Random musings on mythic relevance, gaming, books, and other shinies.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Queen of Crows on Sale
Psst.
I am told there's a GM's Day Sale going on in ebook land. What does this mean to you? Why, it means The Queen of Crows is available at 25% off through Sunday, March 7.
So! If you've been debating whether to pick up the story, now's a good time to do so. Support your favorite independent artists -- at about $3.75, it's both cheaper than a Starbuck's grande caramel macchiato, and more fulfilling. ;)
Today, The Queen of Crows was unleashed on an unsuspecting world. (I don't mean you, of course. You are obviously the handsomest and cleverest of all pandas, suspecting things left and right, hither and yon! It must be so, if you are perusing Monica's blogs over breakfast, and chasing down your evening snack with my own humble little scribblepad.)
But what is The Queen of Crows?, ask the poor, confused pandas who have just wandered in from the bamboo forest. It is, of course, a digital-release short story by my good friend Monica Valentinelli. The story is full of magic and bones and fire and revenge, set on the eve of the real-life horror known as the Navajo Long Walk, and it is delicious.
In addition to the story, Monica has packed a selection of other goodies into the PDF: an original portrait by artist Leanne Buckley, author's notes on the story inspiration and her concerns on writing historical fiction based in another culture, a brief discussion about the main character, a crash course on her Violet War setting, and more.
Plus, you get my fabulous cover! And interior layout. And editing. Yes. So be a good panda and go download The Queen of Crows, won't you?
Airship pirates, back to work, and the Queen of Crows
Will was right. There is something amusing about blasting Abney Park's Aether Shanties while trying to navigate the winter roads of Northern Indiana. A pirate airship would definitely fare better in this weather than my Corolla.
Yesterday was the first day back to work. It does suck, not being able to take the pain meds during the day. Both for the obvious reasons and for the fuzziness and exhaustion that follow during the evening. Unfortunately I've been back in insomnia mode for the last two nights, as well, so evidently all that recuperating last week used up my sleep minutes. Bah.
In less grumpifying news, I mentioned in an earlier post that the fabulous Monica Valentinelli drafted me to do editing, typesetting, and the cover illustration for her Queen of Crows project, which has been great fun. I'm slowly plugging away at my end -- even more slowly now that I've been essentially out of commission for a week -- but there has been progress. (For those who are either new to EFI, or may have stumbled across this post in a fit of whimsy, QoC is a short story set in the world of Monica's very cool Violet War novel-in-progress, Argentum. I do recommend checking it out if you get a chance.)
Artist Leanne Buckley is providing the character art for the QoC character, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how it matches up to the image evoked by Monica's writing. (M. herself seems thrilled with what she's seen so far.) More details will follow soon on that project -- but in the meantime, here's a peek at the cover I did for the story (click to embiggen):
Mind you, I'll be the first to confess I'm more of a writer/editor/typesetter/webmonkey than a graphic designer. I do like to play with Adobe programs, though, and this was a lot of fun, so I'm glad she talked me into it. I think it turned out pretty well (for an amateur!).
Finally, this blog will be getting an overhaul in the next few weeks if I have time. There is much reorganizing and re-templating to be done. (I believe the Violet War site will see its revision first, though, so I'll post here when Monica has the new site up and running.)
Recuperating after a wicked exhausting week. It's been a long, long time coming, but I think things are finally starting to look up at work. There are a lot of interesting projects in the works -- about half of the projects on my grand to-do list are my idea, and half are from the new deans who've asked for my help on one thing or another. All of them will involve some form of geekery, so I'm looking forward to digging in.
Also handed off a 19-page doc to my boss this week that included a project log, to-do list, arguments on why my job needs to be restructured, and the four other positions I'm applying for. After taking a few days to digest the info, she came back with an encouraging response, so I'm working on draft two this weekend.
Speaking of work, I'm also working with The Monica on layout and design for a Violet War story project, and was approached by another program on campus to do some freelance work on their behalf. I have a couple of weeks at most to put together a workshop, modified style template, and procedural guidelines. And then we're going to tackle how they archive these projects, because they will contain patent-application materials that will need to be restricted to secured access. (I'm hoping to spread that luck around a bit, as well, since they also need writing help for their students, and I happen to know a freelance writer and editor with graduate/academic experience...)
It's almost like 2010 is apologizing for 2009. I ... accept. I think we're off to a good start, here.
In other news, a good friend shared a fun vid of a Glee-based flashmob in Rome over the holidays:
The fascinating part for me in the vid is how the flashmob grows, the longer it goes on, as if people who weren't in on the plan start to join in around the edges.
I don't think I've mentioned this previously, but I came across an excellent myth- and folklore-related blog late last year by author Kate Winter. Titled Girls Underground, it's Kate's attempt to explore the Persephone/Armless Maiden story archetypes in popular culture. I've been drawn to these stories since I was a kid, so I'm excited by the prospect of a writer paying close attention to those heroines.
It's been an exhausting week, and today was the worst of it. The snow-madness outside isn't helping much. I was ready to crawl into bed when I got home from work. However! The Monica has asked me to help out with a story she's going to be posting for sale soon.
Hurray for layout projects! They are my favorite. To me, text formatting is like ... a crossword puzzle, of sorts. Relaxing, finicky, tricksy and a good excuse to exercise the channel all the typesetting-perfectionist tendencies I try not to unleash on dissertation students. (I'm not sure they'd believe me if I told them that, though...)
The Monica has also asked me to assist with graphics and cobbling together a cover. This sounds fun, but is Very Hard Work when you're falling asleep and thinking half-awake thoughts about yetis and cookies (not necessarily in that order) as you peruse stock imagery sites. Hm. Perhaps I should put the perusal off until the weekend...
I received the files for a freelance job today, due by the end of the week. Woot! Both content editing and formatting, this time, for a dissertation meant for a different university. Nice. Here's hoping I can keep the taint of the internetz out of my editing long enough to get through the document.
This also gives me a chance to compare our formatting guide with the other school's, and our MS Word template vs. theirs. I'm already jealous of their fabulous formatting guide cover. (/sigh) My client pointed out some problems with their template that I managed to address with ours, as well, so I'll have to take a closer look at that as I go.
I also recently discovered that one of the changes from MS Word 2003 to 2007 seems to have perma-glitched my template's subheading settings for 2007 users, unless they use exactly what I've programmed into it and don't deviate from that at all. Which isn't very helpful, IMO. The previous system was incredibly intuitive, and the new version seems to have taken a perfectly reasonable, concrete setup option for programming subhead numbering and zapped it into a fine mist that permeates the program in a decentralized miasma.
Microsoft, I shake my fist at thee! Grr!
Also, I signed up for the TeX Users Group free workshop day for LaTeX. /happy dance!
