Countdown to Technically Dead, Day 5

Hello, everyone!

I thought, since Technically Dead is out soon (on the 20th), I'd do a little countdown for you all.

I might be mostly talking about the music of Technically Dead, but I will probably share a lot of other things too, like the faces I see when I think of the characters and things that influenced the story.

And on the day of the release, I'll also be giving away one eBook copy of the book, so you might want to keep an eye on this countdown to learn how you're eligible for the "contest", which won't really be contest at all. ^^

So let us begin.

As I said, music. Many of my stories have a song or a few I associate with them or the events, characters or places, even scenes. So far only my novels have playlists, though.

There's a post somewhere in this blog about the playlist of By Any Other Name, in case you're interested. Just follow the tags.

Technically Dead has even a longer soundtrack, an I keep adding to it occasionally. The latest two additions are Bring Me To Life by Evanescence and Shady by Adam Lambert. Here are the videos for you, I won't spoil who or what I associate the songs with, though. You can read the book and figure it out yourself! :)

I thought I'd share some of the other songs too, but these I can tell you more about... ;)
Just as By Any Other Name's "main theme" was Ghosts of Days Gone By by Alter Bridge, there's one "main them" for Technically Dead as well. This is it:

I love Three Days Grace in general, but when I had just started to write Technically Dead, it hit me that Lost in You was the perfect song for the novel.

Of course I may "see" these songs differently than most readers will, but they're still very strongly "Technically Dead's songs".

Hmm... what next? Well, the funniest thing that I can find from the "soundtrack" is this... :)

Trust me, even when I was writing the book and this song came up as an addition to the soundtrack, I aimed a "really?" at Bran. He insisted. So here it is, Teenage Dream by Katy Perry. I think, even though Bran has never said it, that it represents the naive teenager Bran was when he first met Heath.

As I was writing Bran doing everyday mundane things, like walking from one place to another or working in his office, he was whistling this song in my head a lot.

Moves Like Jagger has been my "earworm" for a long time and apparently I gave it to Bran at some point. However, it doesn't annoy him like it annoys me sometimes, go figure. Yes, writers are a bit odd like that... Nobody ever claimed we were sane... ^^

When I poked at Heath in my head and asked him if he liked contemporary music, he said that he didn't mind it, but that he rarely found any that he truly liked. When I pressed on, he managed to come up with one song that he absolutely loves, but the smile that he gave me was a bit sad, and if you listen to this, you'll know why.

That's about it for today! Because there are almost thirty songs in this list of mine, I'll share with you the Spotify-link to it. Click here to see more. If you don't have Spotify and there's interest, I'll write them all down and make a post or you can email me and ask about the songs if you want.

Tomorrow is all about places and faces, I believe... So see you!

The one where I try not to rant... much.

Lately I've been trying to stay away from Goodreads. Why? Because I seem to be getting a lot of reviews that, positive or slightly less so, miss the story's point completely. Whichever story it is, whatever kind of review it is, I find myself going "did you actually READ the book?" or "wasn't that obvious?" way, WAY too often.

One of my pet peeves is people who read my shifter book, Chuffed, and compare it to the kind of books I talked about in my blog post at Sue's blog. Or when they just don't seem to read the book carefully or slowly enough and then complain about things they missed because they really didn't see them, I guess?

For example, I've had one or two complaints about the shifters in Chuffed going to have their blood tested to be able to bareback. The complaint is that they don't go to the hospital for other reasons, but they do for this? Like it's an OUTRAGE for this to happen. My question to these readers is, where in the book does it say they can't go to a hospital/clinic to have their blood drawn? It's made very clear--if you read the book, that is--that they won't go to a hospital when they're in serious pain because that causes an involuntary shift and they need to stay hidden from the human eyes. Getting your blood drawn wouldn't cause this...?

Or maybe they think that there's something in the blood that would expose the shifters somehow? This is not even talked about in the book, but now that I'm talking about it here, no. There's not a thing in their blood that someone could see and think odd while taking a standard STD-test.

Another thing that comes to mind is about Thank My Lucky Scars, my novella about a bike messenger and a porn star who fall in love. The complaint about this story seems to be that it's ridiculous/stupid/pretentious/hypocritical/whatever that while the guys don't have sex, the porn star goes and has sex on the job.

Now, I don't understand this at all. Honestly. Let's say you're in a tentative relationship with someone who doesn't drink wine. Your job, however, is wine tasting. That's all you do all day every day, taste wines. Because your romantic interest doesn't drink wine, do you stop doing your job?

I know it's not the same, sex and wine are hardly the same (though some say both can be near religious experiences...). My point here is that IT IS A JOB. Do you stop doing your job for your lover who, by the way, understands the nature of your job completely?

Or maybe these people who complain about this aspect of the story don't understand porn? Don't approve of it? Or just find porn dirty and disgusting, unless they're watching it when it's SUPER HOT. But god damn it if those guys have a real life outside their jobs! That's just DISGUSTING!

Okay. I think I'm done ranting now. ^^

There are several other things I don't understand about some reviews or random comments I see about some of my stories, but then again, that won't prevent me from writing other things people won't approve of or understand. In some ways, writing a completely understandable book and trying to see how many people don't actually care to read it carefully enough is... fun. In some masoctistic way, at least.

Another pet peeve? When people round down their .5 ratings on Goodreads. That's just mean, really. But that's a whole other rant for some other time.

(PS. There will be a contest at some point soon, you can win a paperback of Technically Dead and whatnot... Keep your eye on this blog and my Facebook and Twitter too. Just remember I'm usually not that SFW with my Twitter links... ;))

Contest Winners!

I promised to post about who won the contest I held at the Dreamspinner Blog.

I've contacted the winners and they've selected their prizes. :) If you didn't get an email, sorry, you didn't win this time.

BUT! There will be other contest this summer and in the autumn, so don't worry, you'll have your chance!

Thank you so much, everyone who participated. I loved to read your answers. :)

Once again, congratulations Jessie, Monica, Judi and Sabrina, I hope you enjoy your prizes!

Have a nice springtime!

Heads Up!

Okay, since I have so many stories coming up like right now or soon, I'm planning on holding a little contest this spring.

Actually it might be a big contest, since it will have some nice prizes, after all. And I totally mean nice on my scale. I'm talking about free ebooks of my three releases (Lucky, Something New, and Thank My Lucky Scars), maybe a small gift card for an eBook store of your choice, some swag... That sort of thing.

So, keep your eyes glued to this space, people! Soon enough you'll have some information and possibly some neat prizes!

That said, Something New is out today and you can already find it from the Dreamspinner Press store and at least All Romance Ebooks and later from Amazon and all the other places DSP novellas usually are sold.