You are currently browsing the The Mark of Ashen Wings weblog archives for December, 2007.

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Passage to India

drupagliassotti @ December 27, 2007 # No Comment Yet

I’ll be in India from this evening to Jan. 20, so this blog will be quiet for three weeks. I’m one of two professors taking a class of 14 students, and two other adults, overseas. We’ll be seeing Delhi, Amritsar, Varanasi, Agra, Bhanderaj, Jaipur, Mandawa, Chennai, Mahabalipuram, Madurai, Trichy, and Pondicherry. Whew! I’ve never been […]

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On Christmas Gifts

drupagliassotti @ December 26, 2007 # No Comment Yet

About three years ago my sister and I stumbled on a Christmas Eve/Day formula that really works for us: we cook our turkey and have our big meal on Christmas Eve and then spend Christmas Day opening presents, relaxing, eating leftovers, watching movies, and chatting. In addition, our Christmas Eve dinner has been boiled down […]

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Harrow Update

drupagliassotti @ December 22, 2007 # No Comment Yet

Whew! I’ve finished editing and lining up the January issue and paying all the authors — usually I pay them once the issue is out, but since I’ll be gone for so long, I figured this time I’d pay in advance. …I used to pay authors upon acceptance, but then an author I’d paid turned […]

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Interview at Fantasy Literature

drupagliassotti @ December 21, 2007 # No Comment Yet

Katherine Hooper of FantasyLiterature.Net, a professor herself over in Florida, interviewed me and asked for a copy of Chapter 1 of Clockwork Heart. Paula Guran of Juno Books kindly gave me permission to send it, so you can now read a sneak preview! Keep in mind, though, that the final version of the chapter may […]

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Verb Tenses: Simple Past vs. Past Perfect

drupagliassotti @ December 19, 2007 # No Comment Yet

Why do American writers have such difficulty grasping the difference between tenses? I can only imagine that it’s the collective-cultural result of our being traumatized by hellishly pedantic high-school English grammar teachers who forced us to diagram sentences, a pastime I thoroughly detested as a teenager but have started to believe may have deserved closer […]

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Cover & Countdown

drupagliassotti @ December 18, 2007 # No Comment Yet

This is the revised cover to Clockwork Heart — I have no idea if it’ll be the final version or not! But things must be counting down, because I’ve been asked for the dedication, bio, and author photo.
I hate having photographs taken of myself. That’s why so many photos I voluntarily put up of myself […]

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Simplicity & This Blog

drupagliassotti @ December 14, 2007 # No Comment Yet

Yesterday I was writing down a list of potential New Year’s resolutions to muse over and found myself going back and forth on one of them: “Turn my blog into a paying gig.” On the one hand, I believe I could make this blog a successful source of information about writing, editing, and getting published. […]

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Megane & Clockwork Heart

drupagliassotti @ December 10, 2007 # No Comment Yet

I’ve been reading Ouran High School Host Club and have been amused by Kyouya, the glasses-wearing “shadow king” in the host club. I’ve also learned the proper term for his type of character.
The term for glasses-wearing male characters in manga is apparently megane, “spectacles,” and they tend to share similar characteristics: they’re intellectual; quiet; often […]

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Flesh & Spirit, Necropolis Railway, Orphan’s Tale 2

drupagliassotti @ December 10, 2007 # No Comment Yet

I highly recommend Flesh and Spirit by Carol Berg, but be warned; although the book doesn’t say so, it’s the first of two. However, since the sequel, Breath and Bone, is due out in January 2008, you might as well read it now. The book is about Valen, a pureblood refugee from his abusive family […]

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Harrow 2008

drupagliassotti @ December 7, 2007 # No Comment Yet

We’re plugging away on The Harrow still; the December issue is online and I’m starting to edit the January 2008 issue early because I’ll be off to India from Dec. 28 to Jan. 20. Plans are in the works for The Harrow’s next anthology; an announcement will go out soon, but it’s going to […]

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