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Angela Korra'ti

Bone Walker Kickstarter update, and other news!

As I’ve just told the backers of my 2012 Kickstarter, all owed copies of the print edition of Bone Walker have been sent out to their recipients. This is very gratifying, as it gets me that much closer to being able to finally finish off my Kickstarter obligations.

This means that the rest of the copies in my personal stock are ones I can sell, free and clear! A couple will be handed out as part of my ongoing Goodreads giveaway, which ends at the end of this month. So if you’re a Goodreads user and you’d like a crack at a free copy of the book, hop right over here and clickie! I’m offering two copies of the book to Goodreads users in the US and Canada.

ALSO: reader and supporter David is about to finish up his own giveaway for print copies of Faerie Blood and Bone Walker, as well as a copy of the soundtrack. That giveaway is in progress over here, and it ends on March 8th, so time is running out! Your chances of winning are still VERY good, so go give it a look, won’t you?

Meanwhile, the sales on the ebook editions of Faerie Blood and Bone Walker are over, and both books have reset to their $4.99 price points. But they’re still available on many major ebook vending sites, as well as directly from me! As always, links to buy are on the official Faerie Blood and Bone Walker pages.

And since the rest of my stock of copies of Bone Walker are free and clear to sell, don’t forget, you can order those directly from me (see the Buying From Me page) or buy one via the Bandcamp page!

Any questions, let me know! And as always, thank you for your support.

March 4, 2015 by Angela Korra'ti

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RIP Leonard Nimoy

Spock

The original Star Trek series was one of my very first introductions to science fiction–and to science fiction fandom. When I started going to conventions in the late eighties, I was delighted to discover that a group of fan performers, headed up by the redoutable Julia Ecklar as Captain Kirk, had done a couple of live musical parodies of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. They used, respectively, West Side Story and South Pacific–giving us Wrath Side Story and Spock Pacific.

Dara digitized our old copies of these, and you can find them on her YouTube channel here.

I mention this because to this day, Dara and I still periodically break into song snippets from these performances, and I always DID love the opening number in particular: “WHAT AIN’T WE GOT? WE AIN’T GOT SPOCK!”

Now that line’s got a brand new poignance, since I am seeing the Internet explode with the news of the passing of Leonard Nimoy. The New York Times has an article here. Tor.com covers the story here. John Scalzi has a post up here.

I started watching Trek in my mid-teens, and at that age, I was totally bowled over by Captain Kirk. But as I grew older I developed much more of an appreciation for Spock, and a couple of my very favorite episodes of the series–“Journey to Babel” and “Amok Time”–are Spock-centric episodes. His ongoing struggle between his human side and his Vulcan side makes Spock, for me, a truly compelling character. And it’s played so beautiful in his contentious relationship with his father, from whom he gets his dry Vulcan snark QUITE honestly. Moreover, the way Spock’s face lights up when he realizes he didn’t kill Kirk after all at the end of “Amok Time” is beautiful.

Trek is a strong current in the filk music I came to love as well, particularly the songs by the aforementioned Julia Ecklar. Julia has a wrenching song in particular about the destruction of the Enterprise, one which makes me tear up every time I hear it. But she’s also got a delightful one from McCoy’s point of view: “He’s Dead Jim”. And yet another about the resurrection of Trek fandom when the movies came out. Trek meant a LOT to her in her music, and this shone through into my own development as a fan of Star Trek. I came to admire Spock as a character even more when I saw the hints of an early romance between him and Uhura in the initial episodes–and when I realized he was a musician as well.

So I may be a Kirk fangirl, but Spock is right behind him in my affections.

We lost DeForest Kelley in 1999, and now we’ve lost the second of the triad of the characters that were the heart of the original Star Trek.

But I think I speak for every Trek fan in the world when I say that all of us will be happy to stand in for Doctor McCoy, and provide a place for Spock’s katra to live forever.

Rest in peace, Mr. Nimoy. You lived long and prospered. We will miss you.

I leave you with this rousing chorus:

We’ve an admiral brave and daring, he’s the best the fleet has got!
We’ve a helmsman who’s named Sulu and an engineer named Scott
A Russian navigator and a slightly schizoid doc
But what ain’t we got? WE AIN’T GOT SPOCK!

There is nothing quite like Spock!
Nothing in the world
There is nothing you can grok
That is anything quite like Spock!

Editing to add:

And I also leave you with this.

Speaking of Julia Ecklar, here’s that song I mentioned above about the destruction of the Enterprise. This is “Fallen Angel”, from her album Divine Intervention. It brings me to tears every damn time I hear it, and I’m crying today as I transcribe the lyrics. And the solemn French horn that comes in at the line “there are stars before my eyes”, evocative of the Star Trek theme, particularly kills me.

You can find the album on iTunes, or from Prometheus Music here.

My god, what have I done? Is this what I had to do?
I paid to save six lives–was it worth the price of you?
I would take your spirit in me, to make you live again
But your fire dies across the sky
My god, is this the end?

My steel-and-stardrive lady, my soul’s death is at your hands
As your own death was at mine, love
Though even I can’t understand
Why we gods can’t live forever–why should legends have to die?
As you wail to sleep in glory, my heart still seeks the sky

There are stars before my eyes
But they pale to your dying
You swore we’d outlive time
Oh my love, were you, too, lying?
What’s my life without your singing?
When I’m naught but flesh and bone?
Where have I damned my lover’s soul
To wander all alone?

But this death I can’t deny, as you fade to distant ember
My need to steal from death cost you, love, but I’ll remember
And I long to burn there with you, to never live again
Forever we would light the sky–my god, is this the end?

February 27, 2015 by Angela Korra'ti

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Dara and I are on Seattle Geekly!

This past weekend Dara and I got to hang out with Matt and Shannon of the Seattle Geekly podcast–and we got interviewed for their latest episode, #248!

We’re a little sad that this is in fact the last episode that Matt and Shannon will be doing for a while, since they need to stand down from podcasting to take care of other ongoing life goals–but we’re honored to be in their closing episode, and we very much enjoyed talking to them. I’d never been on a podcast before, so wasn’t sure how it was going to work. But we all sat around a table with headphones on, chatting into microphones. It was fun!

Things I talk about: Faerie Blood and Bone Walker, my goals with the diversity of the cast (both in race and in sexual orientation), my familiarity with Seattle despite not actually being FROM here, and how Elvis and Great Big Sea are both huge musical influences on the storyline.

Things Dara talks about: the history of the bouzouki, how the Bone Walker soundtrack started as a Kickstarter stretch goal and then turned into a monster of epic proportions, hints of future plot points to be glimpsed in “Anarchy Now”, and things to look forward to on the Norwescon music track this year.

Go give it a listen, won’t you? And many thanks to Matt and Shannon for having us! I particularly enjoyed meeting their cats, and was deeply charmed that their big orange one is named after Ben Grimm. 😀

February 26, 2015 by Angela Korra'ti

Quebecois Music

Fun with tunes and whistles

Dusty Strings is a dangerous place!

Any acoustically-oriented musician in the Seattle probably already knows this, of course–and I myself have mentioned this before. But it was driven home to me again this past weekend, when Dara and I went in to get her a proper shoulder strap for the Godin A5 fretless bass we finally got her as a late Solstice present!

This is a sexy, sexy bass, you guys. But also surprisingly heavy! So we wanted to make sure to get a strap that could support its weight and not kill Dara’s shoulder while she plays it. We fully expected Dusty Strings would provide, and they did indeed. We got her a nice leather strap with a padded section for her shoulder.

But what I did not expect was that a blackwood whistle made by Sweetheart would leap into my fingers and go “HI I’M COMING HOME WITH YOU.”
One of these, specifically. Dusty Strings had two of them, one in rosewood and one in blackwood, and since I’ve been more interested in whistles lately I started playing around with them while Dara experimented with straps.

The rosewood didn’t seize me. But the blackwood did, with some surprising clarity and power to its tone. And wow, it carried well in Dusty String’s instrument room. I could see this being an instrument I could use to make myself heard in a room full of fiddlers and accordion players. Maybe not a session cannon–I’m not that powerful a player–but perhaps a session pistol.

For shots of what the instrument looks like, side by side in a couple of them with my carbon fiber whistle for comparison, hop over to the Blackwood Whistle gallery on annathepiper.org!

And here’s what the instrument sounds like. I did a few snippets of recording with my phone last night, playing around with bits of “Ciel d’Automne”, one of my favorite tunes by André Brunet, who as I’ve said before writes lovely flute-friendly tunes.

First, this is me doing the tune on my small D carbon fiber flute. Because while I am having fun learning whistles, I’m still way more comfortable on a flute. And I wanted to show this for a comparison of tonality as well.

Second, this is my carbon fiber D whistle.

Last but not least, here’s the blackwood whistle! There’s better clarity here than on the carbon fiber whistle–possibly because this thing is a bit heavier as well as being wider in diameter. So the feel of it in my hands is closer to what I expect with a flute, and I don’t have to work as hard to figure out what amount of air to put through it.

So this is all fun and I’m going to greatly look forward to bringing this new whistle to a session!

And if you want to hear “Ciel d’Automne” in all its full La Bottine Souriante glory, go find their album Xième, which was also released in the States under the name Rock and Reel. This has the distinction of being the first André Brunet tune I ever fell in love with, so it’s got a special place in my heart!

EDITING TO ADD 12/27/2018: Since I had to remove the whistle pics from Flickr, I have edited this old post to point at the gallery of the same pics I made on annathepiper.org. Previous references to the Flickr versions of the pics have been removed.

February 25, 2015 by Angela Korra'ti

Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: Going Against Type, by Sharon Black

I don’t often get queries for Boosting the Signal from authors I don’t already know–but this one came to me from Sharon Black, who approached me asking for help promoting her debut romantic comedy. “But Anna,” I hear you cry, “you don’t read contemporary romance!” That’s true, usually. But I’ll cheerfully say that a) she did catch my interest talking about how this one’s set at a newspaper, and I do have a personal history involving newspaper employment, b) Ireland is always a win, and c) her cover’s rather adorable. So let me turn this over to Sharon’s protagonist Charlie, who’d like to have a word with you all! Because she’s definitely a girl with some goals.

Going Against Type

AN OPEN LETTER TO READERS OF BOOSTING THE SIGNAL, FROM CHARLOTTE ‘CHARLIE’ REGAN, THE PROTAGONIST IN GOING AGAINST TYPE.

Dear reader,

My name is Charlotte. My friends and colleagues at the paper usually call me Charlie, so you can too. I’m a 29 year old Dublin girl. Most importantly, I’m a sports reporter for a national Irish newspaper, Ireland Today.

Which isn’t easy. I mean, the work is fine. Better than fine. It’s great. I adore sports. Even wanted to be a professional soccer player, until I injured myself. And I’m not afraid to go after the big stories. I’m surrounded by men—they do dominate sports reporting. So I have to prove myself.

And a few weeks ago, it paid off! The editor gave me a shot at writing the new sports column, Side Swipe. It’ll be written anonymously—which is fine by me. For the moment.

I can almost feel the other reporters looking over my shoulder. Don’t get me wrong, most of them are great. Recently, some of us even spent a weekend in the West of Ireland, surfing in the Atlantic. Loved it!

But any reporter worth his salt would do pretty much anything to get his own column.

What’s a girl to do? Well, I’ll tell you what this one’s going to do. Write the best damned column I can. Week after week. Which is why it has to be spiky and sharp and controversial. No holds barred. What I have I got to lose?

Only the column! Because if I’m not careful, I’ll lose it to somebody who thinks they’ve earned it, just because they’ve been here the longest.

And when I’ve put my stamp on it, they’ll have to give me a by-line, right? Because by then, they won’t want to let me go.

Which would be straightforward enough, if a rival columnist hadn’t declared war! No sooner had my first column appeared, than The Squire let loose on me. The Squire is the gossip columnist at The Irish People. I don’t know who he is, of course, because his scathing column is anonymously written. But I loathe him.

A couple of years ago, he went to town on a friend of mine, when her marriage was in trouble. Her celebrity husband had been having an affair, and that despicable man at The Irish People ran the sordid details for weeks in The Squire.

Anyway, he had the nerve to attack me! I had merely pointed out the stupidity of professional footballers, getting involved with big brand sponsorship. Fashion, in particular. I mean, I’m a huge sports fan. I’m just getting a bit tired of seeing my football heroes modelling briefs. Not to put too fine a point on it, I only want to see balls going into the back of the net!

But back to The Squire. Whoever he is, he’s picked the wrong girl for a fight. Because, as I said before, this girl isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty.

Thing is, the whole thing has escalated, and it’s turned into this weekly war of words. It seems everyone is following us. Broadcast media, social media, you name it. Which is a lot of pressure!

Of course, I’m absolutely determined to win. There is no way I’m going to let this arrogant slime, whoever he is, get the better of me.

The other exciting thing that’s happened, is that I’ve met somebody. He is seriously hot! Derry Cullinane. Tall (the guy must be a foot taller than me), dark and dapper. He’s actually a fashion writer for The Irish People. Which is a bit weird, I must admit. But this man is not only comfortable in his own skin, I think he actually enjoys being surrounded by women. Although maybe it’s not that shocking. He’s definitely a bit of a player.

Funny thing about our first meeting. I was covering Ladies Day at The Galway Races, and this guy steps back on my foot. He apologised, but he had the cheek to suggest that I might have been standing too close to him! Anyway, when I bumped into him again later that day, he told me he’d read Side Swipe‘s racing tips and had lost €1000!

He asked me straight out who wrote Side Swipe, by the way. I told him I hadn’t a clue. Pretended I was just there to write about the fashion. There was no way I was owning up to getting that one wrong!

I nearly blew it though. We met a few weeks later, through mutual friends. When he told me he worked for The Irish People, I started ranting about how much I hated The Squire. You’ve never seen anyone change a topic of conversation so fast. It’s a wonder he asked me out at all.

I don’t really understand why he did. You have no idea, we are complete opposites. I just don’t think I’m his type at all.

But right now, I deserve a bit of fun in my life.

And after my last boyfriend, I have no intention of getting hurt again.

Buy the Book: Tirgearr Publishing | Amazon | Nook | iBooks | Kobo

Follow the Author On: Facebook | Blog

February 20, 2015 by Angela Korra'ti

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Friday fun with French

Since I’ve had some cycles free up now that Bone Walker and Victory of the Hawk are done, I’ve turned my attention to playing with translating my own prose. Specifically, I’m amusing myself writing that story I threatened to write some time ago, “The Dragonslayer of Chimay”, based on Le Vent du Nord’s song “Le dragon de Chimay”–and hey, I figure if it’s based on a song in French, I should try to write the prose in French!

Playing around with this yesterday, though, finally let me figure out the answer to a question I had come up doing the Trilingual Hobbit Reread: i.e., how quoting dialogue in French prose actually works.

I’d noticed in Bilbo le hobbit that some dialogue was bracketed by the familiar angle quotes, « and ». Some dialogue also involved m-dashes, and some actually mixed them in ways that didn’t seem obvious to me. To further complicate the matter, I noticed as well that within the same paragraph, dialogue was not separated from dialogue tags by closing quotes the same way an English sentence would do it.

So for example, an English sentence might look like this:

“I love that band,” she said. “Their tunes are awesome!”

But in French you’d get this:

« J’aime ce groupe, dit-elle. Leurs tounes sont fantastique! »

See how there’s no closing quote after “dit-elle”–which is “she said” here, what gets called a dialogue tag in writing–and no quote to reopen the spoken words after it?

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE. The m-dash comes into play, it seems, to signify if there’s a change in speaker. And furthermore, the angle quotes are used less to signify “here is something a person says”, and more “a general area of conversation that can involve one or more people”–and so the starting and closing quotes bracket an entire section of dialogue, as large as possible in the context of the narrative.

Which suddenly makes large bits of Bilbo le hobbit make more sense to me!

Here’s an example:

« J’aime ce groupe, dit-elle. Leurs tounes sont fantastique!

— Qu’est-que tu penses de leur violoneux? demande son ami. Il joue bien, oui?

— Absolument! Il est merveilleux! Je veux apprendre toutes ses chansons! »

So that’s fun, and something I look forward to practicing as I slowly work my way through not only writing “The Dragonslayer of Chimay”, but also translating it as I go!

Relatedly: I have also discovered that if you’re dealing with those angle quotes in French prose, you’re going to want to make non-breaking spaces to go between them and the words they’re surrounding–otherwise the text will wrap weirdly and that’s no fun. And there’s an easy way to do this on the Mac: Option + Space.

Not as easy to do if I’m on one of my iOS devices, but this is a problem that can be solved by my Bluetooth keyboard!

What fun things do you all know about in non-English prose? What tricks do you know to make non-English characters when you’re typing?

February 20, 2015 by Angela Korra'ti

Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: Heartsick, by Caitlin Sinead

Fellow Carina author Caitlin Sinead has a New Adult book out this week, one that straddles the line between mystery and romance. Heartsick tells a tale of a mysterious affliction spreading through a college town and turning everyone’s eyes purple–and in today’s Boosting the Signal post, we’ve got a character interview with someone who I daresay will be part of the research into this very problem! Though his goals appear to be rather more basic than that, too. Let’s let Zachary tell you all about it!

Heartsick

Allan High School Principal: As a continuing university outreach project, we have another Poe University student here to talk with you. We welcome Zachary Leibowitz, a graduate student in the biology program. Thanks, Zachary, for coming by. What first interested you in a science career?

Zachary: I thought it would get me girls. *grins*

Principal: Ha, and how is that working out for you?

Zachary: The most amazing woman I’ve ever met is dating me, so, I’d say pretty well. Seriously, she’s awesome. She laughs at almost all my jokes and she can build a mini hut out of sugar packets. Kids, let me tell you, some people will try to tell you there are more important things to consider when assessing a potential girlfriend, like trust fund sizes, but it’s all about laughter. And sugar packets.

Principal: I’m glad you’re love life is going well, but—

Zachary: Swimmingly!

Principal: Okay, swimmingly, but let’s get back to your career. What made you want to study viruses?

Zachary: The human body is amazing. It can run on nothing but Tostinos and orange juice for eight straight days. I know this because I’ve tried it. But then these tiny viruses can come in and mess with all that important cellular machinery and completely crash the party. I’ve always found that interaction interesting.

Principal: So, you want to stop viruses?

Zachary: I wouldn’t use the word “stop.” I want to understand them. Sometimes the guy who crashes the party ends up being the life of the party…I know this because it’s often me. Bringing Tostinos doesn’t hurt.

Principal: Have you enjoyed your time at Poe University?

Zachary: Yes. My advisor has supported my whacky ideas and the other students in the program are brilliant and friendly. It’s been great. I’ve also really enjoyed Allan. I know not everyone in Allan thinks Poe students are great, especially after…well… *shifts in seat* but, anyway, I think if we can get past our differences we can accomplish some really amazing things together.

Principal: Thank you for your thoughts on that, and for stopping by today.

Zachary: Of course, thanks for having me. And I’m happy to stay and talk with anyone who’s interested in becoming a scientist. As I said, that’s how to get the girls. *winks*

Follow the Author On: Official Site | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

February 20, 2015 by Angela Korra'ti

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