annathepiper

Those of you who know about my completed but unpublished novels will know I’ve got Queen of Souls, a Persephone and Hades story on the queue to be edited into queryable shape. So it should surprise none of you that I’m quite interested in checking out Frayed Tapestry, by my fellow Drollerie author Imogen Howson. In fact, as the cool kids like to say, her post for this month’s Drollerie Blog Tour, on the topic of dangerous writing, is Relevant to My Interests indeed.

Check it out, folks! Here’s what Imogen’s got to say.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

annathepiper

Tonight, I learned that pretty much every character major and minor in the cast of The Venture Bros. has an in-character Twitter account! This came onto my radar when I saw Nathan Fillion answering tweets from @numbertwentyone and encouraging people to follow him–and then flirting with @DocGirlfriend, who was all over flirting right back.

Naturally I started following all of my favorite characters and being highly amused by tonight’s exchanges between them. Then I noticed I’d picked up a new follower of my own. And the following ensued:

annathepiper: Don’t look now, but I appear to be followed by @DeadlyMolotov. No no you fool, I said DON’T LOOK! She can shoot your eye out!
DeadlyMolotov: @annathepiper Retweeted and favourited.
annathepiper: @DeadlyMolotov Thank you kindly! Partner says to tell you “By the way darling do not forget lunch date in Volgograd.”
DeadlyMolotov: @annathepiper As long as he brings the dolphin; Tell him that. He’ll know what it means.
annathepiper: @DeadlyMolotov Partner’s a girl. Also, a supervillain! Come to think of it, this probably explains where she got the dolphin…
DeadlyMolotov: @annathepiper Oh? Even better.
mistwolf: @DeadlyMolotov @annathepiper Your partner with a dolphin scares me deeply.
annathepiper: @mistwolf @DeadlyMolotov I’m quite sure I don’t want to know her intentions for that dolphin, here OR in Volgograd. I already know too much!

I think I just had a geekgasm. <3

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

annathepiper

So there I was about to answer @heatheringemar’s lovely supportive tweet about my cake-resistance efforts tonight, as well as tweeting my previous post, when Twitter suddenly inexplicably fell over. No fail whale, no nothin’, just suddenly I couldn’t get through.

Didn’t think anything of it though until I saw this post show up on JournalFen’s Fandom Lounge community–from which solarbird has concluded that Twitter’s apparently suffered a name service hack. From what the JF poster saw before Twitter vanished completely, it looked like a group in Iran tried to take over the site. One expects in retaliation for Iranian students trying to use Twitter as a protest mechanism. Dara doublechecked by trying to get data off of Twitter’s nameservers, and yeah, they were reporting bad hosts and everything before Twitter just dropped completely off the net.

Anyway, y’all, if you can’t get through to Twitter tonight, this is very probably why. I don’t envy Twitter’s support team right now; they must be having a very stressful night!

ETA: Dara has more tech-oriented details over here.

ETA #2: And we’re back! We now rejoin your regularly scheduled tweeting, already in progress.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

annathepiper

Fictionwise, as I’ve posted before, has pretty much got me right where they want me. Especially right now with their mighty end of year sale, wherein everything is pretty much 40-60 percent off. Plus, since I’m a member of the Buywise club, they have a thing going where I can get an extra 10 percent rebate for orders between $50 and $100. So I just dropped fifty bucks on the credit card tonight to stack up on the rebate goodness.

And here’s the thing: Fictionwise books you spend rebate dollars on themselves generate more rebate dollars. So I just went through five, count ‘em, five rounds of book buying before I finally exhausted my rebate amount. The list of books that resulted is mighty indeed. Here they all are in their glory!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

annathepiper

So y’all know how I posted two weeks ago about using the LoseIt! iPhone app to start trying to get my weight under control? I’m pleased to report that so far, the plan seems to be working. And in fact, I’m a little ahead of the game since I had set the thing for losing 1 1/2 pounds per week and so far I’m down four pounds, not three.

I made a point of checking in with my general care doctor too so that she is aware of the Plan. Happily, she agreed that what I’m setting out to do seems sane and a healthy rate of loss; she counseled me to make sure to not drop more than two pounds a week and to be prepared to bump up my exercise later as well, neither of which were surprising. She wants to see me in 2-3 months for a physical, so we’ll see where I am in March or so.

Going to have to brief my post-cancer endoc and my thyroid doc as well, especially the latter, given that weight reduction will of course also affect my thyroid levels. Fortunately I have appointments with both of them next week during my vacation time, which will be nice.

All in all I am finding the app a breeze to use, since it conveniently combines several things I was either trying to do or was intellectually aware I should have been doing anyway: i.e., a food log, an exercise log, and managing not only what I eat but how much. Really, the idea of losing weight by eating less and exercising more is one I have known for most of my adult life–we ALL know this one. But knowing it and actually having an effective tool to pull it off seem to be a world apart, at least for me!

Having a daily calorie budget and a way to easily check against it also seems to be vital. Knowing how many more calories I have to blow in a day has already led me to decide against snacks when previously I would have had them; as I type this, I am stoically resisting cake. Because I don’t have enough of a calorie surplus yet, and I won’t until I get on the treadmill Saturday morning!

Long story short, I love this plan! I’m proud to be a part of it!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

annathepiper

Check it out, you guys, pictoral proof that why yes, Drollerie authors can indeed get books in print! My fellow Drollerie author Joely Sue Burkhart, who y’all may recall from assorted blog tour posts, is having herself a giveaway for a print copy of her novel The Rose of Shanhasson–follow the link to drop a comment on her post if you’re interested in a shot at winning one!

And tell her I sent you.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

annathepiper

Because I’m peeved that a cold has thrown me off of my writing AGAIN, and because I didn’t want to go to bed without throwing at least a few words at the book, I bumped up the word count on Bone Walker by a couple hundred. Mostly, this gave me time to let Kendis discover a new thing about Christopher: he can get jealous!

And technically, I wrote sixty or so words of this the other day, but I never actually transcribed them out of the Moleskine, so I’m only counting them now. Because I can.

Written tonight: 222
Chapter 6 total: 1,104
Bone Walker total (first draft): 15,064

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

annathepiper

Just saw this on celandineb’s journal: apparently LJ is about to make the Gender field a mandatory setting on new account creation, and word has it that you’ll have to set it to Male or Female. “Unspecified” will no longer be allowed. Details on this can be found over here.

Since I have several transgendered and genderqueer friends, I find this generally displeasing, especially when coupled with the likelihood that this’ll lead to gender-targeted ads for non-paying users of the system. As per synecdochic’s post, I’ll be sending in some feedback on this to (politely) express my displeasure. I recommend any of y’all who feel likewise do the same.

ETA 12/15/09 6:24am: As has been noted elsewhere, LJ’s support team has been replying to feedback that’s gone in saying that this was apparently beta code and a screw up. I’ve gotten this same support reply, so that seems to be that. Good.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

annathepiper

A lot of you reading this will probably see this posted elsewhere, but just in case you haven’t, word is going around the Net today about how Canadian SF writer Peter Watts was stopped at the US/Canadian border on his way back into Canada, beaten by border guards, and released in his shirtsleeves into the middle of a snowstorm. Various pertinent links include:

• Watts’ direct account of the matter
• John Scalzi’s post at the Whatever
• Post at Making Light

I’d previously downloaded the four Creative Commons copies of Peter’s novels from his site, and have elected to send him a Paypal donation for roughly the amount I’d have paid for these books if I’d bought them in paperback in a store. If like me you are deeply appalled that this happened to him, I would encourage you to consider sending him whatever you can spare as he gets a defense fund together.

More formal efforts to get something organized for him are underway, but in the meantime, he has a Paypal donation button here. If you use it, please also send him a separate note specifying that you’re donating to his legal fund since the button was originally set up for veterinary bills for his cats.

Thanks, folks. Let’s hope this works out for the best.

ETA 12/12/09 11:47am: Peter has posted again with an update, specifically touching on how a Michigan newspaper story on the incident is telling a version of events that contradicts what he said happened. He’s clearing up a couple other points as well, and voicing his thanks to folks who have given him support.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

annathepiper

So yeah, after falling hard off the wagon in mid-November, I’ve had a devil of a time trying to get re-organized for getting back on again. Tonight is my attempt to get that started, ’cause this book? It ain’t writing itself.

Not much done tonight, but I did at least update my outline for Bone Walker a bit, to try to get the initial chapters to reflect what I’ve actually written and lay down the ground work for extrapolating ahead. And I threw a couple hundred words into Chapter Six. Not bad considering I was brain dead for most of the day thanks to staying home with a sore throat, and that I need to go to bed now.

Hopefully more tomorrow!

Written tonight: 213
Chapter 6 total: 882
Bone Walker total (first draft): 14,842

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

annathepiper

If you happen to be like me and am crossposting these days over to LJ and LJ-related sites off of Wordpress, you might want to give a look to the shiny new version of the JournalPress plugin. It just upgraded to version 0.3 and includes, finally, support for letting you choose what userpic you want when the post shows up on LJ!

This gives me a Happy, since it takes a few extra steps out of my crossposting efforts. And lets me specifically do something like oh, say, choose to show those of you who’re looking at this post on LJ or Dreamwidth the shiny new icon that spazzkat made me! It’s a new version of Great Amurkian Novel, featuring Scuzzbopper, who is arguably my personal muse. I <3 Scuzzie so.

But for those who’re looking at this post via Wordpress, here’s the icon itself, behind the fold!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

annathepiper

So I went to Third Place Books tonight for a reading and signing by the mighty cmpriest, who read one of the very best little bits from Boneshaker, and who then answered a lot of questions and signed quite a lot of books. Far and away, hands down, the best question answered was that yes, there will be a sequel to Boneshaker. Which I’d actually already seen her mention on her blog/LJ posts about its progress, but I hadn’t realized it was Boneshaker’s sequel! Anyway, it’s coming. It’s called Dreadnought. I will be waiting for it with bells on.

Also happened to see caitkitt there, so I thanked her for sending the e-arc of Street Magic to me, and picked up a couple more books of hers while I was there. In print, since I’m trying to keep the Seattle-based authors on the Buy In Print list!

But on a related note, I also asked the staff about their shiny new POD machine–with, of course, an eye to whether they could print Drollerie books. I had the guy at the info desk do a couple of searches, but sadly, it looks like Drollerie books are NOT in its database. So assuming that Faerie Blood joins the Drollerie print roster, the only option will be to order it. If the situation changes I will of course let folks know.

Meanwhile I must note that the following books have now been purchased by me:

In print:

• Demon Bound and Witch Craft, by Caitlinn Kittredge

In e-book:

• Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament, by S.G. Browne

And, since Fictionwise is having a massive and I mean MASSIVE sale for the end of the year (to the tune of everything between 40 and 60% off, so if you haven’t bought Faerie Blood yet now would be a REALLY GOOD TIME, not like I’m hinting or anything okay yeah well I am), I’m probably about to do another e-book run. A good chunk of this will be buying stuff by Morgan Howell, because I just read Book 1 of his Queen of the Orcs trilogy and liked it quite a bit.

Until then, the yearly books purchased tally is now up to 173.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.