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Faerie Blood

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Faerie Blood

Internets, I give you: Kendis! Marie! Thompson!

Active negotation continues with my cover artist, ladies and gentlemen, and she just offered for my pleasure and delight these rough sketches of my girl Kendis, fiddle in hand!

Kendis Sketch #1

Kendis Sketch #1

Kendis Sketch #2

Kendis Sketch #2

We’re going to be going with something more like sketch #2 as Kiri, userinfosolarbird, and I proceed with the cover design, since it seems a bit more dynamic and better suited to Kendis as a character. And. Oh. My. God. I cannot wait to see a full color treatment of this!

I invite you all, O Internets, to imagine a more detailed version of this, in color, with Kendis’ golden eyes alight. And imagine what this same artist is also going to do with Elessir and Christopher. Now be thinking about that, because this, oh my yes, is going to be part of what that Kickstarter on the way is ALL ABOUT. You all can help me make this happen. And it is going to ROCK.

Internet, I am EXCITE!

ETA: And, having just posted the cover art, I have been immediately asked: does Kendis play her fiddle right handed or left handed? Faerie Blood never said whether Kendis is right handed or left handed, so it’s fair to assume she’s right handed. Therefore, fiddlers out there who haven’t already seen me post this to Facebook or G+, my question for you: she should be holding the bow in her right hand when she plays, yes? Because the fiddle will be resting on her left shoulder? This will of course impact the final art since Kendis needs to be holding the instrument correctly!

ETA #2: Just for everybody’s reference, while I tend to use the words ‘fiddle’ and ‘violin’ interchangeably in casual speech, I have been advised that there IS a difference between ‘bluegrass fiddle’ and ‘classically trained violin’. So Kendis, who learned to play in her school orchestra, should clearly be considering herself a ‘violin player’. Doublechecking Faerie Blood, I see that I used the word ‘fiddle’ twice; once was in a bit of dialogue of Christopher’s, so that can stand, but the other was Kendis in the narrative. So I’ll need to fix that in the second edition release.

I’m also being told that EVERYBODY pretty much learns with the instrument on the left shoulder. I’ll make sure this is appropriately reflected in the final art.

And I’m also being advised that the difference between ‘fiddle’ and ‘violin’ matters for how the bow is held as well, so I’ll make sure Kendis is holding the bow correctly as well.

Thanks to all who’ve advised me on this! 🙂

February 25, 2012 by
Bone Walker, Faerie Blood

Bone Walker Kickstarter update!

Just to let you guys know I have NOT forgotten or abandoned this, O Internets: there is new news on the Bone Walker Kickstarter front!

As I’ve previously reported, I’m in talks with a cover artist for not only Faerie Blood, but also Bone Walker and the still as of yet unnamed Book 3. But as of this week, I’m also in possession of an editing agreement I’m about to square away!

Which means that once I hand off Lament of the Dove to Carina’s submissions queue, the big plan for March is going to be finishing Bone Walker. Then I shall hand it off to be edited in the latter half of April, with a target of having it back to me by early May.

And! I’ve pinged Third Place for an appointment to discuss printing of Faerie Blood with them. Dara (who will be firing up her considerable layout experience to do the layout for the print edition) and I will be going to talk to them about that soon!

Which all means, O Internet, that April is beginning to look very, very good for a target timeframe for the Bone Walker Kickstarter. As soon as I have all the numbers for projected costs to bring unto you the second edition of Faerie Blood as well as Bone Walker, I am going to officially get this show on the road.

Getting excited about this, and I hope you guys will join me for the fun!

February 22, 2012 by
Bone Walker, Faerie Blood

New cover art for Faerie Blood on the way!

I’ve already noted this on my various social networks, but to note it again here in greater detail: I’m pleased to share with you all that I’m in talks with artist Kiri Moth to do new cover art not for Faerie Blood, but for Bone Walker and Book 3 as well! I very much like her light, airy style, and cannot wait to see what she does with Kendis. Big, big props to userinfotiggymalvern for recommending her!

We’re at the stage of Kiri doing some preliminary sketches, and when she has some to share with me, I’ll see about posting one so y’all can get an idea of what the future cover for Faerie Blood is going to look like. Stand by for the shiny, all!

February 20, 2012 by
Bone Walker, Faerie Blood

Plan of action for Faerie Blood, second edition

For those of you who may be wondering what the status is on my plans for Faerie Blood and Bone Walker, there are a few new developments I’d like to share!

First and foremost, I’ve been doing a bit of judicious Googling and also asking around to get a sense of whether I should use one of the services available to deploy a new version of Faerie Blood out into the wild, or whether I can save myself some money and just do it myself. The answer to this question appears to be the latter. I had a lovely little email exchange with romance novelist Courtney Milan, who kindly advised me on how she got her recent self-pubbed Unraveled out: i.e., she deployed directly to Amazon, B&N, and Apple herself, and used Smashwords to hit a couple other services like Kobo and Sony. Moving forward, I’m going to be looking with more depth into how to do these things.

Secondly, I also asked Ms. Milan if she had preferred software for creating her ebook editions. She pointed me at this excellent guide by Guido Henkel about how to do ebook formatting, with a focus on epub and mobi versions. Boil it down to its essentials, and what you get is “do a bit of tweaking to your original manuscript file, throw in some HTML and CSS, and then fling it through Calibre”. As y’all know, I’m a professional techie. HTML and CSS? Not a problem. So yeah, I can totally do this formatting myself.

(Mad, mad props both to Ms. Milan and to Mr. Henkel, by the way. If you’re a romance reader you should totally go read Ms. Milan’s Turner series, the first two books of which I have reviewed here and here! And if you’re not already familiar with the ebook creation process and you want to be, you should go read Mr. Henkel’s guide and thank him for his work!)

Third, in commencing the tweaking of Faerie Blood‘s previously released RTF file, I’m finding some things that need tweaking. After several hard rounds of editing on Lament of the Dove, my older tendency towards ellipses, which is still present in Faerie Blood, is standing out hard. So I’m going to clean those up.

Also, since this book was originally written in 2003, its ‘present day’ setting is in fact 2003, and that now reads a bit weird to 2012 eyes–especially in regards to things like my mentions of older-style cell phones and passing references to pay phones as well. I’m going to tweak these things a bit since it won’t impact the story any, just incidental details to give a better ‘present day’ feel to any new readers who may pick me up. I am aware that this will require me to adjust my perceptions on ages and timing of certain things that took place before this novel; that’s okay. None of those things are actually in released work yet, so they’re still flexible!

And! I was sad to have realized that the first edition of Faerie Blood didn’t have a proper dedication or a proper acknowledgements section. I will be correcting both of these problems, along with an Author’s Note that will mention the changes I’m describing here.

Fourth, I will definitely be pursuing working with Third Place Books (and possibly also the University Bookstore) to engage their espresso book machine to generate any print copies of Faerie Blood–about which I am more excited now that I’ve learned that these machines are not restricted to trade paperback size. So step one here is going to be to get userinfosolarbird to do a proper print layout for a PDF version, and step two will be arranging to hand that off to be printed.

Fifth, I am investigating a particular artist recommended to me by userinfotiggymalvern, and have had a hopeful initial email exchange with her, including sending her a review copy of Faerie Blood‘s Drollerie edition to see if she wants to commit to doing new cover art for me. More on this as it happens!

Last but not least, please note that all of these plans do not preclude proceeding with a Kickstarter for Bone Walker! Before I move forward with that, though, I’d really like to nail down a cover artist, since it will be important to me to have professional-looking art that can give all three books of this projected trilogy a unifying style. More on this as it happens, too!

February 18, 2012 by
Faerie Blood, Short Pieces, Site Updates

More site updates and reminder re: buying Faerie Blood and short story

I’ve done a bit more tweaking of the site layout and content tonight, trying to make the main page a bit less busy, but also still visually interesting. So I’m experimenting with the post layout–let me know if you think the columns work.

I’ve also removed a few of the sidebar widgets. The Links/Blogroll widget has been turned into an actual Links page, since I had enough links that I thought they might as well have their own page. I’ve also created menu items for my Facebook and Twitter accounts under the “Contact” menu to give those higher visibility, and I’ve provided a link off to my annathepiper.org blog for those of you who might care to follow that. (I’m a lot more prolific on that blog than I am on this one, which remains writing-related!)

Meanwhile, I’ve updated the FAQ, Faerie Blood, and Defiance pages to reflect the status of my former Drollerie works. Since I’ve seen a few folks on Goodreads have continued to add me to their To Read lists (hi, Goodreads folks!), I just thought I’d issue a reminder: Faerie Blood and Defiance are to my knowledge no longer for sale with any ebook vendor. (If they are, and you can point me at a link, let me know! Drollerie needs to take any further instances of the book down if they’re out there.)

But if you haven’t read the book or the short story and you want to, I’ll be happy to hand-sell a copy to you. For Faerie Blood, I’m asking five dollars for an EPUB or PDF copy (and I’ll convert it to other formats on request). For “The Blood of the Land”, I’m asking 99 cents. The best way to pay me for either will be via Paypal to my gmail address, annathepiper. If you’d like to discuss alternate payment arrangements, drop me an email to the same gmail address, or visit my Contact page.

These prices will stand until my plans to self-publish Faerie Blood and Bone Walker go through, as per my previous Kickstarter post. Anyone who’d like to go ahead and buy Faerie Blood now will receive the Drollerie release copy, though I will also provide updated copies to known purchasers of the book once the self-pubbed version is ready.

Note also that I am pursuing self-pubbing “The Blood of the Land” with new cover art and layout; what you’ll get now if you want to go ahead and buy it is my manuscript copy. Again, though, if you buy the story now, I will keep track of you and provide you a free copy of the self-pubbed copy later!

As always, thanks for your support, folks. Y’all on Goodreads, hope you’ll like my book!

January 8, 2012 by
Bone Walker, Faerie Blood

I need your help on initial Kickstarter thoughts!

So let’s get this show on the road, people. I want to start planning the Kickstarter project to get Bone Walker finished and purchasable, but as Phase 1 of this, I’d like your feedback on potential incentives!

I want to hear from you if you fall into any of the following categories:

  1. You’ve run a successful Kickstarter campaign (what incentives worked to get you supporters?)
  2. You’ve supported a successful Kickstarter campaign (what incentives got you to support the campaign?)
  3. You are a prior reader of Faerie Blood and you want more in the same universe (what would get you to support this campaign?)
  4. You haven’t read anything in the Warder universe yet and you want to (same question as previous)

Note that the overall point of this Kickstarter would be to get Bone Walker finished and purchasable in electronic and print formats, with the side bonus of doing a second edition release of Faerie Blood. Thus the things I’d need to pay for would include:

  1. Commission of cover art for both books (cost TDB, I have a query out to a potential cover artist)
  2. A proper edit pass over Bone Walker (estimated cost $700), since it absolutely must be edited by someone who isn’t me; a query is out to a potential editor
  3. Initial setup cost with either Third Place or the University Book Store, depending on who has better rates, to get both books printable on the Espresso Book Machine (estimated cost $150 to set up both books)
  4. Cost per book and per page of printing individual copies of both books (cost TDB, as Bone Walker isn’t finished yet, but Faerie Blood would probably run me $2 per book and $.03 per page)

Look behind the fold for my thoughts on potential incentives. I want your feedback on order of incentive levels, combinations of potential incentives, and viable pledge levels for them! Also, if you can think of any really nifty incentives I don’t include here, do please let me know!

Continue Reading

December 20, 2011 by
Faerie Blood

Would you buy a print edition of Faerie Blood?

So, Carina Press has said no on Faerie Blood. This leaves before me the question of what to do with it next, and at this point, I have three problems with this novel when it comes to pitching it in the current market:

  1. There are already a whole lot of urban fantasy novels out there;
  2. I’m not romance-y enough for the paranormal romance end of the spectrum, read, I have no sex in this novel, and there’s barely any kissing;
  3. I’m also not dark/gritty/apocalyptic enough for the urban fantasy end of the spectrum. There’s not much actual violence in this book, and my heroine isn’t a badass, she’s a fiddle-playing geek who only just finds out about her fey heritage and the magic she’s inherited from her mother–she doesn’t have much time in the story to actually do anything seriously badassed with it.

Given these things, I am extremely dubious about my ability to pitch the novel to any further big pubs or agents. For one thing, I’ve already pitched it to most of the big pubs, with the exception of DAW, and the main reason I haven’t sent it to them at this point is my aforementioned wariness of the current urban fantasy market. For another thing, I’ve also already pitched it to the agents in which I’m actively interested. Part of me is still nagging that the couple dozen agents I’ve pitched it to isn’t enough work on pitching it–but on the other hand, a lot of the agents out there seem to have gotten slammed with so many queries now that their slush piles are crazytalk and their response times have accordingly increased dramatically. There are some agents whose response time has gotten to be over a year, and that’s assuming you get back a response at all.

So given all this, I’m seriously tempted to go the self-pub route with Faerie Blood and any further related stories, and focus other energies on newer things to be pitched to the big pubs.

My question for you therefore, O Internets, is this: if I were to do a limited run of print copies of Faerie Blood, would you buy one? I’m thinking about it because there are two Espresso book machines right here in Seattle, and one of them is right down the hill from my house at Third Place Books. I have two books (by other people) that are the output of this machine, and while it had trouble with the thicker one which is over 500 pages, the shorter one, which is comparable to Faerie Blood in length, is not badly assembled at all. If I were to get new, cover-quality art for the novel, it’s conceivable that I could therefore do a small set of print copies.

So I’m putting hard thought into this. I am looking at Third Place’s posted rates for their printing services, and pondering the possibility of doing a Kickstarter to raise the money.

Talk to me, Internets. Would you be interested? Because if I get enough people going hell yeah, I will move forward with this.

ETA: It has now been suggested to me on Google+ that I should consider a Kickstarter not for Faerie Blood specifically, but rather, for finishing Book 2, Bone Walker–and offering print copies of Faerie Blood as a potential incentive! I like this idea quite a bit and am going to be thinking about it very hard. If any of you out there would like this too, I really want to know about it!

December 14, 2011 by