If you live in America, there's a good chance that you've probably, at least once, heard the song "Moves Like Jagger." (OH MY GOD IT'S A MAROON 5 SONG?!). Well, here's my confession: Until I actually saw the name of the song, I thought it sounded like, "I got to move vagina."
"I got to move vagina, I got to move vagina, I got to moooooooooooooooooooooo."
Come on, though, how many of you here have never, not once in your life, mistook a set of lyrics for something else?
Like for awhile, in Slipknot's Duality, I thought that first phrase was, "I push my fingers into my IIIIIIIIICCEEEEE...!!!"
The funny thing, though, is that there's entire youtube videos of people creating "Wrong lyrics" videos, the most famous of which being a rendition of Nightwish's "Wishmaster".
Here's some more (from me):
"Now I can understand the solo that fits your liiiiice..." ("Burn it Down" by Avenged Sevenfold.)
(Bah...can't think of anymore immediately. Anybody else got some?)
Maybe it's just because I kept seeing "Go Pats!", and read it as "Go Packs!" Those damn packs.
I live in an area where football is semi-important to people, I suppose. Actually, I'm surprised that football hasn't taken over the unofficial title of "America's Favorite Past Time." I don't know hardly any baseball fans myself, but I sure do know a hell of a lot of football fans.
Oh yeah, my television said that the Giants and the Patriots played just a few years ago. Was that the year that the Patriots were undefeated all year, and then the Giants snaked the win for them with just a few seconds to go? I remember that play. I tried to explain why it was awesome to my then-boyfriend, who thought I was fucking nuts for trying to explain it to him.
P.S. PEOPLE, PLEASE! If you're going to order pizza, please order it BEFORE 3:00 (MST). Oh, wait, it's 3:18. Crap. Well, my old workplace must be ready for a hell of a night. I hope that all the people that made my life hell that still work there (most of them, even 2-3 years later) have a terrible night. Suckers!
P.S.S. I know I'm shooting myself in the foot with my nice little "product placement" here, but if you're going to get pizza, order from your little local places. All the big chain places really suck.
P.S.S.S If you order delivery, tip your driver. They're missing the Super Bowl because their bosses would otherwise automatically fire them.
Personally, I'm totally cool with that, though. Because to me, 3-star reviews still mean that they liked it, or at least they thought it was okay.
Considering I wrote Family History Part 1 and Part 2 two years ago, though, and had not really looked at them too much since, I'm good with that. I know that I've gotten better. I also know that not everybody is going to like my writing. In fact, I'm surprised anybody's liked it enough to buy it. Especially The Dowry. I'm dreading the day somebody finally decides to review that book...*shudder*.
But honestly, I would rather have a mix of good and bad reviews. There's this one guy on my twitter who is constantly boasting about how his book has something like 27 Five-Star reviews. I clicked the link to his book to see if it was true. It was, indeed true, but there was something else missing - other reviews. That's right, his 27 5-Star Reviews were his only reviews.
Honestly, that just makes me feel like he has a generous extended family or an extensive group of friends.
Anyways, here is the link to Family History: Part 1 with the review. I'll post the text below:
KT Hall's Family History Part 1 is a generational tale about Collie Barrett and her descendants and how they deal with an old family curse. The story begins with Collie and her brief but passionate sexual encounter with a stranger. She gets pregnant from this encounter with Marie. Marie grows up to become a beautiful albeit naïve girl who, like her mother before her, finds herself with child and an uncertain future.
It's easy to mistake the novel, which is set in the backdrop of 19th century England, as a historical romance. It's not. Far from it. Even though the bulk of the book deals with romantic love, the characters are complex and do not adhere to any kind of stereotype that you might find in romance books. Collie for instance is a strong-willed woman who is quite intuitive about people. Yet, her daughter, Marie, is almost the opposite. It's revealed in the book that while she thought she was pregnant with her beau's child, it was in fact his cousin that she had unwittingly been sleeping with.
The writing is focused and does not meander. You can tell that KT Hall is a precision writer who values control. In fact, it might be too controlled. The story is divided into different time periods that almost read like thinly connected vignettes. This is a good thing if you like reading snippets of what life is like in 19th century England. However, in this case, you won't know it without the chapter titles. The author does not take the time to world-build so you're left with little to discover about what life was like back then. The characters all talk like it's Midwest USA, 2012. Maybe that's a point, if not the point. Some readers will like it because it's postmodern. For me, at least, it's a distraction and therefore at times it pulls me from the story, particularly when a character refers to someone as a "guy". Would it have killed the author to at least use some English slang--not all the time but at least once or twice--to create verisimilitude?
As for the family curse: I don't think it's ever intended to be a mystery. In the first few pages, you'll find out what it is. And yet, the author never truly delves into it. Perhaps, again, it's because the story doesn't end with Part 1. Still, despite these shortcomings, the book is an enticing read, one filled with intrigue. When you read this book keep in mind that it's the journey that matters not the destination. It is, after all, just the first part of an even bigger story. I can't wait to find out what happens next.
...my favorite part was "KT Hall is a precision writer who values control."
I started this post at about 9:00 am this morning, because after checking out my data for my free promo of Family History: Part 2 and seeing that I couldn't even give it away, I fell into some kind of depression. The kind where you realize you mean pretty much nothing to this world, especially as an author, and wonder if you'll ever gain any kind of traction in this competitive world.
However, I seem to have sold 3 copies of The Dowry today; 2 in the UK and 1 in the US, though I'm not really sure why. It's honestly not that good of a story.
I think, though, that the only real reason that The Dowry is doing so well, is because it's a standalone book, and it is not obviously labeled CHAPTER ONE (like my preview of The Night Life). People see "Part 2" on Family History and think, "Oh dear good golly gosh, I would have no idea what goes on!" But, the thing is, you would. The ending would make more sense if you read Part 1, but other than that, you would be perfectly in the clear. Read the descriptions, people.
This does make me wonder how "The Night Life" will do, since it is it's own standalone story. I hope it does rather well when it comes out, actually, because it really is a beautiful story. I'm so confident, in fact, that I'm going to blackmail my graphic artist friend into making me a real cover, because he owes me money anyways. It seems there's a reason I never bugged him too much about it, even though it was a somewhat substantial amount (for me).
That's all I have tonight, folks, unless you're interested in more drawings of Twitter using MS Paint. I haven't actually done any of those, though, so even that would be problematic at best for tonight.
First off, let me precede this with a note: Blogger Really Ought to have a "Subtitle" Option."
Because my Subtitle would be appropriately titled, "Follow My Updates on How I Sold Out."
In fact, I could probably do an entire blog just on my experience with Twitter, and why I all at once dislike it and can't seem to stop using it (grrr!).
If my Twitter posts are getting old, I'm rather surprised, because for whatever reason, they seem to be the posts that gain the most attention, though I'm not really sure why. Though my last post, entitled "What My Twitter Looks Like Now", got a substantial amount of views (substantial for me, anyways). Actually, that's funny, because all it really was was a drawing I did in MS Paint.
Perhaps I should make these "Twitter Experiment" Posts more official-like, starting off by linking to the previous "Twitter Experiment" posts. Maybe I'll do that at the end of the post.
Anyways, onto the topic at hand.
Tomorrow is Friday. Actually, for folks in the mountain time zone, Friday comes in about 3.5 hours. And what is Follow Friday?
According to the first result of Google for "Follow Friday": "#followfriday is a game in which people suggest who to follow on Twitter. It helps everyone find interesting Twitter users. You list the users you recommend following and add “#followfriday” anywhere in the Tweet so others can find it. The “#” is very important – don’t forget it!"
Do you want to know something really cool, though?
Somebody told people to follow me!
And that person has a ridiculous number of followers, too (90k+).
Do people actually follow those "FollowFriday" suggestions? Maybe I ought to find people to "recommend".
Although I don't think I would ever go so far as to claim that "Music iz mi lyf!!1!", music does play some importance in my life - mainly, there's usually something playing in the background whenever I'm doing just about anything, be it writing, studying, or just plain ol' surfing the web. (You may or may not have seen my January 16th post on my latest music tastes.)
(1:56pm Mountain Time; Currently Playing: "Baby One More Time" - Britney Spears. What?)
Now, I think most of us remember our first albums, do we not? I think, however, it's especially important to many people, especially those born since about 1960-70, since music has only recently become easily available thanks to vinyl records, cassette tapes, 8-Tracks, and CDs. Thus, I think most people who ever owned some sort of musical device probably remember their first album, whether it was played with a needle or a series of lasers.
When I was around eight years old or so, I was into some music, most of which came from the radio. I particularly remember Lou Bega's "Mambo Number 5", which quickly became my favorite song. After all, it was catchy, and no eight year old really understands what's really going on in half of these songs anyways.
For whatever reason, my parents decided it was appropriate to buy this album for me. I don't even think I ever listened to the other songs on the album; how many of you can name a song by a one-hit-wonder that wasn't their debut song? (Hell, how many of you also knew that A-Ha only broke up a few years ago?)
The funny thing is that I was growing up around the time that The Backstreet Boys/N'Sync was insanely popular. As an eight year old girl, I thought that boy bands were incredibly silly, even when so many others my age thought that "OHHH EMMM GEEE NICK IS SO HAWWWTT." (Is one of them named Nick? I honestly have no idea.) I also did not care for Britney Spears at the time, when again, so many people did (though not just for her singing, ha).
(2:12 pm Mountain Time, and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra has just come up in my library!)
My first real album, though, the one I truly consider to have "owned", is Evanescence's "Fallen". In 2003, when I was just beginning to grow up, I fell in love with the rock-female singer combo. For my twelfth birthday, not only did I receive "Fallen", but I also got my very own portable CD player, which I still have laying around some place, actually.
(2:17 pm Mountain time; "Last Train to Memphis" - The Band.)
Two years later, for my fourteenth birthday, I found myself the owner of a First Generation Ipod Nano. They had literally just come out that same month, and I adored how small they were. However, it would quickly become apparent that 4 gb of space just wasn't enough for me. Yet at the time, I only listened to Green Day, Good Charlotte, Simple Plan, and Evanescence (and similar bands). Space wasn't a large concern for me.
Until, of course, I met Ryan.
Ryan was 21, and he liked cool music. He didn't listen to lame mainstream stuff, but cool stuff, like 90's grunge music (some of which I was already listening to) and Drum and Bass. He was the reason I ever heard of Pendulum, Jefferson Airplane, and the one I am probably indebted to him for, Richard and Linda Thompson. (2:24 pm Mountain Time: "In Only Seven Days" - Queen).
You see, when I was nearing the completion of "Family History", I was beginning to search my subconscious for another idea for a story. Richard and Linda Thompson's album, "Shoot Out the Lights" was my original inspiration, because somehow, I saw the entire album as a story waiting to be completed. I wanted there to be a movie where that album served as the soundtrack. Somehow, it became my job to do just that. And, after some intricate workings, I came up with a rough plot for "The Night Life."
(NOTE: This portion of this post was entirely unplanned. And I might detail how I arrived at the rough plot sometime, but not now. Mostly because I would have to explain every song and what it meant, and I honestly have no idea where I would begin with that, other than starting at Track #1.)
Coming Soon: A Post on that silly little poll I had about DRMs, and what they mean to different authors.
