Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Sci-Fi For Your Wi-Fi: Panel on Krypton Radio

Tomorrow I, along with fellow novelists Robert Seutter (the Brass Jack novels) and Maggie Secara ("The Dragon Ring", "King's Raven" and "The Mermaid Stair"), will be doing a panel on creating a fantasy world. It will be recorded for broadcast on line on Krypton Radio (kryptonradio.com) on the following dates and times:
Saturday Sep 27 9PM Pacific
Sunday Sep 28 5AM Pacific
Sunday Sep 28 4PM Pacific
Thursday Oct 2 5AM Pacific
Thursday Oct 2 4PM Pacific
Saturday Oct 4 5AM Pacific

The panel will be presented at The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS).

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Launch Date 31 October 2014!




The novel that almost didn't happen will be published this 31 October, just in time for me to take it to the World Fantasy Convention, this time in Washington D. C.!

I started this book ("Raven's Daughter")  in 1995, got about 56,000 words into it and suffered a total computer crash.  Needless to say, I was heartbroken.  I had a lot of it in longhand, but the prospect of doing it all over again was a bit more than I could bear, so I started in on the two series "The Glastonbury Chronicles" and "Tales of the Dearg-Sidhe" which Pendraig Publishing picked up in 2010.  Then a few months ago my wonderful husband, Jay T. Mayer happened to find a file on one of his old computers.  He had backed up the entire 56,000 words for me and forgotten about it.  It was in a very old form of Word, and on Mac format instead of PC, but with a lot of work he was able to convert it and deliver it to me in a format with which I could work.

Two months later, to the day, I finished the book and turned it in to my publisher, and last night the publication date became finalised.  To say I am elated would be an understatement!

Enjoy!



Friday, August 1, 2014

What's In A Name?

     I just saw the mock-up of the cover for my latest novel.  It was wonderful, except I noticed the title had been changed from The Raven's Daughter to Raven's Daughter.
     "Why?" I asked.  
      Before I had a chance to ponder the question for more than a few seconds my publisher responded that it was a stronger title without the article and that the use of the word the at the beginning of a title was disappearing.
     A sign of the times.  We have gotten so used to texting in shorthand, speaking in shorthand and conversing in shorthand that those wonderful building blocks of speech, articles, are beginning to be banished from our consciousnesses.  I mourn their loss.
     Fast cars, fast food, fast talk.  The use of an article as the beginning word in a title makes it difficult to find the title in a search engine.
     Sigh.
     Yet  I do recognise the truth of it and have been guilty for a long time of the same article abuse, even when referring to the plays of  William Shakespeare.  Tempest, Merchant of Venice, Taming of the Shrew, Winter's Tale...all of these seem to have lost their article when mentioned in conversation and nobody seems to miss them.  Gone also is the initial A in such plays and films as Hard Day's Night and Streetcar Named Desire, which at times is simply called Streetcar.
     Welcome to the twenty-first century.
     As Bob Dylan sang, "The times, they are a-changing."
     Wait...maybe that's where one of the missing articles went...