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Monthly Archives: December 2010

Twelve Days of Christmas Videos – To The Manger

So how many of you took part in Nativity Plays as kids, where you’d use tinsel on a bent hanger for a halo and bathrobes for shepherds’ frocks? When I was a preteen, I directed a number of these, including one with a science fiction theme: the Nativity in outer space. (It was a Unitarian church, what can I say.) Were you in plays? Where and who put it on? What sets and costumes did you use? Did you sing Christmas carols or just read the New Testament as though it were a script? To tell! Don’t be shy. 🙂

Behold the New Cover Art

Here it is! The new cover art for the first Dindi book, now known as Initiate: The Unfinished Song, Book One. The model is Jessica Trescott, of Faestock on deviantART. The pixie is my very first artwork done in Poser. I’m still not good enough make realistic looking people in Poser, and I don’t want androids on my cover, since this isn’t science fiction. But I think it works well enough for a pixie. What do you think?

Here’s the back copy:

DEADLY INITIATION

A Bumbling Girl
Dindi can’t do anything right, maybe because she spends more time dancing with pixies than doing her chores. Her clan hopes to marry her off and settle her down, but she dreams of becoming a Tavaedi, one of the powerful warrior-dancers whose secret magics are revealed only to those who pass a mysterious Test during the Initiation ceremony. The problem? No-one in Dindi’s clan has ever passed the Test. Her grandmother died trying.

An Exiled Warrior
Kavio is the most powerful warrior-dancer in Faearth, but when he is exiled from the tribehold for a crime he didn’t commit, he decides to shed his old life. If roving cannibals and hexers don’t kill him first, this is his chance to escape the shadow of his father’s wars and his mother’s curse. But when he rescues a young Initiate girl, he finds himself drawn into as deadly a plot as any he left behind. He must decide whether to walk away or fight for her… assuming she would even accept the help of an exile.

A Riddle and a Doll
Dindi discovers a strange corncob doll that could hold the secret to the riddle her grandmother couldn’t answer…or could doom Dindi, Kavio and all of Faearth.

Is it clear? Enticing? Let me know if there are sentences that scan awkwardly or something that could be improved!

An earlier version was much shorter, but it was too short, and also, I feared it made the book sound like it was Middle Grade fiction:

The Tavaedies, powerful warrior-dancers, guard the secret magics of Faearth.

Dindi wants to be a Tavaedi. No one in her clan has ever passed the test. Her grandmother died trying.

But Dindi has a plan.

I’m still looking for taglines. For the print version, I’m thinking of using just, “No one in her clan has ever passed the Test. But she has a plan.”

Suggestions are very, very welcome….

Twelve Days of Christmas Videos – Last Minute Gift Ideas

Christmas is about shopping and shameless self-promotion, so this is a good time to remind you that you can give ebooks as presents! (Hint, hint.)

If you’ve already given all fifty of your friends a relatives gifts of my ebooks, and yet you are still frantically running around, trying to buy last minute presents, as I am, I humbly offer some suggestions in the songs below. There are a lot of good versions of Santa Baby. I chose Madanna’s because it has a cute video. And who better than the Material Girl to represent the material side of Christmas?

Wait, you’re objecting that Christmas is not just about shopping and self-promotion?

Weird.

You mean maybe what we want often bears no resemblance whatsoever to what we need…?

Nah.

I REALLY DO NEED A HIPPO!

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