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its not a secret to anyone that i love to read. and there are tons of new releases in the new year that i’m looking forward to, but i thought i’d just detail the top three here! so, here i go, in no specific order

1. LINGER by Maggie Stiefvater.

LINGER by Maggie Stiefvater

.. words DO NOT describe how drooly i am over this… i waited a long, long, long LONG time for “SHIVER”, and i wasn’t disappointed. it was one of the most beautiful books i’d read in my life, and honestly, i’d not wept over the last 40 pages of a book in SO LONG, i think the last time was “HARRY POTTER & THE GOBLET OF FIRE”. every word, every page was just an awesome venture to partake. i loved it, to put in simple words. and im so looking forward to see what Maggie has up her sleeve in the sequel!

2. SHADE by Jeri-Smith-Ready

SHADE by Jeri Smith-Ready

Jeri Smith-Ready, A.K.A my favourite author’s first YA release! she quickly became my favourite author when she combined two of my favourite loves — music and vampires. this book, SHADE, is about a girl named Aura who can see ghosts and needs to figure out where she belongs amongst the living and the dead. im very excited to see how this reads, as Jeri has an outstandingly funny voice even in the darkest of moments. if she wrote a phone book, i would sit and read it cover to cover.

3. 13 TO LIFE : A WEREWOLVES TALE by Shannon Delany

13 TO LIFE : A WEREWOLVES TALE by Shannon Delany

i’m dying to read this. now, i’ve gotten a look at it via textnovel (where my piece of crap book is currently being posted), and it’s an awesome take on werewolf lore. Werewolves are the new Vampires, im just letting you know now. i can’t wait for my copy to be in my hands

and those are my three most wanted books for the new year. new year, new start, and new books!

as some of you know, i’m involved with the awesome website Bitten By Books.  this week, it’s week 3 of the Paranormal Author Polls, and one of the choices is Stephenie Meyer. between a tweet from the awesome Macbeaner, and my own silly thoughts, i decided to do a blog entry on how people who are suffering the end of the “Twilight” series can go on with their reading lives with other series by even more awesomer authors.

first of all, yes, THANK YOU Stephenie Meyer for making Urban Fantasy/vampires cool again. we went through a stage where we kinda had to hide out our love for such dark things, but with the release of the “Twilight” series, (mostly the film version), its now “trendy” to love the dark side again. personally, i liked having this love be a bit verboden, but now with the stores filled with “I LOVE VAMPIRES” t-shirts and “BITE ME, EDWARD” stuff everywhere, it’s now socially acceptable.

as someone who has read Urban Fantasy since she was 9 years old, of course i read the “Twilight” series. and while my personal opinions on the series will stay to myself, i want to tell people how you can still get your UF fix beyond this series.

First off, if vampires are your thing, check out these series :

the “House of Night” series by P.C and Kristin Cast – i’ve only read the first book in this series, but it’s pretty popular with YA and adult readers everywhere. it’s about a 16 year old named Zoey who is “marked” to become a vampire and the ominous “House of Night” school she must attend to see if she can hack it in the vampire world.

“Night Huntress” series by Jeaniene Frost – Edward Cullen can’t stand up to the smokin hot Bones, main character Cat Crawfield’s love interest. This series is more geared toward adult readers, with the language and content, but it’s also irrepressibly awesoime.  Cat is a half vampire who hunts down vampires and kills them, and as the series progresses, you just are begging for more.

“Vampire Academy” series by Richelle Mead – i haven’t read any of these, but they come highly recommended by a few friends of mine. People seem to love the character Dimitri!

“Evernight” series by Claudia Gray – in my personal opinion, these books trump “Twilight” tenfold. they are quick, fantastic reads, it’s the story of Bianca, who is struggling with the realisation that she is becoming a vampire, and the boy who loves her, Lucas, who is a member of the Black Cross, a vampire hunting group that is hell bent on eliminating her kind. third book in the series, “Hourglass” is out in March!

now, if werewolves are your thing, and you just are aching that there is no more Jacob to read, i suggest these series :

“Shiver” by Maggie Stiefvater – between this and Jeri Smith Ready’s books, the best book i read in 2009. Maggie spins an awesome tale of Grace Brisbane and the wolf she’s been watching in her backyard all her life – Sam Roth. it’s an achingly beautiful love story, and it’s got some majorly awesome twists. Sam > Jacob, people!

“!3 To Life : a Werewolves Tale”  by Saorise Redgrave – this book isn’t exactly out yet, but you can take a look at the winning submission by Saorise at http://textnovel.com. another really awesome take on werewolf lore

other types of UF that people can enjoy :

“Wicked Lovely” series by Melissa Marr – an awesome set of books about faeries, but these aren’t your disney faeries.

“Red Headed Stepchild” by Jaye Wells – about a half vampire/half mage assasin. there is also a demon disguised as a hairless cat.

my brain is kind of dying at the moment, but as you can see, there are lots of options for life after “Twilight”. it’s most definitely NOT the only series in existence that can be a satisfying read! so the next time you’re in a bookstore, try to check out some of the options i’ve put here. (and honestly, there would have been more if half my book collection weren’t packed up, these were just the ones that came off the top of my head! and of course, everything on this blog is all in my own opinion, it wouldn’t be ohkamikaze.net if it weren’t!)

first off, congrats goes out to Alejandra from Toronto for winning the “Shiver”/Maggie Stiefvater contest.  i’ll be sending out the ARC as soon as possible.

second off, i’m getting married! i know, i know, WHAT?! yes, really. most of you that visit this blog already know, but yeah. my lovely boy Anthony and I decided about a month ago, at the very end of his visit here, that we couldn’t live without the other, and wanted to be together forever. we’re not actually going to get our piece of paper that says we’re married untill 2011, but i’m leaving the U.S permanently at the end of December to live with him in England. it’s a move i can’t wait to make; i never wanted to leave England (and him!) in the first place, but it had to be done. we’re going to live in Plymouth, which im very happy and excited about, because it was my favourite place i visited in England (for obvious reasons!), and yes, it’s going to be good. i have a very, very good feeling about it, just like i had before i left for England in the first place.

the tasks that sit in front of me are : packing up all this crap i’ve amassed in this stupid apartment over the last 2 1/2 years, trying to consolidate my book collection/film collection for transport to England, and waiting the 85 1/2 days that it will take for my Anthony to get back over here. it’s good practise for when he’s deployed though (i’ll be a navy wife, oh dear!), so i suppose it’s a necessary thing, but still. i hate waiting. things need to be done anyway; Mneo needs to get certified and microchipped to go over with us in six to eight months time, i need to get all my doctors in order to prescribe me meds 6 months in advance, etc.

as far as my writing goes, i’ve gotten a bit more done, but not much. things happening way too fast etc. i’ll have to work on it when i get to England. anyway, watch this space for a few more ARC giveaways, because i’ll be giving away some books i’ve amassed over the last year, mostly cos i can’t take them with me!

how does music influence you as a writer?
I have to have it. That’s basically how it influences me.

Heh.

Actually, I need it to set mood and to focus. Without music playing, all I can think of is all the other things I could/ should/ might be doing.

how do you go about choosing your playlists for a certain book/story? do you choose the songs beforehand, or afterwards (meaning, do you go back and look at what you listened to the most when you were writing?)

Definitely beforehand. Before I write a novel, I have a vague idea of the mood I’m going to try to convey, and then I go hunting. I hit iTunes, Amazon, Youtube, my five CD binders, Pandora . . . my perfect tune, or even better, my perfect album, could be lurking anywhere. I don’t really know what it is that I’m looking for until I find it. For instance, for SHIVER, I knew I wanted a bittersweet song, but I didn’t know if it was instrumental, vocal, rock, Celtic — until I played The Bravery’s latest album, got to the lack track, and heard “The Ocean.”

Suddenly I had my tune, and suddenly I could start plotting.

In “Shiver”, Sam is a gifted songwriter, often writing lyrics as he goes along. what gave you the idea for this aspect of him? and if you had to choose one song that described Sam, what would it be?

Man, I’m having to wrack my brains to think of the first song lyric that Sam wrote. A lot of the scenes are now out of order from when I first wrote them (the first bookstore scene, for instance, came much further in the book as a memory). I just went back to the first lyric I wrote: You’re my change of skin/ my summer-winter-fall/ I spring to follow you/ this loss is beautiful and tried to remember why I did it. And . . . I just remember doing it. I don’t remember the thought behind it. A lot of Sam’s actions and brain workings were very intuitive; he’s not nearly as engineered as a character like James in Ballad.

One song to describe Sam? “A Message” by Coldplay or “Unwinding Cable Car” by Anberlin.

And one song that would describe Grace?

It’s harder to do one for Grace, as she’s just more pragmatic, and songs aren’t given to that . . . still, I’ll go with Imogen Heap’s “Headlock.” I listened to it a lot while writing Grace’s POV, and I think the lyrics fit.

What about them together? (haha)

I wanted to be totally tongue-in-cheek and say “Furr” by Blitzen Trapper, but I’ll go with “Spaceship” by Jonas & Plunkett, which waxes all metaphorical. Whooo! right?

Who are some of your favourite artists to listen to when you write? and how do you go about discovering “new” music to listen to?

Well, the playlist I did for Shiver is a good place to start, because I love indie/ alternative, but I can’t really generalize, because every book requires something different. Lament was all traditional Celtic, Ballad was harder alternative like Breaking Benjamin and Ashes Divide and fusion Celtic like Kila, Shiver was indie and (strangely enough) Blaqk Audio, and Linger turned out to be indie rock and the soundtrack from the Last Samurai. I am writing one in my spare time that’s using all oldies from the ‘60s. Every book is different.

You composed some of your own music to go along with “Shiver”, called “The Golden Woods”, where do you get the inspiration for something like that? (by the way,it’s AMAZING!)
I always used to imagine a scene in order to compose music — I’ve been composing since I was 16 — but now, I can use a scene from one of my books. I throw out a lot of fragments that just don’t match the mood of the book, though — I composed a song for BALLAD as well and I imagine I’ll write one for Linger too. And thanks.

any advice to writers out there? (generic)?

Read. Industry blogs and the bestselling books in your genre of choice. There’s no point being a) uninformed or b) reinventing the genre wheel. And don’t take no for an answer.