Why J.R.R. Tolkien's semi-colons became the bane of my writing existence

For a while now, my wife has been going to a small casual reading group involving another household of friends of ours. I recently joined in, once they decided to read N.K. Jemisin's excellent Broken Earth trilogy. And since, hey, I like reading books, I've decided to stick around!

And to my great pleasure, the next thing we're tackling is The Silmarillion.

It's deeply amusing to me to go back and reread Tolkien, whose work I've loved all my life, now that I've published a few novels of my own. After having worked with a few editors now, and in particular one editor on all three of the Rebels of Adalonia books, I've started being more aware of editing-level details in other people's work.

Even Tolkien's. And this time through The Silmarillion in particular, I noticed one huge thing that leapt out at me: SO. MANY. SEMI-COLONS. Like, every other sentence or so.

If you've read this particular Tolkien work, you know that it's written in deliberately formal, mythic language. I've known this for ages, of course. But this time around, the semi-colons particularly stood out for me because my editor on the Rebels books very specifically made me yank a great number of semi-colons out!

I now have a much, much better understanding of where my propensity for throwing semi-colons all over my prose came from. :D

So with this in mind, I thought I'd share with you all today a list of other quirks in my own writing I know I have to keep on top of, lest they get out of my control.

In no particular order:

1) Why should I say something in twenty words when I can use a hundred instead? Verbosity. It's my superpower.

Let me underscore this for y'all: the draft of the book I submitted to Carina Press that became Valor of the Healer clocked in around 118,000 words. Its original draft was more like 167,000. I took out over fifty thousand words editing that thing down. That's a short novel's worth of words right there, folks.

When I write posts for my own site, the SEO plugin I've got complains at me about this, too. It gets cranky if I have too many sentences that are too long.

2) If I get fixated on a particular word or phrase I really love, I run the risk of overusing it all throughout a draft. Sometimes across multiple books.

I've learned about Scrivener's functionality for checking word frequency in a draft. I WILL be making more use of this!

3) I also overuse ellipses, particularly if I'm writing a shy character. This came up a lot as I was creating Faanshi in the Rebels books.

4) I find it all too easy to get into a rut with sentence structures, too. The first time through a draft I don't always catch this, but it's a thing I look out for in edit passes. It helps my prose flow better if I vary up the sentence structures and lengths.

5) Likewise with catching myself starting consecutive sentences with the same word. In fact, while writing this post, I rearranged the previous item in this list just so all the sentences wouldn't start with "I"!

This is another thing the SEO plugin on angelahighland.com will complain to me about.

There's more I could go into, to be sure. But in the name of curbing my natural verbosity, I'll cut it off here and turn it over to you all. Particularly fellow writers, whether you write professionally or for pleasure: what are your own quirks you catch yourself doing in your work?

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Angela writes the Free Court of Seattle books as Angela Korra'ti, and the Rebels of Adalonia books as Angela Highland. Either way, you can find all her books at angelahighland.com! Or, you can find her on Facebook or Twitter. (She makes no apologies, however, for her comma choices.)

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!

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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!

My favorite creepy stories, in book and movie form

Technically it's the day after Halloween, but I don't care. Here's a Halloween-themed post anyway! Specifically, about my favorite examples of creepy storytelling. I like horror--but my horror preferences are weighted towards suspense-type horror and creepiness, rather than gore. Which has, over the years, informed what books and movies have become my favorites in the genre.

In no particular order, here are five of my favorite creepy books, and five of my favorite creepy movies!

Books:

1) Rolling in the Deep, by Mira Grant. Mira Grant, a.k.a. Seanan McGuire, is definitely one of my favorite authors. But I tend to prefer her Grant titles, in no small part because she's really good at creepiness. And it comes in a nicely condensed novella-length form in Rolling in the Deep. Complete with scary mermaids.

2) The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell, also by Mira Grant. I adore Grant's Newsflesh trilogy, but in some ways I find the novellas set in the same universe almost more satisfying. In particular, The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell is deeply nerve-wracking, in no small part because of it being a zombie story set in a school.

3) The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan. "Lyrical" is not a word I would normally think to apply to a zombie novel, but I sure did to this one. Like Grant's Newsflesh books, this story is less about the zombie apocalypse per se and more about the society that has evolved since, a trope I like a lot.

4) Four and Twenty Blackbirds, by Cherie Priest (and books 2 and 3 as well). Priest is another author who's great at creepy atmosphere. Her Eden Moore books, the ones by which I initially discovered her, had this in spades.

5) The Mist, by Stephen King. It is probably inevitable to have King on this list--though I've read only a small fraction of his titles! This one, though, stood out for me in being a tight little story with very spare, clean prose. (And I liked it way better than the movie version. If you want to engage with this story, I definitely recommend the book rather than the film.)

Movies:

1) The Ring (American version). When this movie came out, my household found it deliciously creepy--in no small part because it was set in Seattle. Moreover, they got the rainy, cloudy atmosphere of a Seattle winter right, as well as the sorts of busses we use in our mass transit system. The best part? Coming out of the theater into the exact same rainy, cloudy atmosphere, which had us all going AAAAH WE'RE STILL IN THE MOVIE.

2) Paranormal Activity. This thing had me creeped out for weeks after, particularly the part about the possessed heroine lurking next to her sleeping husband and just STARING at him in the dark. (Which my wife TOTALLY pulled on me one night, since I go to bed earlier than she does. I wasn't quite asleep yet when I rolled over and found her lurking there and went AAAAAAAH!)

3) The Pit and the Pendulum. Let's go classic old school horror here, with one of the Edgar Allan Poe flicks starring Vincent Price. This was delicious. It's an excellent example of why, if you ever find yourself in a horror movie with Vincent Price, it is a sound survival strategy to avoid pissing him off.

4) The Shining. Again, probably inevitable to have Stephen King here. But the man's considered a master of horror for a reason, and this film is an excellent example of why.

5) Alien. Sci-fi horror is still horror! I've heard this movie described as a haunted house movie in space, which it is. And while I really rather like Aliens better, still, the original is a splendid example of that suspenseful creepiness I love. Plus it has Ripley, and Ripley is utterly badass.

So there you go! I hope all of you had a suitably creepy and/or candy-filled Halloween! What are your favorite scary reads or watches? Tell me about them in the comments!

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Angela likes creepy stories and good chocolate, and a holiday that celebrates both of these things is splendid in her book. The one ghost story she's written so far, "The Blood of the Land", has no chocolate in it, alas. She promises to rectify this problem if she writes another creepy story! Still, c'mon over to angelahighland.com, Facebook, or Twitter if you'd like to tell her more about your own favorite creepy tales. Or your favorite chocolate.

Characters I'd love to have visit my work

When I put out a call about what to post about today on the blog, I was asked:

"Are there any character from other authors that you would transport into your worlds that you write about and are there any author you'd like to co write with (dead or alive, same with characters)? This might possibly be two separate posts."

Since both of these questions follow the general theme of crossovers, I think they would indeed make a nice pair of posts. For this one, I'll focus on the question of characters.

Here are some characters I think would fit nicely into the Warder Universe:

From C.E. Murphy's The Walker Papers, Joanne Walker. Not only because the Walker Papers are urban fantasy, but also because they're set in Seattle. With two Warders and a high-powered half-Seelie mage running around the city, if that same Seattle contained Joanne Walker in its police force, she couldn't help but notice them.

From Kat Richardson's Greywalker series, Harper Blaine. Because again, urban fantasy set in Seattle. The Greywalker books tend to go a bit darker than the Warder universe has to date. But if Richardson's Seattle intersected in any way with mine, I daresay private investigator Harper would be in an even better position to notice Team Kendis than Joanne.

From Seanan McGuire's October Daye books, October Daye. More urban fantasy, this time not actually set in Seattle--but given that October's a high-powered half-fey, I'm pretty damn sure Kendis could learn a lot from her.

At this point, astute readers are probably noticing I'm pulling in a bunch of my favorite authors here, and those readers would not be surprised in the slightest to see that my next choice is Tanya Huff. And I'd have to go with two potential characters from her books. One would be Henry from the Vicki Nelson series, in no small part because to date the Warder universe does not yet contain vampires and it might be amusing to see what happens if Kendis discovers them. The other would be Charlie Gale from The Future Fire. Not only is Charlie high-powered magically, she's _also_ a musician. I'd have great fun seeing her and Elessir trying to out-jam each other.

No wait I lied, there's another Tanya Huff character I must include! I have to give a shoutout to Dean McIssac in her Keeper series. If he ever got a chance to meet Christopher, I think those two Newfoundlander b'ys would get on very, very well together. <3 (In fact, Dean is a strong inspiration for Christopher. I loves me some boy-scout-ish Newfoundlanders, what can I say?)

Last but not least I'll pull in Doranna Durgin's Brenna Fallon, from her book A Feral Darkness. This is still one of my all time favorite Durgin titles. I'd call it urban fantasy except its setting is not actually urban; it's more rural. I'm partial to the story not only for its use of magic and its excellent lead characters, but also because it's got an adorable dog. And if Brenna herself is not a Warder, I could see her very much being an ally power to the Warder nearest to her.

And one other Durgin character who I think would blow Kendis's mind: Jess, from the Changespell books. Just because a horse who gets changed into a human, has her entire brain restructured as a result, and who then has to figure out how to navigate both ways of existing and whether she even wants to exist both ways, would be someone very educational for Kendis to know. Just on general "whoa, how is this even POSSIBLE?" terms. And then on "letting her meet other people who don't necessarily think like humans" terms, too.

The Rebels of Adalonia books would be harder. Modern urban fantasy by its very definition--i.e., the "real" world, but with magic, supernatural creatures and situations, etc.--means it's more possible for different urban fantasy settings to intersect. Get two urban fantasy series set in the same city, and a crossover could practically write itself.

Epic/high fantasy, on the other hand, offers no such convenient intersection points. Some series in that genre are still ostensibly our world, but either in the distant past (like my beloved Tolkien), or a far distant, post-apocalyptic future (e.g., Terry Brooks). But many other fantasy series are set in their own secondary worlds, which may or may not have enough cultural or technological things in common to create crossover possibilities.

That said? After what I put all three of them through in the Rebels trilogy, I daresay Faanshi, Kestar, and Julian would all do very well with a vacation in Lothlórien--Faanshi in particular. My shy young healer girl could stand to learn a lot from Galadriel.

How about the rest of you out there? If you're a writer, whose characters would you love to drop into your work, and which of your characters would you love to drop into someone else's? And what are your all's favorite examples of crossovers in any media? Talk to me in the comments!

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Angela wouldn't necessarily give her right arm (she needs that to type with, as well as play her fiddle) to write with Tanya Huff, but she'd certainly be willing to sacrifice some time and maybe some very, very good Scotch. In the meantime, if you'd like to know more about the stuff she's written on her own, go have a look at angelahighland.com! Or come find her on Facebook or Twitter.

Weather and elemental magic in SF/F

In the last couple years it’s been very difficult to miss events of extreme weather in the news: destructive wildfires, massive hurricanes, flooding, and more. And if you’re a fan of SF/F, it may have crossed your mind at least once to wonder how someone might deploy weather-based magic to ease the ravages of these events. If you’re an SF/F author, you may have even been asked if you’d ever write weather-based magic; I have!

So here’s a post about that.

First, I’d like to note that I certainly do like me some elemental-based magic in my fantasy. It’s a very common trope to have a world where users of magic are aligned with Air, Fire, Earth, and Water. The world of Avatar: The Last Airbender and Avatar: The Legend of Korra is a recent big example, but it’s hardly the only one. If you google for “books with elemental magic”, you’ll find multiple Goodreads lists with titles spanning the epic fantasy, urban fantasy, and paranormal romance genres, and with publication dates over the last several decades. Jim Butcher, Mercedes Lackey, Rachel Caine, Tanya Huff, Sharon Shinn, and many other authors have all dipped their pens into that particular inkwell.

I’ve also seen that legendary weather events have in fact made their way into urban fantasy as part of authors’ worldbuilding choices. Hurricane Katrina in particular has shown up repeatedly in novels set in and around New Orleans, and with good reason. It was a massive, transformative event all on its own, entirely aside of any connection to settings that include magic. In a setting with magic, weather events of that caliber gain the power to wreak even more havoc. As backstory for a character or a city, it can be a critical developmental event. As an actual on-camera event, it can raise the stakes even higher in the climax of a story—or could even be the climax of the story.

As for me?

Given that I’m already writing an urban fantasy series with magic in it, it’s not out of the question that weather-based or elemental-based magic might eventually show up in the Warder universe. I grew up in Kentucky, an area of the United States prone to tornados and thunderstorms, as anyone from the Midwest knows. To this day, I have visceral memories of a tornado that hit Louisville in 1974 when I was five. And as an adult in the Pacific Northwest, I have a very healthy appreciation for the power of windstorms that hit the Puget Sound region every fall. (Just ask folks who follow me on social media how many times I’ve warned about power outages taking down my website!)

If you’ve read Bone Walker, you know that the climax of that novel does indeed deal with a weather event that strikes Seattle, fueled by the wrath of a spirit-possessed dragon. Seattle’s Warders, along with my heroine Kendis Thompson, must raise their powers in response to that event. Kendis, Christopher, and Millicent do not, themselves, have elemental or weather-based magic. But the Warders and the Sidhe are only two populations in that universe that use magic. A story has not yet presented itself to me for that world where weather or elemental magic would be in play… but one may yet do so.

In the meantime, I’ll continue my affection for the trope in other people’s stories! I do have a strong affection for the two Avatar animated series, as well as Rachel Caine’s Weather Warden books and Tanya Huff’s Quarters series.

What about the rest of you? What are your favorite weather-based or elemental-magic-based stories? Talk to me in the comments!

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Angela writes urban fantasy as Angela Korra'ti, and epic fantasy as Angela Highland. But no matter what name she's using, you can come geek out with her on angelahighland.com, Facebook, or Twitter. Come say hi!

How I find new things to read

As I’ve written about before here on this blog and elsewhere, I’m a passionate reader as well as a writer. Like those of a lot of geeks, my household reflects that we’re readers. We have shelf after shelf of print books all over the house, as well as hundreds of ebooks between us on various digital devices.

And, like a lot of geeks, we often find ourselves hard pressed to figure out how to find the books we want to read. So I thought I’d do a roundup of where I find my newest reads, in the hope that this might prove helpful to fellow readers out there!

So in no particular order, I give you my list of recommendation sources!

1) Tor.com is one of my biggest ones for SF/F. I regularly read their site, and their reviews of recent releases as well as announcements about upcoming titles frequently make me go “ooh hey that sounds like fun”.

2) Also for SF/F, since I regularly read both John Scalzi’s and Mary Robinette Kowal’s blogs, I see the Big Idea and My Favorite Bit features that they regularly run. I’ve picked up several titles on the strength of posts that authors have sent in to appear on those features.

3) Yet again for SF/F, book reviewer James Nicoll. What he likes to read doesn’t always align with what I like to read, but he’s pointed me at more than one book I’d otherwise have never thought to pick up. For example, The City, Not Long After and There And Back Again by Pat Murphy, or The Dazzle of Day by Molly Gloss. I find him quite satisfying for broadening my SF/F reading horizons.

4) For romance, my go-to, one-stop shop is Smart Bitches Trashy Books. I’m persnickety about what romance subgenres I like to read, and they’ve been consistently reliable at helping me find titles as well as authors that fit into those subgenres. Two of my favorites I’ve learned about from them are Courtney Milan and Kate Noble.

5) For mystery and suspense, I keep an eye on Criminal Element’s newsletter. I don’t read those genres as often as I do SF/F, but I do like a good period mystery occasionally, or a good suspense novel.

6) Since I’m a member of the Northwest Independent Writers Association, I learn about multiple things I’d like to read just from my fellow members of that group.

7) While I don’t use the feature very much, I do keep an eye on the recommendations features on Goodreads (and by extension, my Kindle) just in case that pops up something I want to check out.

8) Other readers I know are always a win for telling me about potential fun things. “Hey Anna, you should totally read this, I think you’d dig it,” is one of my favorite things to hear out of someone!

9) And, of course, I keep an eye on other posts on this very site!

What about the rest of you? How do you find new things to read? Tell me all about your favorite book sources in the comments!

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Angela has a lifelong goal of reading ALL THE BOOKS, and this has been compounded by also wanting to read SF/F in French, because holy crap you guys there's a whole other language's worth of books over there that she hasn't read yet! Meanwhile, she writes her own books as both Angela Korra'ti and Angela Highland, and you can come find out all about those at angelahighland.com. Or you can geek out with her about your favorite books on Facebook or Twitter.

Why I'm excited for Avengers: Infinity War

Avengers: Infinity War is almost upon us, and as of yesterday I’ve already seen the initial wave of freakouts crashing into the Internet. Which means I’ve had to launch Operation Anna Ignores Most of the Internet Until She Can See the Movie!

If you’re in the same boat I am—i.e., not entirely sure when you’re going to get to see Infinity War—fear not. I am not going to talk about the film in this post. But what I am going to talk about is all the work the MCU has gone to up to this point in order to build their shared universe and ongoing storyline, and why this impresses me as a writer.

When Iron Man dropped in 2008, the moviegoing world was introduced to Tony Stark, incarnated so ably by Robert Downey Jr. Had that been a truly standalone movie, that would have been peachy; Iron Man was huge fun. “But wait,” the closing credits told us at the time, “there’s more!” And there was: Nick Fury showing up in a post-credits scene, to bring Stark the news of the Avengers Initiative. And bringing _us_ the first signs that there was going to be a lot more to this story than one film could show us.

Then in 2011 we got both Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger. And I was already on board after Iron Man, but Loki and Cap both, in their own spectacular individual fashions, sealed the deal for me. (I could write a whole separate post just on the topic of why I adore Captain America. And may, in fact, next time it’s my turn to post around here. ;D ) But that’s from the perspective of moviegoing audience member.

As a writer, what I really appreciate about the MCU is that over the last decade, they’ve taken the time to show us all these individual characters, which has gotten me to care about them. And at the same time, they’ve kept drawing the individual plot threads closer and closer together. One by one, we’ve seen most of the Infinity Stones show up and have come to learn about their various abilities—in some cases, spectacularly destructive ones. We’ve seen the universe from multiple angles: Earth in various locales. Asgard. The various worlds the Guardians of the Galaxy cast have been to. And, most recently and awesomely, Wakanda. (Which is of course on Earth, but which deserves calling out separately, because good gods I loved Black Panther. But that, again, could be a whole other separate post.)

This is storytelling at an epic scale. Character building across multiple movies—and I almost hesitate to use the term “world building”, since we are dealing with a storyline that spans many, many worlds, so “universe building” is almost more appropriate. I keep seeing posts from various sources on the Internet talking about “superhero fatigue”, but I can safely say that for me, at least, this is so very not a problem. We’re only just now getting to the big climactic fight for a storyline that’s been building over the last ten years—and okay yeah sure that’s asking a lot out of audiences, to stick with a storyline that takes so long to build. But y’all, seriously, I’m an SF/F fan and a devoted reader. I’ve easily taken this long to keep following series of novels that take just as long to build. Doing this for movies? Cake.

And sure, I’ve liked some of the Marvel movies less than others. Some of them I have declined to re-watch, even as I happily go back and watch others over and over again. (The first Captain America is particularly my favorite.) But this, too, is similar to some of my favorite long-running series of novels, wherein I like some installments of the story better than others.

So yeah, I am very, very excited for this latest chapter in the ongoing MCU saga. And trying very hard not to fret about whose chances of surviving this plot are slim! ;D

Talk to me in the comments, y’all! Who all’s going to see the movie this weekend? What are your favorite movies in the MCU? Who are your favorite characters?

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Angela is totally not in the slightest bit nervous about Steve's chances in this movie NOPE NOPE NOPE (fidget fidget fret). And when she's totally NOT FIDGETING about Steve Rogers, she writes as both Angela Highland and Angela Korra'ti. You can find her books under either name at angelahighland.com! Or come say hi and tell her all about your favorite superheroes on Facebook or Twitter.

Excerpt from Walk the Wards!

While I've been fighting with ongoing long-term writer's block, this year has not been entirely without words, I'm happy to report. I've made some progress on Walk the Wards, which is still planned to be my next release in the Free Court of Seattle series. As a general reminder, this book will not actually be a novel; it'll be a collection of novellas and novelettes.

And just to show that I have actually been writing at least a bit, how about an excerpt?

This is from "The Deepest Breath of Song", a story about a shy young tuba player who discovers there's a lot more to life in his small coastal town than he'd ever imagined when he must help the town's Warder find out who's been hunting the herd of hippocampi migrating through the local oceans.

When Oscar finds the culprit, well... let's just say it doesn't go well. ;D

***

Ashosha. Her name was the very crash of the tide against the sands. Oscar caught glimpse after glimpse of the ocean through her eyes, as she, proud huntress and magic-wielder of the merrow, roved through the wide Pacific waters on behalf of her people.

They numbered fewer every year, driven as they were into the last lingering hidden places of the deep, for the oceangoing vessels of his own kind grew harder and harder to elude. So too did the creatures that could feed the merrow dwindle—for all of them were threatened by not only the ships and submarines of humanity, but the pollutants that fouled the currents even when no humans were near. With such challenges before her people she could not afford compassion, not if it kept her from filling the bellies of hungry merrow children—

Without warning, as her finned hand snapped back from him once again, their connection broke. Or the physical one, at least. Oscar clutched his paddle to him, half-convinced it might somehow balance him against the sudden tumultuous whirling in his skull. This single huntress, this female called Ashosha, roared across his thoughts with a power far greater than the entire hippocampi herd.

How she perceived him he dared not imagine. Yet the wave that bore her drew her back from his kayak now, and he could no longer mistake the look in her eyes for anything but reluctance.

The next words she hurled at him, though, rang with resolve as sharp as her spear.

“I give the herd three days. In exchange, human, you will come to the shore each night and play upon this horn you say sounds like them. Make your case for their lives. If I do not like what I hear, your own life will be forfeit.”

It was no bargain; if anything, it was an ultimatum. Accepting it was the height of foolishness. The sheer thought of it crowded Oscar’s brain with twin thoughts that should have amplified his panic past all bearing. One, that hardly anyone in the town would understand, know, or care what happened to him if the huntress Ashosha should kill him. And the other, that his mother would.

He didn’t know how. He didn’t know why. But he did know that it was important that he return safely to his mother, and that he ask Amanda Beck, the quiet owner of a quiet B&B in a quiet little town, knew of the world Marikat had shown him.

Was his mother a Warder?

Had his father been?

“Promise me you won’t harm Marikat or my mother,” Oscar said. To his surprise, the words sounded steadier than anything he’d ever uttered, for all that his voice had gone quiet and thin. “Or anyone else in the town.”

“The merrow do not come ashore,” Ashosha replied. “None of your people will face our spears if they stay out of our waters.”

Whether he could believe her, Oscar could not possibly guess—but then, the whole night had been filled with impossibilities. Yet something in him, born out of that brief fierce contact with her mind, hinted that perhaps, just perhaps, she was not lying.

And that perhaps, just perhaps, there was compassion within her that he could reach. That made it easy to, at last, put forth his promise.

“I’ll come. I’ll play for you.”

***

"The Deepest Breath of Song" is just shy of 14,000 words as of this writing, and is indeed shaping up to be one of the longer pieces in the book! I hope y'all like my take on the "magical duel" trope. Not to mention my determination to have a musician in a story who doesn't play a traditionally sexy instrument, for once!

I'm fond of Oscar, too. I've had fun researching what a well-played classical tuba sounds like, just to get an idea of how he should sound on his instrument. And, he is totally a Tolkien nerd and named his tuba The Horn of Helm Hammerhand.

Want to know more? Check back with me! I'll be doing Camp Nanowrimo again next month, and hopefully, I'll be able to finish Oscar's story.

Meanwhile, I'd love to hear about your favorite story with a musician protagonist who plays an unusual instrument. Talk to me in the comments!

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Angela writes the Free Court of Seattle series as Angela Korra'ti, and the Rebels of Adalonia series as Angela Highland. Either way, come find out about all her books over at angelahighland.com, or say hi to her on Facebook or Twitter.

What is it like writing on a shiny new iPad Pro?

Angela's iPad Pro

One of the nicest things about surviving the December holidays—aside from the general relief of the holidays being over—is the fresh slate of a new year. A lot of folks take this as an opportunity to do their New Year’s resolutions. I am certainly among them! And as a writer, there’s certainly a lot I could say about writer-based resolutions in general, or about my particular writing plans for 2018. But it’s a bit late in the month for New Year’s Resolutions posts, and I’ve actually already written the “my writing plan for 2018” post over on my own site.

What I want to talk about in this post is actually why I like January: because it’s when I have my birthday! This year, thanks to a nice bonus from my day job, I’ve treated myself to a birthday present. I’ve gotten me an iPad Pro. I’m not going to review the device in full here; plenty of tech sites have done that in depth already. But I do want to talk about its probable uses for me as a writer!

First and foremost: one of the accessories you can buy for it is a Smart Keyboard. If you follow Apple tech news you may already know about this, a cover similar to the smart covers that older iPads have, which magnetically snap shut over the screen when you don’t want to use the thing, and which can fold in useful ways when you do. The Smart Keyboard takes that same idea and expands upon it. Now, in addition to the ability to close over your screen magnetically and fold in a couple of interesting ways depending on how you want to arrange the device, there’s a built-in keyboard.

As a techie myself, I’m interested in how the keyboard functions. If you’ve used mobile devices before, iOS or Android, you are likely already familiar with Bluetooth. This new keyboard is not actually a Bluetooth device. Instead, as I understand it, it makes a direct connection to the tablet via three little dimples along the side. And it’s not battery driven, which is handy on the general grounds of not having to remember to charge it.

There are three possible downsides for the casual user for this thing:

1. It comes in only one color, gray, so if you care about that you may find it kind of boring looking. I would not be surprised at all if Apple starts shipping the thing in different colors later, given how the smart covers are in a variety of shades. But for now, your option is just ‘gray’.
2. It adds a bit of extra bulk when you close it over the screen. I still find it slim and light enough to make it worth carrying around with me, but it’s something to consider nonetheless. Even with the extra thickness from the keyboard, the tablet still fits in the previous sleeve I was using for my older iPad, an iPad Air 2, so it’s all good for me!
3. I have a long history of writing on my laptop while flopped over on the couch, with the laptop propped against my legs. With my older iPad, I have a hard shell for it made by HP that has a built-in Bluetooth keyboard, and I can do that sort of maneuver with it, too. But with this new iPad and the Smart Keyboard, I can’t, quite. The reason for this is the way that the keyboard folds up against the device, and how the device attaches magnetically to it. It’s very stable on a flat surface, like a desk or a table. But it would not be quite so stable propped against your legs when you’re lying on a couch.

None of these issues are particularly huge for me, though. And so I wouldn’t hold any of them up as reasons for a fellow writer to not get one of these things.

“That’s all very well and good, Angela,” you may be saying now, “but you’re a writer. How’s it handle for actual writing?”

Good question! I can tell you that I wrote the first draft of this post on said keyboard. I find it very easy to type on, though the various keys are a bit squishy compared to a larger keyboard—such as the one on my MacBook, or even the Bluetooth keyboards I’ve used before. But unlike with the laptop keyboard, there’s no openings under the keys on this thing that would allow for dust getting in under them, which I feel is a strong win. The really interesting question for me will be how it holds up to extensive use, though. I’m a fast typist, and I can give a keyboard a lot of work in the course of long-term usage!

For now, though, I’m finding it a pleasant enough experience that I’ve not only written this post on it, but some work on my actual work in progress, too.

Which brings me to the next thing to talk about: what apps to use when you’re doing actual writing on such a device.

I’ve written here before about being blown away by Scrivener. I continue to love, love, love me some Scrivener, and as an iOS user, I’m particularly happy that the program—essential for my writing—has been ported to that platform. I’ve got mine set up to save projects to my Dropbox, so I can easily work on the iPad, save, and jump over to the laptop as necessary. Or vice versa.

This post, however, I wrote in something called DocsToGo. This was an app I picked up in the early days of my iOS usage, back before Microsoft Office existed in app form, and even before cloud services like Dropbox became a thing. DocsToGo set itself up as an app you could use to sync documents back and forth between your computer and your mobile device, and, most importantly, included compability with Microsoft Office files.

Now, of course, we have official Microsoft Office apps that exist on iOS, as well as Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive, and other cloud services. But for now, I’m hanging onto DocsToGo just because it’s an easy way to write up a short thing like a blog post without having to fire up Scrivener. I’m not a hundred percent happy with this as a writing experience, just because it seems to have some screen redraw problems when I select text and delete it. I’m also seeing a bit of flakiness with the app taking a few seconds to acknowledge the keyboard’s presence when I bring the device out of sleep.

Aside from the keyboard, I note for reference that I chose to get the smaller iPad Pro, since I felt that the larger one was too bulky for my tastes. If you are a fellow writer who might want to write on an iPad Pro, screen size will be a matter of your personal preference. I find that the smaller device gives me plenty of screen space, enough that for any given bit of something I’m working on, there’s enough context that I can do any necessary edits.

I will be posting more general details about the iPad Pro over on my own site, including my playing with the Apple Pencil that I bought with it! I invite Here Be Magic visitors to come on over to angelahighland.com and look for my posts there.

Here, though, I’d like to open it up to the floor for my fellow writers who write on mobile devices! What do you use? Do you write on a tablet or a phone? Do you use an additional keyboard? What apps do you like, either iOS or Android? Share your recommendations in the comments!

Editing to add: Changed the post to reflect that the Smart Keyboard does not actually come with the iPad Pro; you do have to buy that separately.

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In addition to being a writer of urban and epic fantasy, Angela is also a giant tech nerd, as you probably guessed. Come geek out with her about your favorite apps at angelahighland.com, and oh yeah, check out her books while you're over there! Or, find her on Facebook or Twitter.

Fantastic naming cliches and how to avoid them

With apologies to J.K. Rowling. ;)

Here’s a proposed topic that came at me when I put out a call about what to post about for my turn on the blog today: how do you make names in fantasy novels not sound silly?

And, as a writer of epic fantasy and urban fantasy, this question is highly relevant to my interests. So let me talk a bit about what I try to do when I come up with names. (As always with writing advice, though, this is what’s worked for me so far, and it may or may not work for you.)

Apostrophes

Apostrophes in names are of course a huge fantasy cliche. I am not immune to them. If you’ve read Faerie Blood and/or Bone Walker, you’ll probably have observed that my Sidhe do have apostrophes in their surnames. The three examples I have so far on record are Elessir a’Natharion, Melisanda ana’Sharran, and my heroine Kendis’s mother, Elanna ana’Kirlath.

In my defense, I will note that my intention here was to have the “a” and “ana” prefixes function similarly to “O” and “Mac” in Irish and Scottish names—i.e., they’re designators for what family or House the Sidhe in question belongs to. “A” as a prefix is for males, “ana” is for females. The apostrophes are silent, and are indicators that the “ana” and “a” prefixes are meant to be considered as a single unit with the House names. This is similar to my understanding of how Irish names evolved in real life.

And because I do in fact have a point to those apostrophes, I embrace using them. ;D

I do not have apostrophes on the names of elves in my Rebels of Adalonia trilogy, but this is because my editor (justifiably) intercepted them before they made it into the final draft of Valor of the Healer. I was okay with that for two reasons: one, apostrophes are more cliched in epic fantasy than they are in urban, at least in my personal experience, and two, I’ve already got them in one series and it’s good to avoid repeating myself.

Eight million diacritics all over your names

Anybody who grew up reading Tolkien like I did, and who then turned to writing fantasy, will understand this one: the urge to slap diacritics all over your names to emphasize how they aren’t English.

Boy howdy am I not immune to this one. But again, I tried to dial it down to moderate levels when making up my language for my elves in the Rebels of Adalonia books. The only accent I’ve deployed in my Elvish language in that trilogy is a grave, and the intention for those is to serve as indicators that any vowel with one is in fact supposed to be sounded in speech. I generally only drop them on second vowels in a word—there are no such things as dipthongs in my Elvish—or on vowels at the end of words that follow consonants.

As with apostrophes, I do try to employ at least some form of basic linguistic consistency here. I am so very much not an actual linguist, but I’m enough of a language nerd to try to pay at least a little attention here and to balance out “it just looks cool” with “but let’s give it an actual purpose in the language, mmkay?”

Long multi-syllabic names

Yep, this is another one I’m not entirely immune to. Amelialoren, Queen of the Seelie Court, and Luciriel, Queen of the Unseelie Court, I am looking straight at you.

Yet again, though, this is one I try to keep down to a reasonable moderate level. Complex names like that are ones I usually drop only on major power figures—like, say, the Queens of the Courts. My Seelie warrior Melisanda is about the only other notable exception to this, since her name has four syllables. But she’s also directly named for a character I used to see played on Two Moons MUSH.

(Fun side trivia fact: I have named multiple characters after people I used to play with on various MUSHes!)

Mostly, though, I try to keep names down to two or three syllables at most. And in the Rebels of Adalonia books in particular, this rule is in play. Most of the elves in that story have two or three syllables in their names, and the human characters likewise.

Among the humans in particular, I have a mix of names that are in use in real life (e.g., Julian) and names that clearly aren’t (e.g., Kestar). But there’s a linguistic rule here, too. Names with obvious real life analogs are intended to be derived from one language, while names that are clearly made up are derived from another. (Specifically, for names derived from the Adalonian language, I used either names that appear in real life, or else grabbed names from Irish or Scots sources, sometimes anglicizing the spelling. E.g., turning Séamus into Shaymis. Names derived from the language of the people of Nirrivy were based on Norwegian sources.)

In general

I do try to keep my names short and punchy: Kendis, Faanshi, Kestar, Julian, Jude, etc. It fits my writing style, and I hope that it makes life a little easier for my readers. As you’ve probably seen, I do like to indulge myself with classic naming cliches, and I cheerfully blame a lot of that on Tolkien! But I do also try to rein it in and use just enough to add a little bit of flair to my naming schemes without going overboard.

(‘Cause I do love me some Tolkien, but wow, is it hard to slog through any of his works that use a lot of Quenya names. Like most of The Silmarillion!)

So talk to me, fellow writers and readers: what are your favorite fantasy naming cliches? Which ones have a way of showing up in your writing?

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Angela writes as both Angela Highland and Angela Korra'ti, but either way, you can find out all about her books at angelahighland.com. Come geek out with her about languages on her site, on Facebook, or on Twitter!

Would I collaborate with another author?

So there I am on Facebook, two days before this post on this site is due to go live, and I’m asking folks whether they have a topic they’d like me to post about. My sister chimes in on that post and asks me:

“If you could co-author a novel (or short story) with your favorite living author or two, who would that be and what would be the general plot of the book?”

This is a very good question. The problem with it, though, is that I’m not entirely sure I can answer it in the way my sister intends. So before I try, a few caveats.

One: Some of my favorite living authors write in genres I don’t, and vice versa. For example, any of my favorites that write historical romance, or romantic suspense, or mystery.

Mind you, “not having a genre in common” would not necessarily be a deal breaker if both I and the other author were sufficiently committed to making it work. But it would make things more difficult, just because we wouldn’t necessarily have common experience with genre conventions as authors. (As opposed to common experience with genre conventions as readers, which is not the same thing. If we didn’t have a genre in common as authors but we did as readers, that might inform the type of work we’d create together.)

Two: Nailing down “my favorite living authors” is hard, you guys. Even if I focus on SF/F, since that’s what I write, there are a lot of authors in the genre whose work I have admired at one point or another just because I read a lot.

I can point at a lot of books and go “I loved this book because of how it did its worldbuilding” or “I loved this one because it had an amazing set of characters” or “Jesus H. Hopping Christ on a pogo stick, this book’s command of the language makes me just want to set my keyboard on fire now”. In other words, I tend to place more of an emphasis on “favorite books” than I do “favorite authors”.

Which is not to say I don’t have favorite SF/F authors, because I do. But for me, “favorite author” is a category I pretty much reserve for “people who have directly impacted my life above and beyond just writing a book I thought was awesome”. Tolkien goes into that category. So does Barbara Michaels, a.k.a. Elizabeth Peters. You will note, however, that both of those authors are deceased and my sister specifically asked me about favorite living authors.

Three: “I adore this author’s work” does not necessarily equal “so I’d like to collaborate with this author on a project”.

Even if we’re talking authors who are also SF/F, this doesn’t necessarily mean that that person and I would be a good fit for collaboration. Some questions we’d have to consider would include (but not be limited to):

• Do we have compatible writing styles?
• Does our individual work hold any promise of interesting crossovers?
• Alternately, if we want to do a new project together that has nothing in common with our individual projects, do we have an idea to pursue we’re both excited about?
• Do we have compatible writing schedules? Are we local to one another? If we’re not, how many time zones are between us? Would it be difficult for us to coordinate via Skype?
• Are we both reasonably sure we can work together as professionals and not drive one another nuts?
• Can we set up a reasonable contract for the work between us, or have agents do so on our behalf?

All of which would slant me in favor of collaborating with an author I actually already personally know.

Four: Just because I really like a given author’s work and would really love to write with them doesn’t necessarily mean they’d want to write with me.

For one thing, they might not know me from Adam, and might not have any reason to know whether I’m capable of stringing coherent sentences together. And certainly, a lot of authors above a certain tier in the world of publishing are going to get a lot of strangers approaching them going “I have this awesome idea, you write it, we’ll split the royalties fifty-fifty.” (I do not operate at this tier of publishing.)

For another, even if they’re aware of who I am, they may not have actually read my stuff. Or even if they have, they might not have cared for it. Which is fine!

But if I’m going to work with someone, it would definitely need to be someone who knows my work and who would be excited about working with me.

Which, again, would probably slant me towards authors I personally know.

Five: Most importantly, even if I can name an author I’d love to work with, this doesn’t mean I can say off the top of my head what the general plot of our project would be.

For one thing, if I’m going to collaborate with someone, the very first thing I’d want to settle with them (aside from verifying workable logistics and the whole ‘can we work together without driving one another crazy?’ question) is what we’d actually be working on.

And what that project would be would very much depend upon the individual author. If they’re someone else who writes urban fantasy, we might conceivably do a crossover between my main character and theirs. But it’s just as possible that we might wind up doing something separate from either of our own titles, if we find an idea we’re passionate about.

All of which is a very long-winded way of me not actually answering my sister’s question. (Tolkien's "go not to the elves for council, for they will say both no and yes" quote? Totally applies to me. Also, verbosity is my superpower and this is a pretty impressive number of words to answer a question I wasn't even sure I could do a full blog post on!)

Given all these caveats, and assuming that all relevant stars were in alignment and these would be collaborations that could in fact happen, here are some ideas:

• Along with Tanya Huff, I’d be real amused to write Kendis and her compatriots discovering courtesy of a certain centuries-old gentleman named Henry that vampires totally exist. I'm pretty sure the Warders are trying very hard to go LALALALALA about the whole vampire concept. (But really, I would happily write anything with Tanya Huff, who is a queen of all the subgenres. I’m not even particularly interested in writing milSF, for example, but for Huff I would make an exception.)
• Along with Julie E. Czerneda, I’d want to write an original SF story because she is way, way better at aliens than I am.
• Along with C.E. Murphy, some form of historical/period urban fantasy since she and I both have some interests in that direction.
• Along with Cherie Priest, I’d be interested in doing something fun in the realm of Southern Gothic. You couldn’t pay me to live in the South these days, but you could totally pay me to write a story set there. Alternately, it would be very amusing to see what Warding efforts would be happening in Priest’s version of the Civil War and post-Civil-War history, in the world of Boneshaker. It would not be impossible to Ward Priest’s version of Seattle. But it would be a lot harder what with all the zombies.
• Along with Doranna Durgin, even though she’s writing paranormal romance these days, I’d be interested in original secondary world fantasy or contemporary fantasy (not necessarily urban).
• Along with Kat Richardson, there’d be more fun crossover potential. Can a Greywalker actually see the Wards on a city? Can a Warder actually go into the Grey? It’d be fun to find out.

So there you go. Becky, this post is for you!

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Angela hasn't collaborated with another author yet, even though she does a pretty passable imitation of being two different authors herself, what with publishing as both Angela Highland and Angela Korra'ti. Regardless of what name you know her by, come find all her books at angelahighland.com, or say hi to 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!

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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.

Excerpt from Chapter 1 of Warder Soul!

For a writer, there are few things more frustrating than making about 20,000 words into a manuscript, only to realize that it's not working. This has recently happened to me, as I work on Warder Soul, book 3 of my Free Court of Seattle urban fantasy series.

The bright side of this, at least, is that I was only about 20,000 words in versus, oh, say, 90,000. And also, I was able to nail down pretty well why what I was writing wasn't working for me, because it was a problem that had come up while I was working on Victory of the Hawk. Namely, that after releasing five novels, three of which had me working extensively with a good editor, I'd developed a tendency to write too superficially in the name of trying to write more quickly.

Because of this, I just wasn't feeling suitably, truly engaged with what I'd put down for the story so far. And if the writer isn't engaged, the reader can't be!

So even though it was irritating to have to go back and rewrite the beginning, I did it anyway. I now have a new opening scene for Chapter 1, and I'm feeling a lot better about it. So I'd like to share it with you all now!

The scene is long, about 2,000 words, so I'm only going to include a small taste of it in this post:

Amount of time it took to get my hair ready for Jake and Carson’s wedding: three hours.

Amount of time it took a flock of fairies to have at it: five minutes.

The little knuckleheads divebombed me the minute Jude and I got out of her truck at the Golden Gardens bathhouse. One minute I was closing the passenger door behind me, taking care not to crinkle my skirt as I got out, because honestly, how often was I going to wear a dress in public? I’d been twitchy the whole morning about tearing it, or spilling coffee on it, or any number of potential disasters. The next minute, my field of vision filled with a disaster I hadn’t counted on: the glittering, swooping bodies of seven fairies, all of whom seemed more pleased to see me than I’d ever seen fairies be about anything. And that counted the time I’d bribed half a dozen of them to find my phone. With red velvet cupcakes. They’d brought me three other phones before I’d finally convinced them that no, really, my own phone was enough.

“Queen!” one of them caroled as it whirled around my head, so quickly that I got barely a glimpse of flashing wings and tiny flailing hands. “Queen is here!”

Want to read the whole scene? I've got it available as a PDF on my site!

The moral of this story: listen to your muse, if it's telling you you need to fix something in the story.

The other moral of this story: cake is awesome.

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Angela writes the Free Court of Seattle urban fantasy series as Angela Korra'ti, and the Rebels of Adalonia epic fantasy trilogy as Angela Highland. Come tell her all about your favorite kinds of cake at angelahighland.com, or follow her on Facebook or Twitter!

RIP Carrie Fisher 1956-2016

2016 has been a very rough year for a lot of us, for a great variety of reasons. Quite a few of those in particular have applied to me, to be sure. But this week 2016 just had to get in one last punch—one that hits home hard for me—because this is the week we’ve lost Carrie Fisher.

I have a post up on my own site about this, over here. But in this post I want to expound a bit upon what Ms. Fisher as Leia Organa has meant for me, not only as a female fan of science fiction and fantasy, but also as a female writer of same.

Certainly if you’ve seen my prior posts here on Here Be Magic, you know I’ve posted about my love of Star Wars before. Last month, in fact, I posted about what I was looking forward to with Rogue One (and, if you want to see my review of that movie now that I’ve actually seen it, go check this post on my site). One of the things I touched on in my review of that movie was how it brought everything I loved about Star Wars roaring back to life.

And with Carrie Fisher’s passing, that resurgence in me has taken on a bittersweet tang.

Like a lot of women my age in SF/F fandom, Leia Organa was iconic. She was the very first woman I can remember rooting for in a science fiction setting. As Star Wars is the first movie I can remember seeing in a theater, Leia is the first woman I remember being able to identify with. I have memories of wanting the Leia action figure, when my brothers and I got hold of Star Wars toys, wanting to be as cool as the Luke and Han figures were.

It took a while for other women to measure up. The closest I got was perhaps Marion in Raiders of the Lost Ark, four years later. As I got older and started devouring books and other SF/F things like cartoons, I kept wanting to identify with the women: Sheba, Serena, Cassiopeia, and Athena in the original Battlestar Galactica. Princess in Battle of the Planets. Lisa Hayes in Robotech. Cheetara in Thundercats. Judy in Lost in Space.

Then I got a little older and discovered Laura Holt of Remington Steele, and Nikki Carter, the one awesome female character in MacGyver.

In books, it was all about Lessa in The Dragonriders of Pern, Brin Ohmsford in The Wishsong of Shannara, and of course Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings. And once I hit high school and discovered the novels of Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters, I started meeting so many wonderful heroines in her works.

And I could of course write many, many posts on all the female characters in Elfquest who have meant so much to me, both as a reader and as a writer.

All of these characters have been wonderful in their own ways, have brought joy to me as a reader, and have influenced my own sensibilities on how I should write my own female characters.

But every last one of them owes a debt to Princess Leia. She was the first. She was the one who showed me that even if you had to put up with being imprisoned by the Empire and waiting for a big-eyed farmboy to come break you out of your cell, that didn’t mean you had to be meek and shy about it. You had every right to grab a blaster and shoot Stormtroopers just like the guys.

And under no circumstances did you have to take any shit from smart-mouthed, disreputable smugglers. (Even if they were maddeningly hot.)

In The Force Awakens last year, we saw that very same Princess become a General. And now that I’m older, I have a whole new wave of feelings about that—because this Leia, this older, wiser woman who has suffered heartbreak and loss and who has never once stepped back from her ongoing quest to safeguard the galaxy, is every bit as much of a role model as her younger self. General Organa shows us all that yes, women can be generals. Women can lead a Rebellion that becomes a Resistance. Women have a place in the story even when they’re no longer conventionally pretty, or thin, or young. That message is just as valuable to almost-48-year-old me as the message of the young Leia was to me at age 8.

I love both Leias. And when Episode VIII comes out next year and I see General Organa on screen for the last time, I’m sure I’m going to cry for then as I am now.

RIP, General. Thank you for the joy you’ve brought so many women who came to SF/F because of you.

May the Force be with you always.

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Angela writes as both Angela Highland and Angela Korra'ti, and as ought to be obvious by now, is also a gigantic Star Wars nerd. Come geek out with her about Rogue One on angelahighland.com, or her Facebook page, or her Twitter!

What it's like to become a writer

Any writer who’s managed to get a book out the door, whether they’re a tiny little indie writer like me or a national bestseller, will eventually get asked “Hey! What’s it like to break into the writing business?”

I got asked about that week, in fact, by a friend who relayed to me that a friend of his was thinking about doing it. So, since it’s my turn to post on the Here Be Magic blog today, I thought I’d address this very question.

First, a caveat: I’m coming at this from the perspective of someone who’s specifically working in the SF/F genre, and also, someone who’s specifically working on novels. Mileage will definitely vary if you’re wanting to break into writing short stories, or non-fiction, or poetry, or articles for media sites, etc. For the purposes of this post, though, I’m going to focus on where my experience lies.

So. The very first thing you need to do, if you haven’t done it already, is write the book. This may seem self-evident, but sometimes, for some folks, it’s not.

Don’t get me wrong—it’s useful, vital even, to be looking ahead and working out a plan for what exactly you want to do with your work once it’s ready. But don’t let making that plan get in the way of the most critical thing you need to do. Which is to say, writing the book.

I wrote in more depth about this on this post over on my personal site, so rather than going into detail about that here, I’ll just give you all the link. To that other post of mine, though, I’ll add here that this was one of the most valuable things I had to learn about getting into writing: that it should, in fact, be treated with the same seriousness that you’d approach getting things done at your day job.

You get paid for doing things at a day job. And if you’re hoping that people will pay you for your writing, you should approach it with the same level of care you’d use for any other work.

Once I got to a point where I was able to start querying completed novels around, I came to learn that the current state of the publishing world had become a lot different than it was when I first started wanting to write. By which I mean, there are more options available today for aspiring SF/F novelists. No matter what route you take, though, there will be challenges. And there will be questions you’ll want to ask yourself.

If you want to go the traditional publishing route:

1. Do you know which publishers you want to work with?
2. Do you know what their submissions guidelines are?
3. Do you know how to write a query letter?
4. Do you know which publishers will take unsolicited manuscripts, and which ones won’t?
5. Do you want to get an agent?
6. Do you know which agents represent the kind of work you want to write?

If you want to go indie:

1. Do you have the technical skills necessary to build your own ebooks?
2. If not, do you have a budget set aside to hire someone to build ebooks for you?
3. Do you know how to find a trustworthy editor to edit your work before release? (Because yes, you will need an editor.)
4. Do you have the graphic design skills necessary to do your own cover art?
5. If not, do you know how to find and commission a cover artist?
6. There are a lot of vendors through which you can deploy an ebook for sale. Do you know what those vendors are, and how to deploy books to them?
7. Do you want to try to sell your book in print as well as digital? If so, do you know what your options are for printing your book?
8. Do you know how to do your own book promotion? If not, are you prepared to find and hire a publicist?

And this is just scratching the surface of it all.

Either way, whether you want to go traditional or go indie, my answer to the question of “what’s it like to break into writing?” boils down to this: it’s challenging. It’s exciting. Often it’s nerve-wracking, particularly if you go a while between sales, as a lot of indie writers can attest.

Because here’s the thing: just because you have a book up for sale does not mean you’re going to have money roll immediately in. The vast majority of writers, traditional and indie alike, do not make much money. Be prepared for this and adjust your expectations accordingly. I can name multiple SF/F writers who, even after releasing several novels, making it onto the New York Times bestseller list, and winning awards, still had to wait many years before they could give up their day jobs and write full time.

If you want to be a writer, all you really need to do is write. There are countless fanfic writers out there, and others who just want to write for the love of writing. If you’re writing something, anything, you’re a writer.

But if you want to break into writing as a business, go into it with your eyes open. Every writer with a novel to sell wants to make money. Few actually will. But if you can find a balance between your love of telling stories and how fast you can sell them, if you can work out a long-term plan as to how you want to deploy your work for sale, I daresay you’ll find the path easier to follow.

And no matter whether you want to be a traditional or an indie writer, good luck. You’re in for one hell of a ride.

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Angela writes as both Angela Highland and Angela Korra'ti, and you can find out all there is to know about her books over on angelahighland.com! Or you can come say hi to here on Facebook or Twitter.

Excerpt from Warder Soul, Book Three of the Free Court of Seattle, now in progress!

A consequence of having a mentally challenging full-time day job is that I'm a slow writer. But I do have works in progress--and one of those is Book 3 of the Free Court of Seattle series, currently with the working title Warder Soul!

I'm a few thousand words in on it so far, and can tell you that the story starts when my heroine Kendis Thompson's housemates and dear friends, Jake Tanaka and Carson Saunders, get married. All is well at their wedding until Kendis and the more magically-inclined of her friends sense... well, something. Which is disquieting when you're trying to hold a wedding!

Here now is an excerpt from this work in progress, as Kendis, her beloved Christopher, and Millicent Merriweather all try to make sense of what just happened.

***

It took a while, ultimately, before any of us could slip away safely to compare notes on what we’d just sensed. With the ceremony done, it was time for the reception, and therefore time for Elessir to take over musical duties. Thanks to the retro Elvis look he favored, including a practiced sneer and a faux Tennessee accent he could turn on and off at will, Elessir a’Natharion was easily mistaken for an Elvis impersonator. If you couldn’t see past Sidhe glamour, that is. If you could, his pointed ears and eyes like evening stars clearly proclaimed him something other than human. So did the singing he sent wafting out through the gathering, a clarion baritone that needed no amplification. To my surprise, he didn’t break out a single Presley song. Instead he kept singing in flawless Japanese, in a range of styles from rock to quieter traditional melodies, none of which I recognized. They did, however, go over splendidly with the Tanakas.

(And with me, though I wasn’t about to admit that to anyone. More of me than I generally wanted to acknowledge—the part of me that in the last six months had developed a deep, fierce pleasure in the breath of living trees and the purity of starlight—stirred every time I heard Elessir sing.)

The music kept everyone occupied for much of the night. Carson and Jake, once they opened the dancing themselves, each insisted on a dance with Millicent. And since Christopher and I had nominated ourselves in charge of making sure refreshments got to everyone that needed refreshing, we couldn’t exactly make ourselves scarce. Not to mention, for one thing, that I didn’t want to abandon the festivities. I’d lived with Carson and Jake as my housemates for years now, after all. The chance to see those boys finally get married was important beyond words.

For another thing, hello, Christopher in a tux. One sight of him dressed like that had been enough to lay down a critical side agenda for the evening: namely, dancing with my man, and if we got any moments to ourselves, find out if Jake and Carson’s change in status was giving him the same intriguing ideas it was giving me.

But that nagging sense of dislocation hadn’t entirely left me. It lingered through the distribution of wedding cake, champagne, and sake to the guests. It lurked in the back of my mind, unassuaged by the sound of Elessir’s singing, a subtle discord beneath otherwise pure and perfect melody. And it set off my nerves in a way that had no place in a celebration, for it brought back recollections of exactly how we’d kept Seattle from being destroyed. That disembodied spirit that had taken over Saeko had also tried to take me.

The reminder of what it felt like to be pulled out of my own body, here and now, was utterly unwelcome.

I tried to keep my disquiet to myself. I hoped I kept my disquiet to myself. Yet some hint of what I was feeling must have shot across the blood-forged magical link between Christopher and me. An hour and a half into the general partying, he commandeered two glasses of champagne, proclaimed to everyone in earshot that the lucky grooms weren’t the only couple who needed time alone, and whisked me outside into the night.

“Oh thank God,” I breathed as soon as we hit open air.

We found nothing to give any credence to my unease. No demons dropped out of portals to attack us. No dragons, child-sized or grown, spat lightning down from the sky. All that met us was the tang of salt in the air from the nearby Shilshole Bay, mingled with the fainter, chillier bite of snow on the Olympic Mountains to the west. There was no danger of it snowing so close to the water, or even of the rain-laden winds that were far more common than snow during a Seattle winter. Somewhere to the north of us a flock of Canadian geese honked to proclaim their presence to the night, while out across the bay, a ferry blew its whistle at a passing barge.

“Drink that, Kenna-lass,” Christopher advised, clinking his glass against my own. “Slow. You’re starting to spark through your shields.”

“The boys didn’t notice, did they?” I asked, alarmed.

“Not that they let on, but we shouldn’t risk it. Not tonight.” He looped an arm around my waist and looked down at me, hazel eyes warm with concern. “Are you all right?”

A cautious sip of the drink gave me a moment or two to think about that. The small motion of drinking gave me something to anchor on, to underscore where and when I stood. I took a moment to think of nothing but the cool glass of the champagne flute, and of the shape of my fingers around it. Of the fizz and bubble of the liquid against my tongue, and of the smells in the air around me allowing the fragrance of the blossoms in my hair into their midst.

It didn’t seem wise to take more than that moment, though.

“I’m okay, aside from wondering what we felt in there. Did something come over the Wards?”

Christopher shook his head, and then gestured with his own glass towards the solitary figure who’d come outside ahead of us, and who now stood some distance away from the bathhouse. “I don’t know any better than you, and that scares me. We’d better go talk to her.”

Millicent, of course. Everything seemed peaceful, just as it’d been when we’d all arrived at the bathhouse for the festivities at hand—save for that one unnerving moment of whatever-it-was. But the old Warder First was turning slowly about on her heel, scowling as if something had mortally offended her. When she scowled like that, chances were good someone or something was about to be shot. Never mind that we were at a wedding reception, out in public, wearing our formal best. Millie usually kept her trusty old shotgun Butch out of sight, Warded against theft or confiscation. If the look on her face was any sign, she was thinking of breaking it out.

She turned in our direction as we walked out from the bathhouse to meet her. Christopher didn’t lengthen his stride; if Millicent hadn’t armed herself already, we were in no immediate danger. Nor did he call out to her. Not until we were in close enough range for quiet speech did he finally ask, “What happened back there, Millie? Do you know?”

“Not to get all Galadriel-exposition-y at you children,” she promptly replied, “but something’s coming. I feel it in the wind. And it’s shaking me to my goddamned bones.”

My restlessness sharpened, recognizing the warning in Millie’s words somewhere below the level of conscious thought—down where my magic lived. “Me too. Whatever that was that hit us, it’s still bugging me.”

Christopher’s gaze went unfocused, while a sheen of gold flared in his hazel eyes, a sign that only Millicent and I could see of his magic. “The city feels normal. But there’s… something. An echo. A shadow.”

“So we’ve all agreed there’s a disturbance in the Force,” I said. We were mixing movie metaphors, but I wasn’t about to care. “How big a disturbance? Do we need to start checking if Alderaan just blew up?”

Millicent smirked; she’d seen A New Hope more often than Christopher and me combined. “I’m pretty sure the Death Star isn’t about to come into orbit. But I can’t nail down what this is. Nothing’s breached the Wards. Nobody in the city’s under threat from anything fey. Hmm.” The elder Warder’s attention came back to me. “Fey. Your magic’s different from mine and the boy’s. How does it register for you?”

“When it hit, it was like I was suddenly somewhere else. Like leaving my body, except I didn’t actually go anywhere.”

“And now?”

I grimaced. “Not as bad now. But I still feel like something’s off. You know how if the alarm clock wakes you up out of the middle of a dream, and it throws you off the entire morning because part of you is still convinced you’re still in whatever you were dreaming about?” Both the Warders gave me slight blank looks; apparently, that was just me. “Well, it’s like that.”

“None of us are dreaming,” Christopher said. “And none of us have had enough to be drunk.”

“We won’t, either, at least not tonight.” Millicent’s tone grew stern now, brooking no argument. “Finish what you’ve both got there, but no more after. Stay on your guard, but try not to be obvious about it. Don’t alarm the Tanakas or the Asakuras, and especially not the boys. Anything short of immediate flood, fire, or zombies, they do not need to care. Jake and Carson’s only priority tonight is to eat cake, drink the sake and champagne we will be leaving them out of the goodness of our hearts, and looking forward to their honeymoon.”

Given how serious her expression had become, I opted not to ask right then and there if zombies belonged on the list of Things Which Are (Surprise!) Not Actually Fictional. “And after tonight?”

“Get the singer and find out if he’s sensed anything we haven’t. Then get him and Jude to help walk the Wards as soon as Jake and Carson are safe off on their flight. I want all our eyes on the city. If something’s about to creep on us, I damn well want it found.”

***

If you're intrigued, more of this book is on the way! And if you haven't met Kendis and her friends yet, you can get caught up on their story in Faerie Blood and Bone Walker, on sale now wherever ebooks are sold, and in print from me!

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Angela writes the Free Court of Seattle urban fantasy series as Angela Korra'ti, and the epic fantasy trilogy Rebels of Adalonia as Angela Highland, for Carina Press! Come find her at angelahighland.com, on Facebook, or on Twitter.