome ideas you may have spark for your next book.

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Fellow Carina fantasy author Shawna Thomas is talking up her work over at Eleri Stone’s place, and in particular about coming-of-age fantasy. Go give her a look, ’cause fantasy by Carina is love!

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I’ve been following the news posts on TheOneRing.net for a while now, because hi, yeah, Tolkien geek, yo. But this post of theirs made me up and join their message forums for the express purpose of voicing my appreciation to their forums member who wrote some nice fanfic about Dís, the mother of the dwarves Kíli and Fíli, the only female dwarf Tolkien ever named. Looks like Cirashala’s getting her epic on with further fanfic about the character, too, based on what she’s saying in the thread that the news post links to. I approve!

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And last but least, speaking of Tolkien, I’m posting about reading fantasy in other languages over on Here Be Magic today! I talk up the Trilingual Hobbit Reread, but also a couple of the novels I want to read out of Quebec SF/F as well, like the ones by Élodie Tirel I’ve been talking about, as well as Esther Rochon.

C’mon over and tell me about nifty non-Anglophone genre works English speakers should know about, won’t you?

About Me

Hi there, visitors from transformativeworks.org

Whoa hey, a sudden flurry of hits from the site transformativeworks.org has alerted me to having gotten linked to right over here! It’s a roundup of reactions to the story I posted about last month, when a Sherlock fanfic writer’s saucy fic got unexpectedly thrust into the faces of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman when interviewer Caitlin Moran asked them to read it out loud.

So um hi, people coming over from transformativeworks.org! Say hi if you see this post. As I said in the post that got linked to, I’m fanfic-friendly, and have been both a reader and a writer of fanfic in my day!

And to the rest of you, if you’re also fanfic-friendly and don’t already know about transformativeworks.org, you might go check ’em out.

About Me

What I want to do for 2014

I get regularly mistaken for being in my 30’s, and sometimes even younger, but truth be told I’m looking 45 in the face. And as such I’ve got a pretty damned good idea at this point of my nature and what I’m likely to do in any given year–so making resolutions I know I’ll never keep seems a rather silly way to start off a new year.

Now, goals, on the other hand, that I can do. So here’s a roundup of what I hope to accomplish in the forthcoming year.

First and foremost: write Victory of the Hawk. I have a hard deadline for this, and this time, I’m going to damn well hit the thing and not give my poor editor gray hairs. Plus it’ll be supremely satisfying to finish up the Rebels of Adalonia trilogy, which has after all been rattling around in my head since 1998.

Second and just as foremost: release Bone Walker, DAMMIT. Ideally before Vengeance of the Hunter drops.

Third: Finish up everything else owed to Kickstarter backers. This means three shorter novella-length pieces as well as the soundtrack.

Fourth: I know better at this point to say I’ll avoid medical drama. I’ve had too much of it in my life. But what I can do as a goal is to be in charge of the aspects of my health that are in my control, both mental and physical. Which includes doing what I can to stay healthy, and if I drop weight, bonus–but also not to stress out too much if I don’t drop the weight I’d ideally like to drop. Because I think everybody on the Internet knows at this point that the hard part may be losing the weight, but the even harder part is keeping it off.

Fifth: If SOMEBODY IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET (ohnoez!), remind myself that everybody will be better off if I just do not, repeat, DO NOT engage. Nobody needs that.

Sixth: Play music! And stuff as many Quebecois tunes into my head as possible. And go play them at session!

Seventh: Keep working on my French and start making a dent in the small collection of French-language novels I have acquired. Especially the Quebec SF/F ones.

Eighth: Help my fellow Carina authors spread the word about their books.

Ninth: Cuddle my spouse, pet the cats, and in general, try to maintain a good outlook on life.

Yeah, I think that’ll do nicely. So yeah. Hey there, 2014, bonjour! Comment ça va? C’mon over here and have a cup of tea with me and let’s talk about getting these things done.