Reaper's Rhythm Blog Tour - A Teaser Post!

So, as I mentioned in my last post, I'm currently helping with a blog tour to promote the book Reaper's Rhythm, by Clare Davidson, who is nice enough to follow me on Twitter. Today we have a teaser post! A picture of one of the characters: Charley, the main character's sister, whom everyone says committed suicide. But did she?

And we also have a snippet, to go along with the picture:

"An oversized photograph of Charley stands on an easel at the front. I freeze and stare at her charming smile, unable to squeeze a breath out of my lungs. I recognise the photo. It was taken the evening of her year 11 prom. She was wearing a peach ball gown with a sequined bodice that wrapped tightly around her torso. The skirt splayed out like a waterfall. Her blond curls were piled on top of her head and her makeup was expertly applied to accentuate her angular cheek bones and her full red lips. It’s exactly how I remember Charley: beautiful and confident."

And, there you have it! As I said in the last post, I've been reading the book myself... It's pretty good, and I'm enjoying it. The official release is Friday. You should check it out! And if you're not convinced, you'll have more proof next time.

About Reaper's Rhythm:

When everyone thinks your sister committed suicide, it’s hard to prove she was murdered.

Kim is unable to accept Charley’s sudden death. Crippled by an unnatural amnesia, her questions are met with wall after wall. As she doubts her sanity, she realises her investigation is putting those around her in danger.

The only person who seems to know anything is Matthew, an elusive stranger who would rather vanish than talk. Despite his friendly smile, Kim isn’t sure she can trust him. But if she wants to protect her family from further danger, Kim must work with Matthew to discover how Charley died – before it’s too late.

  

About Clare Davidson:

Clare Davidson is an independent writer, based in Lancaster. Clare is a high school teacher, mother and character-driven fantasy writer. Clare was born in Northampton and lived in Malaysia for four and a half years as a child, before returning to the UK to settle in Leeds with her family. Whilst attending Lancaster University, Clare met her future husband and never left. They now share their lives with their young daughter, a cranky grey cat and an insane white kitten.

She published her first novel, Trinity in July 2012. Trinity is a young adult, fantasy novel, which currently has seventeen five star reviews on Amazon UK.

Her second novel, Reaper’s Rhythm, is due to be released on the 26^th July 2013. Also aimed at a young adult audience, Reaper’s Rhythm is an urban fantasy with a dash of mystery.

Ways to connect with Clare Davidson:

Website: http://claredavidson.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClareMDavidson

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClareMDavidson

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6445758.Clare_Davidson

New releases mailing list: http://eepurl.com/zpjGf

Reaper's Rhythm by Clare Davidson - Cover Reveal

Hello there, friends! So it's been awhile, but I have news! Faithful readers may recall that, back in October, I had the opportunity to do a guest post over at the blog of author Clare Davidson. Those of you who don't remember, it was a piece on character creation and development, and you can check it out here. Well, Clare is just about to release her new novel, a Young Adult Urban Fantasy called Reaper's Rhythm. Here's the blurb:

"When everyone thinks your sister committed suicide, it’s hard to prove she was murdered.

Kim is unable to accept Charley’s sudden death. Crippled by an unnatural amnesia, her questions are met with wall after wall. As she doubts her sanity, she realises her investigation is putting those around her in danger.

The only person who seems to know anything is Matthew, an elusive stranger who would rather vanish than talk. Despite his friendly smile, Kim isn’t sure she can trust him. But if she wants to protect her family from further danger, Kim must work with Matthew to discover how Charley died – before it’s too late."

I've been reading the book myself the last few days, and it's pretty good so far. Not only that, but through the magic and camaraderie of blogging, I have the honor of helping her promote the book.

Yep, I'm one of the stops on her blog tour, so over the next couple of weeks, I'll be posting some cool content related to Clare and Reaper's Rhythm. Today we begin with the cover reveal! So here it is, the cover of Clare Davidson's upcoming YA novel, Reaper's Rhythm!

*drumroll*

There you have it! Tune in next week for more blog tour adventures!

About Clare Davidson: 

Clare Davidson is an independent writer, based in Lancaster. Clare is a high school teacher, mother and character-driven fantasy writer. Clare was born in Northampton and lived in Malaysia for four and a half years as a child, before returning to the UK to settle in Leeds with her family. Whilst attending Lancaster University, Clare met her future husband and never left. They now share their lives with their young daughter, a cranky grey cat and an insane white kitten.

She published her first novel, Trinity in July 2012. Trinity is a young adult, fantasy novel, which currently has seventeen five star reviews on Amazon UK.

Her second novel, Reaper’s Rhythm, is due to be released on the 26^th July 2013. Also aimed at a young adult audience, Reaper’s Rhythm is an urban fantasy with a dash of mystery.

 

Ways to connect with Clare Davidson:

Website: http://claredavidson.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClareMDavidson

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClareMDavidson

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6445758.Clare_Davidson

New releases mailing list: http://eepurl.com/zpjGf

Splitting Sequels...

I find it somewhat distressing, this recent trend of film adaptations of books being split up into multiple parts. First there was Harry Potter: All the other books, they just cut subplots out left and right in order to fit everything into the allotted 2 1/2 hour time frame. But the final book... They decided there was just so much stuff, they couldn't possibly cut it, or fit it all into one movie, so we got Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: part 1, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: part 2.

Then along came Twilight, announcing that, wouldn't you know it? The final book of THEIR series is just too big and grandiose to fit into one movie too! So they released The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - part 1, and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - part 2.

After that was The Hobbit. Peter Jackson said right from the beginning that he planned to split the film up into two parts. But then, all of a sudden, not long before part 1 was released, he announced that, try though he might, he just couldn't cut this epic saga down to two films, so he would have to make it into three. It didn't matter that Mr. Jackson previously managed to fit each book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy into just ONE movie apiece, even though they're all longer than The Hobbit. The Hobbit is different, and requires a trilogy all its own.

And now, I've just been on IMDb and discovered another addition to this ever-growing trend. Mockingjay, the third book in the Hunger Games trilogy, is going to be split into two parts as well. They haven't even begun pre-production yet, and they already know they need more time for this book than one movie will allow. Even though one movie is fine for the first and second books, it won't do for the third.

What distresses me about this trend is not the blatant Hollywood Greed that it demonstrates, wanting to squeeze that extra bit of profit out of their series. I'm in marketing, so I understand the compulsion. If it's something I want to see badly enough, I'll gladly pay for it again. If not, then I won't even pay for it once, so what does it matter to me?

No, what irks me about it is that there's no room for this kind of doubling up on the book end of things. If I write a trilogy of books, Hollywood can sell at least four movies from it. But I only get to sell three books! If I want to sell a fourth book, I have to start from scratch and write another book! Which Hollywood can then turn into two more movies! Where's the justice in that?

Fortunately, I've come up with a solution. I'm going to start work on a new Young Adult trilogy. I'm going to call it Sequel Splitters. The individual books won't have titles, because by the time they get to the film stage, they'll all be called by the name of the first book anyway. New Moon and Breaking Dawn are still the Twilight Saga. Catching Fire and Mockingjay are just the Hunger Games books. Heck, I'm a big Harry Potter fan, and even I just refer to them most of the time as "the fourth Harry Potter book, the fifth Harry Potter book," etc. So why come up with extra titles if no one's going to use them?

No, the first book is just going to be called "Sequel Splitters: Part 1." The second will be "Sequel Splitters: Part 2." Then the third book I'm going to cut in half and release the two halves a few months apart. "Sequel Splitters: Part 3 - Part 1" and "Sequel Splitters: Part 3 - Part 2."

Then, when Hollywood gets around to adapting them, they can split BOTH final books into two movies. "Sequel Splitters: Part 3 - Part 1, Part 1," and so on. They may decide to throw in a Roman numeral or a "The Final Chapter" or something, to keep things from getting too convoluted, but I rather hope not.

But whatever they decide to call them, the result is the same: Four books and six movies out of one trilogy. Publishers and producers alike will be practically when I try to sell them on this. It can't fail! We'll all be rich! I just need to...


Wait, what's that? Plot? Characters? Actual words written on the page? Spoilsports.

Creative Mathematics...

For today's adventure in freelance writing, we conduct a math experiment.

The assignment: A blog post. "10 Tips for Designing a Restaurant Menu."

The dilemma: After spending a very long time, painstakingly researching and choosing 10 separate tips that involve designing a restaurant menu, it comes to your attention that tip number 5 and tip number 6 are pretty much exactly the same tip. There's slightly different information in each, but it's fairly obvious that this is essentially the same tip told two different ways. More importantly, you feel confident this will be fairly obvious to your editors.

The problem: Is it possible to combine tips 5 and 6 into one, without sacrificing any of the tips in the post and still coming out with an even 10 at the end?

The solution: Yes. Apparently it is possible. Specific details as to how this was accomplished remain a mystery. I'm confident I have the write answer, but... Please don't ask me to show my work.

My (not so) Awesome New Year's Resolution.

A couple of days ago, on January 1st, I was chatting with a friend, when I noticed something: I use the word "awesome" a whole lot. It's a very versatile word. It works as an all-purpose positive adjective:

"That was an awesome meal!"
"That movie looks awesome!"
"Thanks for getting the door for me. You're awesome!"

 As well as an all-purpose positive exclamation:

"You're checking out that new restaurant? Awesome!"
"Awesome! The new season of Psych is airing next month! It's going to be so awesome!"

Often I use it when I can't think of anything else to say:

"So, my uncle is coming to visit from Albuquerque next week."
"Awesome."

It's a word I enjoy, and it lends itself to almost any situation. But I'm a writer. It's my job to think about word choice more deeply than that. And so, since it was January 1st, I decided, somewhat as a joke, to make it my New Year's Resolution to find some new adjectives and exclamations to use in place of the word "awesome." Not to stop using awesome altogether. Just to inject a bit of variety into my language.

The resolution was, as I say, supposed to be a joke. But then I went to the Thesaurus... There are some really fantastic alternatives to that word. In fact, I just used one in the previous sentence. Some of them may sound a little odd at first, but I think it would be wizard to throw a few of them into my daily conversation. It might spice things up a bit. Here are some of the options I've found to replace the word "awesome":

As an adjective:

Magnificent
Fascinating
Wonderful
Stupendous
Amazing

As an exclamation:

Capital
Boss
Champion
Whiz-Bang (frankly, I may not use this one, interesting as it is, since it always makes me think of a rather unpleasant former boss of mine. Perhaps my next blog will be about my irrational distaste for certain words.)

Not that I didn't know these words before, or don't already use many of them at least occasionally. But it's all about context.

"What did you think of the book you just read?"
"It was magnificent!"

"I just passed the bar exam!"
"Capital!"

Isn't that so much more interesting than the word "awesome"?

So anyway, this will prove to be an interesting experiment, at least for the next few days. Anyone have any other suggestions for word alternatives?

The Superpup Effect...

Years ago, I bought a copy of a movie called "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla." It was dirt cheap, and with a title like that, how could I not? So I brought it home and started to watch it. I got maybe fifteen minutes into it before I had to shut it off. Didn't even get to any scenes of Bela Lugosi. One of the two main characters spent the entire time doing a bad Jerry Lewis impersonation that grated on my nerves like nails on a blackboard. Eventually it got to the point where I just couldn't continue. And so the DVD sat around for years, collecting dust, and I hardly dared to look at it, much less try to watch it again.

Flash forward to a couple of years ago. A friend of mine loaned me a boxed set of Superman DVDs. In addition to all the mainstream Superman movies, it was loaded with special features and obscure stuff that most people had never even heard of, much less seen. Among these things was a failed pilot called "The Adventures of Superpup."

Adventures of Superpup was conceived because George Reeves had killed himself (or possibly died under mysterious circumstances, if you've seen Hollywoodland) while the Superman TV show was at the height of its popularity. And in the wake of this tragedy, the network executives proceeded to ask one question: "Is there any way we can keep making money off of Superman?" There were still a bunch of sets left over from the show. There were still a bunch of kids who wanted to see Superman, and would pay big money for whatever cereal he endorsed. So a pilot was produced, and that pilot was The Adventures of Superpup. It used whatever was left over from the Superman TV show, only instead of people the show was about dogs. Played by little people wearing dog masks, with character names like "Bark Bent" and "Pamela Poodle," who were reporters for the Daily Bugle.

If you're thinking that sounds awful, you don't know the half of it. It's physically painful to sit through. I could drive myself half mad trying to comprehend exactly what any individual person involved in the production of this pilot could possibly have been thinking at the time, but I'd really rather not give it any more thought than I have to. Suffice it to say, this was a terrible TV-watching experience.

So after this abomination was over, I went over to the shelf where my copy of Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla was sitting, virtually untouched for a good seven or eight years. I popped it in the DVD player and proceeded to watch it, beginning to end, without so much as a cringe or a flinch. Up until that moment, it had been the worst cinematic monstrosity I had ever seen in my life. But now suddenly, by comparison, it wasn't all that bad.

I call this the Superpup Effect. When you endure something so abysmal that anything else seems fully tolerable, almost easy, by comparison. Frequently accompanied by the assertion, "Yeah, this is bad... But hey, at least it's not as bad as Superpup!"

A Strange Affliction...

There's something that happens to me every once in awhile, that I just can't explain. Honestly, there are a number of things that happen to me that I can't explain, but this one in particular stands out at the moment. It's a very minor issue, not like a disease or terrible hardship. Just an oddity.

Every so often--from a few months to a couple of years apart--I get the overwhelming urge to watch the movie Lucky Number Slevin. Most of the time, I'm only barely aware that the movie exists (I assume this is the natural state in which most people exist with regards to this film), and can go ages without giving it a single thought. But then all of a sudden, I think to myself, "Wow, I really want to watch Lucky Number Slevin!" Which is not such a terrible thing, I guess. There are plenty of much worse movies I could watch. It has Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley, and Stanley Tucci in it, after all, not to mention Lucy Liu. But what makes it so strange is that... I was only moderately entertained by the movie the first time I watched it. And it's not one of those movies that gets better and better over time, either. I still find it only moderately entertaining. I'm also not a big fan of Josh Hartnett.

But for some inexplicable reason, every once in awhile, I just feel like I have to watch the movie. And it's not a particularly easy task. I don't own it because, as I've said, it's only an average film at best. It's not available for Instant Viewing on Netflix, it's not a film they show on TV very frequently, and it doesn't appear to be on YouTube in its entirety, like a lot of films are. I always check, just to be sure.

I suppose I could pay to watch it on Amazon Instant, or put it at the top of my Netflix queue and watch it in a day or two... But it never seems worth it, because, much as I want to watch it, I know in my heart it's only a mediocre movie. So I usually end up not watching the movie. I just bear with it, and eventually the feeling passes.

The very odd thing is that this overwhelming, inexplicable urge is how I ended up seeing the movie in the first place. Before the film's release, I saw the trailer and it looked pretty stupid. I promptly forgot all about it. Then, awhile later, a few weeks after the movie came out, I suddenly said to myself, completely out of the blue, "You know, I should totally go see that movie!" And I was really excited about it, too. So I paid to see it in the theater. It was OK. And I promptly forgot about it again, until maybe a year later, when I decided I really wanted to watch it a second time.

It kind of makes me wonder... Did this ever happen to me BEFORE the movie Lucky Number Slevin came out? There have been plenty of times in my life when I've really wanted something, but had no idea what it was. Could these have been early manifestations of Slevin Syndrome, that my brain just didn't know how to interpret, because the movie hadn't yet been made? I think this would be an issue worth considerable pondering, if I were ever to take up getting stoned.

So anyway, the other night, I happened to be flipping through the channels, and I noticed Lucky Number Slevin was about to be on, so I DVR'd it. And now I'm thinking of watching it. And thinking... "Meh. It's not really that great of a movie." Guess I'll just keep it around until the inevitable Slevin Syndrome sets in again...