All Posts By

Angela Korra'ti

Faerie Blood

I'm getting an iPhone! And celebrating with a contest!

So has himself a shiny new iPhone 3GS, and has gone and given his old first-gen iPhone to . Dara futzed around with the device some last night to get it all set up and activated and stuff, and then let me play with it some to get the final bit of critical information I needed: i.e., could I use the virtual keyboard on the thing well enough to write on?

Survey says, YES. I quite liked the virtual keyboard that came in with the 3.0 version of the iPhone software, especially in landscape mode. This doesn’t leave much screen room, but that’s okay; for my purposes, all I really need is to be able to whip out a few paragraphs here and there (such as when I’m at a con or something), which I can then sync up onto my laptop later.

Knowing this, I stopped in the AT&T store this morning and ordered me a shiny new iPhone of my own. I asked for one of the 32G white ones, and the girl who rang me up said those are coming in pretty fast. So I should get the device sometime in the next few days–it may even come in before I get back from Disneyland!

And, folks, this is where you come in, because I also need to settle the vital question of what to name this incoming iPhone. Drop your suggestions in the comments! The strongest contenders will then go head to head in a poll.

To sweeten the deal, I will heretofore announce my very first author contest. The winner of the poll will get one free e-copy of Faerie Blood in the format of their choice (options: PDF, Mobi, or Microsoft Reader). Or, if you already own a copy of Faerie Blood, I’ll give you a copy of any Drollerie Press book of your choice from the Drollerie bookstore!

So spread the word far and wide, people, and start winging those suggestions at me! You have until Monday, when I get back from Disneyland, to submit your nominations for the poll!

ETA 4:47pm: A couple of quick addenda to stick in a couple of rules!

1. Multiple nominations will be allowed but I reserve the authorial right to allow only one nomination per person to get into the final actual poll.

2. If you’d like to endorse someone’s nomination, you may do so by dropping a comment in support of it wherever the nomination originally showed up (which is to say, angelakorrati.com, LJ, Dreamwidth, Facebook, or Twitter, since I doubt anybody’s actually reading this post from InsaneJournal or JournalFen). If a nomination receives at least two comments in support, it’ll go into the poll!

And again–y’all have until Monday the 13th to either get in your nominations or support somebody else’s! So let me hear from you, folks!

Valor of the Healer

Mobi-format Lament of the Dove

So if you happened to be thinking, “Hey Anna, I’d love to beta read Lament of the Dove for you, only I don’t have it on my Kindle/Sony Reader/iPhone running Stanza or some other appropriate Mobi-friendly reader app”, worry no more. has your back!

She’s kindly converted my RTF file for Lament into Mobi format and informs me that it can be “just drag-and-dropped into a Kindle’s ‘documents’ directory, or sync’d onto a Sony Reader, or used with Stanza on the Mac or on an iPhone, etc.”

All props to ! And if anybody wants this version of the file, sing out and I’ll fire it your way. Formatting may not be perfect but it should be readable!

Drollerie Press

Y'all like chocolate, right?

Chocolate. It’s a good thing. So are contests!

Drollerie Press is having a contest in honor of Celebrating Chocolate Day! Cindy Lynn Speer‘s The Chocolatier’s Wife is on sale for 20% off, and if y’all go drop a comment saying where you’ve linked to the post about the sale and contest, you’ll be put into a drawing for a $25 gift certificate for tasty, tasty chocolate.

Go for it. Buy the book! Enter the contest. Because, dude, CHOCOLATE.

Valor of the Healer

My word, I think I'm done

All in all, not quite to the full 20K edited out, but I did make it down to 118K or so. So I’ll take this and run with it!

This means, folks, that Lament of the Dove‘s fourth draft is now open for beta reading. As I’ve mentioned, I only need people to read through it and make sure that it holds together. In-depth proofreading is not required (although sure, if you see any typos or anything, call them out).

If at all possible I’d like to send the manuscript off to Ms. Fox by Monday of next week, so if you can read over the story this week, sing out. Throw me an email at my annathepiper gmail address, and let me know where I can send you the RTF to read. Thanks in advance, all!

Edited today: -467
Chapter 24 revised total: 5,925
Postlude revised total: 1,185
Lament of the Dove revised and final total (fourth draft): 118,358

Valor of the Healer

Day 9: Last night's tally, almost there

Finished off Chapter 23 and made decent inroads on Chapter 24 yesterday, and am getting very, very close to the end. I’m under 119K at this point, and even if I don’t make a hard 20,000 words removed, I can deal with this. So as soon as I finish Chapter 24 and the epilogue, I’ll be putting out the call for people who want to beta read this thing for me.

Today, being the Fourth of July, will have somewhat less editing efforts tonight. This afternoon, though, is a different story–or at least it will be as soon as I get back from taking a walk outside in the sunshine of glory. More later.

Edited last night: -589
Chapter 23 revised total: 4,767
Chapter 24 revised total: 6,297
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 118,825

Valor of the Healer

Day 8, a day late: Last night's editing goodness

This being what I pulled off in editing land last night before I went to bed, too bleary to bother to make a post. I knocked a couple hundred more words out of Chapter 22, and started putting a dent in 23; all in all, a decent night’s work!

As expected, I was able to tighten up the entire sequence where Julian and Faanshi and the elves break into the abbey; I think that bit alone was good for a thousand words or so. I sacrificed some decent enough descriptions, but in the name of brevity and pacing, this close to the end, I think it’s for the best.

Now into 23, which is the big climax where Super Annie appears to wreak havoc. Not sure yet how many more words I’ll be able to yoink out of here. But today, I shall give it a go. About 2,900 more words to go!

Edited last night: -330
Chapter 22 revised total: 3,931
Chapter 23 revised total: 5,060
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 119,414

Valor of the Healer

Edity marathon of editing, Day 7: This is more like it

I must have eaten my Editor Wheaties for breakfast this morning. (Which is funny, because I could have sworn I had a ham and cheese bagel sandwich.) I have just trimmed the hell out of Chapter 22, focusing on the sequence where Faanshi, Julian, and the elves scout out the abbey. I decided there was actually quite a bit of cruft verbiage there, and no real need to linger on describing ‘yeah, it’s twilight, the abbey’s busy having vespers, nobody’s out, they get to break into the postern gate because inexperienced Faanshi and one-handed Julian aren’t going to climb over a wall’. ‘Cause seriously, the good stuff? That’s getting them inside to Kestar.

Anyway, I am suddenly quite a bit closer to the 20K goal after all, and Chapter 22 has had about 1,100 words yoinked out of it. Here are last night’s and tonight’s stats.

Edited last night: -314
Edited tonight: -902
Chapter 22 revised total: 4,144
Chapter 23 revised total: 5,177
Chapter 24 revised total: 6,593
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 119,744