Madhuri Pavamani's Blog, page 44
April 18, 2014
Random Musings (Otherwise Known As Procrastinating)
I will pretty much do anything in a gym class, no matter the difficulty and strain, so long as you’re pumping RiRi or Kanye through the sound system. In class the other day “We Found Love” came on and I don’t even really like that song but I was suddenly re-energized. And when “Black Skinhead” plays, and those opening beats pump through you and that “For my theme song, My leather black jeans on” blasts out, let me tell you, it is on.
Is it ever going to feel like spring around here?!
The waitress last night at Stanton Social was a complete bitch, and not in the affectionate way I tend to use that word.
My friend, Mei, brought me a box of tampons the other day for no reason at all except that she knows I always forget them in my gym bag. It’s a girl thing. We can be totally random with each other about the most personal shit.
Prince’s “Take Me With You” is just so freaking good.
And why can’t I find a download of Vanity 6′s “Nasty Girl”?
I love the word Meraki
I am absolutely overwhelmed by the number of attorney evaluations (51 in total, have completed 19) I have to complete by the end of today. I have been so busy that I completely forgot about them until this morning, when I received an email, reminding me they are due today. I. Am. Fucked.
So of course, I’m writing this post because I would rather do anything than draft those freaking evals!
Oh, and my migraine just broke after two and half days of brutal, mind-numbing pain. I feel like a person again. Just in time for the weekend.
HOLLA BITCHES!
April 17, 2014
April 11, 2014
Kill, F*ck or Marry – The Ocean Boys
I’m bored. I’ve got a ton of work to do but I feel like playing.
So let’s do another round of Kill, Fuck or Marry, this time with Danny Ocean and his boys. (My girlfriend, Priya, will get all judge-y with this one because she no longer approves of George’s playboy ways, so I’m guessing she’s going to kill him. Maybe even a few times over, just for good measure. Me, I rather like George’s catch-me-if-you-can lifestyle and will always fall victim to his smirk.)
Let’s do this.
For me, this is only working one way – I don’t even really need to contemplate it or feel bad about it. Okay, maybe a little bad when I think of Brad in Thelma and Louise or Ocean’s Eleven, but whatever. I’m killing his ass, because I’m going to fuck George, mostly to hang in his Lake Como villa for a weekend and I’m marrying Matt because, well duh. Do I even have to spell that one out for you?
And what say you – who are you going to Kill, Fuck or Marry?
Book Review: CORE by Teshelle Combs
Cale eyes Ava at a fight and right away, his dragonblood knows she is his. He simply needs to convince her of the same, which will be no easy task, but is a journey worth embarking upon, where the reward is to fly as one: dragon and rider.
I’m so glad I stumbled across Teshelle Combs’ CORE because I rather loved it. It’s different from any of the other dragon stories I’ve read, is full of rich detail and history and honestly, sucks you in from the very first chapter.
My one small criticism of Core is with the character of Ava – I can’t get a read on her and maybe this is what the author wants, but at times it feels frustrating. I so badly want to like Ava, but I find myself liking her simply because Cale does. And again, this, too, might be a purposeful construct of the author, but as a girl who LOVES reading and writing about bad ass girls, and Ava is pretty bad ass, I so desperately want to wrap my little reader arms around Ava and I just can’t. Me and girlfriend never clicked.
But Cale, he’s another story. His fierce loyalty sucked me right in and his unwavering belief in Ava, even when he doubts himself, is poignantly captured in the small details of the story. His interactions with his family and friends mirror his treatment of Ava; as a reader, you trust Cale.
Combs is a gifted writer with an amazing imagination. She builds a world of dragons and magic that is both unique and beautiful and I look forward to reading more of her work.
April 10, 2014
My First Fan “Letter”
It’s not truly a letter because it’s a post on my Facebook page and honestly, these days I’m probably the last dork alive who actually bothers to write a letter.
I even have thank you cards and stationary, but I digress.
So check it out – I just got my first piece of fan mail and it kind of made my day. Like seriously. Like I’ve got a huge, shit-eating grin on my face.
HOLLA.
April 5, 2014
Book II: THE BOY – A Saturday Snippet
A little Jedda for anyone stopping by to check us out:
Rosie’s late-night, Manhattan crowd was a mixture of the beautiful and the strange and no one batted an eyelash at either. While the streets were rather quiet due to the time of night, the minute the door opened, the sounds of laughter and mischief, mixed with clanking dinner plates and the occasional breaking of glass, flooded the sidewalk, enticing the random passerby to sneak a peak inside and see what the hullabaloo was about. More often than not, they were sucked into the festivities, pulled in by the joie de vivre of the crowd and delicious smells of the kitchen.
Jedda was not a random passerby.
He was a regular, with a booth in the back, his personal chef’s plate, a combination of the meatloaf special and fried chicken basket with sides of greens and limas all sitting on a pillowy bed of garlicky mashed potatoes, and all the scotch one shifter could possibly imbibe. But tonight none of that mattered; his one and only interest was the woman in white.
“What the hell are you doing in New York City?” he growled as he slid into his booth, “and here, at Rosie’s, of all the godforsaken places.”
“I wanted to see you,” she pouted, her red lips appearing fuller than usual, sensually kissable.
“You wanted to see me?” Jedda asked with irritation, “what are you, a twelve year old child?”
April 3, 2014
THE GIRL and Story Cartel
A friend and fellow author, Kayti Nika Raet, put me onto Story Cartel several weeks ago, saying it’s a great way to get some reviews and publicity for The Girl, so of course, I checked it out right away.
The premise of Story Cartel is that you, the author, offer your book to the reading public for free for a month and readers download it, promising in exchange to write and post a review within a month. Every reader who leaves a review is entered into a giveaway of the author’s choice (three $10 Amazon gift cards or copies of your book). There is no guarantee you will get any reviews at all, since Story Cartel has no way of forcing readers to leave them. Just as there is no guarantee the readers who leave reviews and win the giveaway will receive their prize (I’ve heard of jerk-off authors doing this. Asshats.) Basically, everyone is functioning under the honor system and hoping the parties’ live up to their promises.
While your book is live, Story Cartel encourages you to reach out to those who downloaded it, they really push this idea of building your own tribe, beginning with your Story Cartel readers. To further this aim, they provide you a list of the email addresses for everyone who downloaded your book and suggest you contact them, interact with them and “build collaborative relationships” with them.
So my month of free downloads ended a few days ago. I wound up with 68 downloads, which isn’t too bad. I wanted to hit 100, mostly because it looks pretty and is an even number (don’t ask – some sort of OCD I’ve indulged in since I was a kid, wanting everything to be an even number, endlessly counting things, hoping to reach an even result…totally bizarre and yet, so damn soothing.).
Am I going to get 68 reviews? I highly doubt it.
Thus far I have received two, which if I’m being totally honest, is two more than I expected to receive, so I’m rather pleased. If I manage to garner five reviews, I will be thrilled. Would I possibly get more if I emailed my list of readers more often?
Perhaps.
But I wasn’t totally comfortable with emailing folks more than the Thank You note I sent (which was pretty cool thanks to MailChimp. This indie author adventure has opened up all sorts of cool little worlds to me.); Joe Bunting – one of Story Cartel’s founders – would probably think I failed at building my cartel. I just never got comfortable sending repeat emails to a group of people who might not even like my book, so I was pretty chill with that aspect of the experience.
Overall, I think Story Cartel is great – I got THE GIRL into the hands of 68 more people than it was a month ago and if I can get some more reviews, well hell, that’s even better. Would I do it again? I plan on using them when I launch THE BOY.
Hey! That might be the perfect opportunity to finally put that email list to work and in the words of Joe Bunting, build my cartel.
Thursday Thoughts
Personally, I recommend tequila, but you get my drift.
April 2, 2014
Read this book: The Passage
Scanning through the blogs I follow, I came across my friend Kevin’s blog, Read by Kevin, and his most recent post on Justin Cronin’s The Passage. Have you read The Passage? If you have, then you know it is amazing. Easily my favorite book of 2010. If you haven’t read it, then read Kevin’s post and then grab a copy. It’s worth its weight.
Originally posted on Read by Kevin:
This literary/genre juggernaut is worth the hundreds of pages.
If you picked up The Passage without knowing the plot, you would quickly know that dark times were ahead. It starts out with a deadly virus culled from South American bats, adapted and tweaked by government scientists to create super soldiers. Of course they test it out on twelve vicious killers on death row. And of course the outcome is worse than these scientists could ever have imagined.
So begins The Passage, Justin Cronin’s cinder block sized novel about vampires, the first of a trilogy. In other hands this setup might have been just another soon-to-be-forgotten pulp read. Cronin has the skills and literary background to create a lush, sprawling tale that spans genres and centuries.
The Passage, like the monsters it portrays, mutates and grows. It starts off as a technothriller that follows FBI Agent Brad Wolgast and…
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