Kalayna Price

When it comes to politically correct terms for gender roles, anyone who knows me personally long ago gave me up as a lost cause. I don't care one bit about the generalized 'man' being a collective for both males and/or females such as in words like mankind and chairman. I find the insertion of the word woman in such words to be amusing, and the substitution of 'person' downright silly. In person, I'm not even particularly inclined to differentiate male and female versions of long held titles. For instance, I may mention the party's host, and mean the woman hosting it. And as far as new 'titles', well, expect an eye-roll if someone refers to me as an author ess . In print, my characters speak and think in terms that are in line with their views. Unless they are particularly pushy in the politically correct department, my characters typically follow common gender grammar rules simply because 1) so far I haven't had a good reason for one not to an...

I like pirates. The fictional kind. You know, big hats, swords, and a penchant for rum. I really like sky pirates in their clockwork ships. I don’t like internet pirates. Not at all. They make me sad. Google alerted me this morning that someone made a copy of OB available for download. It was suggested that I should feel flattered that someone liked my book enough to give it away. I don’t feel flattered. I want to cry. On average, authors make 8% of the cover price from books (that means, on your average 7.99 mass market book the author makes about 64 cent) but they make 0% on pirated downloads. Everything comes down to numbers in publishing, so not only do pirated downloads affect an author’s bottom line, but they can actually jeopardize her ability to convince publishers to purchase future books from her. Which translates to no sequels, and the author possibly having to use a pseudonym to sell another series. Now, one little download site on my one little book isn’t the bigg...

I'm starting to think my post office has something against me. Mailing a package should be a simple process, and my stress should be over what is in the package, not how it is getting to its destination, right? Well, this week, that hasn't been the case. (Edit: Not that the stress over what is in the package was missing. I've just had extra stress with shipping.) I had an important package I needed to ship this week. I'm accustomed to shipping manuscripts and books at this point, so I know the whole 16 oz rule (in which any package weighing over a certain amount has to be shipped from the post office.) So, early this week, I walked up to my local post office and shipped my package. The meter wasn't working, so the woman at the desk sold me stamps--which in hindsight, I should have taken as a warning. Anyway, I didn't, but I did feel insecure enough to pay extra to track the package. I'm glad I did. My very important package floated in nowhere-space for a w...

I was having a conversation with my hubbie the other day when it ended abruptly with the comment that I didn't live in the real world. Now there are lots of reasons someone could look at me and say I didn't live in the real world. The most obvious reason might be the fact I write fantasy so I spend a lot of time thinking about things and people who don't exist. Or maybe the fact I don't work a regular nine to five in an office, but spend ungodly amounts of time in the spare bedroom I've converted into a office/studio unless I have to run out and see a client face-to-face. Being able to go to work in my PJ's tends to earn some people's scorn. But neither of these reasons is why my hubbie accused me of not living in the real world. Why then? Because I think paying $100 for a pair of shoes is absolutely preposterous. I've always been under the impression clothes should be inexpensive and last forever. (Which I'm reminded is not true every time somethin...

Be warned, this is a bit of a rant: I think I burnt out. I have been spending around 14 hours a day for the last week (or two) trying to pound out and polish that draft of DH. I finally finished, printed the thing out, and now I can hardly stand to look at it. The hard part is done, I even thoroughly enjoyed the hard parts of the re-write (the manuscript ended at just above 95k words, but about 15k were brand new shiny words because I deleted a good deal and it was only 85k before.) What I have left a monkey could do. I just need to read the draft on paper to find the typing errors and keep an eye out for awkward sentences. But every time I sit down with the pages, my mind rebels and I can only make it through a few chapters at a time. I get easily distracted, what was funny before is boring now, the description is dull…all and all I want to burn the darn MS. (Which I can’t do because I told my agent I would have it in the mail in the next few days) I think I’ve just looked at it too m...

I feel like I have been knitting and knitting and knitting constantly, with the only interruptions being sleep and baking cookies. I haven't even opened a word document since Saturday (well, except to spellcheck these short blogs. I couldn't spell my way out of a hat.) The next time I decide it's a great idea to knit gifts for Christmas but wait until only a week ahead of time to begin said knitting, someone kick me.