#james scott spaid

[kvalenagle]

There we go =] With Audible, I believe Pridelord's audiobook is up on most stores/libraries. Yay! https://www.audible.com/pd/B0DCGTX3QN

[kvalenagle]

Mronk!

I'm lucky that I have an audiobook narrator who loves birds so he'll see a skraark, oo-awk, or aqesgiq and know it's a specific bird's call.

I would not blame another narrator for seeing a ptarmigan gryphon go aqesgiq and thinking, "I'm not saying that."

[kvalenagle]

Pridelord audiobook update: 9 of 71 Chapters Recorded.

[kvalenagle]

Me trying to provide helpful clues for both myself and James Scott Spaid, the audiobook narrator, when it comes to which "a motmot" is which.

"Yes?" (Motmot who sings songs about Stripes' stripes) "No." (Motmot who solves all problems using strips of leather) "Brace yourself!" (Motmot who likes water slides)

🎨 @toadalled

[kvalenagle]

I just realized that it's not just that a lot of GryphIns fan art hasn't shown up on Tumblr yet, but also Glenn Birmingham's Dragon Source. Well, since it's National Appreciate a Dragon Day, let's fix that, starting with @toadalled's wonderful Stekin pieces, some of the very first. Glenn has a tendency to stumble across random queer frogs or bug plushies in the wild and send them to Smatterbrain, and if I remember correctly, these were her way of saying thank you for all the gay frogs. Stekin is one of the two protagonists of the Reunification series by Glenn Birmingham. The first book follows Arten, a girl with magical fire burning its way out of her, and Stekin, a frosty dragon trying to get her to safety before the church finds her. While Stekin is hiding in human form for most of the first book, later entries take place inside a city of dragons. Though my favorite exchange from Dragon Source is... Arten: "But where does the tail go when you transform?" Stekin: "That is a very rude question!" Glenn's recovering from long COVID complications and only recently has become just well enough to do some writing. Dragon Source and Dragon Bound are available now (books2read.com/dragon source), and the third book is in the end of story edits, wrapping up an unfinished subplot, though there's no ETA while he's recovering. If you'd like to listen on audio, both of the first two books have been recorded by James Scott Spaid and are undergoing audioproofing.

[kvalenagle]

Okay, I've been summoned to Tumblr by cute Satra and Lei fan art, so I should probably introduce myself and my books. Hello! I'm Vale, and I write creature fantasy as K. Vale Nagle. If you like interesting gryphons, you're in the right place: aquatic diving petrel/fishing cat gryphons, poisonous hooded pitohui/tiger gryphons, pretty gyrfalcon/snow leopard gryphons, intimidating Haast's eagle/saber-toothed tiger gryphons, soggy sandgrouse/sand cat gryphons, and a lot more. My series are epic fantasy using mostly real (though sometimes extinct) animals, free of humans but full of queer characters, intrigue, large battles, and ecological apocalypses. My cover art is by Jeff Brown, with interior graphite pieces by Brenda Lyons and gryphon chapter headers by Kittrel (whose chibi hearts you may have seen). I also have a short story collection (best read anytime after Starling, book three) with a beak-cute lesbian gryphon love story with terror birds, a Gryphon vs. Nature blizzard apocalypse tale, a Christmas-y story, and something pretty close to zombies. I've also written a full novel set in the world of Dire by John Bailey called Coldbright which can be found in the Tales of Feathers & Flames anthology. If you like GryphIns but you want something with more mystery, almost horror, as told through the eyes of a snarky little opinicus and his dire gryphon ex-boyfriend, it's a great read this time of year. I love and appreciate all the fan mail, fan fiction, fan letters, and people reaching out about this series. I'm a little slow replying, as I started writing the series right after getting diagnosed with a catastrophic autoimmune system. The treatments are pretty intense, and it's easiest for me to spend my time and energy writing. I used to have a few pen names across several genres, but for the most part, all of my energy goes into finishing up GryphIns. I'm married to dragon author Glenn Birmingham, so if you've seen us posting pictures of our cats and thought it's strange they share a name, they're the same cats. And that's about it. Just a queer author writing gryphony books when I'm not walking my cat. A few common answers to questions: Q: There are sometimes typos in social media, why is that? A: Catastrophic APS means I've had a stroke (and associated memory loss), so when a copy editor isn't coming up behind me, there'll be doubled words and typos from time-to-time. I used to worry about them, since they don't look good if you're an author! But I'd rather reply to fan letters and kind posts. I think if you've read my author notes at the back of my books, you know to expect a few doubled words here and there. Q: When you say a queer author, what do you mean? A: Since people ask about own voices and I have a lot of lgbtqia+ characters in my books, I'm pan, demi, trans, and genderfluid. I'm lucky enough to have a lot of queer friends and first readers who make sure I don't mess up any characters. Q: When's the next GryphIns novel coming out? A: Some years, I spend a lot of my time fighting health insurance battles, and it slows me down. Pridelord (#8) is currently in line edits. It's twice as long as Eyrie and three times as long as Coldbright, so it's a pretty big book! It shouldn't be too much longer. You'll know it's just about time because you'll hear James Scott Spaid talk about narrating the audiobook. Q: How many books will there be in GryphIns? A: I'm famous for underestimating how many books it takes to finish a series. My other pen names all wrote short stories and standalone novels, so my proposal for GryphIns originally had five books. Jeff Brown is wrapping up the cover for Saberbeak (#9) and Nighthaunt (#10). If I end up needing one more book to finish, though, don't be too surprised.

[kvalenagle]

If you're a patron at any tier that gets my ebooks, there might be something waiting for you on Patreon =] Happy reading! And if you're not, did you know that patrons get ebooks or audiobooks early? https://www.patreon.com/kvalenagle (Proof copies of the paperbacks and hardcovers coming soon, and James Scott Spaid has started recording the audiobook.)

[kvalenagle]

Spent last night chatting with James Scott Spaid, my audiobook narrator, about how challenging and rewarding it was for him to voice a character who grows up and transitions over the course of the first five GryphIns books.

("Don't you dare hurt Lei!" is a common fan mail I get.)

[kvalenagle]

Merry Gryphmas, everyone! To help get you through any holiday travel, feel free to grab a free copy of the beak-cute lesbian gryphon love story with terror birds, "Blue Eyes," on audiobook. Read by James Scott Spaid <3 https://dl.bookfunnel.com/ueigpx6kur

[kvalenagle]

It's a chaotic week, and there's no better way to greet a grumpy Wednesday than with this @merteazy Blinky art <3 It's a week of doctor visits and medical tests, which always leaves me grumpy because I can't always get any editing done. Pridelord is mostly through line edits, which are going fairly fast, but I needed to take a break to add in a new Whisper scene. I'll avoid spoilers, but there was a subplot I considered taking on to Saberbeak before finishing it, and when I was doing my line edits, I realized that I had the perfect moment to pay it off right then. It just required a few nudges. Most books don't get scenes added in the line edit phase, but the large ones like Ashen Weald or Crackling Sea had the same thing come up. If you're new to book creation, everyone is a little different, but my novels usually go through the following phases. Story-related ones are slow, the rest can be as fast as a single day or two. 1. I write the book. This is actually the first and second draft. Before I start writing for the day, I read and edit what I wrote yesterday. That helps keep it fresh in my mind. I ran a test early on when it took me an hour to write a thousand words, and I found that if I had just read/edited the last thousand words I wrote, it took about 30 minutes, and the writing went twice as fast. So this turned out to be a 'free' second edit as I went along. 2. I read through it in Scrivener (the most common novelist word processor) and make changes. My goal here is to fix story issues, foreshadowing, etc. 3. I read through it out loud with my spouse. My brain will often leap from A to D, and his brain needs B and C to be there. If I'm reading it out loud, he can tell me what he needs to make sure the logic flows, and I can usually find a way of saying it that works perfectly for me, too. And reading aloud catches some errors that I wouldn't normally find. 4. I hand it off to my developmental editor, Dustin Porta, and my beta readers. These steps used to be separate, but there's a lot of redundancy here. It's also a case where sometimes Dustin has a feeling but we need data from how fans think. A lot of Foultner and Henders scenes get saved here. I'll go through his feedback (~500+ fixes, some bigger than others), and go through beta feedback. Beta reader probably deserves its own post, but the biggest problem with editing isn't finding problems... it's the author editing out the good parts. Beta readers are flagging their favorite bits first, before the mistakes, so I don't delete, say, Cherine from the novel. 5. I print it out and do a line edit myself. This fixes prose, pacing, language, imagery, and echoes. This is about making sure the language compliments the story and doesn't detract from it. 6. It goes off to Tim Marquitz, my copy editor. This is spelling/grammar/etc. He catches the grammar things that're invisible to me. 7. I do a final printed read-through with a green pen (things I want to fix but probably shouldn't so I don't introduce new errors) and red pen (things that if I saw in someone else's book, I'd consider an error, and must fix.) There's usually a proofreader in here, too. You expect to catch 95% errors from each pass. This is often when the Patreon supporters get their ebook version =] Though it gets updated with the release version if typos are found after here. 8. The audiobook narrator, James Scott Spaid, begins recording the book. He'll always catch some things that got past everyone else by virtue of saying them out loud and doing the sound engineering. Once he finishes, I listen through, suggest changes if any come up, and an audio proofreader comes in. Usually once I've listened, Patreons get the audiobook. And during this phase, the final formatting and printed proofs are happening since the page count is finalized even if a typo or two gets fixed. And that's it =] Eight big steps from start to finish. The first steps are by far the slowest because they involve story changes.