Yay! Sunday!!! And I don't have to go to work tomorrow, well actually for the next 2 weeks, so I am in a good mood ;)
Picture this week is 'Life on Mars' a great TV series about a British police detective who somehow ends up in 70's. Great fun and loads of action. If you haven't checked it out yet then go have a look and maybe give it a try.
My guest last week was Angie Fox and she and her author friends have been giving alot of books away over on Something Wicked. I haven't won anything because I haven't been checking in often enough...I think I need to make sure I go over there every day.
Staying with Angie Fox there is a cool quiz she has on her homepage. Just enter your name and you can find out what Your Biker Witch Name is. Mine is Pretzel Legged Peggy Wheelie-Gig. Let me know what yours is!!
Darque Reviews is back in force and there are some amazing reviews if you like Rachel Caine, Kat Richardson or Charlaine Harris! There are also a few others that had me adding some more books to my every growing wishlist.
Remember when Jeri Smith-Ready was here a few weeks ago? Well if you didn't win that signed copy of her brilliant book 'Wicked Game' you can try your luck over on Sidhe's blog! There is also an interview if you want to find out more about Jeri!
While browsing around I found a new site for me to add to my every growing list of sites I like is The Good, The Bad and The Unread. Catchy name isn't it? Check it out!
Oh and don't forget about Vampire Genre being back up! If you took it off your list of blogs to visit then add it back again.
I have mentioned 'Hide-a-Book' before but now I can highly recommend hiding your book! I ordered a couple for myself and a couple for a friend. We both love them. Nothing better to hide those sexy porn like vampire covers on public transport and from family. If you haven't already had a look then just take a peak! They make great pressies!
The question over on Suburban Vampire this week is what is the must have trait you need for your vampire? Also the site has a new look!
Finally don't forget the monthly giveaway and if you want to let me know what you are reading...not reading etc then join me over on Goodreads! The name is Amberkatze ;)
Then a friend of mine is giving away a copy of 'Black Magic Woman' by Justin Gustainis who I interviewed here a few months ago! He was a great guest and even let me post a preview chapter from his new book 'Evil Ways'.
Oh and Justin turned in the manuscript for EVIL WAYS two weeks ago and obviously has some time on his hands! Because he is over on Bitten By Books answering questions and giving away 2 copies of Black Magic Woman and an Amazon Giftcard!!!
My friend Terra is also running a contest but I think she is a little mixed up. You see it is sooo hot here and I am melting in the sun! But she is having Christmas in July!!! So go over and celebrate the festive season with Terra and enter her contest for some great prizes here!
So click and enter the contests! There are some great books on offer!
This week I am very honoured to have author Jeri Smith-Ready as my guest and she has also been nice enough to donate a contest prize! So keep reading and don't forget to enter your name into the pot!
Amber - First I want to say a huge thank you to Jeri for taking the time to answer my questions and for visting Amberkatze's Book Blog! Her amazing book 'Wicked Game' has been one of my favourite reads so far this year and I love her leading lady Ciara!
To start things off could you maybe tell us a little about your book 'Wicked Game' for the people who haven't read it yet?
Jeri - WICKED GAME is a fun, sexy, dark urban fantasy. Here’s the back cover blurb (which I helped write, so this isn’t a total cop out ;-):
Late-night radio you can sink your teeth into
Recovering con artist Ciara Griffin is trying to live the straight life, even if it means finding a (shudder!) real job. She takes an internship at a local radio station, whose late-night time-warp format features 1940s blues, 60s psychedelia, 80s Goth, and more, all with an uncannily authentic flair. Ciara soon discovers how the DJs maintain their cred: they’re vampires, stuck forever in the eras in which they were turned.
Ciara’s first instinct, as always, is to cut and run. But communications giant Skywave wants to buy WMMP and turn it into just another hit-playing clone. Without the station—and the link it provides to their original Life Times—the vampires would “fade,” becoming little more than mindless ghosts of the past. Suddenly a routine corporate takeover becomes a matter of life and un-death.
To boost ratings and save the lives of her strange new friends, Ciara re-brands the station as “WVMP, the Lifeblood of Rock ’n’ Roll.” In the ultimate con, she hides the DJs’ vampire nature in plain sight, disguising the bloody truth as a marketing gimmick. WVMP becomes the hottest thing around—next to Ciara’s complicated affair with grunge vamp Shane McAllister. But the “gimmick” enrages a posse of ancient and powerful vampires who aren’t so eager to be brought into the light. Soon the stakes are higher-and the perils graver-than any con game Ciara’s ever played…
Amber - Wicked Game blew me away! While being typical in some ways you also put your own unique twist on things. How did you come up with the concept?
Jeri - It was total serendipity. I was driving to work flipping the dial and came to a classic rock station playing “Bad Company” by the band of the same name. I thought, Hmm, “Bad Company” would be a perfect title for a paranormal book with a shady main character. Ooh, and there could be a whole series with “Bad” songs as the title: “Bad to the Bone,” “Bad Medicine,” “Bad Moon Rising”…
By the time I got to the office, I had a fully formed idea for vampire DJs stuck in time and a heroine with a criminal past. If I hadn’t been listening to that station at that moment, the series would have never been born. (Cue Twilight Zone music…)
The punch line is that even though it all began with “Bad Company,” the publisher ultimately asked me to change the title.
Amber - Lots of authors have been putting playlists into their books lately but you have taken that a bit further by bringing the music into your books. How long did it take you to come up with the playlist or did the playlist come first?
Jeri - The story came first, with the music in it. For instance, in a given scene a song might be on in the background, or Shane might play something for Ciara on the guitar. Music is really integral to the novel. Sometimes it transforms a character’s mood and therefore that of the entire scene, as it does at the end of Chapter One.
So my publisher asked me to make a list of all the songs mentioned in the text, and that became the “playlist” that is literally a soundtrack to the novel.
The fun part of forming the list was figuring out which songs to choose when they were mentioned only obliquely. For instance, the text in one of the creepier scenes said that a Cure song was playing on this 1940s-era radio, but it doesn’t say which song. I chose “10:15 Saturday Night” because it’s a particularly haunting tune, providing great atmosphere. Also, that bass line would sound bizarre coming out of a Mono speaker.
Even though the playlist came from the novel and not the other way around, there was one instance where I changed a detail: I went back and put "a Liz Phair song" in the background of one scene, so I could add "Flower" to the playlist. It's a perfectly raunchy song for Ciara and Shane. Every line fits the way she feels about him at that point in the book.
Amber - You obviously listen to music but are you a fan of the music you are writing about in 'Wicked Game'? Do you have any other favourites that didn't fit into this book?
Jeri - I’m a passionate fan of every kind of music in the book—-blues, rockabilly, psychedelic, reggae, punk, Goth, indie, and grunge. Each of these genres were revolutionary in their times, which fits nicely with the counterculture nature of vampires.
I love all kinds of Celtic music—from traditional to rock to New Age. It’s just in my blood, I guess. I also love bluegrass and classical. But none of these are really associated with a specific time period, so they don’t fit the framework of the book.
You never know, maybe one day there could be a swing or jazz DJ from the 20s!
Amber - Reading through the book it came to my attention that some, if not all, of the chapter titles are names of songs. Was it hard work coming up with those titles?
Jeri - I knew I was going to name the chapters after songs, so over the course of writing the book I collected cool song titles from the radio, and then of course from my own CD collection. Unlike the “playlist” tunes, these would all be relatively popular songs (i.e., released as singles, no deep album cuts) that at least some readers would recognize.
Then I wrote for myself a brief paragraph about what happened in each chapter. Lastly, I paired up the songs with the events and made sure I didn’t repeat any artists or have too many from any one decade. These last two steps took a full day.
The chapter title playlist can be heard on the Wicked Game music page. A fun game for readers would be to go through the book and try to name the artist from the title, then look it up on the website to see if you’re right!
Or at least, I think it’d be fun. But maybe I’m just a total geek.
Amber - Ciara and the vamps are very interesting characters. Any similarities to yourself there? ;) or anyone else you know?
Jeri - Hah! I wish I could have Ciara’s self-confidence, not to mention her acting ability. I’m a terrible liar--a polygraph machine would laugh at me. (Unless I’m lying about that.) She’s way more practical and realistic than I am. Publisher’s Weekly called her “irrepressible.” I, on the other hand, am easily repressed.
I relate most easily to Shane--not just his age and taste in music, but his idealistic pessimism. He wants the world to be perfect but knows more than most people how much it can suck. I wonder if but for the grace of good fortune, I’d be as haunted as he and his hero Kurt Cobain were during their lifetimes.
Regina is a tiny bit inspired by my best friend from college, who first turned me on to punk and Goth music. But I didn’t realize this until just now. Wow. No wonder Regina totally kicks ass. *waves to Anne Marie*
Amber - I hope Wicked Game wasn't a one off and we will be seeing more of Ciara and the crew! What can we expect in the future?
Jeri - Absolutely! A sequel, BAD TO THE BONE, will be published May 2009. To tide readers over until then, I’m writing a series of tie-in short stories, to appear on my website every other month beginning at the end of June, that depict the “turning” of each of the vampire DJs. These are very secret stories they only share with people they trust with their lives.
Also, subscribers to my totally-unannoying-quarterly newsletter will get early access to each story, as a gift for putting up with me. There’s a sign-up box for the newsletter on pretty much every page of my website.
Hopefully there’ll be many more WVMP books to come after BAD TO THE BONE. I have big plans for Ciara ‘n’ Crew! (Heh-heh, little do they know… *rubs hands together, Montgomery Burns-like*)
Amber - Wicked Game isn't your first book. I know I have your other books on my wishlist and hope to get hold of some of them soon. Maybe you can tell us a little about your previous novels?
Jeri - My first book, REQUIEM FOR THE DEVIL, is most like WICKED GAME in terms of tone and story, because it's urban fantasy. It's a love story but not a romance. Can't guarantee an HEA for that one. But I've reformed since then--no more tragedies for me. ;-)
My other series is a romantic epic fantasy trilogy called ASPECT OF CROW. It takes place in a world where everyone has magic according to their Guardian Spirit Animal or totem. I guess it’s kind of Native American-esque, but they’re not meant to be Native Americans. The totem animal concept is universal to shamanistic cultures around the world.
ASPECT OF CROW follows the same heroine through three books: EYES OF CROW (November 2006), VOICE OF CROW (October 2007), and THE REAWAKENED (November 2008). Each has a romance subplot. They're quite different in tone and style from WG, in that they're serious and dark (and somehow with no profanity!). But if you like animals and magic, you might dig this series. I’m really proud of it.
Amber - What books do you enjoy reading when you aren't writing your own?
Jeri - I tend to read widely rather than deeply and seldom follow series for more than a book or two, unless I can slurp them up all in a row (like I did with Harry Potter last July). So I’ll read Book One, then if I like it I’ll wait until they’re all out and read the entire series at once.
And if a series shows no sign of ending, like, ever? Forget it. Just send the 55-volume box set to me at the nursing home, okay?
My current favorite authors tend to write stand-alone novels or loosely connected series, usually either fantasy or mainstream fiction: Neil Gaiman, PC Cast, Charles de Lint, Christopher Moore, James Morrow, Caprice Crane, Nick Hornby, and John Irving, to name a few. They also tend to be funny.
Amber - If you could only take 3 things on to a desert island what would they be?
Jeri - Assuming that basic survival needs like water, food, shelter, bathroom facilities, sunscreen, and my husband and pets are provided…
Music and a way to play it (iPod, victrola, whatever) Books My favorite stuffed animal Nork. He’s sort of a cat, and my mom gave him to me when I was 16. I take him traveling with me everywhere—he’s been to the Grand Canyon, the Bahamas, and even the Situation Room at the White House.
For more about WICKED GAME, check out My site. To visit the DJs, listen to a musical sample of their shows, and get yourself some cool Lifeblood of Rock ‘n’ Roll, swag, go to WVMP Radio. Jeri and Ciara can also be found on MySpace, though mysteriously never at the same time.
Amber - Thank you Jeri for the great interview! I will be checking out more of Jeri's books and I can't wait for 'Bad to the Bone'.
If you want a little sample of Jeri's work then go here to read 'The Wild's Call' a Free online short story!
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Contest time!
So when I asked Jeri if she had time to be interviewed I also mentioned giving away my copy of 'Wicked Game' for the contest. However the lovely lady said (and I quote)
I'll give away a signed copy of WICKED GAME to a randomly drawn winner. :-)
To enter the contest to win a signed copy of Wicked Game make a comment here on this thread letting us know what songs you would have to put on your songlist!
But wait...you can get an extra entry if you post about this contest somewhere else (you need to post a link so I can confirm your entry)
And you can get another entry if you sign up for my newsletter! (entry form below and in the sidebar).
So you could get up to 3 entries if you play along!
Also feel free to ask Jeri questions! She may pop by and answer them if you are really lucky!!
The contest is open till Sunday 6th of July (9pm CET) and you have to send me your full name and address if you win.
Just type in the author, book or keyword you are looking for and hit enter!
Previous Author Interviews & Guest Blogs!
Thank you to all the authors who have just popped in to comment, guest blogged or stayed around for an interview!
Here are all the previous author interviews & Guest Blogs!
Yay! Sunday!!! And I don't have to go to work tomorrow, well actually for the next 2 weeks, so I am in a good mood ;) 
' a great TV series about a British police detective who somehow ends up in 70's. Great fun and loads of action. If you haven't checked it out yet then go have a look and maybe give it a try.
' you can try your luck over on Sidhe's blog! There is also an interview if you want to find out more about Jeri! 
, is most like 
(November 2006), 
(October 2007), and 
(November 2008). Each has a romance subplot. They're quite different in tone and style from WG, in that they're serious and dark (and somehow with no profanity!). But if you like animals and magic, you might dig this series. I’m really proud of it.
by Kelley Armstrong
