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Vengeance of the Hunter

Vengeance of the Hunter

Just for the record, Vengeance of the Hunter is not a romance novel

This is kind of exciting–I’m actually seeing Vengeance of the Hunter showing up in fiction roundups on a couple of fairly high-profile sites. Namely, tor.com and Heroes and Heartbreakers! Wow. 🙂

However, both of these roundup posts are mistaking me for writing romance. I’m not, despite the fact that I’ve got me a shirtless Julian on my cover for Vengeance of the Hunter. I do have a love story building in this trilogy, but it’s not actually the A plot. I’m better quantified as “fantasy with romantic elements” than outright romance or even romantic fantasy. Think Doranna Durgin before she started writing paranormal romance, or Tanya Huff’s fantasy novels, or early Esther Friesner. That’s the kind of flavor I aim for in my writing.

This, folks, is a side effect of my publisher for this trilogy targeting a lot of its marketing towards a romance-heavy audience. And I’m okay with that–the covers Carina has given me so far are a good compromise between their aiming towards the majority of Carina readers, and what I’m actually writing.

I just want to make sure that if you want to check out my stuff, you’re not confused by what’s on the cover!

Last but most assuredly not least, SF Signal has me in an April roundup post right over here. Scroll down to the V’s and you’ll see THIS.

REALLY Good Company

REALLY Good Company

I… WOW. I’m next to Tanya Huff and Mary Robinette Kowal. *^_^*;; Gosh. Makes me feel like a Real Writer!

Vengeance of the Hunter

And now, the official What Should I Name This Zombie? poll!

As y’all may recall from this prior post, O Internets, I received some Plants Vs. Zombies swag from my friend Kaye! Which included this little guy, who I promptly decided required a NAME.

I have received several amusing suggestions, and now the time has come for you to decide what, in fact, I should name this zombie!

Road Cones Protect My Head

Road Cones Protect My Head

Since the poll script won’t work on LJ and Dreamwidth, if you’re seeing the post there, please be sure to click the fold link to come on over and vote! Ditto if you’re clicking over from any of the social networks. I will only count votes on the actual poll. However, don’t let this stop you from campaigning for your choices in the comments! And if you think I should add an option, by all means, campaign for that, too! I will update the poll with any further appropriate choices presented to me.

I’ll be keeping track of who sent me what suggestion, and the winner of the poll will get their choice of an EPUB or PDF of Vengeance of the Hunter! I will be running this poll until Monday, March 24th, at which point I’ll announce the winner. Vote early! Vote often! Vote ZOMBIE!

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Vengeance of the Hunter

WAY OVERDUE announcement of Vengeance of the Hunter winner!

Sorry about this taking so long, folks! This is what happens when I’m in Canada for two consecutive weekends, and then have to scramble to get caught up again with my backlog once I return.

But, that said, the random number generator has SPOKEN. The winner of the copy of Vengeance of the Hunter is Venus on Facebook, who has now been pinged with a request for her to tell me what format she’d like the book in.

Stand by for further giveaway opportunities, Internets! And again, I’m sorry this took so long!

Contests, Vengeance of the Hunter

Who wants a copy of Vengeance of the Hunter?

RIGHT THEN! I have a book coming out! And I have piping hot fresh copies of an EPUB and PDF that I am willing to hand out to a lucky random winner. So here’s how this is going to work!

I will take entries into my random draw until 5pm Pacific time, this coming Friday! When I get home from my day job on Friday evening, I will announce a winner and that person will get their choice of an EPUB or PDF of Vengeance of the Hunter!

If you do any of the following things, you will get one (1) entry in the draw:

  • Drop a comment on this post (whether on angelahighland.com or on its LJ or Dreamwidth mirrors; only one comment per entrant, please)
  • Reply to the post on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+
  • Like the post on Facebook or +1 it on Google+
  • Like the post on Tumblr

If you do any of the following things, you will get two (2) entries in the draw:

  • Retweet the post on Twitter
  • Reshare the post on Facebook or Google+ (I’ll be posting this to both my personal wall AND my author page, so you can reshare it from either location, but only one reshare per person please)
  • Reblog the post on Tumblr
  • Add Vengeance of the Hunter to your to-read shelf on Goodreads or the equivalent on LibraryThing or Shelfari
  • Original post on your own blog/journal, Facebook, Google+, or Tumblr, linking to this post
  • Original tweet on Twitter, linking to me

If you do any of the following things, you will get five (5) entries in the draw:

  • New review of Valor of the Healer on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Goodreads, or any other place where Carina Press ebooks are sold and/or available to be discussed–because Valor of the Healer should ideally be read before anyone reads Vengeance of the Hunter! If you post a review in multiple places, I WILL give you entries for each. Because reviews are love.

You do NOT have to buy Valor of the Healer in order to get in on this giveaway, though if you do because you haven’t read it yet and you want to prep for reading Vengeance, that sure wouldn’t suck. 😉 All the places where you can buy Valor of the Healer are linked up on its official page!

(ALSO: Vengeance is available for pre-order on a couple places so far–its pages are still deploying up to the various sites where it’ll be available. But if you are a Kindle user, it IS up on Amazon and you CAN pre-order it! Pertinent links are here!)

Ready? Set? GO!

Vengeance of the Hunter

Cover reveal for Vengeance of the Hunter!

We are now at the stage of the game where Carina’s cover team presents to me the cover art for Vengeance of the Hunter, Book 2 of the Rebels of Adalonia trilogy!

Y’all keep in mind that while my trilogy is high fantasy, I am having it published via an imprint with its roots in romance–so that tends to show up in the marketing. Which means, I get me a shirtless cover model this time around. But even given that: I’m really rather digging the color scheme, and especially the raven. Because it’s ever so appropriate for my boy Julian, a.k.a. the Rook, a.k.a. one of the most infamous assassins in the entire realm of Adalonia, around whom the main character development focuses in this forthcoming book.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the cover for Vengeance of the Hunter!

Vengeance of the Hunter

Vengeance of the Hunter

Bone Walker, Vengeance of the Hunter, Victory of the Hawk

Status update on ALL the books

As of this morning I received an official final Word doc version of Vengeance of the Hunter. This means we are now SIGNED OFF on the text of this book. Next comes the cover copy and the cover art, and I hope to be showing you all these some time soon in coming weeks.

And this means as well that I need to start planning on Victory of the Hawk and start writing this puppy WAY sooner than I did Vengeance. Getting Vengeance ready to ship was an exercise in pushing it, and I need to NOT DO THAT for Victory. Expect me to be posting more updates about the third installment of Rebels of Adalonia in coming weeks as well, for the sake of visibility and accountability!

ALSO: I need to start the official edit pass on Bone Walker. Which will be starting THIS WEEKEND. I want this thing done and dealt with and hopefully ready to ship before Vengeance comes out in April. Again, look for more updates to come on this.

Likewise, I have the shorter works I want to finish off as well and get to Kickstarter backers who are LONG overdue for getting the shinies that are due them.

Lot of work before me, folks, as I head into 2014. Looking forward to taking it on and letting you know how it goes!

Vengeance of the Hunter

Vengeance of the Hunter update!

A couple of folks have asked me on the Intarwebz today what the difference is between line editing and copyediting, and so I thought that might make an amusing blog post topic. So here you go, an overview of what’s been going on with Vengeance of the Hunter over the last few months.

At Carina, editing is done in three overall phases: developmental edits, line edits, and copyedits.

Developmental edits are what happens when the editor asks you to address issues at the big-picture level. These will include fixing things broken with the overall plot structure, perhaps even rewriting a considerable amount of the book if necessary.

Line edits pull the scope in from the overall structure of the book to a tighter focus. At the line edit stage, you may be adding scenes to address anything not already adequately developed, but you won’t be rewriting huge swaths of the book. You’ll also be sometimes be rearranging word choices, adding or deleting things as necessary, to tighten up the overall flow of the prose.

Copyedits are pretty much straight up proofreading, and that’s done by a copyeditor, not the primary editor. At this point, the copyeditor is looking for typos that you or your primary editor may have missed, and may be asking questions about some of your word choices. But the primary goal here is not to get you to rewrite sentences, just to hunt for any misspelled, forgotten, or superfluous words. Or, anything that goes against Carina’s overall style guide for its authors (e.g., avoid using semicolons in dialogue).

Vengeance of the Hunter, as of this writing, has gone through these major phases:

  • First raw draft
  • Developmental edits, in which I rewrote the first several chapters, rearranged what characters were involved through pretty much the entire latter half of the book, and rewrote the ending
  • Line edits, round 1, in which I reordered the flow of a few of the scenes at the beginning and dropped in a new chapter break; added three brand new scenes in the latter half of the book; rejiggered a scene in the climax, and dropped in another chapter break; and rewrote the tail end of two scenes in the final chapter
  • Line edits, round 2, in which I swept through a lot of line edits mostly involving the new material added in the previous round, but also removed a scene break to improve the immediacy of the action in the climax, and stuck in a new line to make it clearer that a minor character is in fact female

Next up will be copyediting, as described above.

And meanwhile, I’m awaiting word on the cover art and the blurb copy. Once I have these I’ll be able to put up an official page for the book!

This thing is getting close to release state. Internets, I AM EXCITE, as all the cool kids say.

Stick with me. On April 28, 2014, the Hunter will seek his vengeance.