Posts Tagged by other people’s books
Other Carina authors I recommend
| April 17, 2013 | Posted by annathepiper under Carina Press |
I got asked about this by the loverly Geri on Twitter, so I thought I’d devote an entire post to this topic: i.e., now that I’m a Carina author, who might I recommend to folks who might want to check out what else Carina has to offer?
I’m glad you asked that question! Because hell yeah, I can help you out with that. Keeping in mind that Carina’s catalogue is dominated by romance, a lot of my answers are going to have some measure of that involved–but I’m also going to spotlight some of the non-romance works I’ve read as well. So here you go!
Hands down, my favorite author out of all the Carina stuff I’ve read thus far is Susanna Fraser. She writes historical romance, and I very, very much liked her first outing, The Sergeant’s Lady. Particularly when I saw it going around Twitter that she was a fellow Browncoat. And then I noticed that if you’re a raving Browncoat like myself, a couple of the names of male characters in that book are suspiciously familiar, even if switched around. Plus, that book’s set during the Napoleonic War and her hero’s a sergeant in the British army, in love with a noblewoman, so there’s fun class-based conflict going on there. And I got to spend the entire book imagining her hero looking like Nathan Fillion. This did not suck.
If you enjoyed Faerie Blood, I’d like to direct your attention to one of the very first Carina releases I read and which I don’t see getting much attention at all–a book called Dark & Disorderly, by Bernita Harris. I found the sensibility of that one pretty much right in line with the kind of urban fantasy I like to read, i.e., mostly about the fantasy, not as much about the romance, but the romance is not absent either.
Similarly, although I have yet to actually read these books, I’d like to give shoutouts to the books of David Bridger, who writes urban fantasy–and especially Tia Nevitt, who’s posted before right here on my very own blog. Tia is at the top of my list for Carina authors I’ll be reading next, because she does fairy tale retellings, turning the stories to bring in the perspectives of characters who don’t normally get the spotlight. And I’m very much looking forward to reading about her dwarf heroine in The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf.
For other books in the vein of SF/F, what I’ve got queued up to read are the books of Nicole Luiken, Gate to Kandrith and Soul of Kandrith. Shawna Thomas has a couple of fantasy novels I want to check out, as well as a more science-fantasy-sounding book as well. And J.L. Hilton has a couple of romantic SF works–she’s the one who wrote Stellarnet Rebel, which impressed me by having a three-way romance between a human woman and two males of an amphibious species which apparently sounded entirely awesome to those of you who are Mass Effect fans. 
Also, I was deeply happy to see an Irish pub in her story. Because there are sessions EVEN IN THE FUTURE. Her second book of that series is on my queue to check out. Note that this is romantic SF, so yeah, there’s some emphasis on the emotional and sexual connection between the characters, and since it’s a three-way relationship she has to take the time to set up all three parties and their connections. But she’s also got some fun political machinations going on and I’m looking forward to seeing how the situation develops both on the galactic and personal levels.
For some evidence of Carina’s being generally LGBT-friendly, I point you at Cathy Pegau and her book Rulebreaker for some F/F science fiction. She’s got a more recent release as well, with a het pairing, Caught in Amber, and that’s also very high on my Carina list to check out. Likewise, if you’re a superhero fan, grab The Superheroes Union: Dynama by Ruth Diaz!
For some non-romance stuff, I very much liked the period mystery The Hollow House by Janis Patterson, which had some fun Gothic feel to it despite being set in the entirely non-Gothich setting of 1920′s-ish Denver. Well done there. And not a trace of romance in the story, either, with a heroine who’s gone through a great deal of shit in her life and who was not in a space to deal with such shenanigans. Nor did she need to. ‘Cause there were murders going on that needed to be dealt with!
For a bit of horror along the lines of how I like my horror (i.e., creepy and suspenseful, not gory), I recommend the novella Lure of the Mummy, by Janis Susan May. Nice little Egyptology-based plot. With a mummy. Like you do with Egyptology. Just ask Amelia Peabody!
There, that ought to get you all started. 
ETA: I have been reminded that I forgot to add Last Car to Annwn Station, another urban fantasy, by Michael Merriam. This is another LGBT book as well, with protagonists who are a lesbian and a bi woman, and particular thumbs up for that latter. Thanks to Catherine Lundoff for the tip!
This year’s Norwescon!
| April 2, 2013 | Posted by annathepiper under Events |
I’ve had more fun at Norwescon in recent years, in no small part because it’s actually pretty cool to be Dara’s water fairy–i.e., the person who runs water to the musicians she’s bringing in for the concert tracks. It means I get to hang out listening to all the music, and every so often, somebody’ll play something really awesome.
For example, this is the year I discovered Molly Lewis and Hello, the Future!, both of whom involve awesome geek girl singing. And ukeleles. I’m totally now hearing the Doctor in my head saying “I play a ukelele now. Ukeleles are COOL.” And while nerdcore remains not really my Thing, I did nonetheless quite enjoy what I saw of Klopfenpop and Death*Star, in Dara’s MONSTARRS OF NERDCORE concert.
But I also had quite a bit of fun attending three excellent panels. One was a complete geek-out about the movie edition of The Hobbit, in which I amused the panelists by announcing I was reading the book as we speak, in two different languages (and I was told that why yes, that IS extremely geeky). I was particularly pleased that one of the panelists was a young woman who’d just taken a semester on Tolkien at the U-dub, in fact–and that the two men on the panel cheerfully deferred to her as their expert, since her knowledge of the canon was significantly more current.
It will probably surprise none of you that the entire room was pretty much in agreement that 1) yes, we all liked the movie, 2) yes, we all had issues with the movie, and 3) yes, we’re all going to go see The Desolation of Smaug, probably two or three times. I was also quite, QUITE amused at one dude talking about how they prettied up Thorin, Kili, and Fili to get them to appeal to the “tweens and twenty-somethings”, at which point I and the fifty-something woman behind me were all “whaddya mean, twenty-somethings?” Because yeah, we were on board with the Unexpected Hotness of Dwarves.
Another panel was excellently moderated by Diana Pharaoh Francis, and was about Rogues and Anti-Heroes in Fantasy and why we love them and such. We had a delightful discussion about the differences between those character archetypes, and moreover, I was quite charmed by Diana’s purple hair. And Browncoat lanyard. You can’t go wrong with a Browncoat lanyard.
The third panel I quite enjoyed was one on Big Publishing Vs. Small Publishing Vs. Self-Publishing, which, for reasons that should be obvious, is Highly Relevant to My Interests. I wasn’t terribly surprised to see the guys who run small presses of COURSE being all “but of course you should send your stuff to big presses and if not then the small presses”… and this was where I started diverging in opinion from them, because I’ve come to believe that whether or not you submit to a big NY press should in fact depend on what your goals are and how much patience you have. Meanwhile, though, the two women who had more experience with self-pub had stern opinions about whether or not big publishing had worked for them (spoiler alert: it hadn’t, not really).
And in particular, I was pleased to note that Karen Kincy, an author whose book Other had been recommended to me, was on this panel. She spoke quite passionately about her experiences and why she chose to run a Kickstarter for the fourth novel in her series. As a Kickstarter author myself, that was pretty much the most interesting part of the panel for me.
Meanwhile, I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of local authors I’d seen at a previous Norwescon–Tiger Gray and Vivien Weaver, who have a couple of books in a shared universe that are published under the moniker of Hard Limits Press. When they found out I was an author as well we had quite the delightful chat about each other’s covers–and when I told them I had a book coming out from Carina, they were all “ooh, Deb Nemeth” and I said quite happily that she’s my editor. I quickly bought both of their books in trade, and then came home and bought them again in digital form just so I’d have them easily at hand for my commutes.
And. AND! I sold five print copies of Faerie Blood, three of which were with the help of the lovely people of Book Universe. I sold them on consignment so I didn’t get as much money for them, but hey, they were sold, and I was quite happy to give them a cut for doing the work of selling the copies for me!
Music-wise, I had huge fun at the Find Your Instrument panel, in which I totally bugged 
solcita
I did learn two things that may eventually become useful when writing Kendis, though. And those are: 1) there’s not really any such thing as a chord on the violin, but you can sometimes play two strings at once and that seems to be about as close as you get; 2) if you want to do quick staccato notes, you will want to bow down rather than up, since you get more force that way. (Since one of the questions I asked Sunnie was how to know which direction to bow when.)
Cascadia’s Got Talent was fun again this year, even if it was short, and was sadly lacking in a gong. But that was okay, since nobody was really bad enough to deserve being gonged, and a couple of people were actually actively funny and sang well. And I did love Dara’s schtick about the grand prize of Metro bus passes to Kenmore (“Kenmore! It’s on the way to Bothell! Kenmore! We used to be interesting, thank God THAT’S over! Kenmore! Where the appliances go to die!”).
Dara and I closed out the con with what’s becoming a tradition–the Intro to Irish Session panel, which is small but fun and eventually I’ll have enough damn tunes to actually carry a fair share of one of these. But in the meantime, this time, I heavily geeked out about podorythmie and Quebec music as opposed to Irish music, and had the delight of a lady in the audience name-checking Le Vent du Nord. “YES!” I proclaimed happily, as the aforementioned solcita
And I got told by Alexander James Adams that my singing was good on the GBS fanvid that Dara and I showed off to him. Which was awesome. <3
About Bridget Zinn and Poison
| March 25, 2013 | Posted by annathepiper under Other People's Books |
The other day I heard about an author by the name of Bridget Zinn, whose first book, a YA Fantasy novel called Poison, has just been released.
Thing is, it’s been released posthumously–because Bridget died of cancer in 2011. Now, her book’s finally seeing the light of day. And her loved ones are asking people to spread the word about it, particularly asking that authors post about their first releases, or that non-authors post about other momentous firsts in their lives.
I could post about my own cancer diagnosis and how, even with the reasonably low-impact scenario I went through, hearing about Bridget dying before she could see her own book published really hit home with me. Instead, though, I’m going to focus upon what the Help post I linked to asked for, and talk about my first book.
As y’all know, Valor of the Healer is about to drop in another couple of weeks. But it’s NOT the first book I professionally released. That of course was Faerie Blood, my urban fantasy, which was originally published by Drollerie Press in 2009 and which I resurrected via Kickstarter last year. While I am extremely proud of Valor of the Healer, and am secure in proclaiming that it’s a more complex and mature work, in many ways Faerie Blood is the book of my heart.
I wrote the bulk of it in 2003 for Nanowrimo, and kept going until I had a full novel’s worth of words. I threw everything I loved into it: music, magic, elves, Seattle, biking, computers, and all sorts of geeky references to things like Linux and Nethack and Calvin and Hobbes. My love of the music of Elvis Presley AND the folk music of Newfoundland influenced two major characters in the cast. It is, after all, no accident at all that Faerie Blood‘s hero is a bouzouki player from Newfoundland!
I wasn’t diagnosed with my breast cancer until 2007, by which point I’d gone through several query cycles with the book. And it wasn’t until 2008 that Drollerie agreed to publish me. The book finally was deployed for sale in 2009, and by then, I’d gone through radiation treatment, a mastectomy, and reconstruction surgery. I’m in good condition now, and am immensely grateful that Evergreen Medical Center has looked after me so well, and that I am in fact here to see my next book about to be released into the digital wilds.
So yeah, very much feeling for Bridget’s loved ones. And I’d like to encourage you all to consider going to check out the site that remains up in honor of her and of her novel. If you’d like to help spread the word about her and do something in her memory, check out her family is asking for folks to do over here.
And if the book sounds like fun to you, buy it! And review it! It certainly sounds like fun to me–and since it’s described as being full of “adventure and romance and fun”, I can’t think of a better way to celebrate its author than to indulge in what the book’s got to offer. Go check it out. For Bridget.
Thanks all.
Guest Post – Geekiness and Writing
| March 15, 2013 | Posted by tianevitt under Guest Posts, Other People's Books |
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.
Mixed-media book roundup
| March 10, 2013 | Posted by annathepiper under Books |
Picked up in print from Third Place:
- Midnight Blue-Light Special, by
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
- 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.
Call for topics for visiting Carina author!
| March 5, 2013 | Posted by annathepiper under Carina Press, Other People's Books |
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!
The Kobo is still shiny ebook roundup post
| February 24, 2013 | Posted by annathepiper under Books |
Latest roundup of books, particularly motivated by trying to get caught up on the releases of several of my fellow Carina authors!
Thus, from Carina Press:
- The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf, by Tia Nevitt. The second of her fairy tale adaptations, which I had to grab pretty much because of adoring that she’s got a dwarf heroine, and let’s hear it for heroines of atypical body types!
- Blood of the Pride, by Sheryl Nantus. This one’s urban fantasy. I liked the idea of a cat shifter who’s unable to shift being the protagonist, and this is also me supporting the SF/F side of Carina’s catalogue!
- Golden Triangle, by David Bridger. See previous comment re: supporting Carina’s urban fantasy. This is the second of Mr. Bridger’s books.
- Journey of Awakening, by Shawna Thomas. This is the second book from Ms. Thomas I’ve picked up from Carina, and this one’s more fantasy than her other one. I’ll want to get caught up soon on her too.
From Kobo & Third Place, for the new reader:
- Sweet Deception, by Heather Snow. Historical romance. I read book 1 of her series not terribly long ago, rather liked it, and am picking up book 2.
- Mark of the Lion, Stalking Ivory, and The Serpent’s Daughter, by Suzanne Arruda. These are all re-buys, and are the first three books of the historical mystery series featuring Jade del Cameron.
- The Man in the Queue, by Josephine Tey. Mystery. First of her Inspector Alan Grant series. Grabbed because the fifth of these, The Daughter of Time, was recently highly spoken of on tor.com.
- The Spiral Hunt, by Margaret Ronald. Urban fantasy. Grabbed because I’d seen this spoken well of on Whatever, because it’s urban fantasy with scent-based magic, and because Kobo currently has it listed for .99.
- Still Life With Murder, by P.B. Ryan. This was a recommendation, in the realm of historical mystery, and Kobo has this one for .99 right now too.
- The Hanover Square Affair, by Ashley Gardner. Another recommendation of the historical mystery variety. And, again, .99 right now on Kobo!
In print, from Third Place:
- The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey. Book 5 of the aforementioned Alan Grant series. Bought in print specifically because of being happy with Third Place’s customer service, and also because of the aforementioned positive review on tor.com.
- Blackveil, by Kristen Britain. Fantasy. Book 4 of her series about the Green Riders, picking up at last because my previous copies of books in these series were all in mass market paperback and the book’s finally out in that form.
Last but not last, from B&N for the Nook:
- If I Fall, by Kate Noble. Historical romance. Book 4 of her Blue Raven series.
26 now for the year.
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