New Valor of the Healer giveaway starting RIGHT NOW!

The fine folks at Carina Press are promoting me today, with some tweets and Facebook posts going up! The first of the promo tweets just went up a little while ago, and it should surprise exactly NONE OF YOU that this is what it says:

Raise Your Hand if You're Surprised
Raise Your Hand if You’re Surprised

Now, this is all very well and lovely (and in fact you should also soon be seeing a tweet go up about how I once stood three feet from Russell Crowe and my brain fell RIGHT OUT OF MY HEAD), but it occurs to me: why should Carina get to have all the fun here? I am a complex, living organism! And just like Scully once said unto Mulder, I just keep unfolding like a flower. I have LAYERS!

So starting RIGHT NOW, O Internets, I’m throwing open a brand new giveaway: spread your own promo tweets, Facebook posts, etc. about me and Valor of the Healer! The rules are as follows:

  • You have to link to my official site, http://www.angelahighland.com/, or use this for a short URL: http://bit.ly/Zgk7am
  • Or you can link to Valor of the Healer’s official page, or use this for a short URL: http://bit.ly/YQTYDm
  • Or, if you want to encourage your friends to jump in too, link directly to this post! Or use this as a short URL: http://bit.ly/17EIOUw
  • You have to share one fun fact about me! Note: this fact does not actually have to be TRUE. Tall tales are highly encouraged, in the vein of the “Chuck Norris” meme, or if you happen to be a Doctor Who fan, the “Rory Williams” one. ;D
  • You have to post on a social network or on your own blog or journal.
  • You have to send me a screenshot or a link, or tag me on your post so I can see it.
  • Each place you post a “fact” about me will get you one entry in the random pool of entries!

This giveaway runs from NOW until midnight Pacific time, Friday April 19th! I will choose a winner on Saturday the 20th!

Ready? Set? GO!

The challenge before you: name this mammoth!

I will be doing a full weekend report when I get back to an actual keyboard, but for the time being I must report that Dara and I did in fact make it to the Royal BC museum in downtown Victoria. We did not do it nearly enough justice, considering how little time we spent there. But we were killing time waiting for our hotel room to be ready, and we bailed quickly in search of naps.

I did, however, accomplish the mission of seeing their woolly mammoth in the natural history exhibit. And the corollary mission of acquiring a mammoth of my very own! The question at hand: what is this mammoth’s NAME?

I have already received several excellent nominations on Facebook, but am extending the call here. There is some debate about whether I have a boy or a girl mammoth, and whether or not the mammoth is Quebecois and should therefore have a French name. Present to me your theories, and show your work! The best nominations will be going into a poll to do my next giveaway for Valor of the Healer!

Name This Mammoth!
Name This Mammoth!

Blogging at Here Be Magic today!

Hey folks! Surfacing from Norwescon long enough to report that my very first contribution to the Here Be Magic blog has gone up today! I’m being relaxed and groovy, and talking a bit about Valor of the Healer as well as Faerie Blood, and mentioning a few of the ways I’m shooting for equality and balance in my work. It’s no accident that both of my heroines of record, to date, are elves who are not white.

And being, well, ME, I also mention a few of the ways I love to geek out!

Come on over and say hi! I AM at Norwescon so I’m only able to pay erratic attention to the comments right now, but I’ll be trying to answer any comments as the weekend progresses and I have time in between convention programming. :)

Many thanks to my fellow Here Be Magic authors for spreading the word!

I have a cunning plan

Which is to say, I’m going to take the entire week of Labor Day off since I have the vacation time to spare, and work on finishing my edits. To further this goal, I will be also dropping off the net for the duration of that week. I’ll still be answering email, but I won’t be monitoring Twitter, Facebook, or Google+, and for the most part I’ll only be answering email sent directly to me (as opposed to any of the mailing lists I’m on, or comments on any of my posts).

Noting this now by way of general accountability. I may post status updates during that week–again, for purposes of accountability–but I can’t guarantee I’ll answer any comments on them.

We’ll see how much I can get done before then; any little bit I can get done before does after all further the goal. And anything I can write above and beyond finishing the edits on Lament will be bonus. Christopher and Kendis are looking VERY expectant in the back of my brain, you know.

So there you have it. If you think you might want to get a hold of me during that week for whatever reason, email, text, or phone will be best! If you think you should have those means of contacting me and you don’t, let me know.

My muse demands bronzeriders, who knew?

I just finished writing 500 words or so about a bronzerider character I used to write for Telgar Weyr, the offline Pern fan club group I used to be in, and which is making noises about resurrecting itself lately. This is pertinent to my writing efforts because, for the first time in many months, I felt my brain leap at the idea of revisiting a lot of stories that I never did get to finish when the club fell over before.

So for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been distracted with that. Which is, I know I know, not exactly conducive to me getting Lament of the Dove done. But I can say this: after writing that snippet about J’marr, I felt a lot more sanguine about poking at Lament, and I fired up Chapter 20 and went through a couple of (fairly light) pages of editing until realizing I needed to bugger off to bed.

Apparently my muse has just been jonesing to write about a hot young bronzerider. If that’s what it takes to get my ass back in gear, I am happy to oblige it!

I’m still in Chapter 20, although my mental page pointer has moved ahead from page 4 to page 7. And now I’m in the good bit of this chapter–the scene with Faanshi trying to deal with what she’s discovered about Alarrah. Let’s see what happens next.

Edited tonight: Net loss of zero, actually, although I did take out a few words and put a few others in
Chapter 20 revised total: 4,509
Lament of the Dove revised total: 121,904

Wait, what, Chapter 19 is done?!

I should have actually posted about this on Saturday, only I was entirely distracted by the fun of going to see State of Play. Which of course leads me around to a traditional fallback of mine any time something sets back my writing: blaming Russell Crowe. (All my typos are his fault, you know.)

But I did actually finish up Chapter 19 on Saturday, one last little gasp through the final pages. Which means Chapter 20 is now finally on tap, and I began a cursory poking at it today. It is a measure of how long it’s been since I’ve actually worked on that chapter that I forgot completely about the opening scene in it, to wit, Ulima Secretly Plotting Secret Plots. But once I remembered that, I was able to mentally call up the rest of what to expect. Faanshi and Alarrah’s conversation scene is going to have to be completely redone, and if possible, I want to revisit some of the content I had to cut from this draft’s Chapter 17. Specifically, the bit where Kirinil actually checks Faanshi out magically for the first time.

So the beginning of Chapter 20 probably won’t change much, but most of the rest should wind up looking fairly different. I may have to write out a summary before I tackle it in prose.

And oh yes: pre-emptive thanks are going to have to go out to the spouse of one of my fellow Drollerie authors, who has kindly offered to beta read this draft for me when I finish it. For that matter, my editor at Drollerie also kindly offered to give it a once-over, although she knows I’m intending to fire this book at agents. I mention this not only to give them both public appreciation, but also to hold myself accountable for, y’know, actually finishing the draft. Note to self: YOU’RE ON NOTICE. GET WITH IT.

Edited up to tonight: -157
Chapter 19 revised total: 5,252
Chapter 20 revised total: 4,509
Lament of the Dove revised total: 121,904

Last couple of pages finally

Closing in on the tail end of Chapter 19, at last. It’ll feel good to finish this up.

I know I’ve said this before, but it continues to amaze me how much better Faanshi (to me at least) comes across when I tighten up her dialogue and actions. Even if I don’t actually change her words much. I’m hopeful I am now better walking that line between keeping her gentle and making her strong.

Edited tonight: -58
Chapter 19 revised total: 5,362
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 122,061

Editing! From the con!

I suppose it’s hopelessly lame introverted of me to have spent a good chunk of last night holed up in my hotel room editing Chapter 19 of Lament rather than being out talking to people. But this is what I get for being a hopeless introvert. Hey, I figure I did exchanging words with one total stranger in the bar, and letting another one fasten one of those glow-bracelets around my wrist.

Besides, Lament is waking up again with a vengeance and I need to humor it as long as possible.

Read over a couple of pages and realized that yeah, there’s still some work that needs to be done to finish this off. The last big scene in the chapter–Faanshi, Julian, Alarrah, and Kirinil trying to figure out what the hell they’re doing–is not fundamentally changing in terms of basic detail. And yet, it is; I am finding myself still rewriting a lot of Faanshi’s specific actions in an attempt to strengthen her up. Hopefully it’ll read okay; I’m not sure yet how the Faanshi of Chapter 17 and Chapter 19 will flow out of the Faanshi of the earlier chapters of this draft. Will definitely have to have a beta reader or two make another pass through this when I’m done.

Edited last night: +90
Chapter 19 revised total: 5,420
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 122,119

And now that round 1 of Faerie Blood editing is done…

This means I need to beat up on Lament of the Dove some more.

Fortunately, my brain’s come back enough that this is an option. I’ve actually made significant progress on Chapter 19; there’s some stuff that still needs to happen to polish this file up, but the end is in sight on it now. Soon I’ll be able to proceed to Chapter 20, which also promises to give a few editing challenges given how much I’ve had to do with 19.

But then there’ll be 21, and I’ll be back to Kestar, and can hopefully spend just about all of that chapter doing a serious word count reduction. I still have about 5K to kill, and I’ve got five more chapters and an epilogue in which to do it.

Edited as of Wednesday: -413
Chapter 19 revised total: 5,330
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 122,029

Quick editing update

Last night I did get in another paragraph in Lament which should be accounted for here. But now that I’ve gotten in the changes for Faerie Blood finally, Lament just dropped hard down the priority queue. We’ll see how this changes over the next couple of weeks, but at least through the weekend, I expect to be spending all my energy on FB.

Lament of the Dove:
Edited last night: +75
Chapter 19 revised total: 5,743
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 122,442

Faerie Blood:
Edited tonight: Reviewed changes for one chapter! 22 chapters to go.