Author blog-in: The Artist’s Inheritance by Juli D. Revezzo

I discovered Kate Policani through a Facebook group run by Novel Publicity, and so now that my book is out I finally have a chance to participate in her “Author Blog-in”. Gotta post about my own books the next few days, and hers and a few other good writers, so please enjoy. Thanks, Kate, for including me…. Oh, and have a groovy, weekend.

The Artist’s Inheritance

(Antique Magic Book #1)

by Juli D. Revezzo

Available now at Amazon and Smashwords

Synopsis:

Settling into their new home in Gulf Breeze, Florida, Caitlin finds strange changes coming over her husband Trevor. He seems obsessed with a beautiful chair he’s carving.

When the nightmares deepen and ghosts begin lurking—she knows something’s not right, and not just her newfound precognitive abilities. It’s the damned chair, she’s sure. Could it be just what it seems: a mundane piece of furniture? If so, why is it attracting dark forces—the forces she suspects drove Trevor’s siblings to insanity and suicide?

Before the same happens to Trevor, Caitlin must convince him to sell his art. But armed with only a handful of allies, and little experience of the supernatural, she must proceed with caution against the hellish forces besieging her family.

If she succeeds, she will break the ancestral curse. If she fails, she may lose forever the one thing she cares about most: her beloved Trevor.

genre: Paranormal Fantasy

Book Two in the Antique Magic series forthcoming: Shadow of What She Once Was

Friendly reminders

Found this prompt on author Marian Allen‘s blog:

Is there something you do or say or eat that reminds you of a particular friend?

Herm…. Yes, I can think of a few things. Let’s see, Ah! Yes. One Christmas, this friend of mine made this fabulous soup. We loved it so much we asked her every Christmas when we get together if she’d make it for us. Love the stuff. It can keep my small family fueled up for days while I write, I’ve found.
I finally asked her for the recipe. Potatoes, vegetables, whipping cream….*drools* I’m getting hungry just thinking about it!

Well I don’t have a picture of it, so I’m going to refer you to All Recipes.com. This is about what my friend’s soup/mine looks like.

So, every time I make that soup, I think of my friend. Thanks, Marian for the question!

For more on author Marian Allen…. (who authored this prompt and who’s fine story “Crumb” appears in the charity anthology Dark Things II: Cat Crimes with my paltry little–plug and *Wayne’s World bow*–story,) see her website: http://www.marianallen.com/

PS. I’m touring Dark Things II: Cat Crimes in several places over the next few weeks. Please don’t forget to, pretty please, pass the word around, to help the kitties, and come on by and say hi!

An artist’s take on SOPA

I’m sure you can’t go anywhere online today without seeing the blacked out sites. Rather than blocking ourselves out, however, shouldn’t we be discussing this subject?

As an artist, I have mixed feelings about this. Ya!!! for being down on pirates, but… a lot of sites and artists offer their stuff up for free (ya!! to them for being aware of the fact that not everyone’s last name is Rockefeller). See that lil ole sexy security guard I have hanging out up top there? That came from a Free to Use (for certain terms of use) stock photo and art site called Freedigitalphotos.net. And its terms stated, yep, it could be used, so there he is to look all sexy and hot and catch any bad guys that slip past my guardian dragons. *weg* In fact its tou states: This royalty free image, “Security”, can be used in corporate, personal, charitable and educational projects: it may be used in web design, printed media, advertising, book covers and pages, music artwork, software applications and much more. For more information please read our terms of use.

I figure being a selling writer falls me under the corporate thing although technically at the moment, I’m hosting and selling other folks. So either way, I’m good with regards to that babe above.

There’s also a FTU section of Dreamstime.com (which is where my gravitar fox came from), and various other FTU sites and artists. Gods bless these sites for having the artists willing to, basically, share their art and photos with the world for things like, websites, book covers for, you know, books that’ll end up for sale, and other sundry uses. I’ve watched the FTU/PTU (pay to use) image use debate for a long time, in the Paint Shop Pro community and I always, always try to find the terms of use on pictures I display for that reason. When in doubt I often don’t use it. (Like mama always says, “When in doubt, throw it out!”)

(Curious about this subject? You can read about it on sites like Copyright Corner and Bel’s Safe Graphics School. The terms for use on art under pay to use art sites like MPT, CILM, AMI, Up Your Art,  and the like usually go something like this: buy the tube for a nominal fee, and certain restrictions apply–usually that the art is *not* allowed to be used to make a profit–like for a book cover or a graphic on an author website. So you’re paying to use it for personal use only (like making an wallpaper for yourself that you won’t share with anyone else–possibly icons but again, I think putting them on an author site violates those tou, so I avoid it).

So, no buying and downloading the pic and putting it on your professional site or a book cover. No taking that cute half-naked guy you spotted on the web and posting his pic for a bit of eye candy.  Think you can claim fair use exists? Not hardly. Not the way so many on the net think. (I could tell you a story about that that goes back decades, but I don’t have the space).

What bothers me most about this SOPA thing, I think, is that I wonder how they will note those sites that use FTU/Free for Commercial use stock art, legitimately, in their “block out” logs. I’m thinking the artists and website owners who use them will have to prove the TOUs of said pic or poem or what-have-you after the fact. So I’m supporting this, on the one hand for myself and my writer friends who’ve been struck by book pirates, but for the users who know about and follow TOUs, to the letter? Not so much. I’m a little worried this is going to hurt them too because this SoPA thing might cover all in one big wet blanket and put the burden of proof on us, the users.

We could debate all day what constitutes copyright infringement and what doesn’t, so I don’t see that there’s a middle ground in this debate. On the one hand, I thank the authors and artists who offer up their works FTU, on the other hand, heck, no one wants to be a thief, right? And certainly we don’t want the government to make that decision for us. So what do you do? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t? But happily, I found a ground of artists who seem to agree. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Check out this site: An open letter to Washington from Artists and Creators.

So for whatever good it’ll do, that’s my three cents.Whatever side of this debate you’re on, I wish you all the freedom make that choice for yourselves.

Why do you blog?

A very astute colleague in the Fantasy, Futuristic,and Paranormal RWA group asked why do we, as writers, blog. You can see her post here. Me? Why do I blog? Well… herm, good question. Dad, were he here,  would probably say it’s because I like to talk. *laughs* But really, let’s see here… I started a website on Angelfire with Webtv, oh, eleven years ago as a way to give my friends a primer in a certain subject–if I remember correctly it was Renaissance art or the perfection that is Michael Moorcock novels or something. I enjoyed it, I enjoyed learning html that was, at the time, new to me.  I kept at it, in between writing, just for something to get the ole mind off the story. You know, fellow writers, sometimes you need to focus your attention on something else to see what needs to be seen in your manuscripts, right?

Then a couple years later, a friend introduced me to livejournal, and ever the perpetual student, I thought I’d give it a shot. It had its drawbacks, style-wise, (I like to control my own look and blogs don’t always allow for that), but all in all, it seems to make more sense to write out things like this babbling-post via a blog, rather than a static html site. Then some …well, not so fun stuff started happening and I began privately blogging about it. It was sometimes easier than writing an email (or twenty) to one friend or other, and what can I say? I enjoyed that connection to my followers–the few I’ve had.

The book reviewing thing (if you’ve followed my links you know what I mean) turned into a more frequent thing somewhere else; it too has its  drawbacks that I won’t get into. Even my little book blog is…well, focused on OPP so to speak and didn’t seem the best place for talking about writing, and my writing, in particular. Nor did my infrequent movie babbling seem to fit there, so I needed some place else to file the rest of the fangirl stuff.

So what’s the deal with this wordpress blog? It started out as an experiment, when a class came along in the RWA Pro loop. Going back to that perpetual student thing I mentioned above. The jury’s still out on it. But at least it’s something new to learn and master! And that’s a good thing, right? Does it get in the way of my writing? Sometimes, in terms of sheer time it takes to write, edit, tweak, and post the post. But really, I look at it this way: If Virginia Woolf was alive today undoubtedly she’d blog. After all, she wrote tons of letters and articles, in between doing her “official writer’s work” of working on her fabulous novels. Is blogging any different? Or is it an updated version of letter and article writing?

Other than that the question came up about promo via blogging. Does it help sell your real writing work? Since I don’t have but short stories…you know, right now, I can’t say. I guess, when I finally have a book published and available for purchase (trying guys and girls, I am!) we’ll see…