Below are the most recent 24 friends' journal entries.

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
annathepiper	3:00p	This just in: Faerie Blood audiobook The folks at Action Audio have a partnership going with Drollerie Press to do audio editions of our bigger-selling titles–and apparently it’s now Faerie Blood’s turn to go audio! I’ve been emailed by a gentleman asking me for pronunciations on various and sundry unusual names and phrases all over the book, and I’ve fired him back a list of notes that hopefully will be helpful! It’s also super-helpful to be able to point at a nice audio snippet of Bob Hallett of Great Big Sea on a radio show about Newfoundland ghost stories, and say ‘this guy? My hero should have his accent’. (Of course, now I totally want to hear that entire radio show. I’ll have to see if I can find it.) Anyway, so this is exciting and stuff; sometime soon there should be audio Faerie Blood goodness, and I shall be making inquiries as to whether I’ll be able to maybe set aside a copy to hand out in another little contest of some sort. Watch this space for updates as they happen. Meanwhile, for the interested, the other Drollerie titles that exist in audio form are: joelysue’s The Rose of Shanhasson Rachael de Vienne’s Pixie Warrior John Rosenman’s Alien Dreams Gary Inbinder’s Confessions of the Creature If audio books are your thing, you might consider checking these out! Mirrored from angelakorrati.com. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
annathepiper	12:27p	Seeking authors for blog post exchanges Those of you out there who’ve been with me a while will know I’ve been hosting the semi-regular Drollerie Press blog tours. My fellow Drollerie authors and I have had some fun doing these, but in 2010, we’re seeking to expand the scope of our efforts. We’d love to find some non-Drollerie authors with whom we could do blog post exchanges. So far our little tours have been monthly (although we’ve canceled a couple of times for various reasons), but the interval in question would be negotiable depending on how many authors wanted to get involved and what their commitments would be like. We are of course writing in a mix of genres at Drollerie: urban fantasy, romance, SF, horror, etc., and we’re predominantly in electronic form, although a few of us have our work available in print as well. Ideally I’d like to find other authors who are e-pubbed and/or who share our genres, but print-based authors are of course very welcome as well. Drollerie of course lives here, and if you’d like to check out an example of one of our recent blog tours, check out the December master post I put up on Drollerie’s main blog. If you’re a writer reading this and you might be interested in setting up an exchange of posts, let me know! Drop me a comment, message me on LJ or DW, fling me email, whatever works. I look forward to hearing from you! Mirrored from angelakorrati.com. (Comment on this)
Monday, January 4th, 2010
annathepiper	11:09p	Book Log #2: Black Hills, by Nora Roberts As I’ve gotten accustomed to at this point, Nora Roberts turns in a decently entertaining and suspenseful little story with Black Hills, one of her most recent works. There’s nothing here that’s particularly unusual compared to all of her other works; she certainly utilizes a lot of her familiar tropes here, such as the hero being a former cop, and focusing less on surprising you with the identity of the killer and more upon the suspense involved with setting up where and how he will strike next and how the good guys will finally track him down. This time around, what makes the story work for me is the fact that she takes the time to show us the childhoods of Lil and Cooper, following them from when they first met as youngsters, up through when they first consummate their blossoming affections as young adults, and on up through to the current day–when Lil has established a wildlife refuge and Coop is coming back to the Black Hills to look after his aging grandparents and to put his past as a cop behind him. There’s nice character development between him and Lil through the whole book, as the two of them strive to deal with the emotional weight of their past and the simple fact that they’re still in love with each other. Since this is of course a Nora Roberts novel, there’s a killer on the loose to spice things up. And after all the romantic suspense novels of hers I’ve read, she’s pretty much got the formula down. Again, nothing terribly unusual in this book’s particular psychopath du jour, how he perceives our heroine, and what ultimately happens to bring about his downfall… but it’s all competently executed and an engaging read. Three stars. Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)
annathepiper	10:57p	Book Log #1: Too Good to Forget, by Marilyn Tracy This is a book I first read as a loaner from the fabulous mamishka (who knows me all too well), and she recently found it again and loaned it to me–and I cheerfully zipped right through it. Let’s face it, folks, Marilyn Tracy’s Too Good to Forget is about as fluffy as a romance gets. And yet? It’s cheesy in all the best cheesy romance ways. It helps a lot that it employs two of my favorite cheesy plot devices: a) one of the lead characters is a writer, and b) the hero has amnesia! In this particular case, the hero happens to be a Treasury agent who’s out on a stakeout with his partner, who gives him quite a bit of good-natured ribbing about the fact that he’s got on a swanky suit and is carrying around a paperback in his pocket because his favorite author is having a signing he wants to attend. And by “favorite author”, I mean “hot writer babe he totally is in love with, despite the fact that she’s married”. But OHNOEZ! The agents discover their boss is the bad guy they’re trying to identify–and the boss promptly shoots them both, leaving the hapless partner to die in our hero’s arms, and our hero to stumble off in a frantic haze, because he’s been shot in the head and is all angsty that his partner just got killed and his boss is a bastard and stuff. Raise your hand if you’re surprised that we have a jump cut over to the aforementioned signing, wherein our heroine is valiantly attempting to carry on the latest episode in her long-running game of Pretend She Actually Has a Husband Because It Helps Her Sell Books. Boy, is she surprised when a wounded stranger wanders into the bookstore, comes right up to her, calls her “Katherine”, and smooches her in front of her adoring fans and shell-shocked cousin! ;) ‘Cause it just so happens that our Treasury agent has the exact same name as her alleged “husband”, and he’s gone and decided he is in fact her Sam MacDonald. You can probably figure out where the plot’s going to go from there, and you wouldn’t be wrong. Most of it has to do with Katherine and her loyal cousin frantically trying to figure out what to do with a Treasury agent who’s clearly off his rocker, and by “off his rocker”, I mean “Katherine secretly finds him totally romantic and wishes he really was her husband.” But the bad-guy boss of course resurfaces at the end, and, well, you can probably figure out what happens from there, too. And in a lot of ways the flavor of the novel is archaic even for the year it came out, i.e., 1991; the fact that our hero could use the phrase “not worth a plugged nickel” without apparent irony made me wonder if he’d somehow gotten knocked back into 1935 or something when he got shot in the head. Yet, I didn’t particularly care; it added a sort of innocent charm to the whole thing, and made me glad to revisit it as my first read for 2010. If it were available in ebook form, I’d totally be buying it. Three stars. Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)
annathepiper	10:37p	Another awesome picture I wanted to give this one a post all by itself. Ladies and gentlemen, from April 12, 1968, I give you my father and mother, Donald Ray and Judith Elaine Highland. And if my calculations are correct, on that date, I’m only a short time away from being more than a gleam in my father’s eye! And not like I normally pay attention to such things, but I gotta say, Mom’s outfit in this picture? Kinda stylin’, in a wholesome 1968 kind of way. Dad, on the other hand? Total dork. ;) All he’s lacking here is a slide rule. Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)
annathepiper	9:50p	Whoa! Family history FTW! My little sister wildshadowstar sent me a lovely, lovely thing in email today: a whole bunch of scanned-in copies of old photographs from our grandmother. Nearly 10 megs’ worth. I’m not going to post them all, but I totally need to share a couple of them with you. This first one is in Naples, Italy, in 1944. That dog-tag-wearing guy on the right? That there is my grandfather, Jim Sherer. I totally do not remember him; he died when I was very small. I have vague impressions of him as a much older man, heavier and ruddy-faced and with much less hair. But I can’t honestly say whether that’s because of pictures I saw of him; I have no recollections of his physical presence. But wow. This is my granddad as a soldier. Wow. There are several pictures of my mother as a little girl, too. Everybody in my family keeps telling me that I look so much like her, but it’s really driven home to me seeing this pictures. Especially this one. I love her expression here. The coup de grace, though, is this one. Four, count ‘em, four generations of women from my family. On the far right is my great-grandmother Margaret, who I again completely fail to remember. Next to her is my grandmother Hyson. Next to her? That there is my mom, Judy Highland. And that blonde moppet in her lap? That’s ME. I’m thrilled to have these. I think I need to send my grandma a letter to thank her for sharing them with the family. They’re wonderful. Many kudos to Becky for sharing them online too. <3 Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010
annathepiper	11:18p	Right then, holiday is over and the new year has begun I know I keep saying this, but let’s see if I can hold to it for a while now that the new year is under way, eh? Back into Bone Walker tonight, with Chapter 7 underway. I’ve got me a Kendis with a head full of stuff she’d really rather not have to be dealing with all at the same time, and a bit about how the magic of Warding a city works, and a bit of Seattle geography all touched upon in the five hundred words I’ve written tonight. This felt good. Let’s see if I can do it again tomorrow. Meanwhile, in case y’all haven’t seen it yet, we’re handing out free downloads of my story “The Disenchanting of Princess Cerridwen” right over here for the 11th day of Drollerie Christmas! I know, I’m already handing it out for free here, but serasempre said such nice things about the story that I really just sort of have to go “aw”. *^_^*;; And oh yeah, did y’all see the new poll I have up in the sidebar? (Go here for those of you who are reading this from LJ or DW.) Written tonight: 508 Chapter 7 total: 508 Bone Walker total (first draft): 17,242 Mirrored from angelakorrati.com. (Comment on this)
annathepiper	7:39p	Jam Report #98–12/20/09: Special Solstice MurkJam Edition In which Kelsey gets to join us since she’s on Christmas break from school; in which we have a special evening Jam just because it’s Longest Night; and in which we finish up with tasty homemade pita bread pizzas! Songs: “The Only Son”, “Goin’ Up”, “Old Black Rum”, “Pirate Bill and Squidly”, “Ferryland Sealer”, “Shout at the Desert”, “Elf Glade”, “Lukey”, “The Night Pat Murphy Died”. ( Read the rest of this entry » ) Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)
annathepiper	5:55p	Doctor Who: “The End of Time”, Parts 1 and 2 So now that I’m done writing up all the rest of my 2009 Book Log reviews, it’s time to jump over to another topic near and dear to my heart. Let’s talk Doctor. And specifically, the Doctor Who “End of Time” story, which I’m pretty sure most of you reading this will have seen by now. But just in case you haven’t, oh my yes ginormous spoilers behind the cut! And, picoreview: fairly sloppy story overall with some moments of beauty. Russell T. Davies does tearjerking sentiment much better than he does logical cohesion of plot these days, I fear. And man, I’m going to miss David. Sniff. (Okay, yeah, the tearjerking sentiment got to me! ;) ) ( Read the rest of this entry » ) Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)
annathepiper	3:41p	Book Log #108: 24 Bones, by Michael F. Stewart My last read of 2009 is my fellow Drollerie author Michael Stewart’s 24 Bones, a book that’s surprisingly hard to pin down into any specific genre. It’s set in the modern day world, and yet it doesn’t play out like what most readers would think of as “urban fantasy”; the feel of it is much more akin to a suspense novel, albeit with fantastic elements, i.e., Egyptian gods coming to life. You might be tempted to think Dan Brown when you think of how this book’s about the clash between two ancient Egyptian cults and how a professor from Toronto is pulled into it when he receives a cryptic coded message. Don’t. This book is simultaneously more and less complicated than a Brown novel, in all the correct ways. We have the Shemsu Hor and the Shemsu Seth at each other’s throats as the time of Seth’s ascension is at hand, and Horus is on the wane. Set off against them both are the Sisters of Isis, keepers of the Balance, who are determined to keep both good and evil from becoming too dominant. And against this larger backdrop we have Samiya of the Shemsu Seth, raised to do evil, use the powers of the Void, and serve the Pharoah–while Taggart Quinn, hauled into this conflict by the mysterious message he’s received, learns that his place in the unfolding events is far greater than he could have imagined. There were times when I had a bit of difficulty following the events of the story; the narrative jumps very quickly from one event to the next when there surely must have been a little time between them, particularly in the latter half. More than once I had a “wait, what?” reaction, and this kept me from finishing the story as quickly as is my wont, since I had to take the time to absorb what I’d just read. But, that said, I was genuinely surprised by some of the directions this plot took, and I have to give it huge props for that. Props too for the final tying together of the plot threads involving Taggart and Sam, and for the moment of delicious irony when a TV evangelist’s flock, called to prayer during the climax of the plot, is not at all doing what they think they’re doing. Over all, four stars. Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)
annathepiper	2:57p	Book Log #107: King’s Property, by Morgan Howell I am very, very glad that I finally got around to reading Morgan Howell’s King’s Property, Book 1 of his Queen of the Orcs series. The idea of a fantasy series with an emphasis on orcs for once sounded like a winner to me, even if it has to take the route of a young human woman being the protagonist rather than an orcish character. Dar is a girl of the hills conscripted into serving the King’s army, a harsh and bitter existence, one in which she quickly learns that a woman’s only chance of survival relies upon her ability to secure the favor of a soldier who will provide for her. But the thought of abasing herself thus to any man–especially when she learns that the commander who’s interested in her is cruel and heartless–horrifies her. Instead, she takes the radical step of befriending a few of the soldiers of the regiment of orcs who are fighting alongside the human army. This puts her severely at odds with her fellow serving-women as well as the male soldiers, who are all pretty much convinced that she must be having sexual congress with the orcs. But only Dar makes any attempt to learn their language and rudiments of their culture, and to see them as anything other than brutal fighting machines. And I’ll say this, it is quite a refreshing change of pace to see orcs be the good guys here, even if the orcish words Howell employs keep making me think they’re Japanese; this is what he gets for using “hai” as his orcish word for “yes”. There are times when I find their culture a little hard to swallow, though. These are orcs who, sure, deserve their rep as brutal fighting machines. In battle, that’s what they are. Outside of battle, though, there’s a lot of the orcs being surprisingly willing to go wherever humans lead them, to the point that they’re eventually willing to give Dar the same status that they accord females of their own species, and accept her orders accordingly. Soon enough the whole situation comes across as “the innocent orcs are being manipulated by the nasty humans”, with a heaping side dose of “human males suck and the only trustworthy ones are the orcs”. But, that said, Howell doesn’t go completely in that direction, and for that I’m grateful. Some of the orcs do complain quite loudly at the influence that Dar has upon their commander, and one sympathetic human male not only gets Dar’s attention but starts contributing towards her eventual efforts to escape the army. And overall, I’m quite intrigued by the bigger picture Howell has set up here with the situation not only between the warring human nations, but how the orcs and their current queen play into it. This is not a cheerful world, be warned. Quite a few dark things happen in it, including rape and needless murder, but to Howell’s credit he handles a lot of the darker events in an understated fashion. And even if I had some quibbles with specific details, overall I very much liked the story and am very much looking forward to taking on Book 2. Four stars. Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)
annathepiper	2:12p	Book Log #106: Over Her Head, by Nora Fleischer If you’re on the hunt for a super-quick read, you can’t go too wrong with my fellow Drollerie author norafleischer’s Over Her Head. I’m a sucker for stories involving intellectual women, and so this little tale of a young woman in the early 1900’s striving to pull off doing a dissertation on mermaids was quite a bit of fun. Frances Schmidt has discovered that Garrett Hathaway has the most definitive collection of works on mermaid myths she’s ever seen, and so she’ll stop at nothing to get his permission to study his library–even if it means showing up at his front door on a bicycle, armed with tasty cookies. That she and Garrett eventually fall in love is not at all a surprise, nor is the fact that Frances discovers that he has an Astonishing Secret or that Frances gets a lot of flak for pursuing “unseemly” intellectual pursuits. What makes this read fun and unusual is a nice little take on mermaid myths as well as a cast of vividly portrayed characters which benefit from the short length of the story; there are no extra words here, and extra words aren’t really needed. Four stars. (P.S. Special side note to lyonesse: the description of Frances totally reminds me of you!) Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)
annathepiper	1:17p	Book Log #105: Birthright, by Nora Roberts I’m sure that people with more archaeology clues than me could find all sorts of issues with Nora Roberts’ Birthright, wherein much of the plot is driven by finding a several-thousand-year-old burial site near the small town of Woodsboro. But really, this is all background to the main plot of this story: Callie Dunbrook discovering that the parents who raised her are not really her parents, and that in reality, she was born to different parents entirely and kidnapped from them when she was a baby. Callie’s investigations into her background are joined by her ex-husband Jacob, her long-lost brother Douglas, and the lawyer Lana. As is pretty much expected with Nora, the romance that re-kindles between Callie and Jacob as well as the new romance between Douglas and Lana are the driving forces of this book. And, as is pretty much expected with Nora, they’re all reasonably engaging people who have to figure each other out in the process of discovering the truth behind Callie’s abduction–and whether the perpetrator committed the same crime with other children. Meanwhile, Callie must learn how to cope with having a whole extra set of parents, and there’s a lot of emotional interaction involved with that that happily never descends into hostility between her birth mother and the one who raised her. All in all, nothing truly outstanding but a good solid read nonetheless. Three stars. Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)
annathepiper	12:01p	Book Log #104: Written on Your Skin, by Meredith Duran I was pointed at Meredith Duran’s Written on Your Skin by way of a link posted to Smart Bitches Trashy Books, and I’ve got to say that I was pleased at the pointing. Certainly for most of this book, I was treated to some delightfully caustic chemistry between the heroine and hero. Our heroine Mina is a young woman of delicate beauty who has been unabashedly letting everyone think she’s an airhead to disguise the fact that she’s diabolically clever; our hero Phineas, an English nobleman and spy. The book’s opening sequence, where Mina must save Phineas’ life, is great fun. It is however only a prologue for the main body of the action, which takes place a few years later, when Phin must come to Mina’s aid. For me as a reader, though, the mechanics of the plot that actually brought Mina and Phineas back together took a massive backseat to the dynamics of their relationship, and I don’t think I did those mechanics justice, since I kept skimming to look for new scenes of interaction between them. I shall have to re-read this one to go back and get the rest of the details I missed. Overall though the book read pretty well for me, even accounting for the skimming. My only beef that I came away with was the feeling that the happy ending came a bit too abruptly. When I get back to re-reading this one, I’ll see if I maintain that opinion. For now, three stars. Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)
Friday, January 1st, 2010
annathepiper	5:03p	Book Log #103: And Only to Deceive, by Tasha Alexander And Only to Deceive, first of the “Lady Emily” series by Tasha Alexander, is one of the “lady of the nobility solves mysteries” milieu, and it’s a decent addition overall. This time around the noble lady in question is Lady Emily Ashton, recent widow of Lord Philip Ashton, who must come to grips with the alarming idea that not only might her husband have been dealing in illicitly obtained antiquities–but he might have been murdered. I’ll say right out that the big appeal of this for me was Emily taking a sadly belated interest in her husband’s work in ancient Greek artifacts, by way of trying to cope with the fact that she never really knew him before he died. This gives her an opportunity to develop her own intellectual pursuits, and I’m always a fan of a plot that lets a woman pursue education just because she likes it, and never mind that it’s in defiance of the expectations of society. There’s some fun here with Emily’s studies bringing her all too close to fruitlessly falling in love with the husband she might have had, too, which causes her no end of consternation. Especially when the possibility is raised that he might actually still be alive. But of course, this wouldn’t be a period mystery without a primary love interest, and the gentleman filling this role is Philip’s best friend Colin Hargreaves. Colin and Emily have fairly standard but nonetheless engaging chemistry, with the obligatory sparks when Emily spends some time infatuated with another man as well. Good fun all around, and I’m definitely looking forward to reading Book 2. Four stars. Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)
annathepiper	4:37p	Book Log #102: House of Whispers, by Margaret Lucke I deemed this book Relevant to My Interests when I saw a blurb of it invoking the name of Barbara Michaels. And for the most part, that’s a not unreasonable name to invoke here. There’s a certain old-school feel to this book in both sides of its plot, the haunted house story and the heavy side helping of romance. By “old school”, I mean a return to what (at least in the books I’ve read lately) has been a vanishing art: encouraging the reader’s imagination as much by what’s not on the page as what’s on it. I miss this, both in things that are supposed to creep me out and romances I’m supposed to be cheering on. On the other hand, speaking as an ardent fan of Michaels’ older books, I didn’t find this one quite up to par with those–although to be fair, I have no substantive reason for this. Mostly, it’s a question of the overall flavor of the writing, which I found more akin to the later Elizabeth Peters works (the last few Amelia Peabodies and the final Vicky Bliss). If you liked the style that Michaels/Peters took with those books, you will probably like the style of this one all right. And all this said, the plot is rather fun. Our heroine, Claire, is the new kid in a real estate office, and she’s given the daunting task of finding a buyer for a local mansion where a gruesome quadruple murder took place. When she gets there, she discovers to her shock that she can actually hear the ghost of a young girl who was murdered there–and who can point her at the true identity of her killer, who is still at large. Meanwhile, Claire has a rivalry going on with Avery, the office sexpot, a character who takes a little while to get her feet under her. And both women aim for Ben Grant, the owner of the house Claire’s trying to sell. Overall, a bit on the fluffy side but not bad. Three stars. Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)
annathepiper	2:16p	Starting the new year off right I have been buying a BOATLOAD of ebooks lately, so I decided today that since the redoutable Third Place Books is having a sale (20 percent off EVERYTHING), I should go show the print books some love. And here’s what I walked out of the store with! Heart of Veridon, by Tim Akers; fantasy Acacia, by David Anthony Durham; fantasy The First, Third, Fourth, and Sixth Books of Outremer, by none other than desperance (somewhere I’ll have to find books Two and Five); fantasy An Autumn War, by Daniel Abraham; fantasy Dragon in Chains, by Daniel Fox; fantasy (which should also please desperance!) So fear not, print-side authors, I’ll still love you too even if I get a lot of ebooks these days! Books thus far purchased in 2010: 8 Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)
annathepiper	12:06a	One last 2009 ebook bonanza As 2009 leaves us I wanted to get in one last gasp of ebooky goodness on the Fictionwise sale, so I’ve done a slew of buying tonight off of Fictionwise! And for the sake of thoroughness, I shall also count the books I’ve picked up courtesy of the shiny gift card that spazzkat gave me for Christmas: Pandemonium, by Daryl Gregory; fantasy The Madness of Lord Ian MacKenzie, by Jennifer Ashley; romance The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, by Lauren Willig; mystery The Magicians and Mrs. Quent, by Galen Beckett; fantasy Fall of Light, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman; fantasy Consequences of Sin, by Clare Langley-Hawthorne; mystery, re-buy Wicked Game, by Jeri Smith-Ready; urban fantasy, re-buy Bad to the Bone, by Jeri Smith-Ready; urban fantasy The Silver Wolf, by Alice Borchardt; fantasy, re-buy Code of Conduct, by Kristine Smith; SF, re-buy Skinwalker, by Faith Hunter; urban fantasy Matters of the Blood, by Maria Lima; urban fantasy Amazon Ink, by Lori Devoti; urban fantasy Madhouse, by Rob Thurman; urban fantasy Unleashed, by John Levitt; urban fantasy The Family Tree, by Sheri S. Tepper; urban fantasy Deathwish, by Rob Thurman; urban fantasy Ghost Whisperer: Revenge, by Doranna Durgin; fantasy, media tie-in The official final grand tally of books purchased by me in 2009 is therefore 210! And for the record, the official tally of books READ by me in 2009 is 108. I am not caught up on book reviews but I will be writing the rest of them over this weekend and getting those posted for you all before I start the 2010 book log. Hee, and solarbird adds that the official tally of books PUBLISHED by me is two! Here’s to 2010 adding to that tally. It’s been a great year for books, folks. Here’s to me beating all of these records in 2010. Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 31st, 2009
annathepiper	5:40p	Ten Years Ago There’s a fun meme going around Twitter today with the hash tag #10yearsago. For the benefit of those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter or Facebook, here are my contributions! It’s fun to write these down, especially given that this year was before I was regularly doing anything like blogging. Y’all will notice there’s a whole lot of fandom and geekery here. This would be because, well, I was indulging in a lot of fandom and geekery that year! Which has certainly not changed at all in the ten years since. #10yearsago Mylee Ejercito drew me a Shenner picture! http://www.annathepiper.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/shenner3.jpg #10yearsago I was still totally fangirling on Strongbow from Elfquest, enough that I had a web page dedicated to him! #10yearsago X-Files was starting to wear out its welcome at the Murk, but ZOMG Season 3 of Buffy. Big, big fun. Mayor FTW. <3 #10yearsago Had big fun seeing The Matrix, Sixth Sense, Toy Story 2, and The Mummy, and OK fine ogled Ewan MacGregor in Phantom Menance. ;) HA I was wrong. My Presario laptop was NOT running XP. It was running Windows 98 and I upgraded to SE that year. #10yearsago #10yearsago Phantom Menace came out! Mimi and I were in line for a late show with a kid with blue hair. We played Egyptian Rat Screw! #10yearsago We didn’t go to Worldcon in Australia but DID go to NASFiC in Anaheim and had a 3-day marathon Disneyland run! Indy ride FTW! #10yearsago I’d quit PernMUSH, BUT! I was still writing in Pern fandom offline in Telgar Weyr, as brownrider Tember and bronzerider J’marr. #10yearsago I was still using a Compaq Presario as my laptop, and it was running XP, and I was FINE with that. Poor deluded 1999 me! ;) #10yearsago Wayfound was born at the Willowholt on Two Moons MUSH, and I destroyed the Willowholt in floods at the end of the year. #10yearsago Tance Vokrim was my surviving character on CrystalMUSH, and he got his beloved Kesya back halfway through that year. #10yearsago I was playing Shenner and Han Solo on Star Wars MUSH and making people’s jaws drop that a girl was playing Solo. #10yearsago in addition to not knowing Great Big Sea yet, my dad was still alive, I worked at Attachmate, and I’d just joined AetherMUSH! In 1999 I was still living at MurkSouth and had not yet discovered either Russell Crowe or Great Big Sea. Had no idea what I was missing! Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009
annathepiper	10:51p	And now, a holiday review! I’m coming off a nice long vacation, thanks to my workplace having given the entire lot of us the week of Christmas off. This was as the cool kids say AWESOME, given that it meant that solarbird and I were able to have Longest Night without me having to take an extra day off for that. And that was a nice way indeed to fire off a relaxing break. The weekend of the Solstice was pretty much given over to, aside from a special Solstice Murkjam (more on this in another post), a mighty rewatching of the entire extended edition Lord of the Rings trilogy. There are few movies I can happily watch over and over again, but these? Absolutely. Especially when Dara starts asking me questions about Middle-Earth lore and we get to Tolkiengeek. <3 Plus, this time around I started finally watching a lot of the copious extras in all three sets of discs, which I had never done despite owning these things for years now. I'm sure you all know by now, but yeah, lots of lovely stuff there and I've only barely scratched the surface of it all. Did a lot of catchup of medical appointments during the week, and the highlight of that was getting to touch bases with both my endocs and say "by the way, I'm working on seriously trying to lose weight, just so you all know". In particular, wanted to check with the thyroid endoc to make sure I coordinate with him about how to reduce my T4 and T3 dosage as I drop pounds. I've already had to start tweaking my intake since I've dropped six pounds or so. I dropped in on kathrynt to say hi in between some of those aforementioned medical appointments, and was treated to tea and a cookie and her delightful offspring informing us, when asked where her dump truck was, “it could be ANYWHERE!” Lillian continues to impress me with her smarts. This kid is going to be scary when she gets older. Hell, she’s kind of scary now! Christmas itself was pleasantly low-key and featured first going out with mamishka to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie. Picoreview: big silly fun if you can buy that this was totally a fluffy, alternate-universe version of Holmes and Watson that didn’t bear too much resemblance to the canon versions. I did like many get a kick out of the chemistry between Holmes and Watson, and felt that poor Mary was sadly underused as a character, and that the actress playing Irene wasn’t quite up to the task of her own character’s awesomeness. But really, the thing I liked the most about the movie? The music. Especially the jigs during the action scenes and the take of “Rocky Road to Dublin”. I may have to buy the soundtrack on the strength of that alone. Christmas evening, mamishka, darthhellokitty, and king_chiron all had dinner with us at the Murk and then we all watched the new Doctor Who, “The End of Time, Part 1″. Most definitely more on this in another post. There are rumblings of another group watch of Part 2 to come. I closed out this past weekend with going, finally, with Dara to see 2012 before it finally vanishes out of the local theaters. We wound up having to catch it at the Alderwood Mall cinema, which was really kinda crazytalk since the place was swarming with after-Christmas shoppers and getting from our parking spot to the theater was a nerve-wracking exercise in dodging oncoming traffic. But we did manage to get there on time, and once we were actually settled in, despite being too close to the screen for comfort, we had a delightful time. I’m sure many of you already know this by now too, but yeah, this movie was awesomely bad. We’re talking epic levels of MSTable disaster pr0n, which is pretty much exactly what we were there for. Mutating neutrinos, baby! Didn’t get a damn bit of writing or reading done, but on the whole, I didn’t really mind. I’ve been catching up on fixing broken stuff on this web site instead, and that sits well with me, since the long-undone tasks there were annoying me, and I found fixing those relaxing. I assure you all though that more writing and reading will be coming with the New Year. And oh yes: with spazzkat coming home from Virginia on Sunday, we had our little house gift exchange. My nifty l00t: one box of Ninth Doctor DVDs (man, I do love Nine and Rose, I must say), one lovely tin of bath bombs from LUSH, one $50 Barnes and Noble gift card which I promptly spent on five new ebooks, and last but not least, this, which is pretty much the Best Possible Christmas Ornament to Give to Anna, Ever: Carefully, Indy There’s a button on it that plays the Raiders March when you press it. spazzkat knows me very, very well. <3 Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)
annathepiper	10:23p	Book Log #101: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters It was pretty much inevitable that, after loving Pride and Prejudice and Zombies as much as I did, I’d have to check out Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, the followup offering by the same press. In a nutshell: not as fun for me as P&P&Z, although it did still have its redeeming qualities. I’ll say right out that unlike Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility never seized my attention nearly so much–in no small part because S&S didn’t have the absolutely amazing A&E adaptation to recommend it. (Mmm, Colin Firth as Darcy!) I do actually own a copy of S&S, but I didn’t remember a thing about it. So I went into Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters not knowing at all what to expect. Aside from, well, sea monsters. This is a Britain where for reasons that are never revealed, all aquatic life in the world has suddenly turned seethingly hostile to humanity. Humanity has had to respond accordingly by altering social customs to place high value upon swimming, sailing, fishing, and any other skill that will improve one’s chances against oceangoing menance. In this setting, we have the Dashwood sisters exiled from their childhood home (as per the original) and embarking upon adventures involving monsters, pirates, a suitor cursed with slimy tentacles growing on his chin, and mysterious natives chanting prayers to unspeakable creatures of the deep (not really as per the original at all). There’s even a bit of steampunky interest when the sisters visit Sub-Marine Station Beta. All of which are fun elements to throw into a story, but for me, they just didn’t mesh nearly as seamlessly as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies did. There are moments of humor–and I will give this book props for never descending into blatant sexual innuendo or jokes about bodily functions, which was P&P&Z’s one failing. But it never quite got to the point of unrepentantly sailing past stupid and all the way into “awesome”, I fear. That said? “That was pretty neat” is still not bad at all. Three stars. Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)
annathepiper	9:43p	Book Log #100: Confessions of the Creature, by Gary Inbinder It’s a challenge and a half to try to write a sequel to no less august a book than Frankenstein, and for that alone, I must give my fellow Drollerie author Gary Inbinder props. I’m also pleased to say that although there were parts of the book that didn’t work as much for me, by and large, I feel he did an excellent job at his appointed task! The opening of the book does ask you to accept the idea that sorcery of a kind exists in the Frankenstein universe, since the entire plot only gets underway when the monster, fresh from killing his creator, is taken in by an old Russian witch. In repayment for his working for her, she grants him his greatest wish: to be human and to be able to have a real life of his own. If you’re used to the version of the Frankenstein story more popularly depicted in the movies, the presence of magic may be jarring; however, my spouse pointed out quite correctly that the original story does heavily pursue the idea that Victor Frankenstein was dabbling as much in black magic as he was forbidden science in creating his monster. So it’s not too much of a stretch for me to allow for actual magic existing in this world. But. This is really only the start of the plot, and the greatest portion of it by far is taken up by the creature–now calling himself Viktor Viktorovich–not only winning himself a life and a family in Russia, but achieving a meteoric rise to power. In fact, the vast majority of the plot is taken up with his participation in the wars against Napoleon. For me as a reader this had quite a bit of interest, but the real heart of the story doesn’t come until the final third, when the truth of Viktor’s origins begins to come back to haunt him. And this is also where the story ultimately let me down a bit, since I was expecting more creepiness than I actually got, and one plot device in particular that was used as part of Frankenstein’s backstory struck me as quite unnecessary. But that said, overall I did find this a gripping read, and it’s worth checking out if you liked the original. Four stars. Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)
annathepiper	9:26p	Book Log #99: Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead, by Steve Perry I’m a huge Indiana Jones fan. To the tune of Raiders of the Lost Ark remaining my all-time favorite movie ever, and collecting every one of the novels I could get my hands on. I even went to go see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull twice. So this should give you the proper context when I say that I really, really wanted to like Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead. It combines two of my favorite things: Indy and zombies! Plus, it’s a story that’s set during World War II and which included Mac, the character we saw in Crystal Skull. So, cool, I thought, we can get a glimpse into what actually happened to Indy during World War II, which was one of the interesting little side details about the movie. The big problem is, the character occupying the lead role of this story is not the Indiana Jones I know and love. He’s too prone to bursting into dry, didactic lectures, a habit we never once saw him have in any of the movies, including the last one. This character failure alone distracted me a lot from the story, and made it difficult for me to enjoy some of the other aspects of this version of Indy that I did like–for example, since this is an Indy up in his 40’s, it did seem reasonable to me that he was starting to get sensitive about his age and yet was still quite capable of being charmed by, and charming to, the young female lead. A similar lack of character development pretty much plagued the bad guys as well, for the most part: the German and Japanese commanders. Since this is a WWII setting, it’s pretty much inevitable that we’d have Japanese forces involved along with the Nazis, and to be fair, this does add a bit of nice variety. And there’s quite a bit of plotting and counter-plotting between the two commanders as they both try to catch up with Indy and Mac to get the final MacGuffin. But none of it had quite the punch it should have had for me, and only occasionally did either of the commanders ever seem like real characters. They definitely paled in comparison to the actual primary bad guy: the voodoo sorcerer who was controlling the zombies. And I will say that okay, sure, the zombie part of the plot was entertaining enough. But on the whole the story didn’t feel enough like a proper Indiana Jones story to me–because Indy just didn’t feel enough like Indy. Two stars. Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 26th, 2009
annathepiper	6:27p	Some end-of-year site housekeeping So just because I can, I’ve been waking up old broken parts of this web site (annathepiper.org, for those of you reading this on LJ or DW), bits that were never properly integrated into Wordpress. Since I’ve got a handy link-checking plugin installed, this has been a lot easier than I thought it would be; I’ve just had to go through and fix a lot of broken links, and in some cases, restore content that’s been absent for some time. Right now, this primarily means reinstating my Great Big Sea page, and a couple of its child pages as well–most notably, the Pictures page, since I found a nifty plugin that lets Wordpress easily talk to Flickr. And I do still have several lovely collections of pictures from various Great Big Sea shows which some kind folks had given me permission to post (mamishka and fredpdx, I’m lookin’ at you!). You can see a nice example of the plugin in action, not to mention some nice pics of Great Big Sea in Vancouver from 2003, here. I’ve also reinstated the Sitemap, the Credits page (with proper updated references to nifty plugins and things I’m using these days), and the Journal section (although this is primarily a pointer off to my LJ and a place to link to posts I wrote before I ever had a proper blog). Mirrored from annathepiper.org. (Comment on this)