Responding to Comments

I always love the comments I receive on this blog, and I try (I really do) to respond in a timely fashion with a witty and informative reply. I had a few comments lately that I wanted to share and share my replies because I think a broader audience might like them. (And I feel like I should've been doing this before now, but sometimes my brain is slow.)

First up we have this wonderful comment from I.C. Silverheart:

I just finished Unicorn Bait on my kindle that i got for Christmas only because it was free! I was seriously addicted to it! I couldn't wait for school to be over on Friday so in the last period which was my study hall I pulled out one of the schools laptops and read a whole chapter! When the book ended I was disappointed! I wanted to know what happened next! I'm so glad that you're writing another book! You made it to the top 3 authors on my favorite author list!!!!!!:):):) Take your time writing because right now I'm waiting for two more books! Take as much time as you want because I hope it's as good or better than the first book! I want to be a writer when I grow up and i hope I'm like you! DO NOT change how you write! Let me repeat: DO NOT, DO NOT change how you write! Have I told you enough? Let me tell you a couple more times: DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT, change how you write! I don't care what the other people tell you! If anyone tells you to change how you write punch them in the face and walk away! I would cry if you changed how you write!
If anyone tells you to hurry up and finish your book don't listen to them. They really learn how to wait. Take your time and don't worry if you fall behind, I can wait!!!
You are so great and I love you so much! I hope I can write like you when I grow up! Don't stop writing and what your doing!

My response:

Wow, you are passionate! I love it! I have no plans to change how I write, and if I do say so myself, I think the sequel is shaping up to be better than Unicorn Bait. I got so much wonderful feedback and interesting questions. The answers to these questions are being incorporated into the story. What's amazing to me is that I thought Unicorn Bait would be a stand alone novel, but the out pouring of love and the requests for more have prompted the sequel. Originally, I didn't know if a sequel would be possible, but now I can't imagine it not happening. Thanks so much!

Next is this comment from Angie:

This new system of publishing is really amazing. I like how much closer it brings the reader and the authors. And good luck, the more free time you have to write them more books I get to read!

Angie is referring to my hope of reducing my work schedule at the library to four days a week. This would mean less pay for me but would guarantee more writing time. She also discovered she could put a name in the name/URL option when commenting and not have to supply a URL to have a personalized name appear. You don't have to be "Anonymous" to leave a comment for me. :-)

My response to her:

Angie,

Thanks! I have been able to factor in a day every other week off work to hopefully write, or at least recuperate from the extensive time I spend writing the rest of the week. I'm on a tough schedule right now. It doesn't help any that I'm taking a college course on top of everything. I'm taking Introduction to Computer Graphics. I'm trying to become a better cover art maker. This class is showing me how much I don't know. And I already had a BA in Art! :-p

The other day off each week is actually paid time. I have enough leave built up to do that without affecting my paycheck. I can't do that forever, though!

Now, I have to mention this because it was quite the geekgasm for me. I am a fan of Felicia Day. She has been doing some wonderful stuff the past few years. If you've never watched The Guild, YOU NEED TO WATCH THAT NOW. (Hulu has them all free to watch!)

Felicia is also a voracious reader and is the first author I fanned on Goodreads. She has begun a book club called "Vaginal Fantasy Hangout". She recently requested Sci-Fi vaginal fantasies. What she means by vaginal fantasies are not erotica per se. She means stories that have kick-ass female heroines that have cropped up in genre work. These stories generally have a strong romantic element and sexual content along with the story. I joined the book club and on a the Sci-fi forum commented that I thought Tanith Lee had a few books that fit the bill. The next day, I found a reply from Felicia Day agreeing with me!!! She knows the books I'm talking about and appears to love them as much as I do. I can't tell you how wonderful this is. Felicia Day actually read something I typed! Can I be more geeky? Yes, I can, but I don't know who else to tell about this. No one at work understands, and I don't know if you will as well, but I had to share! (And Angie, this is all proof that you're right--The online age is making readers and authors closer.)

Felicia is doing a video book club as part of the Vaginal Fantasy Hangout. I watched the first one and was entranced. She has assembled a great group of women to talk about books. I highly recommend it. It's informative and very entertaining!

My Review of Blood Price

Blood Price by Tanya Huff

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is actually a reread for me. I’d read the first three in the series and never finished it. I think the series may not have been fully published by then and that’s why I didn’t finish because I really enjoyed the first three books. Recently, I saw on Netflix that they’d made the books into a television series. I put the DVDs in my queue, but I decided that I wanted to finally read the full series first. I purchased the volumes that I didn’t own yet and am set to read them all.

Happily, I didn’t remember much of the plot of Blood Price when I reread it so I could get drawn into the story. Blood Price was published in 1991, well before the urban paranormal explosion. The books were recommended to me by a B. Dalton employee. (I miss that store.) I’d read Anne Rice, Laurell K. Hamilton, and Suzanne Collins before Tanya Huff. And one thing all of those vampires had in common was an aloofness to humans. They did not rub shoulders with us warm-blood folk. So Huff’s Henry Fitzroy was a breath of fresh air with his romance novel writing, condo, and desire for human connection. There was just enough in flashback to establish his character without weighing him down with too much history, and he just seemed so non-grandiose. He was short for Pete’s sake! So yes, I instantly liked Henry Fitzroy, but it was Vicky “Victory” Nelson, who really grabbed my attention, the fallible, everyday human. Her unwillingness to give up in the face of her mounting blindness made her admirable. She was no superhero, no Anita Blake with her superpower necromancy, far from it. Vicky couldn't walk down a street at night without real concern. Not because something would attack her, but because maybe she'd trip on a curb and seriously hurt herself. And the dreaded phone calls from her mother with their eventual guilt trips were a nice touch.

The mystery itself was actually a little too easy. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but the bad guy isn’t that hard to find. Huff does put a lot of it in the killer’s perspective and we get inside his head, but he’s not that complex. I suppose the mystery couldn’t be too complex if Huff wanted to give her characters any time to shine. Several of Fitzroy’s flashbacks were simply for background information about him, not directly involved with the mystery.

I’ll be reading the next in the series soon. I read the first three in the series before stopping, but I have them all now and plan to finish before the end of the year.

On something of a side note, I didn’t realize this until someone in my writing group pointed it out, but Vicky in Scary Mary has the same name as Vicky in the Blood series. I picked Nelson as a last name because it is pretty common in my area. I didn’t remember Victory’s last name was Nelson, too.

View all my reviews

No, I haven't published a new book.

(I wasn't going to comment on this here, but I forgot about the Goodreads widget in the sidebar, so felt my hand was forced.)

You may notice a new book by S.A. Hunter.

It isn't me.

It seems someone else has chosen to publish under this name. I'm not sure how to deal with this. The other S.A. Hunter has also written a fantasy novel. Goodreads has linked the book to my profile, and iTunes pulls the book up when you click the link "Other works by this author". Amazon has a clear delineation between us, but confusion is inevitable. I'm not sure why this other S.A. Hunter decided to use this particular moniker. When I Google myself or search on Amazon, I appear and thus would indicate that using that particular author name may be ill-advised, but I don't know. Maybe I'm inflating my own importance, but it is rather troubling.

The other S.A. Hunter is already on Facebook. Again, that isn't me. I haven't published a page yet. (And doesn't that sound inevitable? You can still vote in the poll and sway me.)

Right now, I'm trying to decide if I should approach this author and/or her publisher. Asking someone to change their author name seems highly presumptuous, but I picked my author name because it was rather distinctive. (And once upon a time, the number one search result for Stephanie Hunter was an Australian escort service. I could not compete with that.)

So, again, no, I haven't published a new book.

2/13/12 ETA: It appears the other author has differentiated herself by changing her author name. The book is no longer on my Goodreads profile.