Blog Tour: Rook: Allie's War by JC Andrijeski - Guest Post

Hey guys! Welcome to my tour stop of the book Rook: Allie's War. This is a paranormal romance. The blurb looks amazing, I wanted to read it right from the start. However, due to school, I am unable to post my review at this point. The review will be up in the near future though! But really, the book looks fantastic and I can't wait to read it. I read a little bit of it so far and what I read I've liked a lot. Action-packed with that initial mystery that keeps you wanting to read, to discover more about what the whole book is about. Definitely something worth reading.

Rook: Allie's War, Book One by JC Andrijeski

Published by: White Sun Press

28-year-old San Francisco native, Allie Taylor, at least thought she was human. But when she meets her first real seer, a race of human-like beings discovered in the 1900s, he tells her that not only is she a seer, like him, but that all the other seers believe she's going to end the world. Unfortunately, no matter what she does, everything that happens after that only seems to prove him right.

Doesn't the book sound really interesting? Why not get it right here at Smashwords?

JC Andrijeski

JC Andrijeski is a bestselling author who has published novels, novellas, serials, graphic novels and short stories, as well as nonfiction essays and articles. Her short fiction runs from humorous to apocalyptic, and her nonfiction articles cover subjects from graffiti art, meditation, psychology, journalism, politics and history. Her short works have been published in numerous anthologies, online literary, art and fiction magazines as well as print venues such as NY Press newspaper and holistic health magazines.

Obtaining an MA in political science from the New School for Social Research (NSSR) in NYC, she did her graduate studies in race and caste systems, slave and ex-slave systems, religion and its impacts on social systems and other historical weirdnesses which fitted her surprisingly well for both fiction writing and being extremely annoying at parties. She moved from NYC to San Francisco in 1997, and otherwise has lived or spent considerable time in Albuquerque, Portland, Los Angeles, Seattle, Vancouver BC, New York, Florida, San Diego, Prague, London, Berlin, Sydney and Swinoujscie, Poland. JC currently lives and writes full time in Sidhpur, India, at the foot of the Himalayas in Himachal Pradesh, a location she drew on a fair bit in writing the Allie's War books.

Check out her Website | Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

And now, a great guest post from the author where she talks about how music contributes to her writing and how much it means to her!

Music to Write By by JC Andrijeski

I’ve always been a bit of a music nut. I used to actually really keep up with music, at least within my odd little niches. Part of this probably comes from too many years of dating musicians, or maybe just because I found that crowd more interesting than the cheerleaders, partiers and surfers who littered the halls of my Northern California high school.

Writing fiction both made that worse and actually distorted it quite a bit. For one thing, I probably listen to music while writing more than at any other time now. When I used to drive more, that was higher on the list, but given that “driving” now means riding in the back of an auto-rickshaw that is bumping and jostling along the road with a motor smaller than your average moped…or else being in a taxi where Bollywood tunes are blaring, often while the driver is singing along…the whole music and driving thing have a different relationship. Even in Portland, Oregon, where I last lived in the states, I was an IPod girl, writing on the bus or the Max, Portland’s answer to BART.

In any case, I figured out a long time ago that the music I need while writing, with a few notable exceptions, is REALLY different than the music I normally listen to while driving, jogging, cleaning my house, getting ready to go out, lying on the beach…or pretty much any other situation where I might want to listen to music.

The thing is, most music has words. I find that pretty distracting while I write…I always have. Again, there are exceptions. Action scenes generally need a lot of faster stuff, and on those occasions, I find I can tolerate more lyrics, as long as they’re in the spirit of what I’m writing. Nonfiction, I usually want to listen to music with words, too for some reason. Especially if I’m doing any kind of research, and want to get into the swing of whatever time period, person or thing I’m studying (I’ll forever be a Dylan fan after writing a number of essays on Hunter S. Thompson, for example).

Right now, I’m writing the fifth book in the Allie’s War series, and it’s got a fair bit of action so I find I’m delving into harder and faster stuff again. Also, I’m finding that the character’s taste in music is bleeding into my playlists more this time, which is actually kind of funny because it ranges from Wagner (Revik was a Nazi, after all) to the Runaways, Nirvana, Queen, Alice in Chains, Rage Against the Machine, Vivaldi, Gorillaz, the Stones, Radiohead, the Pixies, MIA, Skunk Anaze, Blondie, Camille Saint-Saëns…

I’ll let those of you who’ve read the books decide who listens to what in that mess…in fact, that would be a pretty hilarious quiz, because I bet a lot of people would get a number of those wrong.

The sad truth though, is that I end up listening to a lot of instrumental and soundtracks when I write, and not a lot of the new breaking tunes out there. Here is a (very) partial list of songs, artists and in some cases albums I have on my playlist for book five. It’s a pretty big mish-mash, because of the reasons listed above. The others were much more heavy in the soundtrack ouvre:

“Cherry Bomb” – The Runaways
“Halogen” – Storm Large
“Any Other Name” - Thomas Newman (I think I’ve listened to this track in writing all five books)
Binary Scenes (album) – Atomic Skunk
How the West was Lost (album) – Carlos Nakai
The Social Network Soundtrack (album) – Trent Reznor
Danny the Dog (album) - Massive Attack
A Different Space (album) - Bob Holroyd
“Another One Bites the Dust” – Queen
Bloom (album) – Crustation
“Wargasm” – L7
“Strict Machine” – Goldfrapp
“Caught Without a Race” – Money Mark
“In a Landscape” – William Orbit
“The Four Seasons” – Vivaldi
“You Want it Back” – Propellerheads
Delhi-9 (album) – tosca
“Under the Milky Way” – The Church
“Godsmack” – Alice in Chains
“Kill Robok” – Squarepusher (this band was made for Terian, I swear)
“Wish You Were Here” – Pink Floyd
Elliot Smith (album) – Elliot Smith
“White America” – Eminem
“Let’s Have a War” – A Perfect Circle
“The Times They Are A-Changing” – Bob Dylan
The Dolomites (I can’t write down their song titles as they are in Japanese)
Geogaddi (album) – Boards of Canada
Ghost in the Shell (album) – Yoko Kanno
“Then Comes Dudley” – Jesus Lizard
“Clint Eastwood” – Gorillaz
Ha (album) – Talvin Singh
Isdn (album) & Lifeforms (album) – The Future Sound of London
Jaku (album) – DJ Krush
This strange, harmonic bell album my sister burned for me years ago by Brian Eno
“Paper Planes” – MIA
“Karma Police” – Radiohead
“Gimme Shelter” – The Rolling Stones
Light and Magic (album) – Ladytron
“Wake Up” and “Killing in the Name of” – Rage against the Machine
“Angel” – Massive Attack
“No Sleep Tonight” – The Faders
“I Melt With You” – Nouvelle Vague
“Oceanea” – Thomas Dolby
Trailer Park (album) – Beth Orton
The Richest Man in Babylon (album) – Thievery Corporation
Rhythms of Peace (album) – Nawang Khechog
“High Roller” – The Crystal Method (actually a bunch off the album Vegas)
“War” (from the W. Soundtrack) – Paul Cantelon
“The Carnival of the Animals – Aquarium” – Camille Saint-Saëns
“Taksim” – Ekova
“Waiting Room” - Fugazi

So yeah…eclectic. I have one of those music collections that just about everyone who’s seen it has winced at least once (yes, I have at least one Britney Spears song, and I think a whole album of Lady Gaga)…I’ve also always got at least one thing to impress even the biggest music nerd on the planet.

The previous books were probably not quite as musically “messy” as this one, as the playlists for those books consisted mainly of instrumental, trance, ambient, along with pretty much any soundtrack I could find that didn’t remind me of the movie so much it was distracting.

Still, there’s something about starting a playlist for an album that commits me to the book somehow. It’s hard to explain exactly…maybe it’s just one of those weird artist rituals we do, like sharpening pencils we don’t intend to use, or making sure we have coffee and beef jerky in reach of our hands before we get to comfortable at the desk…

In any case, it’s interesting to me to see what other people listen to when they write or paint or work or whatever else, so I hope this was interesting to some of you.

That being said, writers or not, I’d love to hear the music “lists” of others.

So yep, that's about it for today! Go here to check out the other tour stops! You'll find loads of awesome stuff on the other tour sites too! :D

Thanks for reading this post all the way till the end! :D love you all! :D (alright, I admit, its 4.40am now and I'm delirious.) :P