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Angela Korra'ti

Books

The Man I Got a Lot of Books at V-CON book roundup post!

Back from V-CON, and a full post on that will be forthcoming, but before I do that here’s a quick roundup of books recently acquired!

Picked up electronically:

  • Lord and Lady Spy, by Shana Galen. Historical romance. Nabbed this because of Smart Bitch Sarah alerting the Bitchery that it was on sale for .99 for the Nook, and I figured what the hell, I’m willing to spend 99 cents on this. It’s a historical romance version of the “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” spy scenario, and it sounds like fun!

Picked up in print, separately from V-CON:

  • Ganymede, by Cherie Priest. The next book in her Clockwork Century series, for GREAT ZOMBIE STEAMPUNK JUSTICE. ‘Nuff said!

Picked up in print, at V-CON:

  • Matriarch, by Karen Traviss. SF. This is Book 4 in her Wess’Har series, which I happened to grab because I saw it in a free books pile in the con suite. Woo!
  • Heroes Die Young, by T.M. Hunter. Bought from the nice ladies at the Champagne Books table, who even told me that if I liked this book, I could email her and say “Hey I got this at V-CON, can I have the ebook?”, and she’d let me have it! How awesome is that? As for what the book’s actually about, it’s a short space-opera type thing, with a hero in the mold of Han Solo. Which, as y’all should know by now, is very, very relevant to my interests!
  • The Bloodlight Chronicles: Reconciliation, by Steve Stanton. SF technothriller, bought from the SF Canada table (they appear to be a Canadian analog of SFWA). This is about an alien virus that vastly prolongs life, and a man desperately searching for its source so that he may grant eternal life to his son, who doesn’t have the virus.
  • Dance of Knives, by Donna McMahon. Also bought from the SF Canada table, and this one’s an SF novel about a futuristic Vancouver controlled by tongs and gangs. I was intrigued to note that this one was previously published by Tor, and the author has since gotten her rights back (due to low sales numbers) and has self-pubbed it and the sequel.
  • Forbidden Cargo, by Rebecca K. Rowe. SF, picked up from the EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing table. This one’s about the creator of a virtual system that allows instant access to all of humanity’s knowledge uncovering a plot to prove the existence of an illegally engineered race.
  • And last but definitely not least, Dirk Danger Loves Life, by Chris Rothe. Bought from the nice gentleman at the Atomic Fez Publishing table, because a) I’d heard of this book, b) Atomic Fez is an AWESOME name for a publishing company, and c) the book’s a comedy, and I’m down with the funny right now. I can’t do better than the blurb in telling you what it’s about: “a not-so-typical coming of age story involving scuba gear, terrible poetry, a fish eulogy, a walrus, pop music, terrible puns, marijuana, a fake attorney, homelessness, death, and far, far too much pornography”.

202 for the year!

October 3, 2011 by
Site Updates

Trying an experiment

I’ve been thinking for some time that it’s a little weird that most of my blog posts are on my personal blog, annathepiper.org, while angelakorrati.com remains fairly inactive. Two reasons why this is weird:

  1. If somebody casually visits angelakorrati.com, they may miss my far more frequent posts on annathepiper.org, and therefore miss more of what I’m generally like online, and
  2. The vast majority of writer blogs I’m familiar with don’t differentiate between just writing-related posts and personal ones.

So I’m trying an experiment. I’ve found a plugin that lets me syndicate posts off of one blog into another, so I’ll be using it to try to roll posts from annathepiper.org onto angelakorrati.com.

Note: if you are reading me via Livejournal or Dreamwidth, you are already seeing my direct mirrored copies of the posts on both blogs. This new plugin should NOT echo over onto LJ or Dreamwidth, if I understand it correctly. It’s ONLY for people directly reading on angelakorrati.com.

So if you happen to actually be reading angelakorrati.com directly via RSS, and you’re also reading annathepiper.org, you might try dropping the latter to avoid duplication of posts.

Let me know if you see any problems, people. If this works out I’ll leave it be. Otherwise I’m going to consider just merging the blogs, since I’m finding it also just slightly weird to be splitting up my posting efforts anyway.

October 3, 2011 by
Music

Starting to feel like a proper piccolo player again

When I play piccolo in session, I typically hang out in my lower octave–which, for those of you who are musically inclined, is notated at starting at D above middle C on the staff, i.e., the D just below the bottom of the staff. BUT: that’s actually an octave up from a flute playing the same octave, because a piccolo’s pitched an octave up from a standard concert C flute. So if I’m hitting what’s written out as a D above middle C, I’m actually hitting a D that’s an octave up from that.

Because it’s been so long since I regularly played piccolo, I’ve been staying in that octave for a couple of reasons. One, I haven’t yet regained my old ability to not get louder if I get higher–and a piccolo playing higher notes is pretty damned high. Two, my embouchure also hasn’t been steady enough to not only hit those notes, but hit them cleanly and purely, which is vital on the piccolo. I hit a higher note wrong, you will be able to tell. And the last thing I want to do in session is be the person hitting the obvious high, squeaky notes. *^_^*;;

But this is starting to change. Thanks to regularly going to session–and, more importantly, regularly practicing at home every few days–I’m starting to get my proper piccolo embouchure back. We finished up last night with “Da Slockit Light”, which gets up into what’s written out as my middle octave (which is the third octave on a flute). I was quite happy to get some good notes out up in the neighborhood of G and A! I did notice I was slightly flatter in that octave than I am in the lower one, though. Not sure yet whether this is because I still need to improve that embouchure or if my piccolo needs some tuneup work, or both.

Meanwhile, a fiddle player I hadn’t met yet (I don’t know if she’s new to the Renton session or if she just hadn’t been there when I’ve been before) gave me an awesome pointer. I told her I was learning several tunes off of sheet music since that’s where my background is, and I’m not as solid learning things by ear. She recommended I record myself playing various tunes I’m interested in, reading off of sheet music if need be, and then work on learning the tunes just by listening to myself play. Which sounds like an awesome idea, and I’m going to have to try that!

Note also: “Da Slockit Light” is a gorgeous little tune, and I’m going to have to learn it properly. It’s also got a bit of “aww” with its origin. It was written by Tom Anderson, and according to that Wikipedia page, “Slockit” means “extinguished”, and the title is a reference to people moving away from the area where he grew up.

Also noted from last night’s session: “Dunmore Lasses”, “Out on the Ocean”, and “Kid on the Mountain” are my latest additions to TunePal. Once I get a better handle on more of the tunes in Matt’s PDF, I’m going to start burning through the TunePal set as well!

September 29, 2011 by
Comics

New reboot Trek comics

Throughout most of my life, I haven’t been a huge comics reader. There have been notable exceptions to this–Elfquest of course being the biggest. I paid a bit of attention to The X-Men and Excalibur when I was in Kentucky. More recently, I’ve bought the Dark Horse Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 graphic novels, and their various Firefly and Serenity stories. And I’ve gotten at least the first of the graphic novel adaptations of userinfojimbutcher‘s Storm Front.

But that’s been about it, really. There are a few reasons for this: one, I’ve got plenty of novels I want to read, and have very little mental bandwidth left over to seek out comics as well. Two, I’m finicky about my subject matter. Three, I’m finicky about the art; Wendy Pini set a REALLY high bar for me with Elfquest, and even now, that’s hard to beat. Four, I’ve got very little interest in physical copies of comics these days, for much the same reasons I’ve got less interest in print copies of books: i.e., I do most of my reading on my daily commute, and any paper copy of something I’m carrying around is likely to get beaten up by being carried in my backpack.

That said? I’m actually tempted by IDW’s new line of Star Trek stories that take plotlines from the original series and adapt them using the reboot versions of the characters. Yes, I know–the reboot Trek flick was very silly. But I really rather liked it all the same, despite its spectacularly goofy science. And I’m intrigued by the idea of what this line of comics might do with the plotlines; I was always a TOS girl, when it comes to Trek.

And since IDW does have various free versions of their apps, I could even buy this comic digitally if I so chose. I’ve seen that the Dark Horse comics I’ve picked up digitally are beautiful on the iPad, and that nicely solves the problems of space and abuse of physical copies.

I may have to get this. I’m still pondering; IDW’s app has a bit of a preview up for issue #1 of this line, and it does look tempting!

September 26, 2011 by
Quebecois Music

Most awesome fiddle player of the week

Y’all remember I was gushing over “Lanlaire” by Le Vent du Nord, right, and in particular over this video of it?

That vid was super-handy in letting me figure out a few things about the song. As I’d posted before, I was able to follow the melody on my piccolo and from there figured out what key it was in. Seeing Simon Beaudry’s guitar in the vid let me figure out what set of chords he was using–i.e., that he’s got to be using D minor chords if he’s capoed on 5. (Me, I punted to E minor chords capoed on 3, which are a lot easier for me; D minor is still giving me issues if I try to play chords at any given speed.)

What I could not figure out from the video, however, is what fiddle player Olivier Demers is playing on the bridge and on the outro; he’s playing too fast for me to follow. I tried letting TunePal on my iPad listen to the recording, and it had no idea what the tune was–which is not terribly surprising, since TunePal, helpful though it is, is fairly scattershot about how well it picks up on stuff.

Turns out though that there’s a reason it had no idea what that tune was.

See, I sorta kinda emailed M. Demers and asked him about the tune. *^_^*;; The LVN boys have email links on their bio pages on their site, so I looked at Olivier’s page on Saturday, went .oO (what the hell) to myself, and clickied! Told the gentleman I was a newbie session player and a new LVN fan, and asked if he could identify the tune for me so I could maybe look it up online and learn it. (Because it’s either that or I try to transcribe it, and then learn it that way, which’ll take me a lot longer. Because I can’t play by ear well enough to try to pick out a tune without the intermediate step of transcribing it out first.)

He emailed me back! And said he actually wrote the tune himself for the song! And said he’d send me the sheet music later since he didn’t have it on that computer!

I’ve heard from a couple different directions now (hiya, userinfoscrunchions!) that the LVN boys are sweethearts, and this is clear proof. Olivier Demers for me is now this week’s most awesome fiddle player! I’m going to be fangirlishly squeeing about this all week, so y’all be warned. And then I’m going to see if I actually can transcribe the tune, because it’ll be an amusing exercise, if sheet music actually shows up in my inbox, to compare against it and see if I can get it right!

*squee!*

September 26, 2011 by
Drollerie Press, Faerie Blood

The state of Drollerie Press (and Faerie Blood)

This has started getting talked about in a few public places, so I’m going to go ahead and address it here. Long story short, Drollerie Press is in a slow state of collapse, pretty much due to the ongoing serious health issues our senior editor, userinfoserasempre, is suffering. All indications are that this is an honorable collapse, mind you–and as someone who’s suffered her own health problems in the recent past, I can certainly attest that it’s tough to get through day to day things if your health is rocky, never mind running a publishing company.

There are rumors that Drollerie may be sold, but at this time they are only rumors. I have however taken the step of asking for the return of my rights to Faerie Blood. I don’t have a confirmed date as to when this will happen, given that it (like all other outstanding things that editor Deena needs to take care of) is dependent upon her ability to get to it. But given that this is now in the queue, if you want Faerie Blood, you should go ahead and get it from the site of your choice. Drollerie’s own site is your best bet as that’s the source most likely to get me any payment for it.

Or, if you are so inclined, I have a small number of CD copies of Faerie Blood still available. If you’re local to me, you can have one for $5. If you’re not local, you can have one for $7.

What I will do with the book once I have it back remains to be seen. Much will depend upon whether Drollerie is in fact sold (in which case the possibility exists that new management may be interested in keeping it), or on whether I can find a home for it where the book hasn’t already been queried. I have received Good Advice that one way to go about that may well be to finish Book 2 and query them together. We’ll see.

Bone Walker remains the most likely means through which I could query Faerie Blood anywhere else, since that’ll wind up being a full novel. The current novella-length pieces I’m thinking about for the Warder universe (the Oscar story, the Elizabeth/Ross story, the Millicent origin story) will also have to be considered.

More on this as I know it, all.

September 23, 2011 by
Quebecois Music

Too much awesome for one band alone

All this starts, as many things musical do for me, with Great Big Sea! As I’ve mentioned, the first time I saw GBS perform, La Bottine Souriante was part of that show. At the time they were nine members strong, and I was almost as blown away by them as I was by GBS.

Also from GBS, I get to La Volée d’Castors. I found them thanks to a thread along the theme of “if you like Great Big Sea, you’ll also like ” on the OKP, though it took me some time to actually do anything about it–i.e., to find their music, see if I liked it, and actually buy it! I’m just sorry I didn’t find them sooner. 😀

From LVC I get to Le Vent du Nord, because I found Le Vent buying LVC albums on iTunes. LVN popped up in the list of ‘people who bought this also bought’ albums. It turns out also that Réjean Brunet, current member of Le Vent, also used to be in LVC!

Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer I also discovered on iTunes when I started buying LVC and LVN albums. Again, it took me a bit to actually decide to buy their stuff–but I decided this was clearly Important when I read their web page and discovered a) they’re an a cappella group, and b) two of their members are former La Bottine Souriante guys! One of them in particular, Michel Bordeleau, was in La Bottine when I saw them perform in 2000.

De Temps Antan and Galant, Tu Perds Ton Temps are my most recent acquisitions, thanks to M Kenney, who’s dropped me several comments on the topic! De Temps Antan are connected both to La Bottine Souriante AND to Le Vent du Nord, since all three guys in De Temps are either current or former La Bottine members–and Éric Beaudry is of course the brother of Simon, over in Le Vent.

The Beaudry boys are connected back to the Charbonniers, since André Marchand, current Charbonniers member, produced their album Le sort des amoureux for them.

The Galant girls are also connected to LVN, since M Kenney informs me that they, Le Vent, and the Charbonniers have all performed together, doing a song called “Diable et le Fermier”, written by Nicolas Boulerice of Le Vent. Here it is, on YouTube:

Long story short, clearly all the best bands in Quebec are tied together in one great big web of AWESOME. I love that! And I’ll be amused to see how many more ways I can find to tie all these groups together, and if there are other groups in the web as well!

September 23, 2011 by