Shawna Reppert's Blog, page 7

2.5 Things I Learned at Orycon

OK, so I was going to do the long, obligatory con report, but then I figured, no. Most of my readers know about cons. (For those of you who don’t, short version, cons are fun and full of cool people. Go to one.)

Instead, I thought I’d share with you the 2.5 things I learned at Orycon this year.

1) BBC did not deliberately destroy the film for the lost early episodes of classic Doctor Who. They were stored in the same room as old newsreels legitimately slated to be recycled, and unfortunately there was a mix-up.

Not that it makes the lost episodes any less lost, but at least I feel better knowing that they weren’t lost due to deliberate disregard for one of the best TV shows in existence.

2) Someone has managed to create an actual sonic screwdriver. It is reportedly ear-shatteringly loud and only works in one direction, but yes, it is possible to drive a screw into a hole using only sound vibrations.

Which leads to 2.5), an extrapolation from 2): At least one Doctor Who fan has entirely too much time on his hands.

Just as a final Orycon note: I only day-tripped this year. I was gone for less than 24 hours. Sheesh. Pay no attention to Samhain-kitty’s claims of neglect and abandonment.

Ravensblood released!

Ravensblood  was launched on Halloween,  and readers are already asking about the sequel! (In about a year, if all goes to plan.

This is an indie release, so word-of-mouth is especially important.  Please tweet, mention on Facebook. review on Goodreads and Amazon!  Your support is always appreciated.

A real blog will come soon, I promise.  As soon as my brain recovers from book launch.  Or whenever Samhain-kitty gets at the computer again.

Seasons (A Solstice Gift of Story)

Author’ note: This is quite unlike most of my writing, written in a distant POV, almost a prose poem. It actually came almost whole-cloth out of an exercise in flow writing a while back, and since it didn’t seem to fit into any genre or market, languished on my hard drive. I thought it was too lovely to stay hidden. I hope you like it. (apologies for the indenting being wonky. WordPress and I are not getting along.)

His muse was in the mountains, in the mists on the mountain meadows, in the mournful cry of the dove. She knew this; it was the reason she always came to him, her wild mountain bard with his flute and his flights of fancy. She never asked him to come to her. All through the spring of their courtship, all through the summer of its fulfillment, not once did he come to her tame little farm in the vale with its neat ordered lines. But it was autumn now, with winter hard upon them. She would not make this journey in the bitter snows, nor could she forsake forever the stolid stone warmth of hearth and home.

And so they parted, he watching her go without a word, she leaving with tears but without regret.

Both of them knew, without saying, that she would not make the journey again in spring. She was not made for the mountains, though she loved them, was not made for a love brief and insubstantial as the mountain mists.

Through the fall she labored, harvesting, gathering storing. The air of her vale was cider-sweet with apples. The fields turned to gold and then to brown against the storm-gray skies. Always before her heart had been so full of her love for the land and its colors that she had no room for loneliness. But this year she found her eyes drawn up to the mountains in the horizon, all bright aspen and dark spruce. In the mornings the colors were softened by the mists. On sunny afternoons their brilliance broke her heart.

Sometimes she thought she heard a wisp of song on the winds that blew down from the mountains. Sometimes she whispered his name, just to hear it.

The leaves faded, fell, blew away. Her pony’s coat grew thick and soft as plush. The days grew shorter, the nights longer and dark.

On solstice eve her Yule fire burned bright, and the sweetness and spice of cider filled the farm home that she had been born in, that her parents had been born in. In the rocking chair by the fire, under the quilt she’d made with her own hands, she dozed and dreamed. The knock on the door that woke her seemed like part of the dream, and the face that met her when she opened the door to black night and swirling snow came from dreams of spring and summer and mountain meadows.

“You cannot,” she said, lying in bed that night with him warm beside her, the passion of their reunion spent. “You cannot leave your mountain.”

“And you cannot leave your vale. Not forever, not for long. But for a time. For a brief time, my muse will forgive a visit.”

“As my fields forgave mine, once.”

“Once, and maybe again?”

“Maybe,” she agreed. Not for a love as insubstantial as mountain mists. But for a love as strong as mountain stone, a love that grew and changed and grew again with the mountain’s seasons. She, a farmer, knew much of seasons, and of patience.

The Stolen Luck is a finalist!

Too busy trying to get Ravensblood out to do a real blog. But I just wanted to share my excitement. The Stolen Luck is a finalist for the Epic E Book Awards!

Free Halloween story!

OK, Samhain-kitty wanted me to give away something in her honor, since her day is coming up. (Actually, I think she’s just worried that the Halloween release date for Ravensblood will steal her thunder.)

So here’s a fun little Halloween story to get everyone in the spirit of the season:

Roadside Assistance

Of all the places to break down, The Bitch had to pick a lonely road across the field from an ancient pagan tomb. Danny wasn’t a superstitious bloke, but sitting in a dead truck by the side of this particular road in the dark of All Hallow’s eve gave him the willies. Across the empty fields the garish artificial lights they’d put up at Newgrange shone out in the darkness. And there was Newgrange herself, hulking in the shadow, pregnant with mystery.

 

Of course, his Gran always insisted that Newgrange wasn’t a tomb, even if archeologists found cremated remains inside.

 

“They buried people in St. Patrick’s cathedral, too,” she always argued. “Folks aren’t calling that a tomb, now, are they?”

 

Just what Gran thought Newgrange was, she’d never said. Likely it wasn’t something he’d want to know, out here alone on the night when ‘the veil between the worlds grows thin’.

 

Come to think of it, an ancient tomb was bad enough.

 

None of this was getting The Bitch moving. Cathy was waiting, and Danny was already running late. He could picture Cathy now, checking her watch, her pretty mouth turned down into a frown. Of course, his cell phone was dead and the cigarette lighter and the car charger weren’t on speaking terms tonight.

 

He cursed the truck soundly and hit the steering wheel a few times for emphasis.

Not that The Bitch would care, but it made him feel better.

 

Danny grabbed the electric torch from the glove compartment— The Bitch had taught him the virtue of being prepared. Hopefully, this wasn’t going to be one of those nights where she also instilled the virtue of long walks. Cathy wouldn’t forgive him if he stood her up for her brother’s Halloween party. Not after he missed her parent’s anniversary dinner last month when the rear differential went spare.

 

“Damn, you, Bitch, are you trying to break us up?”

 

Then again, maybe she was. He’d bought The Bitch from a friend of his Gran’s, and Gran didn’t care for Cathy.

 

The thing was, Danny did care for her. A lot. Cathy had every reason to be impatient with his unreliability. The cold shoulder Gran had giver her when he’d brought her by for tea hadn’t helped.

 

Still muttering a string of words that Gran would not approve of, Danny got out of the truck and zipped his jacket against the misting rain. Then he popped the hood and played the light around the truck’s cavernous engine compartment to see what he could see.

 

Danny was a pretty fair mechanic, but what The Bitch needed was an exorcist.

 

The distant hum of a motor broke the silence. Danny looked up. A single headlamp, a pinprick of light growing larger as it approached.

 

Oh, please, be a Good Samaritan and not a hooligan.

 

The motorcycle slowed on approach, then came to a stop behind The Bitch. Its rider was clearly dressed for the evening’s festivities, and Danny had to smile at the image of a faun on a motorbike. Really, the bloke should be wearing a helmet, though he supposed it’d ruin the elaborate, shaggy hair, not to mention the extremely realistic horns.

 

“Engine trouble?”

 

The stranger wasn’t a local, though Danny couldn’t place the accent. Still Irish. Kerry, maybe?

 

“Yeah. Reliable as a drunken fiddler, The Bitch is.”

“Let me see what I can do.”

 

The stranger reached into the truck with his furred hands. Damn, but that was a good costume. He must be in theater, or else he had a friend in the theater.

 

Light flashed like The Bitch was channeling Dr. Frankenstein. Danny cried out in fear for the stranger— his old truck had never done that before. He had less than a second to think about the flammability of fake fur before the engine started up and the stranger stepped back, unharmed, laughing.

 

“Your Gran may know about Newgrange and fairy circles,” the stranger said. “But I’d never take her advice on a car. Or a woman. Dump The Bitch and keep the girl.”

 

A friend of Gran’s? Danny stared at the man, trying to place him, although the costume made it difficult. His mind was still trying to process what had happened with the truck. The first explanation that popped into his mind made him question his sanity.

 

The stranger returned to his bike and mounted. “She was wrong about one other thing. It’s not true that my kind aren’t any good with cold iron.”

 

Danny drove as fast as he could on the narrow roads to reach Cathy before she could decide he had forgotten her. He would see what he could do about trading in The Bitch tomorrow.

 

After all, Gran always said it was dangerous to ignore the advice of the Fair Folk.

 

(With apologies for the formatting.  WordPress does not like tabs, so I had to make do.

Recharging the Batteries

I have a confession to make. I’m waay behind on Doctor Who. As in, I’m working my way through the David Tennant episodes. (A friend of mine threatened to stop talking to me when I revealed this shameful secret, until I pointed out that this means *I* still get to watch new-to-me Tenth Doctor episodes.)

It’s not that I don’t love the show. It’s just that I watch very little TV (and by TV, I mean anything that moves on the screen, movies, Youtube, streamed shows. I don’t even have access to regular network TV because there’s no reception where I live and I refuse to pay for cable). One hour a week is a *lot* for me. I can go for weeks on end with no video entertainment. Not that I think there’s anything wrong with it. I just have too much going on.

So when I watched five hours of Doctor Who plus the first Thor Movie over one three-day weekend, this constituted a serious binge. I’ll admit that the whole time a voice in the back of my mind was saying that I really should be writing, or at least cleaning the house.

But when I was done, I had a fun topic for my turn at the Here Be Magic group blog (see link previous post– and before you start, no, I’m not watching the episodes in order.) More important, I felt refreshed, renewed, and ready to dive back in to writing with fresh enthusiasm.

Sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of what brought us to genre fiction in the first place– the sense of wonder, the willingness to be lost in a story, whether it be a book, movie, or TV show. I think I needed to re-find that young girl who read Tolkien over and over again and never missed an episode of Doctor Who. I needed to renew my commitment to creating that magic for others with my own work.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, The Doctor is waiting.

Oh, the Villains!

Sorry I haven’t been updating. . .been madly writing on a new project that’s really got me, heart and soul. There’s bardic magic and impossible love and the horrors of war and a lot of things that are not as they seem to be.

But I did write a blog on compelling villains over at Here Be Magic. Read my thoughts on attractive villains, why we love them, and why they make stories better. See me compare Loki of Asgard to the title character of Harry Potter! http://herebemagic.blogspot.com/2013/...

Silver Medal for the Stolen Luck! (and Ravensblood funded)

No blog this week. Too busy being happy. The Kickstarter for Ravensblood funded. I am awed and humbled by the support, and look forward to setting that novel loose in the world this Samhain/Halloween.

Bigger news yet: The Stolen Luck won a silver medal in the Global Ebooks Awards in the category of other world fantasy! So very proud and excited.

Crowdsource Funding and Cave of Forgotten Dreams

A year or so ago, I went to see the movie Cave of Forgotten Dreams. (If you haven’t heard of it, it’s an absolutely stunning documentary on a recently discovered cave filled with generations-worth of Paleolithic art. Go see it. In 3-D if you can manage it. I have chills running down my spine just recalling it.)

One of the first things that came to mind watching it (the very first thing was Oh, WOW. And the third. And the fifth. . .) Ahem, yes. One of the first things that I thought about was that whoever made the images on those cave walls had worked hard at his craft. There was shading, texture, suggestion of depth and movement. No matter how talented you are, learning these things takes time.

Now, remember, these images were painted in a time long before take-out food and cozy brick-and-mortar homes. Human beings spent virtually all their waking hours trying to find something to eat, and trying to avoid being eaten themselves. Yet someone from the tribe was taking time away from these essential pursuits to make art. And music, since bone flutes were found from the same period. And, one could guess, storytelling, though there is no proof from a time so long before written language.

We know very little about the people who used those caves. There is no record of their social structure or economic system. Yet I cannot imagine that, in a time of such bare-bones existence, a single person could devote so much time to developing art unless he or she was supported in some way by the community. Think about it. In a world of little to eat and a lot of chance of being eaten, the community said ‘this is important to us. This is life and death.’

Over the centuries, human societies have come up with many arrangements to support their artists, musicians and storytellers, from the patronage system of the Renaissance to the government grants of the New Deal right through to the raw capitalism of the record labels and traditional publishing houses. All of them had advantages and disadvantages to both the artists and the society.

Now, I have nothing against traditional publishing per se. My debut novel came out with Carina Press and overall it was a pretty good experience. But traditional publishing does have its drawbacks, especially now when many publishers are either looking to fill a certain marketing niche or looking for a novel that will not only give them reasonable sales over a few years, but a novel that will be an instant blockbuster.

The publishers need to make money to stay in business. I understand this. Changes in how books are sold make it harder for them to do this with books that are slow-and-steady sellers rather than instant blockbusters. I understand this too.

But if you’re an avid reader, I’ll bet that you have books that you have read until they fell apart, only to buy a new copy. Books that you have a relationship withthan runs longer and deeper than many marriages. If you’re like me, not all of those books have ever seen the top of a bestseller list.

Not that I have an issue with bestseller lists. I’d like to be on one someday, myself. My point is, not every novel on the bestseller list has merit, and not every novel with merit makes the bestseller list. When you look at traditional publishing, you’re removing things one more step, to books that someone else thinks might make the bestseller list (and may I remind you that many of these someones sent form rejection letters out on the first Harry Potter book.)

To my mind, this is where crowdsource funding comes in. Crowdsource democratizes the publishing process. It allows you, the reader of books, the one who listens to music or looks at art, to have a voice in what you think is worthy of being produced.

Crowdsource isn’t perfect. It is subject to popularity contests and the cult of personality. But given the choice of allowing all publication decisions to be made by an ever-smaller group of New York publishers, I’m glad that other alternatives exist.

I’ve just started my first Kickstarter. It’s still anyone’s guess whether it will fund. I’ve also supported crowdsource projects through Kickstarter and other venues. From the creative side, it’s both thrilling and humbling to see people, some friends , some acquaintances, and some perfect strangers, come together to make your project happen. From the supporter side, it’s empowering and exciting to be part of bringing a book or CD into being.

At the risk of sounding overly mystical, crowdsourcing is a way of connecting with those unknown humans from the dawn of time who though that creating was as important as food and shelter, and essential enough to the community for the community to support.

Kickstarter started– join the magic

Ravensblood is one of the best things I’ve ever written. . .and I’m not the only one who thinks so. One of my preliminary readers lives in France, and she got on a plane to come visit me and take the Ravensblood tour of Portland! For those of you who haven’t heard me talk about this before, here is the burb:

In a life of impossible choices when sometimes death magic is the lesser of the evils, can a dark mage save the world and his own soul?

Ravensblood is an urban fantasy set in an alternate version of Portland, OR.

Corwyn Ravenscroft—Raven— is the last heir of an ancient family of dark mages. He holds the secret to recreating the Ravensblood, a legendary magical artifact of immense power. As a youth, Raven wanted to be a Guardian—magical law enforcement for the elected council, but was rejected because of his ancestry. In his pride and his anger, he turned to William, the darkest and most powerful mage of their time. William wants a return to the old ways, where the most powerful mage was ruler absolute. But William would not be a True King from the fairy tales. He would reign in blood and terror and darkest magic.

Raven discovers that he does have a conscience. It’s rather inconvenient.

He becomes a spy for the elected council that William wants to overthrow. His contact, Cassandra, is a former apprentice—and a former lover. She had been doing everything she could to live down her past with him. The ambiguous and contradictory feelings between them only add a level of complication.

Cass and Raven think they have a plan to trap William outside his warded sanctuary, where he is most vulnerable. But William is one step ahead of the game, with Raven’s life, his soul, and the Ravensblood all at stake.

Stay tuned for sample chapters at this website! Please pledge if you can, and whether or not you can afford to pledge please help spread the word!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/8...