MUSIC BLOGGER: EMMA SUTHERLAND

Aspiring music journalist, Emma Sutherland, talks to me about gigs, bad rappers and her prediction for the next big thing…

Hi Emma! Have you always been a writer? 

No, I've only got into writing in the last year or so. I started by writing for the Daily Echo (and still do from time to time) and have written for the Mr Kyps website and an online youth magazine in the North of England. It's a nice hobby I have at the moment but I would really love to do it as a full time job.

How did you get into writing music reviews?

I've always loved music and love the atmosphere you get at gigs; the build up and excitement of seeing a band you love is a great experience. I realised after seeing a few gigs in Bournemouth that I could write about them so as I have a permanent memory of the gig. I got in touch with Nick Churchill (the Daily Echo's entertainment editor until last year) and asked if he accepted gig reviews from anyone or if you had to be a staff writer. Fortunately the Daily Echo have a small army of ordinary people doing reviews and he asked me to send him a review I had done. Off the back of this he offered me a review job for the band Wild Beats at 60 Million Postcards in Bournemouth and despite not knowing all of their material I had a really good night. They're one of the best live bands I've seen and in such a small venue it was a great opportunity to see them up close and get a feel for the band and their music.

Do you have a favourite place to write?

I go to Mr Kyps pretty regularly so I think my favourite place to write is in there! It's great because I can stand at the bar and still see the onstage action while sipping a nice cold beer, which sometimes, if I'm lucky, I get for free!

Best ever gig you've ever been to? Why?

There's too many to mention! I've seen some great acts but I think my favourite has to be Muse at the SECC in Glasgow. This was a couple of years ago before I was thinking about writing gig reviews but it was amazing for a number of reasons. One, Muse are one of the best rock bands in the world so what could go wrong? Two, I went with some lovely people and three, it was a proper road trip!

And the worst gig ever?

There was a night of poetry and music in The Winchester pub quite a while ago and a guy that came on stage to rap towards the end of the night was pretty poor - quite a few people left the pub, me included!

Top three albums?

Ghostpoet 'Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam'

Metronomy 'The English Riviera'

Tricky 'Knowle West Boy'

What are you listening to at the moment?

Ghostpoet and Foals' first album 'Antidotes' are been heavily repeated on my iPod at the moment. They're both so easy to listen to and I love Ghostpoet's talented lyrics 

Your prediction for the next big thing...

I went to The Great Escape music festival in May this year which is a three day event for up and coming bands as well as a good few established ones. Among my predictions for this year are two two piece girl bands, one called 2.54 and the other Smoke Fairies. Both different in musical style but emerging talents for 2011 (hopefully!)

What's your dream job?

Being a full time, paid, music journalist. 

Tell us something about yourself that not many people know.

I'm a massive Formula 1 fan and was lucky enough to go to the Canadian Grand Prix this year. We got absolutely drenched by the rain but it was well worth it!

Thanks so much Emma!

You can check out Emma’s music reviews here:

http://emmasutherland.posterous.com/

Paranormal Romance Author: Tessa Stokes

Hi Tessa! Welcome to Someone Wot Writes. Can you tell us a little about your writing.
I have just completed book four in The Seven Spell Saga, it is titled, The Sealed Door. My books, Spellbinding, The Spell Breaker, and The Seven Spell all in The Seven Spell Saga are romantic, lyrical, sprinkled with the motifs of magic, love, friendship, time travel, and immortality.

I wanted my characters to strike real chords with readers, they had become so real to me that it seemed very important to me that readers could also picture and empathize with the characters. One of my characters actually has their own twitter account, although not too many followers just yet. LOL I will leave readers to guess which character. Anyone who has read any of The Seven Spell Saga books will be able to guess who.

What will readers like about The Seven Spell Saga?

That the main character draws them into her life and tells them about her feelings and thoughts as well as her experiences. Chloe McGarry also turns to the reader now and again for opinions. I think that readers will like the two guys in the book, Oliver Tarrant is centred, loving and lovely. Tristan Dearing is mysterious and intense, his love is consuming. I think readers will like the love triangle in the books. As Chloe settles down to her new life in a different country, falls in love and makes new friends the style of the book reflects her growth.

What inspired you to write them?

I wrote The Seven Spell Saga after having the ideas in my head for a few years, I had made notes on various computers and suddenly found that they all gelled. I love ancient places and history, plus I have come across some strange coincidences in life and that is a major motif in the books.

Do you have any new works in the pipeline?

Yes book five of The Seven Spell Saga is started, I love my characters so much I could not leave them where book four finishes for long and so started the fifth book straightaway.

I have two chapters of a science fiction young adult novel written and I am about the third of the way through a vampire paranormal romance, another plot I have had in my head for a long time. It's a vampire story with a difference, I hope.

Who are your favourite authors?
I have read so much and find it hard to have favourite authors but at the risk of seeming high brow which it's not, I love Shakespeare, also Thomas Hardy. I read lots of detective novels because they are far away from my own genre so that I am not influenced by anything. So I read, Sue Grafton, Ruth Rendell. I also read Alexander McCall-Smith.

Tell us something about yourself that not many people know.
I have a degree in Computer Education. If that is too crusty, I once lived in Tangiers, Morocco, quite exotic.

Thanks so much, Tessa. And good luck with your Seven Spell Saga!

You can discover more about Tessa in the following places:

Twitter

Facebook

Tessa's Blog
Tessa's Website

The Seven Spell Saga is available to buy from Smashwords and Amazon

A Gift of a Read...

It's a new day, it's a new dawn and I’m thrilled to welcome Geoffrey Fox to the blog, with his historical adventure, A Gift for the Sultan.

A story of Christians versus Muslims, cosmopolitans versus anti-urbanites, the conflicts within each group, and the surprising complicities between supposed foes. Based on the true history of the siege of Constantinople in 1402 and the battle of Ankara, with a cast of historical figures and fictional composite characters.

What will readers like about your novel?

Many will be fascinated by this encounter of two contrasting civilizations, one urban and sophisticated and Christian Orthodox, the other the newly Muslimized frontier culture of the Ottomans. The passions of the Christian child princess and of the Ottoman warrior sworn to protect her, the attitudes other characters, and the vivid portraits of city and country life in that epoch make for lively reading.

What was the inspiration behind it?

The brutal siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s and the resistance of its Muslim and other citizens to the onslaught by mostly rural Christian Orthodox forces were very much in my mind when, on my first visit to Turkey, I learned of this earlier siege where the forces were reversed: Christian Orthodox urbanites against a rustic Muslim horde. The overlay of contrasting cultures in Istanbul also deeply impressed me. I wrote the book to try to understand that conflict in 1402, and what it would have been like for both Christians and Muslims to live it.

Do you have any new works in the pipeline?

Yes, first another collection of short stories, and then another novel about world-shaking events, but set in the not so distant past.

Who are your favorite authors?
My favorites change, according to what I'm working on and what I’ve read lately. Right now, I am most impressed by Mario Vargas Llosa and a young Colombian author, Juan Gabriel Vázquez. Don DeLillo, Annie Proulx, Leon Tolstoy and Gustave Flaubert are also examples I return to frequently.

Tell us something about yourself that not many people know.
I am pleased to report that the Istanbul-based publisher Nokta will publish A Gift for the Sultan in Turkish this fall, and will present it at the TUYAP International Book Fair there in November. I’m now working on learning Turkish (my fifth language). Also, I draw caricatures and I'm practicing to play better guitar, and I'm so stubborn that I may succeed despite my lack of talent.

Congratulations, Geoffrey, your book sounds like a fascinating read. And good luck with the guitar lessons!


After graduating from Harvard, Geoffrey worked as a community developer in Venezuela and later, after earning a Ph.D. in sociology (Northwestern U.), did research in other Latin American countries while teaching in various universities. He began writing full time around 1978; his book of short stories, Welcome to My Contri, was very favorably reviewed in New York Times, 1988. He has also published many articles and books on Latin America. He and his wife now live in southern Spain.

You can discover more about Geoffrey Fox and his writing in the following places:

http://geoffreyfox.com/
http://geoffreyfox.blogspot.com

His books are available here:

Amazon

Smashwords

A Healthy Dose of Satire

Lisa Scullard has been writing novels since the age of 18, and has managed to scrape by otherwise without any relationships or permanent career. She has one daughter from a holiday she can't really remember properly, and her main job so far was nightclub bouncer full-time for seven years.

Hi Lisa! Can you tell us about your first novel, Living Hell.

Set in the fictional small suburban town of Jericho, in a world which took a religious wrong turn several hundred years ago and is currently mostly non-practising Satanist, a group of Youth Club volunteers try to organise a Halloween party. In between dealing with the local Press's fixation on an unresolved suicide, and day-to-day blackmail, 19-year-old Kim hooks up with Hellraisers frontman Alastair Brash - and all HIS problems. Which look like they're only just starting.

What do you think readers will like about the book?

It's about that post-adolescent stage in your life when school was pretty much over but nothing real has come along to replace it, and everything's awkward. Your parent's aren't part of your daily life anymore, so you find ways to get by on your own, and try not to be sucked into other people's gangs, groups or cult-type things.

I think a lot of people forget about how funny everything is at that age – there are no commitments, mortgages or 'lifestyle' to keep up with, and pretty much everything is spontaneous and weird.

Also it's a great mystery/action plot following the aftermath of a Halloween party, which takes place over only four days. I wanted to keep the story focused and create interesting characters that readers would want more stories about in future.

What inspired you to write it?

I wrote Living Hell when I was 18, aiming at my own age group - all there was to choose from when I was a teen was Judy Blume, Enid Blyton or Willard Price. Nothing was edgy or racy enough, and it was depressing. Gollancz and Pan MacMillan loved it, but wanted me to change the target audience to adult. Pan Mac asked me to write a sequel, but that only got to first draft stage before the editor handling it left. It was three years' waiting wasted, and I lost confidence for a long time after that.

I lived in a small village with boy racers and bikers amongst the locals, with nothing to do at weekends except pubs or the sports centre in a nearby town - not even a cinema within 30 miles, and the last bus anywhere was at 5.30pm. I also had Graves' Disease and was going back and forth to hospital appointments in London, and having various beta-blockers tested on me, none of which were working, and I couldn't get a job. My brothers and I read Pratchett, Tom Sharpe, watched sci-fi and comedy, and I wrote stories as escapism.

Do you have any new works in the pipeline?

I've also just published Death & The City in hardcover, paperback and eBook - a chick-lit backlash against traditional romance/crime stories. It's satire, dark, and due to get darker in follow-ups. It's about a female bouncer with a personality disorder who has to bump off contract killers identified through her usual job. Her head office set her up with a wingman, and she doesn't want to be manipulated or tied up in romantic cliches that other women would assume was part of the scenario. It's a bit postmodern in that sense.

I'm doing some illustrations at the moment, and writing a sequel to The Terrible Zombie Of Oz, as well as continuing the Death & The City "Tales Of The Deathrunners" series. I haven't got into the sales side of it, I don't want to - would rather just wait and see if readers like it without being pressurised into buying.

Who are your favourite authors?

Terry Pratchett and Tom Sharpe - for pure irreverence and style of humour. The laugh-out-loud even if you know you shouldn't sort.

Tell us something about yourself that not many people know.

While I was at school my only real ambition was to get married at 16, and have six children *fail* :) But at least I can say I've got further in writing fiction than I have in real life ambitions, even if I never sell many books :)

Lisa, you’re such a star. I already have two of your paperbacks on my bookshelf at home and you know I’m a big fan. It’s been a joy to have you here.

LIVING HELL was Lisa Scullard’s first completed novel, and is now available in both ebook and paperback on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords (Nook/Sony), Createspace (paperback) and Lulu (hardcover/dustjacket).

You can stalk find more out about Lisa here:

http://www.screenkiss.co.uk/eStore.htm

http://voodoo-spice.blogspot.com
On Twitter
On Youtube

A Heavenly Read

A dreamy Scottish hero, a feisty modern heroine and a paranormal twist. I’m talking about Cyndi Tefft’s debut novel, BETWEEN.

Lyndsey Waters finds herself at the gates of heaven, but that’s not what’s making her knees quiver. It's because her grim reaper comes in the shape of bonny Aidan MacRae, a Scotsman from the eighteenth century. It’s definitely lust at first sight. But this quickly transforms into something deeper as they are given the opportunity to share glimpses of each other’s lives.

The story has a well-paced balance of humour and pathos as we are taken on an emotional journey through the main characters’ memories of Scotland, Paris and Seattle. At one point, I thought this was going to be the main thrust of the story, but Cyndi Tefft manages to pack a few more surprises into this engaging tale.

There are strong themes of faith and family weaving throughout the novel and these fit in perfectly with the story. There's also a smattering of steaminess, but I'd say it's still a suitable read for young adults. Lindsay is a charming, funny, sympathetic main character and I’m looking forward to reading more about her in the sequel when it’s released!

Between is available to buy now:

Ebook: Smashwords, Apple

Print: Createspace, My website (signed copy)

Print and ebook: Amazon, Barnes & Noble

You can discover more about Cyndi Tefft here: Her Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Shelfari, and LibraryThing.

Hot New Author: Tallulah Grace

Tallulah Grace is a wordsmith specializing in romantic suspense novels that often include a touch of paranormal thrown in just for good measure. Today, she's talking to us about her latest novel, Fate.

        

Is precognition a prescription for happiness or disaster?

 

The good things in life are coming together for Kristina Collins. She’s found her ideal home, her career is on track for mega success and the man of her dreams has finally come back into her life.

 

In Fate, the first installment of the Timeless Trilogy, Kris Collins discovers the benefits and risks of having precognitive visions while being stalked by a serial killer. Her friends can’t help her, the FBI can’t save her; she must save herself.  

The Timeless Trilogy heroines, Kristina, Veronica and Cassandra, each deal with paranormal  abilities as they discover and rediscover eternal love.

Hi Tallulah! What will readers like about your novel?

The characters.  Kris, Roni and Cassie come to life in Fate, along with one (maybe two) love interests. The relationships continue to develop in the next two installments, Spellbound and Destiny. From the connection between the three heroines to the love each one discovers as the stories unfold, I believe that readers will enjoy a rapport with the women and the men who love them.

What inspired you to write it?

It wasn’t so much inspiration as necessity. I’ve known for years that there was at least one book rattling around inside my soul, but there was never time to write it. Turns out, there’s more than one. My alter-ego writes freelance business and how-to articles for private clients, so I’m familiar with research and stringing words together to make coherent sentences.

I was amazed to find that creating a work of fiction is completely different, at least for me. Developing the characters and adapting the story line is truly an organic thing. Quite often, I never knew what was going to happen until I started writing it. If I tell you that the characters told me who they were, you’ll probably think I’m crazy, but that’s exactly what happened.

Do you have any new works in the pipeline?

Yes, I’m in the middle of Spellbound, Book Two of Timeless Trilogy and have already written a bit of Destiny, the third installment. ‘Spellbound’ revolves around Roni discovering her true power and ‘Destiny’ focuses on Cassie’s past, present and future journey towards true love. All three books have a strong element of suspense, along with romance and a hint of paranormal. When I say paranormal, I’m not talking vampires and werewolves, at least not this time around. As much as I love a good vampire story, my books include more common paranormal abilities that any human might have. Kris is precognitive, Roni is filled with magic and Cassie learns more about reincarnation than she ever wanted to know.

Who are your favourite authors?

I love Kay Hooper, Elizabeth Lowell, Linda Howard and Iris Johansen. Nora Roberts is also a long time favorite.

Tell us something about yourself that not many people know.

Tallulah Grace is one of my pen names.

And a gorgeous name it is too. Thanks so much for joining us today. Fate sounds like a fantastic read.

Fate is available now from Amazon.

You can find more information on Tallulah at her website:

http://www.tallulahgrace.com