Creating a Playlist

For me, writing is best done to the sound of music.
I don't know why. Maybe it stems from most of school work being done around other noisy people. But I always do my best work, and am able to concentrate better, with music playing in the background. Whether that be writing, or studying. Heck, even cleaning the house is better with my own personal soundtrack playing!

When creating a playlist for a specific work in progress I focus on songs that immediately place me into the mindset I am looking for. Sometimes that means songs with lyrics, other times I write to completely instrumental playlists.

Often I find movie soundtracks fantastic places to start. Especially ones that have an epic feel to it such as Pacific Rim, The Shannara Chronicles (Season One), Assassins Creed: Black Flag, and Dragon Age Inquisition. These are usually ones that I write my fantasy books to, however they didn't always do the trick when it came to writing this Urban Fantasy book.

The playlist for the Athruithe books is a bit eclectic, but just listening to it puts me in the mood to write! (Which is kind of the whole idea behind creating a playlist ;) )

As you create them, and work on your projects, it gets easier to identify songs, or scores from movies/video games that work for you. I find myself paying even more attention to the scores as I'm watching movies, and have found some of the most motivational music that way.

So in honor of my latest release, Wolf's Blood, here is the playlist that I listened to when I wrote it. (Songs are in no particular order since I hit "shuffle" when working.)

Pain - Three Days Grace
Animal I Have Become - Three Days Grace
Riot - Three Days Grace
The Arena - Lindsey Stirling
Hold My Heart - Lindsey Stirling (Feat. ZZ Ward)
Keep the Streets Empty (Red Riding Hood Original Picture) - Fever Ray
Shatter Me - Lindsey Stirling (Feat. Lizzy Hale)
She Wolf (Falling to Pieces) - David Guetta (Feat. Sia)
Supermassive Black Hole - Muse
Leave Out All The Rest - Likin Park
I Caught Myself - Paramore
Decode - Paramore
Chasing the Sun - The Wanted
Leave Out All The Rest - Likin Park
What I've Done - Likin Park
New Divide - Likin Park
I Will Not Bow - Breaking Benjamin

Sunday Book Review

This month's book review has been a long time coming...A LONG TIME.
H.L. Burke is an author that honestly, I wish I was more like.
It seems that she is a writing MACHINE.
I swear every time I turn around she is releasing a new book. It feels like she does one every few months. Which is fantastic, and honestly, one of the Indie Authors I aspire to be like.

And yet, for all of my fangirling, I had never read one of her books. *gasp*

So for this month I decided to finally read one. Granted, I did win the copy of this book through a contest. I think it was a "caption this" Facebook contest. But it was random, and I went into reading this with quite low expectations as the last two Indie books (by different authors) I had to stop reading and put down.


So without further ado, I bring you Coiled!

Book Blurb from Amazon:

A healing touch. A hideous face. A looming curse.

As the ugly twin to a perfect sister, Princess Laidra lives her life in the shadows—until her parents offer her as bait for a giant serpent.

Her escape attempt leaves her shipwrecked on a secluded island with only one inhabitant: Prince Calen, who lives under a curse. If anyone looks upon him, he turns into a giant serpent. Speaking to him in the darkness, Laidra sees past the monster to Calen’s lonely soul, and she determines to free him from the magic’s hold.

But if Laidra can’t break the curse in time, Calen will become a mindless creature of scales and fangs forever.

A YA mythology/romance that retells the myth of Eros and Psyche with adventure, magic, and true love.

 

 

To be honest, I knew at one point that this was a type of retelling, but it didn't dawn on me until a little ways into the book. I am a huge mythology fan, pretty much any mythology but far east (no idea why) intrigues me. I have done plenty of self imposed research into the topics, and completely loved how Burke took the Greek pantheon and made it her own.

From the get go, I liked the characters of Laidra and Calen. Each were likeable, dare I say loveable, in their views and attitudes. Burke used excellent descriptions of them, you really felt with Laidra her curse. How it impacted—and didn't—her worldview. The same goes for Calen.

At one point in the book I thought, here it is "the end"! They've figured this out, they're going to solve the problem and live happily ever after. With these two, you definitely crave that ending! Then I looked down at the percentage left on my iPad...I had 30 percent left in the book! What was going to happen? Then it did, and while I knew roughly how it was going to work out, I was still pleasantly surprised how Burke wrapped everything up.

Because this is a retelling I felt there was a certain predictability to it, but despite that everything was fresh and new. Definitely a perfect example of the old adage that every tale has already been told, but not by you.

Bottom Line?
Highly Recommend! 5 stars!

Coiled on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Coiled-H-L-Burke-ebook/dp/B0713VTDB3/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1518313469&sr=8-1&keywords=coiled

H.L Burke Author page on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/H.-L.-Burke/e/B00EYQ1HLW/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1

H.L Burke. Website: http://www.hlburkeauthor.com/

What Happened?

Here's how it goes.
You're looking forward to a book. Maybe for a day, maybe for months.
You grab your snack, beverage, a comfy spot, and teasingly open those first few pages. But before long, your cozy evening has been hijacked by a book that wildly doesn't live up to your expectations.
Throwing the book down, you storm off to find another one...But what happened?

What did that book do that broke your short lived love affair?

For me, it's a variety of reasons.

I have read many, MANY books over the years, and recently I have dived into the realm of Self, Indie, and Small Press Pubbed books.
During this time I've found books that for some reason I stopped reading. It doesn't happen often, but it has happened. Case in point: in the past two years there has been three books I've had to put down and step away from.

And no, I'm not going to spill which ones they were here. That is a different topic entirely.
What is interesting is that the main reason for putting each down was different for each one.

The first was a fantasy that I had to stop reading due to the rampant cliche's. It was terrible. From the characters, to plot holes, to even dialogue. It was riddled with tropes, and NOT in a good way. (The editing was also terrible, but that's not the main reason I had to put it down.)

The second was what I thought was an paranormal/urban fantasy. I got 30% in and realized it wasn't, it was a graphic romance novel with paranormal/UF aspects to it. Very little plot development with jumping between characters minds in mid paragraph. I wasn't prepared for the content, and on top of that it was not at all something that I enjoy as the "romance" part of it overtook the rest of the book.

To be slightly more generous, both of the above were self published. Now, self pubbers NEED to have many rounds of edits and re-writes, just like traditionally pubbed writers. Each book of mine goes through multiple rounds of edits from me, as well at least 5 other people before it is released to the world. In the above instances, these things would have been very easily found, and fixed had their editors been either honest, or they went through enough rounds.

The third was the second in a series of paranormal romances. I did enjoy the first, but this sequel was not the same, at all. The back blurb talked about one male and one female, the reader would think those are the main characters, correct? We didn't even see one of them until chapter five. Then we didn't get a chapter from one of their POV's until chapter seven.
On top of that, there were several mistakes that should have been caught as this was published from a small press, that SHOULD have had a through editing before release.

In all of this I don't begrudge the author. Writing is hard. But releasing that book into the world? Terrifyingly difficult.

The only downside I see is that I wasn't able to enjoy the writers world as they intended. And in many of the cases of books I put down, had these simple items been fixed, I wouldn't have been able to put the books down!

Anyone else have books they just had to stop reading? Why?