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Angela Korra'ti

Book Log

Another quickie book roundup post

relayed to me that Amazon lost its suit over the Kindle book deletion brouhaha and will be taking steps to insure that books cannot be deleted off a Kindle without user consent, unless the content has been identified as a virus or a Trojan horse of some kind. Which is fine by me, and enough to make me reverse my personal ban on having the Kindle app on my iPhone.

Which is good, because there are a few books that are available electronically only in Kindle format, such as an SF novel called Arapeta by New Zealand author Peter Tashkoff, which I’d added to my To-Read list a while back. My only options for getting hold of a copy of this were either ordering a print copy, or getting the Kindle version. Now I have the Kindle version. Yay!

Meanwhile I have also bought J.C. Hutchins’ 7th Son from Barnes and Noble’s e-book store. This is the print edition of a story that’s seen quite a bit of love in podcast form, and which eventually scored the author a print contract. The whole situation is pretty cool to me, since Hutchins had originally tried to pitch his story to the traditional publishers, without any luck; he then turned to making it a podcast, which finally actually got him a print contract. Plus, the story sounds pretty fun; it’s an SF thriller involving cloning and political machinations, and it starts with a bang with the President being assassinated by a four-year-old boy.

This brings me up to 170 books for the year. And Fictionwise is trying to tempt me again with a 15% off coupon I got as part of a monthly drawing, too! Ohnoez! 😉

December 5, 2009 by
About Me

Outer Alliance spotlight on me!

Check it out, you guys! The kindly , @omgjulia on Twitter, the driving force behind the Spotlight posts on outeralliance.org, has just put one up on, well, me! *^_^*;;

She winged me these questions the weekend just before Thanksgiving, and this was lovely turnaround time in getting the article posted. Go read if you like, and while you’re over there, don’t forget to check out the rest of the Spotlight posts on Outer Alliance authors!

December 4, 2009 by
Book Log

Continuing my mission to buy every book ever published

Turns out I forgot one of my recently purchased print books, so I’ll note that here:

  • The Silver Ship and the Sea, by Brenda Cooper. SF. Purchased because I was in the mood for something that isn’t urban fantasy, and I don’t have enough SF by female authors.

And, of course, there’s another passle of e-books to note:

  • The Mirrored Heavens, by David J. Williams. SF.
  • Staked and ReVamped, by J.F. Lewis. Urban fantasy. Re-bought in e-book form.
  • Unshapely Things and Unquiet Dreams, by Mark Del Franco. Urban fantasy. Re-bought in e-book form.
  • Skin Deep, by Mark Del Franco. Urban fantasy.
  • Grave Secret, by Charlaine Harris. Paranormal mystery.
  • Flesh and Fire, by . Fantasy.

New grand total for the year: 168. I think I better stop and actually read a few of these for a while.

November 29, 2009 by
Music, TGM

Jam Report #95-96–10/18/09, 11/1/09: Double Afterthought Edition

I know I haven’t been properly keeping up with the last couple of Jam Reports, and this is me trying to get caught up on that! Since it’s been a while since the last couple of Jams, all I have to offer is brief notes on the actual songs we played, so I’ll go ahead and make notes of those here. We’re currently talking about when the next Jam will be, some time in December, and hopefully when that happens I’ll return to serious Jam reporting.

Songs for the 10/18/09 Jam: “Getting Away With It”, “Captain Kidd”, “Chickies in the House”, “The Last Saskatchewan Pirate”, “Elf Glade”, “Dancing With Mrs. White”, “Billy Peddle”, “Mari-Mac”, “Stars”

Songs for the 11/1/09 Jam: “Come to the Labyrinth”, “Pirate Bill”, “Elf Glade”, “Chickies in the House/Duncan’s Dance”, “Goin’ Up”, “The Last Saskatchewan Pirate”, “John Waits Polka”, “The Road to Lisdoonvarna”, “Brian Boru”, “Butterfly Jig”, “Nonesuch”

Some generally fun things to note here:

“Getting Away With It” is a newer one of ‘s, and is a song about super-villainy! Which is of course appropriate, given that Dara is a super-villain.

“Come to the Labyrinth” was brought into rotation by request; it’s one of ‘s, and turned out to be fairly easy once Dara found the chords for it online. The guitar line is dead simple–all the interest here is in the complex layering of the vocals. When the group’s at suitable strength, thankfully, we have more than adequate vocal power to pull this off. We’ll be coming back to this one, I suspect.

Y’all may notice quite a bit of instrumentals in the last couple of rotations. This has particularly appealed to , who asked me for pointers to the various bits of GBS instrumental goodness, and I am of course all over that. But we also broke out my mandolin fakebook to give Dara and Molly both a quick and dirty introduction to how to play “Nonesuch”. I really do need to remember to whip that fakebook out more often; it’s a handy resource. It’s also chock full of all kinds of instrumentals that would be fun to explore in Jam.

On a similar note we also tried to make a serious run at playing through not only “Chickies in the House”, but also its companion pieces, “Napoleon’s Rant” and “Duncan’s Dance”. My eventual goal here is of course to be able to play the whole trio through without stopping, but I think it’ll be a while before we catch up with Tricky Pixie in our ability to do that!

I can also note of course that the last Jam’s pie, in favor of the holiday season approaching, was pumpkin. And as I recall, it was pretty darned tasty.

Watch this space for further Jam goodness, and very possibly, a special Solstice edition of a Jam report! Also? Now that I can play it, I am totally going to be bringing in “Concerning Charlie Horse”!

November 29, 2009 by
Great Big Sea

Songs about horses falling through ice!

asked me if I had the chords to two of the ditties off the mighty GBS album The Hard and the Easy: “Tickle Cove Pond” and “Concerning Charlie Horse”. I’d pulled “Tickle Cove Pond” off the OKP at one point but did not have chords for “Charlie Horse”, and so I’ve spent a chunk of my afternoon with my guitar, working those out!

“Charlie Horse” is a fun ditty in no small part because it changes keys, which is unusual for a Great Big Sea song. So in order to accommodate the key change and the key they recorded it in, I had to figure out what would work best for chord transcription. This led me to do two sets of chords, a set with the capo on 3 and modulating from D to E in the chords, and a set with the capo on 5 to modulate from C to D. Persons way more comfortable with the key of F than I am could go completely capo-free, since the ultimate goal here is to get from F to G.

Anyway, here are some chords! Enjoy!

Tickle Cove Pond

Charlie Horse Capo 3

Charlie Horse Capo 5

November 28, 2009 by
Bone Walker

Sorry, Nanowrimo, just not happening this year!

For the record: it’s pretty clear to me at this point that I’m not hitting that 50K, especially after not having written a word since this past Friday! A good chunk of the cause for this is of course because I scampered off to see my favorite band perform this past Saturday, and that blew any chance of getting any work done right out of my head! And for various reasons, I haven’t written anything since, either.

Tomorrow is of course American Thanksgiving, so it’s highly doubtful I’ll get anything done tomorrow, either. I shall see about resuming work on Bone Walker over the weekend, though, once we get past Turkey Day. I’m about to the point anyway where I need to take a step back and update the outline, and figure out how what I’ve written so far will affect the next several chapters.

Those of you still plugging away at Nanowrimo, good luck to you! Those of you who’ve crossed the finish line, congrats! And to all of you celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, may your companionship be fine and your dinner tasty, whatever that dinner may be!

November 25, 2009 by
Faerie Blood

Faerie Blood once again super-cheap on Fictionwise

I’d be remiss if I didn’t invite you folks to pop over to Fictionwise and partake of their shiny Black Friday sale, going on all week, in which all MultiFormat books are 45% off and all Secure format books get you a 45% Micropay rebate. This means, ladies and gentlemen, that until Friday you can score a copy of Faerie Blood for $3.82 if you’re not a member of the BuyWise club, and $3.25 if you are!

And of course all other Drollerie works in the Fictionwise database are included in this same sale, so this would be a lovely time to get not only my book but choice selections by my fellow Drollerie authors as well. Our latest releases, including the Defiance anthology, aren’t up there yet–but you can score a bunch of our earlier stuff. Go check it out, folks!

November 25, 2009 by