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Angela Korra'ti

Books

Hurray! I met Rachel Caine!

And now for today’s major reason I was happy to avert the threat of the bug from work: userinforachelcaine had a reading tonight at Third Place Books. As I’ve been a fan of her Weather Warden books for a while and as Third Place is literally right down the hill from my house, I pretty much had to show up for this. Never mind that the actual reading was for the latest Morganville Vampire book and that I’m way behind on those; I showed up anyway, just for the awesome.

userinfojennygriffee showed up as well, since she knows Rachel better than I do and even had the pleasure of rooming with her at a Harry Potter convention a few years back–and, she’s in the dedication of one of the Weather Warden books. So we both said hi to Rachel and got hugs and a bit of chatting, and each of us had a few books signed; I decided to bring the first one of each of her series, the Weather Wardens, the Morganvilles, and the Outcast Seasons. She wrote nice things in each of them, for me!

Yay! Rachel Caine Thinks I'm Awesome!

Yay! Rachel Caine Thinks I'm Awesome!

We were charmed as well that an older gentleman ahead of us in the line was attending the reading on behalf of his college-age daughter, who he said was a big fan of Rachel’s work and who was very put out that she was in New York and missing her first reading in the Pacific Northwest ever. He got Jenny to take his picture with Rachel to send to his daughter, which was awesome.

And Rachel told some awesome little anecdotes, including how that excellent userinfojimbutcher quote on the first Weather Warden book came from Jim not even realizing that the book was hers–and they’d known each other already for quite some time, he just hadn’t realized that particular pen name was her! Lulz.

She gave out shiny things to all the people in the line, and there were apparently shinier things she was going to give to anybody who’d shown up with the whole Morganville series. I didn’t see what shiny swag that involved, since I’m behind on buying those! But what she gave out was pretty shiny, a big bookmark that changes images when you change what angle you hold it, and an Official Morganville Resident ID Card.

Shiny Morganville Swag

Shiny Morganville Swag

All in all it was a lovely little way to blow an hour. We left quickly, because the author herself had to get back to her hotel room–she has a book due tomorrow, the next MV installment, and she had 10K to go! She’s been jamming in all of the writing on this thing on the last several stops on her tour. I gotta say, for a woman on a reading tour and working in crunch mode on her next manuscript, she was looking pretty authorial, too.

Authorial Author is Authorial

Authorial Author is Authorial

Props as always to Third Place for their lovely little author events. I’ll have to scamper back down there on Tuesday as well for userinfocmpriest!

October 30, 2010 by
Book Log

Book Log #72: He Shall Thunder in the Sky, by Elizabeth Peters

He Shall Thunder in the Sky (An Amelia Peabody Mystery, #12)

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Now we are TALKING.

He Shall Thunder in the Sky is perhaps my absolute favorite of the entire Amelia Peabody series–and as I’ve indicated in my reviews of several of the earlier books, it’s got some very strong contenders for my affections. It won’t have nearly as much meaning if you don’t read the series through from the beginning, but for readers who do, there is a great deal of reward to be had. There’s not only the culmination of the love story of Ramses and Nefret, there’s also the culmination of Ramses as a mature character and the equal of his parents, and a Big Reveal about the background of Sethos, the Master Criminal.

The book’s not a hundred percent perfect; I’ve got logistical quibbles with the Sethos part of the arc, for example. Odious cousin Percy, while credibly showing his true odious colors, is nonetheless not nearly as effective a villain as he should have been. Plus, I have a few “wait, what?” moments in regards to how Thunder ties back in with events in The Falcon at the Portal–specifically in revealing certain activities of Ramses’ and Nefret’s. I can’t say too much about that part since I don’t want to get into spoiler territory, but suffice to say that the details in question seemed a touch too melodramatic for even the Amelia Peabodies, which are at their height gems of melodrama! Ditto for the Big Reveal about Sethos.

But. I wave aside what quibbles I have with the story on the grounds of the sheer awesomeness that is Ramses in this book. He’s making a big noisy name for himself in Cairo as an avowed pacifist, refusing to participate in the ongoing bloody conflicts of World War I, and it’s getting him blackballed by everyone in Cairo society. It’s all a front, of course–because if you’ve been following the series up to this point, you know that Ramses has a stellar talent for disguise. So does the British government by this point in the series, and they’re making use of Ramses by having him do intelligence work. David’s in on it too, as the two friends put their lives on the line infiltrating a local cell of Egyptian nationalists so that Ramses can impersonate their leader. Not even his own parents know what’s going on, and once they realize the danger their son is putting himself in, they must do everything in their power to assist him. And to keep Nefret from finding out.

This being an Amelia Peabody, there is of course the obligatory preternaturally intelligent cat. This time around it’s Seshat, who’s a rival for her ancestress Bastet in how devoted she is to Ramses; he in turn is finally willing to acknowledge the potential awesomeness of other cats in the world. And of course we have the point of view shifting back and forth between Amelia and Ramses, which (aside from one weird choice of scene order at an early critical juncture) is wonderful stuff. Amelia’s relationship with her adult son is much different than her relationship with him as a boy, and one tender scene in particular they have is particularly aww-inducing.

Action scenes with Ramses here are among Peters’ most tense in any of her work, particularly at the end of the story. And, melodrama aside, the big climactic rescue scene in Thunder stands out for me as one of the most memorable of any of her books.

All in all, five stars.

October 29, 2010 by
Books

Fictionwise ain’t quite dead to me yet

It seems Fictionwise is still capable of grabbing my attention, even if a lot of their inventory vanished once the agency model of ebook pricing took effect this past April. This weekend, though, they’re having a big ol’ 50 percent off sale, in effect through Sunday. (Use the coupon ‘spooky2010′.)

Turns out several of the titles on my ebook wishlist were still in their database, so I’ve nabbed ’em. To wit:

  • A Far and Deadly Cry, by Teri Holbrook. Mystery, re-buy to replace previously owned print copy.
  • Recursion, by Tony Ballantyne
  • Measuring the World, by Daniel Kehlmann. General fiction, was recommended by userinfojanne.
  • Blue Moon, by Cindy Lynn Speer. Ebook re-buy of a print copy I already own, since the print copy is large and unwieldy and I can read the ebook better.
  • Morevi: The Chronicles of Rafe and Askana, by Tee Morris & Lisa Lee. Another ebook re-buy of a print copy I still own, again because large and unwieldy print book I don’t want to carry around.
  • Blood Engines, by T.A. Pratt. Actual purchase of a free PDF I’d gotten before from when Tor.com came online; decided to go ahead and buy this copy since the PDF is 5 MB in size.
  • Mob Rules, by Cameron Haley. Urban fantasy, a recent release from Luna.
  • The Mysteries, by Lisa Tuttle. Fantasy. Picked it up due to a review by Jo Walton on Tor.com.
  • Spellbent, by Lucy A. Snyder. Urban fantasy. Picked up because of her participation in the CoyoteCon panels run by Drollerie Press earlier this year!
  • Total Oblivion, More or Less: A Novel, by Alan DeNiro. This one got a good amount of buzz a while back so I’m finally checking it out.
  • The Tomb of Zeus, by Barbara Cleverly. Re-buy of a book I’d previously owned. Mystery.
  • Deadly Slipper, by Michelle Wan. Mystery.
  • Black and White, by Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge. Because SUPERHEROES, and because I’ve been meaning to read this one for a while now!

And meanwhile, because it was Absolutely Necessary, I picked up userinfojimbutcher‘s shiny new Dresden Files anthology, Side Jobs, from Barnes and Noble! I bought it in both ebook and hardback, actually–ebook for me, and hardback to give as a present to userinfokathrynt, who will need it to occupy herself before her baby boy makes his arrival in the world Any Day Now, and hopefully as she’s resting after as well. So I get to count that one twice! 😀

And OH OH OH I must also add this, since it showed up in my mailbox today: Writing Out the Notes, the new book by Bob Hallett, is another acquisition! That would be the Bob Hallett of my very own beloved Great Big Sea, who’s written himself a combination memoir and musical portrait of St. John’s. I’m quite looking forward to reading it, as Mr. Hallett’s always been the most thoughtful and introspective of the B’ys, based on what they’ve all posted in their various posts on their site.

Grand total for the year: 334!

October 29, 2010 by
Nanowrimo, Valor of the Healer

No Nanowrimo for me this year

Because I’m in crunch mode at work and that’s likely to overlap at least a little into the beginning of the month, and also, because beating Lament of the Dove into proper shape for re-submission to Carina Press is of highest priority for me and the writings right now.

‘Sides, you guys wouldn’t want me to disappoint Julian and Kestar and Faanshi. Especially Kestar. I mean geez, the man’s got a face as earnest as the day is long. I couldn’t possibly make that face unhappy. And given what I’m doing to poor Julian at the end of the book, he’s going to be really cranky at me if I don’t get him to the beginning of Book 2 as quickly as possible. ;>

Good luck to all who will be doing Nano, though! I’m likely to be going just as spare as you guys during the month of November, so I’m with you in spirit!

October 22, 2010 by
Other People's Books, Publishing

Dorchester continuing to implode

I suspect that many of you who’ll see this post are already following the fine ladies at Smart Bitches Trashy Books. But in case you aren’t, SB Sarah put up this post today with the last round of what’s been an ongoing saga of WTF from Dorchester, a romance publisher that’s been in severe financial straits.

Dorchester’s been handling this in very strange ways, and the latest round of it is quite alarming, especially if you happen to be an author: many Dorchester authors haven’t been paid royalties for their titles for years now, and others are beginning to report that despite the fact that rights for their works have reverted to them, Dorchester is continuing to digitally sell them as well as offer them for free as Kindle downloads.

This is unacceptable. So if you’re a romance reader, please be on the lookout for Dorchester titles, and avoid buying them if you can. (SB Sarah provides links off to other posts about the topic, and the affected authors she mentions are posting in the comments, asking readers to refrain from buying the freely offered books and instead sit tight until they can provide digital copies that they’re selling themselves.)

October 20, 2010 by
Books

The only acceptable use for DRM

I’d been aware for some time that a lot of libraries had embraced the ability to check out ebooks, but not until this weekend did I get around to actually trying it. I was quite pleased to discover that both of our local libraries, the Seattle Public Library and the King County Library System, provide the ability to do electronic checkouts.

Since KCLS is the one I have a card with, I gave that a shot over the weekend and succeeded in checking out both Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood and Justin Cronin’s The Passage. I selected both of these novels because they were specifically available in Adobe Digital Editions ePUB format, and therefore were friendly to my nook.

The process of getting the books onto my nook was less friendly than it should have been, and pretty much went like this:

  1. Check out the book from the library web site and download a small file.
  2. Open up Adobe Digital Editions and then actually launch that small file so ADE could see it. If I tried to doubleclick the file without launching ADE first, then I got an error message that claimed ADE wanted an update it didn’t actually need. The file then opened up the actual ebook so ADE could see it, complete with the timestamp for how many days I was allowed to keep it.
  3. Close ADE and then plug my nook into my Mac via USB, then re-launch ADE so it can see the nook. (This is because I’ve had trouble getting ADE to recognize the nook’s been plugged in if I launch it first. In retrospect I could have saved this step by just plugging in the nook first thing and then launching ADE and keeping it open, but I didn’t think of that at the time.)
  4. Copy the book onto my nook.
  5. Profit Reading!

I’ve been working on reading the Atwood and it looks just lovely on the nook, just like all the other ebooks I’ve read. And I honestly am fine with the DRM in this case, since if you’re going to do electronic library checkout, there needs to be some way of keeping track of how long the library patron is allowed to keep the content. I have no problems whatsoever with DRM in this case telling me “HEY YOU HAVE 18 DAYS LEFT ON THIS KTHX” and then making the book magically go away if I run out of time.

There are still issues here of device compatibility, though. I cannot check out ebooks to my iPhone just because Adobe Digital Editions does not like the iPhone; as I understand it, it’s a matter of ADE being a Flash app and iOS doesn’t do Flash. Or something to that effect. I can however check out to the computer, and from there, as described above, I can copy down to the nook. So that’s all fine.

Less fine is the question of file format. ADE does PDFs as well as ePUBs, and while the nook in theory talks PDF, in actual practice so far PDFs I’ve looked at on my nook come across sloppily formatted. They’re still readable, but it’s a clumsy reading experience and just not as pleasant as reading an ePUB, or a PDF on a device that’s capable of showing it to me as it was actually formatted. This is the nook’s fault, though, not ADE’s. (I suspect that Kindle owners would have a better time with an ADE PDF but I have no firsthand experience with that.)

Anyway, though, once I got the books checked out, that was awesome and I plan to make use of this ability more in the future. I expect it will help a great deal in whittling down my Enormous Reading List of Enormousness.

As a general FYI to Seattle-area folks, here are the pertinent links if you’d like to try out this shiny ebook checkout thing for yourselves:

You do of course need a library card for either system, but hey, library cards are Awesome Things and should be had regardless. 🙂 Enjoy!

October 18, 2010 by
Valor of the Healer

Lament of the Dove status report

Y’all know how I mentioned the scene at the beginning of Chapter 15 was destined to die? Well, I killed it–and added in a bit of extra content in the new first scene of the chapter, tying a bit more in to how the previous one closed. This means that all told I’ve killed nearly 2,000 words from this one chapter alone.

And that’ll do me for now with this chapter, I think. I’ll be moving on to Chapter 16 as of tomorrow night to see what I can do to it. Now I’m moving out of the rough middle stretch into where the editor was saying the pacing started working better for her, but I’m still on the Word Count Reduction mission. So we’ll see how many more words I can kill in the remaining chapters. (Of which there are nine, since I’ll also be punting the epilogue over into the second book.)

As of tonight’s efforts I’ve killed 7,346 words total from the draft, and of the words killed, big chunks of them were in that one scene in this very chapter. (As well as shorter interstitial sorts of scenes in the last couple ones as well.) The total word count is down to 111,012. I think I’m on good track to kill 10K total out of this draft, which is smack dab in the target range.

This does not suck.

October 17, 2010 by