New edit pass on Faerie Blood and Bone Walker

I haven't released anything new in a while, for assorted reasons. One of the more pertinent ones is one that'll hopefully resonate with fellow indie authors: i.e., I've got to do new print editions of the first two books of the Free Court of Seattle series, Faerie Blood and Bone Walker.

The reason for this is that up until now, I've been producing my print copies via an espresso book machine, which has been available at the indie bookstore down the hill from my house. This has been great for convenience, because it's meant that I've been able to go down the hill, order a small print run of either book when I need one, and then go pick them up when they're ready!

It's not been so great though for discoverability of my books. So I'd been thinking anyway of transitioning to CreateSpace--or rather, KDP Print, CreateSpace's replacement. But the bookstore near my house forced the matter by deciding they were going to no longer have the espresso book machine available.

So now, given that I'm flat out of personal copies of Faerie Blood and have only two left of Bone Walker, I'm having to do new edit passes.

As of this writing, I'm about halfway through the new edit pass on Faerie Blood. So for purposes of this post, here are some items of interest!

1. When I did the second edition of this book, I hadn't gotten Scrivener yet. So as part of this whole effort, I've ported the last shipping master version of the book into Scrivener, and am doing my edit pass there now.

2. Scrivener's ability to do labels and statuses is proving super useful. I've been able to label the chapters from the second edition as "Second Edition", and roll them over to "Third Edition" when I'm ready to work on them. I have also been using "To Do", "In Progress" and "Done" statuses on them. Which winds up looking like this:

What My Scrivener Project Looks Like

3. I've been keeping a thorough change log of all the changes I'm making. This is for my wife, who does the layout for the print editions of the Free Court books. And it'll be easier for her to apply all the changes to her existing master PDF than to try to whip up a brand new one. This change log, accordingly, is pretty long. Fortunately, a lot of those changes are very similar. See item 4!

4. Faerie Blood's first edition was released in 2009, and the second edition in 2012. Since releasing that book, I've also done Bone Walker as well as the Rebels of Adalonia trilogy. And after working with my editor on the Rebels books, I've had my writing style tighten up considerably. In particular, I'm looking back at Faerie Blood and going GOOD LORD WOMAN, SEMICOLONS MUCH? Not to mention throwing exclamation marks into dialogue all over the damn place. A lot of what I'm doing in this editing pass is backing off on using those two punctuation marks.

5. Faerie Blood's second edition had its timeline bumped a bit to set its "present day" as of when it was released, i.e., more or less 2012. For the third edition, I will not be changing that. It is nonetheless kind of funny to see how I wrote it with the assumptions of someone who'd started her career in tech in the 90's, whereas Kendis? Not so much. Like, I'd envisioned Kendis' job as still having offices. Anybody who works in Seattle in tech now, and who therefore knows that you only get an office if you're a manager and everybody else sits on an open floor plan, will know why this makes me snicker now. I'm not changing it, though; I'm declaring Kendis' workplace as canonically retro enough that they still did give their testers actual offices.

6. I have been asked by one of my local readers if I'd consider putting in a punctuation guide in the new editions of the Free Court books. As this is an excellent idea, I will in fact be doing so.

And that's that for now. If I get ambitious I should be able to finish this edit pass by the end of this year. I'd like to have the third edition of Faerie Blood ready to ship by this coming spring, ideally by the time Norwescon 2019 rolls around so I'll have copies to sell there. Then I'll swing around and do this again for Bone Walker.

And hey, if anybody wants my one of my last two espresso book machine copies of Bone Walker, you can have 'em for ten bucks plus shipping!

--
Angela is frustrated with her ongoing writing block, but hey, new print editions means she can release SOMETHING. Come cheer her on on Facebook or Twitter, or on her site at angelahighland.com!

Bring It Back(list) with Angela Korra'ti

One could argue that I'm still a bit too new an author to really have a backlist--but since it's been five years since my release of the second edition of Faerie Blood, and eight years since Faerie Blood's original release, I think it's fair to say that that book's at the top of any backlist I'd be starting now!

All authors have things to love about every one of their releases. For me, though, Faerie Blood remains in many respects the book of my heart. It's the first thing I released professionally, and it's the first thing I ever won Nanowrimo with as well. It's got all the things I love in it: elves (and specifically, the Sidhe). Seattle. Bikes. Geekery. Magic. Music (and specifically, references to two of my major musical fandoms).

And since I redid the cover for the second edition release, it remains to this day my favorite cover. This thing gets a lot of eyes on it every single time I take it to a convention, and justifiably so, as my artist did a stellar job!

In the last year in particular, I've even had the pleasure of finding whole new ways to connect with my heroine Kendis Thompson--because I've taken up learning the fiddle. Which, as I've written about before on this very blog, is one of the biggest things I've ever ostensibly done in the name of research. ;) Okay yeah I wanted to learn the fiddle anyway--but I'm here to tell you all, being able to actually describe what playing an instrument feels like from direct first person experience is very, very helpful for writing a musician character!

But what about the actual story? Here's the blurb, y'all:

Kendis Thompson of Seattle thinks she’s as normal as the next computer geek, and up till now, she’s been right. But her world is about to turn on its ear, for she is the daughter of a Seelie Court mage and her mortal husband—and her faerie blood is awakening. Suddenly the city she’s known all her life is transforming before her eyes. Trolls haunt the bike trails. Fairies and goblins run loose in the streets. An old woman who is not what she seems and a young wanderer running from his past stand ready to defend Seattle—and Kendis—from magical assault. She will need those allies, for the power rising within her is calling her fey kin to the Emerald City to find her. And kill her.

 And here's a short excerpt!

“Shit,” I squeaked. Then I shrieked in mounting terror at the man sprawled on the trail, “Get up!” 

He stirred. His eyes flickered, urgency warring with grogginess in his bearded features as he clued in that he was now up the proverbial creek, unequipped with paddle. But he couldn’t seem to make himself get out of the troll’s way, even when its next strike with the staff missed his skull by scant inches and pounded a hole into the grass instead. 

Since he couldn’t move, I did. 

Attacking a pissed-off troll with a Swiss Army knife was probably not the wisest thing I could have done. No, scratch that, it was definitely not the wisest thing I could have done. But wisdom wasn’t high on the agenda right then. What I saw before me was a guy getting the crap beaten out of him because he’d answered my scream for help—which made said beating my fault. And that bothered the hell out of me. I couldn’t leave someone to get his head split open like a piñata on my account without at least trying to do something to assist. 

So I flicked open the knife and threw myself in a headlong rush at the creature. I’d like to say that a flash of brilliant inspiration gave me the best possible place to hit the troll with my laughably miniscule blade, and how to tackle it to knock it off of my downed rescuer. But I can’t. I can’t even say that I knew what to call the monster, much less how to fight it. My charge had all the finesse of an intoxicated farm boy trying to tip an armed and all too dangerous cow. I almost knocked myself out when I barreled low into my target, catching the staff between it and me before it could take another whack at the stranger. 

Blindly I stabbed out with my little knife. I couldn’t tell where I connected; I could barely tell that I’d connected at all, thanks to almost gagging on the troll’s stench and trying not to faint as I got my other arm around it and held on for dear life. But the tip of my blade caught somewhere along its hide—caught and sank in and stayed there. 

With another gurgling howl the troll let go of the staff, nearly choking me in the process as the carved wood jammed up against my throat, and started pawing frenetically at the place where I’d struck. It writhed violently, knocking me sideways, away from the tall figure spilled along the trail. And as it writhed, it began to change. 

Color leeched out of its form, turning greenish-brown skin, black tufts of hair, and tusks the stained yellow of old ivory to an overall rocky gray. Flailing arms and paws began to slow, their motions increasingly sluggish, till the troll fell over onto me with one fist still reaching for the knife and the other jabbing clumsily against the ground beside my head. One great foul blast of breath from its maw nearly made me retch before that maw, too, began to freeze up and change color inside as well as out. Its screeches of pain dwindled down to a few burbling gasps, then cut off with an unmistakable finality. Before I grasped what was happening, the weight pinning me to the earth had transformed from monster to monster statue. 

The troll had turned to stone.

Want to know more? You can find out all about the book on its official page on my site. I have the first four chapters available as preview downloads there, or if you prefer, you can read longer previews on Amazon or Overdrive!

Or if you want to go ahead and buy the ebook, here are all the places you can do that!

Amazon | Nook | iBooks | Kobo | Smashwords | Google Play | Scribd

But wait there's more! You can also buy the ebook or the print edition directly from me on my Square store!

If you decide to snap it up, or hey, even if you check it out and want to think about it for later, thanks very much in advance and I hope you will love this book as much as I loved writing it!

--
Angela writes as both Angela Korra'ti and Angela Highland, and you can find out all about her books over on her site, angelahighland.com. Or you can come find her on Facebook or Twitter!

The things I'll do for research: taking up the fiddle!

If you’ve read Faerie Blood and/or Bone Walker, you know that my heroine Kendis Thompson is a fiddle player. There are reasons for that! One is that I am myself an amateur musician, so I’m very inclined to have my protagonists also be musically inclined. Another is that fiddle-playing protagonists are very common in fantasy (and urban fantasy), but also in fiction in general—and in the mythic sources that modern fiction can draw from.

And if you’re a fan of traditional music—Celtic/Irish/Scottish, or if you’re like me, Quebecois—certainly you can’t swing a stick without hitting a fiddle player. Either in the band, or as subjects of songs! “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” is what a lot of Americans think about these days when they think about fiddle players in songs, but in trad music, there are dozens of songs where the subjects involve the fiddle. If you have a song about people showing up for a party, chances are there will be a verse about a fiddle player. If you go up on TheSession.org and search for tunes, you will find lots of them that mention ‘fiddle’ in the title.

And when it comes to songs about musical deals, my favorite, hands down, is Heather Alexander’s Faerie Queen—which has not only a duel, but also a female protagonist fighting the queen of the fey to win back the man she loves. Way more entertaining to me than the idea of just trying to win a fiddle made of gold, because seriously, have you ever thought about how heavy a fiddle made of gold would be? Not to mention whether it would actually produce anything resembling a musical sound.

All of which leads me to note that since I’m a) a writer, b) an amateur musician, and c) a fan of traditional music, it will therefore probably surprise none of you that writing about Kendis has led to me taking up the fiddle myself. When I wrote Faerie Blood, I hadn’t ever handled a fiddle before. But by the time I wrote Bone Walker, I had at least picked a fiddle up once or twice and tried to get noises off of it—and that had led me to discover that if you hit a good strong note on the instrument, that thing will resonate right up your arm. It feels just like magic. There’s a bit in Bone Walker where I describe this, and it’s entirely because I have in fact handled a fiddle now.

When Warder Soul drops, though, I’ll have gotten to the point where I can make better noises—and hopefully even play tunes. I’ve been taking lessons for several months now with a highly skilled teacher, and there are all sorts of things I’ve come to learn about the subtle nuances of motion a fiddle player needs to keep track of when she plays. You have to think about where to put your left hand’s fingers on the instrument. You have to think about where to put your right hand’s fingers on the bow. There’s a certain way you have to twist your left wrist to get your fingers into position. Your left elbow needs to work like a pendulum when you’re changing strings, just to help the angle of your fingers. Your right arm needs to stretch in certain ways as you’re bowing, to help you keep bowing in a straight line.

Which is a lot to keep track of, and that isn’t even touching on playing actual music and how you can do ornamentations and accents on tunes to make them more awesome! All of this is entirely why I wanted to take lessons with an actual teacher—because let me tell you guys, when your native instrument is the flute and you’re used to just having to think about your embouchure and what order you put your fingers down on keys, the fiddle is a whole new paradigm.

And I’m adoring learning about it all. I ain’t gonna lie, my love of music is fueling this a lot more than any needs I have as a writer. But there’s still a lot here I can mine for ways to improve how I write about Kendis. I’ve already utilized some of the ideas of what you have to do with your hands, elbows, and arms to roll over into writing about Kendis getting lessons in magic, just because for me—and by extension, my characters—music and magic are often one and the same.

What about the rest of you? Writers, have you taken up new hobbies as a result of characters you’ve written, or are planning to write? Readers, have favorite characters of yours inspired you to learn a new instrument or craft or other form of art? Share your experiences with me in the comments!

-----

Angela writes as both Angela Korra'ti and Angela Highland, and you can find out all about her books, all of whom have at least one musician in them, at angelahighland.com! Come geek out with her about your favorite fiddle players, and find out who her favorite fiddle players are, on Facebook or Twitter.

Portrait of an Unseelie bard

A friend and reader sent me a link to this story on the newspaper site for the Lexington Herald-Leader, a nice little local color piece about how a bunch of locals gather to make music at a Hardee's restaurant. She thought it'd be relevant to my interests since one of the participants is a gentleman who moonlights as an Elvis impersonator, and she even clipped the picture out of the physical newspaper and sent it to me!

To wit: hurray! A reader thought of me! Thank you, Nancy!

But I do want to talk about what she sent me, because she hand-wrote the question "Elessir?" on the clipping. Since, of course, I have Elessir a'Natharion, Unseelie bard and self-appointed Elvis impersonator, as a major character in Faerie Blood and Bone Walker.

But here's the thing—if you click through to the article, you can find the guy in the carousel of photos. Like pretty much all Elvis impersonators in my experience, he's doing 70's-era Elvis, the Elvis of jumpsuits and scarves.

For the record, Elessir a'Natharion never, ever impersonates 70's-era Elvis.

Part of this comes from my own history as an Elvis fan, and part of it comes from Elessir's in-character experience with Elvis' music.

The part of this that comes from me is that every single time I've seen Elvis impersonators depicted in popular culture, whether on TV or in a movie, it's always played for laughs. And it's always 70's-era Elvis, in full gaudy jumpsuit and scarf glory. The impersonator does up his hair and practices a sneer and drawls "Thank you very much" in as thick a drawl as they possibly can.

I can think of two examples of this off the top of my head—one, an episode in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman back in the 90's, wherein all the cast were inundated with pheromones that lowered their inhibitions. Now, in this version of the Supes storyline, Daily Planet editor Perry White is portrayed as a devout Elvis fan, and I was down with that; I found how he frequently swore "Great Shades of Elvis!" kind of adorable. But in the pheromone episode, what does he do? He slaps on a jumpsuit and a scarf, and tries to imitate Elvis. And it was cringe-inducing for me.

Another example is in Castle, in the episode "Heartbreak Hotel", where Castle and detectives Ryan and Esposito all wind up in Elvis impersonator costumes for plot-related reasons. Not quite as cringe-inducing, but it's still played for comedy.

And none of this is what Elvis actually means to me. None of it touches on Elvis' music.

Now, mind you, I have never actually seen a real live Elvis impersonator perform either. Part of me would be a bit afraid to do so, on the grounds that I'd keep expecting too much emphasis on Elvis-like mannerisms and not enough on actual musical talent.

But there's also the simple matter that I like 50's and 60's era Elvis way more than I do 70's era. The Elvis music I listen to over and over and over again comes from those eras. I'll absolutely break out 70's era stuff every so often—the Aloha Via Satellite concert album is still hugely important to me, as is the live performance of "Let Me Be There" that is one of the earliest Elvis concert tracks my dad ever played for me—but it's the simpler stuff that appeals to me most. The simple 50's-era rock, and the best soundtracks from his movies as well—like King Creole's soundtrack, which crackles from start to finish, and which contains what I consider Elessir's theme song: "Trouble".
Or the sweeter, simpler ballads from movies like Wild in the Country (which I do passingly reference in Faerie Blood), Follow That Dream (which has a lovely little song called "Angel" in it), or Kid Galahad (which has "Home Is Where the Heart Is", which I can actually play on guitar).

And to this day, I have yet to hear of an Elvis impersonator that does young Elvis. Show me one of those, and I might actually consider going to listen to him! (Or her! I do not require my Elvis impersonators to actually be the same gender he was. And if you'd like an idea of how a woman could sound like Elvis, go listen to recordings by his very own daughter. I've heard clips. Lisa Marie sings spookily like her dad.)

All of which swings me back around to Elessir. Something y'all should keep in mind about this boy is, his Elvis affectation, as much as from anything else, is because he likes screwing with the minds of mortals. This boy is Unseelie, after all, and the fey have a long and venerable history of being ready, willing, and able to do exactly that. A big part of him likes to imitate Elvis simply because he knows it screws with humans' heads.

But the part of him he doesn't often show to anybody, the part of him that actually responds to human music in ways the rest of the Unseelie Court looks down on, is drawn to simpler stuff. Elvis singing a simple love ballad with a guitar type stuff. Big, gaudy spectacle like what Elvis did with his concerts in the 70's doesn't impress Elessir. But what will get his attention is the heart and feeling behind a performance—the kind of heart and feeling that made a young Elvis Presley's singing first capture my young ears. The kind of music that in the Unseelie Court, as imagined by me, is a rare and precious gift.

It's the same kind of heart and feeling that has since drawn me to Great Big Sea and Newfoundland music--and much more recently, to Quebecois trad. The kind of powerful joy that comes from being in a session, in a house full of people making music, is exactly what draws Elessir in.

So no, Elessir won't ever put on a jumpsuit or a scarf. He'll be the Elvis impersonator who wears a denim jacket and jeans, with the collar of his shirt turned up behind his neck.

He'll be the one who needs no more instrumentation than a single guitar, and who can enthrall an entire bar just by singing about wild country roses. Hell, if you're an Elvis fan like me, you already know that Elvis was perfectly capable of doing that, and he was a mortal.
But never make the mistake of underestimating Elessir just because of what human he happens to resemble. Because he isn't human. He is born of the Unseelie, a bard and mage, a son of midnight and frost.

And when he unleashes the full strength of his singing, he can call down lightning.

--
Angela writes as both Angela Highland and Angela Korra'ti, and when she's not hanging out with Quebecois fiddle players, she writes fantasy novels with Unseelie Elvis impersonators. Follow her on angelahighland.com or her Facebook page! Or come tell her your favorite Elvis movie on Twitter.

Ten worldbuilding trivia items about my books!

Hi again, Here Be Magic readers! Today I thought I’d share with you an assortment of worldbuilding details about my books, to give you an idea of the thought processes that went into building their settings. Hopefully they’ll be interesting, and maybe spark a question or two about further details you want to hear about—whether in future blog posts or in future actual books.

And so, without further ado:

Five things about the setting of Faerie Blood:

1. The Warders originated in Scotland, and from there, they’ve spread in many directions around the globe. They’re most common in places that have been settled by people of Scots descent, which is why there are high numbers of Warders in the UK, Europe, and North America. But they are by no means limited to those places.
2. Given the nature of Warder magic, and how a Warder is physically constrained to his or her pledged city, families of Warder lineage strongly encourage their young people to travel far and wide to make sure they can see the world before they commit to a city, and to improve the chances that by the time they commit to one, they’re damn sure they want to spend the rest of their lives there. This is why most active Warders are in their 30s or older.
3. Since the Warders did originate in Scotland, the Warder lineage did start out Caucasian. However, not all modern Warders are Caucasian. Warders of color exist, descendants of assorted mixed-race couplings across the world and in particular, the last couple of centuries. This will be noteworthy as the story of Kendis and Christopher’s family continues to develop.
4. Likewise, the Warders are a predominantly human lineage. But not all Warders are entirely human. See item #3.
5. The Warders and the Sidhe are not the only sources of magic in the world. Sources of magic I’ve already written about are the kitsune of Japan, and at least one known healer born to slaves during the Civil War era.

Five things about the setting of the Rebels of Adalonia trilogy:

1. Adalonia and Tantiulo are the primary countries mentioned in Vengeance of the Hunter and Valor of the Healer, but there is at least one other known country in that setting, which I’ll be visiting in a future book. Vreyland is considerably east and north of Adalonia, and unlike Adalonia, is a society where elves and humans are living on equal terms—and which also has active magic amongst the human population as well as the elves. A not inconsiderable portion of the elven population of Vreyland are descendants of the refugees of the destruction of the ancient elven capital Astàlleramè, known to humans as Starhame.
2.  Most of the people of Tantiulo worship the threefold goddess Djashtet, but Djashtet is not the only deity known to the Tantiu people. There is a smaller sect of people in that nation who worship the wind god Vo.
3. There are reasons that the people of Tantiulo have their own name for the elves: the Hidden Ones. Primarily because there are, in fact, elves in Tantiulo, another offshoot population dating back to the fall of Starhame.
4. There were once dragons in this world, but if they still exist, they’re keeping a very, very low profile. No human or elf is known to have laid eyes upon a dragon in several hundred years. That there is a particularly vicious stretch of desert in Tantiulo whose name translates from Tantiu as ‘Dragonfell’ may well have something to do with this.
5. Adalonia is smack in the middle of its industrial revolution, and technologically speaking, is one of the more advanced nations of the world. But Vreyland does a lot with magic that Adalonia does with technology, and as the history of this world progresses, its people will face a sizable clash between technology and magic as they must ultimately decide which will dictate the course of worldwide development. Or perhaps whether both will.

And there you have it! If you’ve read any of my books and have other worldbuilding questions you’d like me to address, let me know in the comments! And if you haven’t read any of my books and would like to, as always, you can find everything you need to know about them right over here.

Angela Highland, a.k.a. Angela Korra’ti, a.k.a. Anna the Piper, writes fantasy and urban fantasy, and lives at angelahighland.com. Follow her on Facebook or on Twitter!

Welcome to NaNoWriMo week!

Hi and welcome to the Here Be Magic NaNoWriMo Week! Several of us here on the Here Be Magic blog are going to present to you a series of posts all about NaNoWrimo, our own experiences with it, and various bits of advice on how to make it through.

First and foremost, for those of you who don't already know what NaNoWriMo is, it's short for National Novel Writing Month, and it happens every year in November. The idea arose in response to how many, many people in life often say, "Well, gosh, I'd like to write a novel!" NaNoWriMo is intended to give you a chance to do exactly that. The basic goal of the exercise is to write 50,000 words--not even a complete novel, by most modern genre standards. The NaNoWriMo site provides you a system by which you can report your final word count, but it's still mostly on you to get those words out of your head and into your manuscript.

Many NaNoWriMo participants have the goal of writing something that'll eventually be publishable. Many others just like the social aspects of it, and the support of knowing that their peers are going through the same mad dash that they are. The NaNoWriMo site itself features forums where you can hook up with your fellow writers, as well as pointers to local events--but all over the Net, really, you can find a lot of NaNoWriMo support groups. There are, in short, countless ways to participate in the event.

Now, a lot of people in publishing find NaNoWriMo can cause more harm than good, since many people who come out of November with their 50,000 or more words immediately try to query what they've produced to publishers or agents. Which leads me into what I want to talk about in my post today: how I did NaNoWriMo the first time, and how it got me started on seriously pursuing writing.

My first novel Faerie Blood was the product of the 2003 NaNoWriMo. I had completed novels before, but not in some time, and I wanted to see if I could meet the challenge of 50,000 words in a month. I worked out the math and saw that it came to 1,667 words a day, give or take a word or two as you rounded off. Given that I had a full-time day job at the time, that was a lot of words to try to produce in a day.

So to try to make it as easy on myself as possible, I did some outline work in the last couple of weeks of October, laying down a rough idea of what I wanted to write about. I had a tiny germ of an idea that had started in a scene I'd written, and I took that scene and expanded it out into a full cast of characters and a roughly sketched out plot. And I threw a lot of things I loved into it, to motivate myself: elves, Seattle, computer geekery, biking, magic, and most of all, music. In particular, my two main male characters are a bouzouki player from Newfoundland (and anybody who knows anything about my musical tastes will know that Great Big Sea totally inspired that) and, of all things, an Unseelie Elvis impersonator (again, pretty obvious to anyone familiar with my musical background).

And it worked. About halfway through the month I ran out of outline, so had to regroup and plot out the rest of the story. Then I barely squeaked over the line by November 30th.

I wasn't done with the story yet, though. So I kept writing, although I'd figured out fast that nearly 1,700 words a day was pushing it for how much I could comfortably produce. So in December 2003 I kicked down to 500 words a day instead, and by January of 2004, I finally had a complete novel.

The process taught me two things:

1. The importance of writing something on a daily basis. A lot of people say they'd like to write a novel, but if you don't actually allocate time to put your fingers to the keyboard and do it, it's not going to happen.
2.  It's okay to write words that aren't perfect the first time. Before I did NaNoWriMo for the first time, I worried a lot about getting every single word and sentence right. I'd ask people for feedback and become far more worried about fixing what problems they reported than I was about actually writing new words.

Want an example? Here! Have some chapter comparisons! Both of these are PDF files.

• The original NaNoWriMo version of Chapter 1 of Faerie Blood
• The current shipping version of Chapter 1 of Faerie Blood

Because here's the thing that I see a lot of publishing people lamenting about: that NaNoWriMo novel you produce is, in fact, probably not going to be publishable the instant you're done with it. You're going to need to give it to beta readers. And you're going to need to edit it, probably several times, before you've got something worth an editor's or agent's time and trouble.

It took me a while to get Faerie Blood into a state where it finally got me a publishing offer--2008, in fact. And by then, the book had been through several edit passes.

I haven't done NaNoWriMo officially since 2003 for a few reasons. Some of them were medical, since in some years I've been through too many medical stresses to be up to the task of producing that high a daily word count. Others, though, were a lot more practical. I'd learned that I could in fact write a novel, and by the time Faerie Blood was published I had in fact finished another novel--what eventually became Valor of the Healer, now available from Carina.

But I still appreciate the social aspects of NaNoWriMo. There's something very encouraging in knowing that your fellow writers are joining you in the goal of producing a novel.

And if you're one of the many who're tackling it this year, I wish you good luck and happy writing!

--
Angela Korra'ti, a.k.a. Angela Highland, is the author of both the Free Court of Seattle urban fantasy series and the Rebels of Adalonia high fantasy series. Come say hi to her at angelahighland.com, and if you want to buy Faerie Blood, all the ways you can do so are right over here!

If I could be a Warder, what city would I choose?

Hi, Here Be Magic readers! My turn to post again today. And I've talked some about Valor of the Healer, my book via Carina Press--but with this post, I'm going to put a spotlight on Faerie Blood, my other work.

For those of you unfamiliar with my Warder universe, I've got two primary groups of magic-users in play in that storyline. There are the Sidhe, represented (like ya do) by the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. And there are the Warders, human magic-users who function as guardians for specific cities--but at the cost of being magically, physically constrained to never be able to leave that city. Ever.

(Think the Genie in Disney's Aladdin. PHENOMENAL! COSMIC! POWER! Itty bitty living space.)

For example! Christopher, the male lead of Faerie Blood, is one of the two main Warder characters as he becomes the second Warder of Seattle--the first one being Millicent, a feisty old lady who's pretty much my Gandalf figure (and who's played in my brain by K Callan, the excellent actress who played Ma Kent in the 90's TV series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman).

One of the things Christopher has to deal with is whether he's ready to tie himself to a specific city, and as I progress through writing more of that series, I'll be exploring more of what it means for members of the Warder lineage to commit themselves to a city. They've developed customs around it, encouraging their younger people to travel a lot all over the world, to see as much as they can before they finally bind themselves to one city for the rest of their lives. Modern-day Warders, too, take a lot of advantage of the Internet to keep in touch--boy howdy, was it ever hard in times past for Warders in different cities to alert each other to potential traveling threats.

A story I have planned for the future, involving Christopher's young cousin Caitlin who's on the verge of becoming the next Warder of St. John's, Newfoundland, is that she's going to fall in love with a Warder boy from Quebec who is in fact doing that very thing that the Warders encourage their young people to do: traveling. They're going to face the challenge of what city they'll finally wind up in. It's going to be awesome.

Today, on Facebook, I was asked this very excellent question:

If you could be a Warder of any city in the world, which would it be?

This is a damn good question, and right now I'd be hard pressed to choose between several excellent cities I've either visited or lived in.

Seattle's got its appeal, because I've been here for half my life and I know the place.

Vancouver and Toronto are two of my favorite cities in Canada, and would have the advantage of having several known friends within visiting range.

Honolulu has the advantage of being in Hawai'i, which pretty much speaks for itself.

Glasgow would be nifty, because I've been there and there's enough of a fannish contingent there that they've held Worldcons. (Glasgow holds a hell of a Worldcon, I'm here to tell you.) Plus, if we're assuming I'm a Warder and therefore in the Warder universe, Glasgow would have the added bonus of having the most number of Warders in any Warded city in the world--since Scotland is where the Warder magic started. They've got a full council of Warders in Glasgow. It'd be nice to know I'm not defending the city by myself!

Montréal would be highly tempting, due to my recently exploded love of Quebecois traditional music, and that would at least let me see a lot of awesome concerts. And of all the cities in Quebec, that's the one where I could get away with my French being still kinda sucky. Working on that!

St. John's, also highly, highly tempting now that I've actually been there--and of course, it's the city Christopher is from, so being on his home ground would be lovely. Plus, it puts me in range of reliable Great Big Sea concerts. Highly important! The Warders are a highly musical people. St. John's is a highly musical city. There are reasons Christopher is from St. John's!

Lexington, Kentucky would also have to be under consideration, given that I spent my adolescence there and it would put me in reasonable range of my family members. Though I'd be hard pressed to decide between Lexington and Louisville, the two cities in Kentucky most likely to have a Warder presence.

What about you, Internets? If you could have a shot at the ability to magically protect a city, but with the catch that you'd have to stay in that city for the rest of your life, what city would it be? Talk to me in the comments!

Find out more about Faerie Blood on its official page, and come say hi to Angela on her official site or on her official Facebook page! Follow her on Twitter at @annathepiper.

Fantasy Week: What draws me to reading fantasy?

Hi again, Here Be Magic readers! As part of Fantasy Week here on the blog, I'm here to talk about a very basic question: why fantasy, and not urban fantasy?

Anybody who's paid the slightest bit of attention to the publishing industry over the last several years, whether as an industry professional or simply as a reader, probably knows that urban fantasy has generally outsold more traditional fantasy for some time now. There are exceptions, of course--George R.R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss immediately come to mind. But time and time again, the people I hear about who are the better-selling names in the SF/F genre are urban fantasy. I've heard more than once about authors who've made the jump from writing traditional fantasy over to writing urban fantasy, just for the sake of strengthening their careers. And clearly, at least for the time being, it's the intelligent career choice if an author wants to increase her chances of getting her book into the hands of readers.

As a reader, I certainly have my own share of urban fantasy in my library. As a writer, I've got my own urban fantasy series, The Free Court of Seattle.

I could tell you that Tolkien was a critical influence on my early reading years, and that he was closely followed up by Terry Brooks' original Shannara trilogy as well as David Eddings' Belgariad and Mallorean series. I could mention Esther Friesner or Gael Baudino or Mercedes Lackey--especially Lackey, given that her first Valdemar novels came out when I was just getting into college. And of course I could mention Elfquest yet again, which in its long and venerable history has generally always been about as non-urban as it's possible for fantasy to get.

All of which would be true, but none of which would really answer the question of what draws me to straight-up, no-qualifiers, fantasy?

• Locale. Sometimes I don't want to be reading about an alternate, magical version of the real world; sometimes I just want to be reading about another world entirely. Don't get me wrong--in the hands of a gifted writer, our own world's magic and complexity can be made to shine. And there's great wonder to be found in the idea that magical things may be lurking right around your neighborhood corner. But I learned very early on, thanks to the authors I've mentioned above and many others as well, that the boundaries of my imagination need not be limited to just our own world. 
• Worldbuilding. This is where fantasy really gets a chance to shine, for my money. Sure, every fantasy novel ever written is going to have a society in it modeled on aspects of the real world; we can't escape that, since we are after all all writers living in the world we know, so of course we're going to be extrapolating out from that. There will still be connections to and reflections of our own world. But oh, the fun of just taking all those bits and pieces of the world we know, mixing and matching them, honing and crafting them, until something emerges that we can call our own.
• Adventure! Huh! Excitement! Huh! A Jedi craves not these--ahem. Er, sorry, wrong genre. Which is not to say urban fantasy can't be adventurous; certainly, the Dresden Files come to mind as an example of urban fantasy chock full of adventure. For me as a reader, though, fantasy tends to provide the kinds of high adventure plots I find more appealing. Good old-fashioned quest plot? Sign me up. Hard treks through wilderness country? Bring it. Defeating an ancient rising evil? On board. And I go as well for smaller-scale adventures--thievery capers, mixing it up with mystery and solving attempted or actual murders, just to name a couple of the sort that Patricia Briggs wrote before she switched over to urban fantasy. Anne Logston did quite a few smaller-scale fantasy adventures too, with the tales of her elf thief Shadow.
• Escapism. Some might actually look on this as a negative, if they're of the school of thought that says that a fantasy novel needs to be dark and gritty and realistic. But escapism comes hand in hand with adventure for me, and dammit, escapism isn't a dirty word. I have enough of dark, gritty realism in the real world. Give me a big, bold colorful escapist fantasy and I'm a happy reader.

I've tried to pull in both adventure and escapism in Valor of the Healer, to make it the sort of fantasy novel I like to read as well as the sort I like to write. For those of you who've bought it or may choose to pick it up, I hope you'll let me know if I've pulled it off!

What do you think about the fantasy genre in general, readers? Tell me about your own favorite reasons to read a fantasy novel in the comments!

--
Angela Highland is the author of Valor of the Healer, book 1 of the Rebels of Adalonia series. As Angela Korra'ti, she writes Faerie Blood, book 1 of The Free Court of Seattle. Come say hi to her at angelahighland.com!