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Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: In the Black, by Sheryl Nantus

Hey, I get to help a fellow Carina author out with release-week promo, how awesome is that? Because Sheryl Nantus has just dropped a brand new science fiction romance, In the Black, and if you’re a Browncoat who’s thinking that title has an awfully familiar ring to it, you wouldn’t be far off. I’ve seen Sheryl citing Firefly as an influence on her story, especially with how her heroine’s the captain of a ship full of high-class courtesans! Just the sort of job I could see an AU Inara taking on.

And now I TOTALLY want that fanfic. But until I get it, here’s a newcomer to the Belle, with a real simple goal–settling in, with the help of Jenny the mechanic, who is apparently this book’s Kaylee, and who apparently has the goal of some side dealing, hmm? Check it out!

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In the Black

In the Black

You from Diego? My name’s Jenny. That box you’re carrying got the stuff I agreed upon with D? Great—come on this way. We’ll talk in my quarters, I don’t want the captain seeing us doing business. She’s not hardcore but I don’t want to put her in any sort of compromising position. Climb down in here.

Hey there—look out for that pipe! It’ll take your head off if you smack it hard enough. I’ve got more than my fair share of bruises from that ventilation shaft. Took me only a few weeks aboard the Bonnie Belle to learn my lesson and duck. Just follow me and don’t take any side trips—you get lost in here easy enough and I don’t got the time to track you down.

The Belle? She’s a fine ship, a good ship. A Mercy ship but don’t let that stop you from admiring a good piece of work. I know Mercy ships got all sorts of reputations and we run hard, taking the courtesans from base to base to keep the miners happy but it’s what’s underneath that counts—and mechanics like me are what keeps them running to make everyone get what they want.

It might not seem very glamorous, crawling around the undercarriage of a big ship like this and keeping out of the way of the women and men above but I don’t mind. The new captain, she’s a nice one. Sam Keller—she lends me books and stuff and we talk a lot about things. She’s new to the Guild so she needs help getting settled and doing what a captain does when you land on a base full of horny miners all wanting to get to the men and women ‘board the Belle. Don’t know what she did before she decided to sign on with the Guild but she’s got ghosts in her mind. Ex-military, I figure, since she likes those damned combat boots and don’t want to wear nothing but her old fatigues. Which is fine except she’s got to make the presentation when we make landfall and those guys don’t want smelly old boots and stained green pants. Well, not stained in that way, if you get my drift.

The crew? Fine folk as long as you know your place. I don’t want to say too much about them ’cause we work different jobs and all that. Usually you keep the same crew for months, maybe years unless one of the courtesans asks for a transfer or buys out her or his contract – that’s how we got Halley. She transferred in after a catfight on another ship and hooked up with Bianca. Only ones here who might be able to buy out their contracts might be Kendra or April but I wouldn’t ask them ’bout it. Not good manners. Lots of the women stay around and take a second tour or third ’cause it’s what they want to do. Plenty more get caught in the company store trick with the Guild and end up owing everything they have. I stay ahead of the game and so does the captain but it means we don’t get a lot of fancy stuff like hot showers and all that. But I’m saving up for a ship of my own, one of those fast cutters like you see here on my wall.

Good, good. Just what I needed. Gotta keep the washing machine going otherwise I’ll be up to my ass in dirty laundry and those women, they don’t like recycling their sheets if you get my drift. Don’t seem important to you and me but they got paying customers who don’t want any evidence of who’s been ’round before them.

Here’s your cred stick. Just what I agreed on with Diego and don’t let him stiff you on your cut for making the delivery. Let me show you back to the landing bay otherwise you’ll get lost and I’ll end up asking Belle to find you.

The computer AI, silly. She’s smarter than most anyone I know and she keeps the ship straight and level. She sees everything ‘cept what she’s not supposed to ’cause of her Guild programming. Still don’t want her having to trace you through the shafts so keep close behind me and I’ll get you out of here in a jiffy.

There, see? Easy to avoid smacking your head when you keep your wits about you and keep your head down. Don’t worry I always got a list of stuff the courtesans want so I’ll be in touch. Diego knows I’m good for a few extra creds whenever we make landfall where guys like you can meet us.

Yeah, the landing bay’s huge. Trust me it seems mighty small when you’ve got a mob of hungry men waiting for their turn with the courtesans. They all behave however else they’ve got to deal with Captain Keller and she doesn’t take kindly to any misbehaving. Not until they’re behind closed doors and all.

After all, like the ad says – “Everyone loves a Mercy woman”.

See you In the Black!

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May 16, 2014 by
Bone Walker, Carina Press, Faerie Blood, Other People's Books, Vengeance of the Hunter

A few promo things make a post

Item the first: Debut Carina author Sonya Clark would like y’all to know she’s having a giveaway for her forthcoming release Trancehack, which is futuristic paranormal romance. Call it PR with a side helping of SF, if you like! Deets can be found right over here.

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Item the second: speaking of my fellow Carina authors, the awesome Joely Sue Burkhart and Raelyn Barclay are running Coyote Con, a virtual convention, all this month! What’s a virtual convention? It’s a series of online chat discussions on various interesting topics, pretty similar to what you’d find at an actual convention in person.

I’ve been in a few of these panels now myself, and there are more to come as the month progresses! And for those panels you may have already missed, Joely and Raelyn are posting transcripts too, so you can catch up on those here.

The panels I was in in particular were Epic Fantasy, Self Publishing, and LGBTQ/Diversity.

There are a couple more panels today, and there’ll be more the remaining weekends of the month. And one chat room’s also dedicated to just general hanging out too! The full schedule is here!

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Item the third: I will be going to Orycon from November 8-10–the weekend right before my forthcoming surgery, in fact. So unless you’re one of the people likely to show up for the annual Murkworks Thanksgiving Day Homeless Waifs Turkeyfest, this is going to be the last chance to spot the elusive Wild Anna outside her natural habitat. If you’re going to be there, find me and say hi, mmkay?

Likewise, I am going to GeekGirlCon this coming weekend, right after I go see Great Big Sea in Edmonds. I’m going to be REAL busy this weekend. 😀

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Item the fourth: This is your friendly reminder that I am down to three print copies of Faerie Blood, so if you’d like a print copy of this book, talk to me! Getting it directly from me remains the only way to acquire it since I currently have no way of selling it online. I ask $15 if I’m going to hand deliver it, $20 if I need to mail it to you.

I also have a small stock of CDs that contain the various formats of the ebook edition, both the original Drollerie release AND the current Second Edition as well. For these, I ask $5 each.

I will have both of these items with me at GeekGirlCon and Orycon as well!

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Item the fifth: Kickstarter backers, just so y’all know, I have totally had my brain eaten by Vengeance of the Hunter edits. I ran behind on it, and am scrambling along with my editor (who is made of solid gold awesomeness, All Hail Her Name) to get the manuscript finished up so that we don’t impact the schedule. We’re in the middle of line edits now. I will be jumping back to Bone Walker the instant we sign off on this book.

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Item the sixth: I have not forgotten the series of posts on advice on self-publishing; these too have had to be paused while I charge through edits on Vengeance. They will resume soon. Thank you for your patience on that; I’ve seen quite a few hits on these posts, so I do want to finish the series up.

October 13, 2013 by
Carina Press

Other Carina authors I recommend

I got asked about this by the loverly Geri on Twitter, so I thought I’d devote an entire post to this topic: i.e., now that I’m a Carina author, who might I recommend to folks who might want to check out what else Carina has to offer?

I’m glad you asked that question! Because hell yeah, I can help you out with that. Keeping in mind that Carina’s catalogue is dominated by romance, a lot of my answers are going to have some measure of that involved–but I’m also going to spotlight some of the non-romance works I’ve read as well. So here you go!

Hands down, my favorite author out of all the Carina stuff I’ve read thus far is Susanna Fraser. She writes historical romance, and I very, very much liked her first outing, The Sergeant’s Lady. Particularly when I saw it going around Twitter that she was a fellow Browncoat. And then I noticed that if you’re a raving Browncoat like myself, a couple of the names of male characters in that book are suspiciously familiar, even if switched around. Plus, that book’s set during the Napoleonic War and her hero’s a sergeant in the British army, in love with a noblewoman, so there’s fun class-based conflict going on there. And I got to spend the entire book imagining her hero looking like Nathan Fillion. This did not suck.

If you enjoyed Faerie Blood, I’d like to direct your attention to one of the very first Carina releases I read and which I don’t see getting much attention at all–a book called Dark & Disorderly, by Bernita Harris. I found the sensibility of that one pretty much right in line with the kind of urban fantasy I like to read, i.e., mostly about the fantasy, not as much about the romance, but the romance is not absent either.

Similarly, although I have yet to actually read these books, I’d like to give shoutouts to the books of David Bridger, who writes urban fantasy–and especially Tia Nevitt, who’s posted before right here on my very own blog. Tia is at the top of my list for Carina authors I’ll be reading next, because she does fairy tale retellings, turning the stories to bring in the perspectives of characters who don’t normally get the spotlight. And I’m very much looking forward to reading about her dwarf heroine in The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf.

For other books in the vein of SF/F, what I’ve got queued up to read are the books of Nicole Luiken, Gate to Kandrith and Soul of Kandrith. Shawna Thomas has a couple of fantasy novels I want to check out, as well as a more science-fantasy-sounding book as well. And J.L. Hilton has a couple of romantic SF works–she’s the one who wrote Stellarnet Rebel, which impressed me by having a three-way romance between a human woman and two males of an amphibious species which apparently sounded entirely awesome to those of you who are Mass Effect fans. 😉 Also, I was deeply happy to see an Irish pub in her story. Because there are sessions EVEN IN THE FUTURE. Her second book of that series is on my queue to check out. Note that this is romantic SF, so yeah, there’s some emphasis on the emotional and sexual connection between the characters, and since it’s a three-way relationship she has to take the time to set up all three parties and their connections. But she’s also got some fun political machinations going on and I’m looking forward to seeing how the situation develops both on the galactic and personal levels.

For some evidence of Carina’s being generally LGBT-friendly, I point you at Cathy Pegau and her book Rulebreaker for some F/F science fiction. She’s got a more recent release as well, with a het pairing, Caught in Amber, and that’s also very high on my Carina list to check out. Likewise, if you’re a superhero fan, grab The Superheroes Union: Dynama by Ruth Diaz!

For some non-romance stuff, I very much liked the period mystery The Hollow House by Janis Patterson, which had some fun Gothic feel to it despite being set in the entirely non-Gothich setting of 1920’s-ish Denver. Well done there. And not a trace of romance in the story, either, with a heroine who’s gone through a great deal of shit in her life and who was not in a space to deal with such shenanigans. Nor did she need to. ‘Cause there were murders going on that needed to be dealt with!

For a bit of horror along the lines of how I like my horror (i.e., creepy and suspenseful, not gory), I recommend the novella Lure of the Mummy, by Janis Susan May. Nice little Egyptology-based plot. With a mummy. Like you do with Egyptology. Just ask Amelia Peabody!

There, that ought to get you all started. 😀

ETA: I have been reminded that I forgot to add Last Car to Annwn Station, another urban fantasy, by Michael Merriam. This is another LGBT book as well, with protagonists who are a lesbian and a bi woman, and particular thumbs up for that latter. Thanks to Catherine Lundoff for the tip!

April 17, 2013 by
Carina Press, Valor of the Healer

Posting at Carina Press today!

My promo post for Valor of the Healer has just gone live on the Carina Press blog! If you’re feeling inclined, c’mon over here and see what I’ve got to say about the challenges of writing Faanshi as a strong female character when she’s not obviously strong at first glance. I want to hear about your favorite female characters who are strong in unexpected ways, and I’ve got another giveaway of Valor of the Healer running in conjunction with that post as well!

So clickie, won’t you? Faanshi and I want to hear from you!

April 16, 2013 by
Guest Posts, Other People's Books

Guest Post – Geekiness and Writing

Hey there Internets! One of the fun things about being a Carina author is the very strong community I’ve joined–and in particular, the community of Carina authors who write fantasy, urban fantasy, and paranormal romance. We’re all on an author blog called Here Be Magic, and I’d like to start introducing you to my fellow writers who post there. Starting today with Tia Nevitt! So y’all grab a chair, raise a jar, and give Tia a listen, won’t you? — Anna

Hi, there. I’m usurping Angela’s blog for a day. With her permission. She actually gave me an account here so I can write up my own blog right here in her site dashboard. I don’t know if that was uber-cool or uber-lazy, but I’ll be returning the favor for her about when her latest book,  Valor of the Healer, arrives on my Kindle in April.

In trying to think about what y’all would want to read about, I thought about what Angela and I have in common. Quite a bit, actually:

  • we both know our way around webservices, a linux command prompt, and general geek tech.
  • we know what muds, mushes and moos are, and how Diablo was a ripoff of a game called nethack.
  • we both write.
  • we both like fantasies and romances all mashed up together.
  • we both have a lot of writer friends.

So I thought I’d write a geeky writer post.

To be a geek is to be somewhat eccentric, and to be just fine with that. Geeks are nerds with aplomb. Nerds were ostracized. Geeks are celebrated.

To be a writer is also to be somewhat eccentric. After all, writers are kind of rare. If you’re not a writer, how many writer friends do you have? Hmm? If you are a writer, how many writer friends do you have, who you did not meet through a writer group of some kind? I can count the number on one hand, and several of those are wannabes who don’t actually write.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Even if you do have writer friends, you probably don’t know it. Writing is very much a closet activity. It’s kind of like being a geek without the cool.

Oh, you think being a writer must be cool? Well, maybe once you’ve been published, but not until then. Here’s how it goes.

Acquaintance: “Oh, you are a writer? Well, what have you published?”

You: “Well, nothing yet.”

Acquaintance: “Oh …”

And the conversation fizzles. And once you’re published? Well then, you’re just trying to sell people something.

I did write a book (or two), but instead of trying to sell you something, I’ll assume you guys are writerly geeks too, and I’ll share some of my favorite writer geeks from history.

Mark Twain

OMG, was he ever a geek. He not only write A Connecticut Yankee in King Author’s Court, which was a very geeky book to write, but he wrote the steampunky Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective. Plus he wrote an autobiography with strict instructions that they were not to be published until a hundred years after his death, and he actually managed to pull that off. Plus he was born and he died while Halley’s Comet was in the sky.

What a geeky way to go!

Jane Austen

Jane was a bookworm who tested out her novels by reading them aloud to her family. I think most of Jane’s personality shines through in Northanger Abbey, where she puts a spirited defense of the reading of novels into the mouth of her hero, Henry Tilney. It is easy to imagine that Jane’s contemporaries saw the reading of novels as something slightly disreputable in a geeky kind of way, like the playing of role playing games.

Louisa May Alcott

Young Louisa was a writer geek among writer geeks. I had the opportunity to tour one of the Alcott family homes once while in Concord, Massachusetts, which is a literary town that also included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. If you’ve read her book, Little Women, you probably know that she is basically Jo.  She was raised by transcendentalists and they lived in a commune for a few years while she was growing up.

Groovy, man.

~*~

I always love to chat with other writerly types, so consider this an invitation to stop by my blog. You’ll find some other geeky writers there as well.

Till then, a question for you. I tend to think that every girl’s got a little geek. What is your geeky proclivity? I’ll be by after work tonight to read and share as well.

 

March 15, 2013 by
Carina Press, Other People's Books

Call for topics for visiting Carina author!

Hey all!

As part of increasing my general visibility as a Carina Press author, I’m going to occasionally have some of my fellow Carina people do some guest posts here on my site. You may expect that these will be people who are part of the Here Be Magic group that I’ve joined–the Carina authors who write fantasy, urban fantasy, or paranormal romance.

On Monday the 11th, Tia Nevitt will be doing a post here for you all to introduce herself and talk a bit about her two Carina novellas. But! We’d like to liven it up a bit, and so my question for you all is this:

What would you like to see Tia post about? Any questions you’d like to ask her? Talk to us, folks!

If you’d like to check out Tia’s work for an idea of topics, I highly encourage you to go visit Carina’s site and look at her titles on sale right over here!

March 5, 2013 by
Carina Press, Rebels of Adalonia, Valor of the Healer

It BEGINS!

Holy hopping Christ on a pogo stick, you guys! Look what I just found! Pre-order links for Valor of the Healer, on Amazon and on Barnes and Noble! No cover art yet or cover copy–these are very early links–but they are THERE.

And if you click over to Carina’s Coming Soon page and scroll down to April, OMG. I’m there.

Coming Soon: Valor of the Healer!

Coming Soon: Valor of the Healer!

Between this and starting to get some emails in my inbox with early rumblings of info on What’s Going to Happen Next, I’m starting to get super-excited here, people. I’ve seen round 1 of both cover art and cover copy, and as soon as I have final versions of both that I’m cleared to post, I’ll be putting up an official Valor of the Healer page similar to the one I have up for Faerie Blood!

You guys. I’M GOING TO HAVE ANOTHER BOOK!

January 3, 2013 by