Browsing Tag

valor of the healer

About Me, Carina Press, Valor of the Healer

Blogging at Here Be Magic today!

Hey folks! Surfacing from Norwescon long enough to report that my very first contribution to the Here Be Magic blog has gone up today! I’m being relaxed and groovy, and talking a bit about Valor of the Healer as well as Faerie Blood, and mentioning a few of the ways I’m shooting for equality and balance in my work. It’s no accident that both of my heroines of record, to date, are elves who are not white.

And being, well, ME, I also mention a few of the ways I love to geek out!

Come on over and say hi! I AM at Norwescon so I’m only able to pay erratic attention to the comments right now, but I’ll be trying to answer any comments as the weekend progresses and I have time in between convention programming. 🙂

Many thanks to my fellow Here Be Magic authors for spreading the word!

March 29, 2013 by
Valor of the Healer

Another writer milestone I didn’t really want to hit

So there I am googling ‘valor of the healer angela highland’, just to see if I find any interesting links that might be talking about forthcoming April releases in the SF/F or Carina realms and such–and I did in fact find one, a link with a roundup of titles due to be released in April. I’m on that list, which is of interest since this woman is a bookseller in Canada (in Toronto, even), but is also specifically calling out Carina SF/F titles!

But that’s not what this post is about. This post is about two other, less amusing links that came up in the same search results. They live at a couple of domains that look like they’re pointing at pretty much the exact same kind of page–and in both cases, they are pretending to offer a free download of Valor of the Healer.

“Well, shit,” I said. Had I really been pirated? Over a month before my release?

I dug into the suspicious pages a little further, though, by doing a View Source command on them in my browser. (View Source IS the friend of the QA web tester.) In both cases what I saw in the code were a bunch of links actually going off to amazon.com–but with a lot of extra parameters on the URLs that make me think that they’re trying to mooch off of the Amazon affiliate system.

I’m told that this kind of thing is actually quite common, affiliate sites pretending to be torrent sites. Which strikes me as simultaneously hilarious and kind of sad, really. And for all I know these two sites–or maybe one site, since both of the pages had pretty much the exact same layout and text to them, except for differing domains–may be legitimate Amazon affiliates.

But I kinda doubt it.

Long story short, when in doubt, check my Valor of the Healer page for the roundup of all the official places selling the book. It IS available for preorder on practically all the major ebook vendors’ sites now, though it has yet to show up on the Sony bookstore. And if you have any doubt whatsoever about where’s best to buy the book from, go straight to carinapress.com!

March 4, 2013 by
Carina Press, Rebels of Adalonia, Valor of the Healer

It BEGINS!

Holy hopping Christ on a pogo stick, you guys! Look what I just found! Pre-order links for Valor of the Healer, on Amazon and on Barnes and Noble! No cover art yet or cover copy–these are very early links–but they are THERE.

And if you click over to Carina’s Coming Soon page and scroll down to April, OMG. I’m there.

Coming Soon: Valor of the Healer!

Coming Soon: Valor of the Healer!

Between this and starting to get some emails in my inbox with early rumblings of info on What’s Going to Happen Next, I’m starting to get super-excited here, people. I’ve seen round 1 of both cover art and cover copy, and as soon as I have final versions of both that I’m cleared to post, I’ll be putting up an official Valor of the Healer page similar to the one I have up for Faerie Blood!

You guys. I’M GOING TO HAVE ANOTHER BOOK!

January 3, 2013 by
Bone Walker, Valor of the Healer

Long overdue update

Most of you who follow me on the various social networks, or who read the posts I make via my personal blog annathepiper.org (whether there or on LJ/Dreamwidth), know this already–but for those of you who don’t, a couple of weeks ago I was briefly, violently ill. I had to spend four days in the hospital, but happily, the problem was relatively easy to deal with. And I’m feeling a lot better now! This did mean though that I was thrown for a pretty massive loop for a couple of weeks, while I dealt with recovering.

The good news though (well, aside from yay! I’m feeling better!) is that Valor of the Healer is officially DONE and has been handed off to my editor. Now comes the waiting for exciting things like cover art! And final blurb copy! And learning about how Carina’s ARC process works!

In related news, I’ve also finally officially signed the Carina contract. You guys, I’m a contracted Carina Press author. I feel all grown up. *happysniff*

Meanwhile! Now that Valor is done, this frees up my brain for returning to Bone Walker. The goal is to try to finish this puppy up by the end of November. I think I have two chapters left, at which point I’ll be putting out a brief call for beta readers before the book is handed off to JoSelle Vanderhooft for formal editing. Those of you who backed my Kickstarter have gotten a longer, more detailed update about this!

Groundwork continues to be laid as well for getting the Bone Walker soundtrack ready. My belovedest Dara, rock star that she is, has thrown together a bunch of practice tracks of the various tunes we’re interested in for the instrumental sets, so that we can start learning how to play them the way she’s envisioning they should sound. It’s going to be exciting, and I’ve got a LOT of tunes I’m going to have to learn how to play really fast. This is what happens when an author is also a musician, you guys!

And, artist Kiri Moth (may her PhotoShop always swiftly load! May her pencils be ever sharp!) has sent me an initial sketch for the soundtrack’s cover art! Check it out!

Bouzouki Cat Says TWANG

Bouzouki Cat Says TWANG

So, lots of stuff still going on, and I’m hoping to finish the year strong–and with another finished book to show for it. Hopefully I won’t be flung any more health surprises. Wish me luck, folks!

November 15, 2012 by
Rebels of Adalonia, Valor of the Healer, Vengeance of the Hunter

Trilogy titles announcement!

With the agreement of myself, my agent, my editor, and the rest of the team at Carina Press, we now have final titles for my trilogy!

As of RIGHT NOW, the book formerly known as Lament of the Dove shall be henceforth referred to as Valor of the Healer!

Book 2, formerly Shadow of the Rook, becomes Vengeance of the Hunter.

Book 3, formerly Lone Hawk’s Flight, will be Victory of the Hawk.

And the series title over all will be Rebels of Adalonia.

I’m feeling quite happy about these titles over all, especially for Book 1, since that very nicely captures the whole character arc I’m doing with Faanshi in that part of the story. And I like the alliteration of the V and H words in each title.

I’ve been asked this on Google+, so I’ll go ahead and note here that the title changes were brought about for two reasons. One, because ‘Lament’ was determined to not really fit Faanshi’s character arc. This was in fact something that beta readers had brought up to me (and did I mention, YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME LIKE THAT), so when Carina raised the issue, it wasn’t surprising to me at all. Two, because ‘Dove’ was thought to be kind of questionable for the fantasy market. This, too, wasn’t really surprising. I also had a beta reader note to me that they felt that ‘Lament of the Dove’ actually sounded like a Western! And on a related note, especially given that a lot of Carina’s buying audience is coming out of the romance genre, I could also see people thinking ‘Dove’ has connotations of inspiration romance–which is definitely not what I’m writing.

So! Valor of the Healer it is. I get to make appropriate changes in the copyedit pass I need to do this weekend! And y’all be on the lookout for this to get incorporated into info right here on my site as well as in upcoming announcements as they happen!

October 17, 2012 by
Valor of the Healer

Lament of the Dove is AWAY!

I am thrilled and nervous as all hell to report, O Internets, that the sixth (and hopefully final, at least for a while) draft of Lament of the Dove has now been sent off to Carina Press!

The word count as of the completion of this draft stands at roughly 112,300. I actually yanked about 13K when I did the word count reduction pass in Draft Five, but about 7K came back with the new content that went into Draft Six. So the net word count reduction came in at about 6,100–at the very bottom edge of the range that Carina’s editor requested! Whew!

Between the change requests I got from their editor and the excellent feedback from this last round of beta reading, Lament is now a much, much stronger book. And even if Carina says no, I’ll be happy to send this book out to consideration elsewhere. For now, the plan is to let Lament sit with Carina until I hear back from them, and turn attention over to finishing up Bone Walker and getting its Kickstarter going!

Today is a good day indeed.

February 26, 2012 by
Valor of the Healer

Calling all beta readers!

I am delighted–and relieved, OH MY GOD relieved–to announce that as of this posting, Draft Six of Lament of the Dove is finally, FINALLY complete.

Final word count on this draft is roughly 110K, which puts me within the range I was asked for in Carina’s R&R. Quite a bit of old content has been taken out. Quite a bit of new content has been put in. And now I am going to step away from this book for a few weeks, before I come back for one last read-through to make sure nothing else is in desperate need of fixing before I re-query it back to Carina Press.

This, O Internets, is where you come in. Several of you out there have expressed previous interest in beta reading for me. If you’re still interested, and you think you’ll be able to read through Lament for me in the next couple of weeks, I need to hear from you ASAP.

What I need is going to be extremely simple. I do not at this point need in-depth proofreading or copyedits, although as always, any obvious errors should be brought to my attention. Mostly I need people to read through it like any other book, sanity-check it, and tell me if it hangs together cohesively. If you’ve read previous drafts of Lament and you’re up for taking another stab at it, you’re more than welcome. If you haven’t read a previous draft and you want to, that’s also awesome.

Either way, contact me if you want in. I will fling you a copy of the manuscript in the file format of your choice. My usual gmail addresses are acceptable contact methods, as are DMs on Twitter or PMs on Facebook. Hell, if you can reach me with smoke signals or carrier pigeons, go for it! Just talk to me!

And talk to me soon. I would like if at all possible to re-submit the book to Carina before I go to Canada at the beginning of March, to get it done and dealt with. Thanks all, as always, for your support!

January 30, 2012 by