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Angela Korra'ti

Other People's Books

Because I need to clear out my Drafts folder book roundup

Bought in print at VCON:

  • Stealing Magic, by Tanya Huff. Short story collection, nabbed because I can never go wrong with Huff, and also because I liked the dual covers, representing the two characters represented in the stories. Something you can’t get with an ebook.
  • The Door to Lost Pages, by Claude Lalumière. This has been parked on my To Read list a while, and I finally nabbed a copy at VCON because the bookseller was the one I often buy stuff from at Norwescon, and she wasn’t there this year, so I made a point of buying from her at this con instead. I suspect this book’s going to be magic-realism-y.
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Nabbed from B&N electronically:

  • All is Silence, by Robert L. Slater. Bought on the request of Dara, who became aware of it via a bookmark from a recent Norwescon. She liked the sound of it, so I grabbed it for her. Apocalyptic YA SF.
  • Grimspace, by Ann Aguirre. SF. Re-buy in digital form of book 1 of her Sirantha Jax series.
  • Bronze Gods, by A.A. Aguirre (who, oddly enough is the same author as the previous!). Steampunk. Re-buy in digital form of her Apparatus Infernum series.

And, nabbed as a review copy because fellow Carina author Sheryl Nantus is awesome like that:

122 for the year!

Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: Wolf Interval, by Chrysoula Tzavelas

Oh, this one’s near and dear to my heart, you guys. Chrysoula Tzavelas is Tribe, and I mean that literally: I met Soula back in the day when she was a player in my Willowholt tribe on Two Moons MUSH, when her character Calmwind was the love interest of my character Wayfound. No fewer than four of us out of the Willowholt—myself, Soula, S.L. Gray, and of course the inimitable C.E. Murphy—became writers post-Two-Moons. So it gives me distinct pleasure to feature Soula on Boosting the Signal now!

And in particular, to feature her forthcoming book Wolf Interval, the latest in her series with Candlemark & Gleam. They’ve got a Kickstarter in progress RIGHT NOW to fund the publishing of this book, with nine days to go as of this writing. So if you’ve read Soula’s prior work, or even if you haven’t, take a gander at this piece about Yejun, one of the supporting characters in the book. And then go check out the page for the Kickstarter! Talk to us, Yejun!

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Wolf Interval

Wolf Interval

I never really tried to run away from home. Hell, it never even occurred to me when I was a kid. I didn’t want to run away; I wanted them to love me like they loved my little brother. That didn’t really work out. But, hey, that was then. Life moves on. By the time I was a teenager, I’d been swallowing all that bull about how I would probably die any day for years, about how my differences were a sickness that would destroy me, or possibly I was actually a demon. It wasn’t until I was almost eighteen that I realized I was doing fine. I was just different and nobody knew how to deal with that.

That’s when Senjen showed up. Man, Sen—short for Ascención—was something else. She was this tiny Latin American woman with sparkling eyes who seemed to know everything. Jen was her girlfriend, and they wanted to do what nobody else had ever even considered: they wanted to teach me about how I was different. They wanted to teach me to control those differences rather than be controlled by them. Yeah. You can bet I went with them like a shot.

It was great for a few weeks. We picked up another guy, Cat, and we were going to help Sen on this epic project involving the Wild Hunt, which is on a countdown to escape and tear things up real soon now. And after we saved the world, Senjen—and maybe Cat—and I were going to do a world tour while they taught me about their amazing world.

Sen was over six hundred years old. That’s old. She was born before Columbus brought the European invasion to North America. She’d seen the whole world turn upside down over and over again, and her eyes still sparkled. She never stopped laughing. Jen, on the other hand, was just 38. She was human like me. She told me, later, that Sen’s kind could live forever if nobody killed them.

But somebody did. Something. My grandmother called me a demon sometimes, but she didn’t know anything outside of her book and shows. I’ve seen a real demon now. I’ve felt the fires they can call. I’ve seen the wreckage they leave behind, of buildings and bodies. Sen is dead, and Jen…Jen is worse. There’s just Cat and me now to stop the Wild Hunt and I’ve got no idea how we’re even going to find them.

What’s left of Jen says there’s hope though. There’s a girl she heard about. She’s a little like Sen and a little like me, and apparently she can find anything if she puts her nose to it. We’re going to have to find her first and convince her to help us. For her, we know where to look. They want me to talk her into this, because Cat’s got to keep taking care of Jen. But…I’m not the most convincing guy out there so…wish me luck?

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Buy the Book: The book’s not yet available, but you can support its Kickstarter here! And Candlemark and Gleam has a cover reveal post up about it here!

Follow the Author: Official Site | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | Goodreads

Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: In the Void, by Sheryl Nantus

Boosting the Signal continues to technically be on hiatus on the grounds that I am frantically trying to pull the last of Victory of the Hawk out of my head. HOWEVER, a few folks have asked me to run pieces for them anyway! And I said sure, as long as they could get me completed pieces without me having to make any tweaks to them.

One of those people is fellow Carina author Sheryl Nantus, who y’all may remember sent me a piece for her Carina release earlier this year, In the Black. Sheryl’s back now, because Book 2 of that same series has released! Folks, I give you In the Void. In this piece, we’ve got one of the crew of the Belle having a sneaky suspicion about the goals our next hero in the series had better be setting for himself. Take it away, Sheryl!

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In the Void

In the Void

Diego! Mon ami! How’s it going…yeah, I know it’s been a while since I got in touch. Been a busy few weeks on the Bonnie Belle but I guess you heard about that. Bad business, crazy business with one of the girls getting murdered.

You got it all? Man, that’s fantastic. Your buddy was cool but I told him I’d rather deal with you direct ’cause we’re buddies. Yeah it was a bit of a lie but he was getting a bit too greedy asking for a tip and between you and me I know he gets enough of a cut. Besides, I like dealing straight-on with my suppliers.

I’ll pass on your condolences to Bianca along with the new curtains. She’s taking it hard but who can blame her? Still life goes on like the Guild wants and we’re turning and burning hard for every landfall with Captain Keller taking us in the black and keeping us safe.

Keller? She’s a damned good captain, better now that she’s gotten a bit o’fun with Marshal LeClair. I know we’re not supposed to know but he keeps coming ’round to inspect the Belle and make sure we’re all fine and ends up in the Captain’s cockpit more often than not, if you get my drift.

It’s good for her and for him and for all of us—well, maybe not Sean. He’s one of the boys, a fine medic and a sweet Irish who’s been around almost as long as Kendra. I think. You know they don’t like to talk about where they been or what they were before signing up to be a Mercy man or a Mercy woman.

He’s got a look about him like when a gear’s been worn down, the edges catching but not quite right—you get what I’m saying? I know it’s tough for everyone out here on the edge but he’s looking a bit more frayed than usual. Sometimes he gets this look and I know he’s not here on the ship and he sure as hell isn’t a Mercy man. He’s gone elsewhere and it’s got to be an awful place from the expression on his face. Then he comes on back to us and makes a joke and tries to hide from the pain.

Can’t blame him for getting tired of being out here. He’s getting older and there’s not a lot of old Mercy men. I know, I know, mature men are better lovers and all that but Sean’s getting to the point where he’s gonna have to figure out what he’s all about without the Belle.

Anyway, thanks for the supplies. I know the Dragons appreciate our business and you know I appreciate you coming out here to meet me. I’ll probably have a bigger list next time—got two cabins empty and I just know the new courtesans are gonna want to redecorate and that’s bad for me and good for you.

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Buy the Book: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Carina Press | Google Play | iBooks | Kobo

Follow the Author On: Twitter | Facebook | Official site | Goodreads Author Page | Goodreads Book Page

Ebooks and Ereaders

Adobe Digital Editions 4 has significant privacy problems

Saw this news breaking on various sites today, so as a PSA I’ll relay it here: Adobe Digital Editions 4 has got significant privacy problems, to the tune of transmitting data to Adobe servers about books on your library in plain text. Some evidence points to this even including stuff not only in your ADE library, but elsewhere on the hard drive as well, such as in Download folders and Calibre’s standard library location.

I’ve seen this reported on in the following places:

  • The Digital Reader, which appears to have been first in breaking the story
  • Ars Technica has a technical breakdown of what exactly ADE 4 is transmitting, including screenshots
  • Dear Author is NOT AMUSED
  • And Smart Bitches Trashy Books is SERIOUSLY not amused, and also provides pointers on how to figure out what version of ADE you have on your system if you don’t already know

If you use ADE at all, you should doublecheck that you’re not running ADE 4. If you have an earlier version, do not upgrade. The various links are all reporting that the earlier ADE versions, while they do still transmit a small amount of data to Adobe servers, are not doing it to the scale ADE 4 is.

I do use ADE, but only sparingly, and mostly as a means of checking out books from the library. This has mostly been trumped by me going directly to Overdrive apps on my various devices, though, and right now I’m really not seeing any reason to change that practice. I recommend anybody with an interest in checking out ebooks from libraries should do the same if at all possible.

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General reminder and FAQ: Still not a romance writer

Actual thing said to me in email today: “I notice you do a fair amount of romance writing…”

To which I’d now like to issue the general reminder that no, actually, not a romance writer.

I am a romance reader, which is why I pay attention to the genre and often post about developments in it, such as my posts on the Ellora’s Cave v. Dear Author case. And also because hey, Carina is a Harlequin imprint and so I’m in contact with a lot of people who do write romance for Carina, and Carina authors are prone to showing up on Boosting the Signal. I love me some romance of assorted genres (historical, paranormal, Gothic, and romantic suspense), and I do believe strongly and proudly in owning my reading tastes.

(Also because Smart Bitches Trashy Books and Dear Author are bastions of awesomeness, and are responsible for helping me find the narrow band of romance I actually like to read, and for the aforementioned proud ownership of my reading tastes. Thank you, DBSA Podcast!)

And science fiction romance IS a thing, a hybrid of the genres. But despite my Carina covers, I’m not even writing SFR, really. I do write love stories, but the level of love story I write is comparable to what you’ll find in a lot of fantasy written by men.

Which is to say: I do have characters fall in love, but this is tangential to the plot and is not the primary driver of the plot. And I very, very rarely write sex scenes. When I do, most likely they will cut a fade to black before anything explicit happens. A romantic relationship by me, on camera, is mostly going to be some intense feelings (and by intense feelings I do NOT mean ‘spending several paragraphs talking about the character’s sudden case of lustypants’, because I find that boring), occasional smooching, and outbursts of daring and heroic activity on behalf of the party to whom a character is romantically inclined.

And yet, I still get mistaken for a romance writer. It’s an easy mistake to make, since I do read and follow the genre, and I post about it a lot. And because of my covers.

But I daresay that some of this is also how a lot of folks out there will all too often see “written by a woman” and automatically assume “must be a romance novel”. Women in SF/F get this all the damn time, and it’s tiresome. If you’ve seen my posts over the last couple years about assorted SFWA controversies, you should have a real good idea of how tiresome I find that attitude.

So in conclusion: not a romance writer, even though I’m a proud romance reader. If you’ve enjoyed reading Valor of the Healer and Vengeance of the Hunter, the favor I’d like to ask of you is this: tell folks about my work, especially people who might be looking at my covers and automatically assuming “romance novel”. Tell ’em “no, actually, she’s writing fantasy!”

I may write actual romance eventually. But I’m not yet. And if I do write something that actually qualifies as romance, believe me, I’ll be making that clear too. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be the first to write a romance with a folk musician as the hero or heroine. Because a well-played fiddle is sexy, yo. 😀

Bone Walker, Queen of Souls, Victory of the Hawk

Victory of the Hawk (and Kickstarter) update

And now, a long overdue update on Victory of the Hawk! AND Kickstarter stuff!

Have been running annoyingly behind on getting this monster done, and managed to miss most of VCON for the second year in a row working on catching up. Got to the point that now I’m within scope for getting this monster’s first draft done by the end of this week, and shortly thereafter, there will be development edits.

How fast I can charge through those will, in turn, impact how fast I can charge through line edits. If all goes well, I could conceivably be done beating on this book by the end of the month. I’d like to be done before I scamper up to Canada again in November, this time for Operation SWING!, in which there will be ridiculous amounts of De Temps Antan!

If I’m done with edits on Victory by then, I’ll be swinging around to finally working on the edits on Bone Walker. When I go up to Canada for the De Temps Antan shows, I’ll be taking the entire week off–and between the two shows, I’ll be holed up in Cumberland working on edits on whatever’s popped next off the queue.

Once I can finally actually free up enough brain for the Bone Walker edits, they should go reasonably quickly since they’re all line-level edits, and I’m not going to be making any structural changes to the book at this point.

When Bone Walker‘s edits are finished, Dara and I will work on layout and on the design of the cover. And when that happens, I’ll have a better idea of when the final ebook and print editions will be deployed. The likely timeframe for this is early 2015, at this point. I’d like to have Bone Walker out before Victory is due to drop in April 2015.

Meanwhile, Dara has been doing a hard push to finish up the Bone Walker soundtrack. She’s very close to finishing the musical bits, although she and I still need to do the recordings for the readings I’ll be doing as accompaniment to the musical tracks. My ability to musically participate in the album has had to fall to the wayside, due to my having to focus on writing actual words, about which I’m sad. But on the other hand, we’ve gotten in excellent people to work with Dara. Especially Alexander James friggin’ Adams, about which I am not sad in the slightest.

When Bone Walker is cleared off my plate, I’ll be turning my attention to finishing up the novellas in the Warder universe, also due to Kickstarter backers. All three of these are still untitled, but to refresh your all’s memories, they are:

  • Origin story for Millicent Wray, who later is Millicent Merriweather, Warder of Seattle
  • Story set in Providence, RI, about a psychic who must help a man solve the murder of his Warder sister
  • Story of a musician who helps a Warder stop the hunt of migrating deep sea creatures

And once all THIS is done, well, we’ll see what happens next. What’s most likely to pop off the queue is the long-overdue Queen of Souls, which needs to be cleaned up so I can try to query it somewhere.

Wish me luck, folks. The rest of this year’s going to be busy, and next year promises to be more of the same!

Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: Life Gives You Lemons editors

This is outside the usual scope of Boosting the Signal, since I usually focus on actual books and helping authors get the word out about their material. However, as part of the ongoing situation with Ellora’s Cave v. Dear Author, I’ve been approached by a group of freelance editors who were laid off from projects at EC, and who’ve asked me to spread the word to the self-published and aspiring authors I know that they’re looking for additional projects.

Several of their group have no day jobs, so they’re very much in need of work. Note that they’re contractually not allowed to solicit Ellora’s Cave authors, so I’m particularly targeting this to indie and aspiring authors.

AND, for bonus thumbs up, I’ve also been informed that JoSelle Vanderhooft is involved with this group. Y’all may recognize her name as the JoSelle with whom I’ve worked on Bone Walker. So yes, if you’re in need of editorial assistance, do consider contacting these folks. Here’s the blurb they sent me about their services:

Following layoffs from Ellora’s Cave, a group of editors has been left with too much time on their hands and not enough demand for their red pens.

Well, we believe that when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.

We are fiction editors with years of professional experience in a variety of genres, who have had the great good fortune to work with some incredibly talented authors. We would love to provide editorial services for your self-publishing ventures, or for stories that are still looking for a loving forever home. We believe strongly in the importance of author/editor relationships, high editorial standards, honest and open communication, fair pricing, and transparency.

We also have a great relationship with some outrageously talented freelance cover artists.

You can reach any or all of us at LifeGivesYouLemons.edits@gmail.com to discuss what you need and how we can help you.

If you talk to them, tell them I sent you. Especially JoSelle. And I wish them all sympathies and hope that they’ll be able to pick up additional work!

ETA: Correcting ‘freelance authors’ to ‘freelance editors’ in the first paragraph. Whoops. Thanks to @LisaHendrix on Twitter for bringing that to my attention!