Nine more days of school and I am SO not ready for summer vacation. Or am I?

Check out my plan for getting work done AND entertaining my kids during this year’s upcoming break, over at WorkingNaked.com.

Wasn’t there some song in the 70s or 80s that started out like that? Dance with me/I want to be your partner/Can’t you see…

Yeah. I remember it.

Anyone got a title and artist for me? (If you know it and want a free download of something from my backlist, holler. What the heck; it’s a Smashwords coupon and a memory like THAT ought to be rewarded.)

The dance today isn’t some veiled sexual comment, like the song is. It’s a happy dance.

Dudes, I am SWAMPED. A big editing project, a couple of samples, a Last Look edit, some PR, some real-life people to connect with, some books to edit for that big name review company who pays me to tell them what I think of a book or two… SWAMPED, I tell you. I’m so swamped, it’s hard to know which project gets top priority and my full attention at any minute of the day.

And I am loving every minute of it. (I’d love it more if the auto-schedule feature were working right ’cause I’ve got cool posts that I’ve been too swamped to hand-post!)

Bring it on. Keep it coming. It may mean less of me on social media. But it means an income, and it means I’m happy and a happy Susan means more good fiction coming your way, as well.

And while I’m this swamped, go visit Jaidis Shaw. I’ve got a Featured New Book spot I need to get up for Monday, so stop in and see what she’s about. Whet your appetite so when she’s here, talking music, you’re TOTALLY into it.

Keep the good stuff coming, guys. It’s magic, and I’m loving it. May it only get better from here.

Well, sure. You guys knew King Trevor arrived back in April.

That’s because you’re the cool kids.

My good friend, Darcia Helle, is helping spread the word. She’s interviewed both me AND Trevor over at her blog.

Stop in and see what’s up.

I met Larry Enright through a writer’s group on Facebook, I believe it was. We Tweet often; he’s funny and charming and is always good to lift your moods when you need to have ’em lifted.

Which of course means I have to host him now that he’s got a new short work out! It’s called 12-21-12 and if you know anything about numbers, you recognize the date. That should tell you plenty as to what the book’s about.

So. On to the song that makes Larry think of his new release.

Answer this question: What song makes you think of your book?
It’s the End of the World by R.E.M.

2. Please provide your book blurb:
The world ends for someone every day. One day it will end for everyone.

3. Buy links:
a. Amazon only!

4. Please provide any personal links you’d like to include:
a. Website
b. Facebook
c. Twitter
d. Goodreads

Come over to Yinz Readin’, home of local girl Laurie Koozer, to see what my favorite children’s book is. You won’t be disappointed!

I took a few hours just now when I should have been writing, and re-added all the book reviews that used to be linked to from the Rock Fiction page.

And the recovery from being hacked continues…

If you haven’t been over to the Rock Fiction page yet, what’s keeping you? Go check it out. Read the reviews. If you know of any good reviews I can link to, let me know. If I’m missing any Rock Fiction titles that need to be on the page, let me know. Drop a note to your favorite Rock Fiction author (well, other than me) and ask them to send me their book for review (although I’m way backlogged!).

I’ve got a few more things to do behind the scenes, and then it’ll be off to some of that magic time that, on Twitter, we call #amwriting.

I met DJ Butler not too long ago, when he dropped into my inbox. A mutual friend had suggested we hook up, and let me tell you, I owe that mutual friend! DJ’s pulp series is FUN, FUN, FUN. The fourth installment of his rock band fighting evil came out right around the time King Trevor did, and I was busy with my own release and getting this place back up and running. Poor DJ had to wait all this time for his feature.

That means that once you’ve read this, you need to head over to Amazon and get yourself ALL the titles in the series. Yes, I’m serious. No, doing so won’t break the bank. (Especially because, for you freebie hunters, there are some this week only!)

Read on and see what song inspired this fourth episode, Devil Sent the Rain.

That’s an easy one: “Sympathy for the Devil.” I actually was going to use that title (all the Rock Band Fights Evil books steal their titles from blues, folk or rock songs), until I saw that it had already been done. Many, many times.

I choose “Sympathy for the Devil” for three reasons. First, I think we can all agree it’s a bitching song. And Rock Band Fights Evil is nothing if not bitching.

Second, the song is a devil’s eye retelling of the history of the human race. It’s epic in scope, involving great human wars and famous atrocities (the World Wars, the killing of Christ and the Kennedys) in a tale in which it’s not always easy to tell the cop from the criminal, the sinner from the saint. This is also true of Rock Band Fights Evil, which is a sort of rock ‘n’ roll telling of the apocalypse, revolving around a not-entirely-unsympathetic figure of Azazel, greatest of the Princes of Hell.

Third — and this is why I wanted to use the title for one of the books in the first place — the action in the early books is driven by sympathetic magic. (For anything who is now raising a puzzled eyebrow, the basic idea of sympathetic magic is that two things that are once together are always together, so you can take magical action on a part of something to cause an effect on the whole thing.) Azazel, imprisoned in the wastes of Dudael for centuries under a bath of holy water, lost a fragment of his hoof. The band, a gaggle of variously-damned men, grab the hoof fragment in book one and race towards Hell against the powers that want to snatch the hoof from them, because they want to use it in an act of sympathetic magic — think voodoo doll principles — to force Azazel to undamn them.

Hey, look, I think I’ve just given you my book blurb, too. Ha! Rock on!

(Sadly, it looks like the Stones have yanked all the video of this off the Internet. Shoot.)

[Note from Susan: I found one! Click that link above!]

Rock Band #1 is Hellhound on My Trail

Rock Band #2 is Snake Handlin’ Man

Rock Band #3 is Crow Jane

Rock Band #4 is Devil Sent the Rain

Blog

Rock Band Website

Facebook

Google+

Twitter

Goodreads

One final note: Be sure if you do nothing else, you check out the cover art for these books. They’re every bit as awesome and entertaining as the books themselves and I HATE that covers this slick have to be reduced to greyscale!

Since the hack caused my Rocks ‘n Reads blog to be lost, I’ve come up with a new way to post my book reviews. You can access them from the Rock Fiction page — once I’ve got them all up.

Down the road, one of my goals is to come up with really cool templates for each page. Yes, each review will have its own sidebars!

(Buy my books and hire me to edit yours so I can afford this project, okay??? Yes, I’m eyeing Kickstarter, too.)

Since there won’t be an RSS feed associated with the new reviews, I’ll take this space to notify you of the reviews I post.

Which means I’ve got a review to tell you about! It’s for Rachel K. Burke’s Sound Bites, a really cute beach read that is totally worth your time. Once you read my review, use this link (my Smashwords affiliate link) to pick up your own copy. You won’t be disappointed!

It’s quiet over here at West of Mars. There are a couple of reasons for this.

First is that I stopped in at Shayna Gier’s blog, talking about the reaction to King Trevor’s release. Go see it… there may be a secret or two that gets revealed!

Second is that another amazing writer has found her way to me, and I’m currently helping her hone her prose from damn fine into incredible. This project will most likely take me into next week, which means very little writing or blogging will be happening.

And last… have you clicked through lately? Why not do it now? You’ll find a whole new look going on here at West of Mars. Regrettably, it came at a cost — the archives of Rocks ‘n Reads have been lost forever, and Win a Book may or may not be recoverable.

I’ll be reposting, slowly, when I have time, the book reviews I’d posted at Rocks ‘n Reads. Keep your eye on the Rock Fiction page and watch as, slowly, the links to the reviews change.

Onward and upward, my friends. Remember to pick up your copies of my books, and to contact me first when you need an edit.

I made friends with author Thea Atkinson awhile ago… over a year, apparently, although it feels like both forever and yesterday. Her new book, Water Witch, is out, which means… she had to stop in for a Featured New Release!

A few years ago, my brain threw out two words to me: water witch. I thought at the time it came from the fact that my Father-in-law was able to divine for us the best place to put our well by using an old apple branch. I’d heard of divining water, and was always intrigued by the idea.

As a writer, I felt compelled enough that the two words together spoke to me. I just couldn’t understand the language until a number of years later when I had to write a fantasy/paranormal type flash fiction piece for a blog. Right then, this character who had been unnamed before and whose story had eluded me, began to solidify.

The result of that is Water Witch: a short novel in a series called Elemental Magic. The release has proven to be both exciting and anxiety ridden, as YA is a departure for me. Would folks like the Alaysha character as much as I did? Would they compelled to hear her story?

While I wrote, like I always do, I had a soundtrack that played to keep my fingers moving over the keys in some sort of trancelike rhythm, trying to harness those creative brain waves. I find music, whether it’s lyrics or the sound, spurs the firing of those beta/theta waves as easily as dreams.

One song I played over and over for the pure enjoyment and for the metaphor within was a Dave Matthews Band song: Don’t Drink the Water.

I encourage you to read the flash that inspired the translation of the water witch codec and allowed me tap into the character in a way that became more clear with each word. And I encourage you, if you like what you read, to go sample it from Amazon.

***

Let the Rain Fall
By Thea Atkinson

The scene was a sickening one, and in her early days, she would have been bothered by such gruesome images of war. Now, 40 years after she’d ridden her first beast to battle, she was hardened to all the death. Hardened like the blade she carried on her back — not that she needed a blade to take a life.

A water witch needed nothing to aid her in killing.

She could draw the fluid from a man’s body in three seconds, count the time with barely a breath between each before they collapsed into a pile of leathered skin with bones so brittle she knew they crumbled to sand inside the left over husk. The eyeballs turned to blackened raisins that fell from the sockets and plopped onto the earth.

When she was young, she thought they were the seeds of a man’s soul, that some god would rejuvenate them. She expected to see another body sprout from where they had fallen.

They never did.

So she hardened herself to all those deaths she’d caused — all those seeds left unspent in the ground. All for the safety of a runt of a man who had never bothered to learn her name.

“Witch,” he called her. “Witch, I need you,” he’d say when he wanted to vanquish an enemy. And there were many enemies.

I need you. I want you. I want you and need you to kill, and so she had without question for years. A girl always obeyed her father, after all.

She remembered her first battle. All of those images that she stored away from her spot in a hanging basket slung like a saddlebag from her father’s war beast. She was young — just seasons old, but a water witch had a long memory to go along with the gift — a necessity if she was to draw water from a vessel. There would need to be a vivid account of pathways and exits. And so she could still see that first pore, that first tear duct, that sweat gland — and deeper, that cell membrane that protected the precious water. She found that if she was significantly hungry, she could speak to those portals and pull fluid from them with an ease that almost hurt her.

Killing was ugly business for a soldier let alone a two-year-old. Her father assumed such ugliness was part of her nature.

“Will it,” he told her. And she did. So strong was her power over fluid that men dropped to their knees in droves, the raisins from their sockets plomping onto the ground like raindrops on thirsty earth: seeds waiting for nourishment.

Storm clouds gathered as the last enemy fell and pelted those left standing–those behind her father–with hail, but no new men sprouted to replace those she’d taken. A hunger rumbled with a terrible ache in her belly and left it feeling like one black cavern that food could never fill — not ever again after that.

She lived in fear that one of those seeds would trail like a pumpkin’s stem into a man’s arm that would sneak forward through the years to reach her finally and strike her down.

And then she wished for it.

And then she prayed for it.

So this scene, nearly 40 years after that first battle was especially gruesome. She sat her beast instead of being side-bagged on it. Her father, furious at his serfdom for a rebellion gone horribly wrong, yelling, weeping, spitting his revenge at their audacity.

“Will it,” he told her.

She drew water from them — each of them — soldiers, peasants, men, women — and yes, even children. She watched every living thing from plant to bird to man in this her father’s serfdom become petrified in an instant. All that remained were stones of different sizes and sand of different piles, and a hundred thousand little raisins peppering the arid earth as if it was a spicy bannock for a meal never to be eaten.

And in that moment she knew some men should never come back. That, that was the secret the gods kept from her. Those seeds, those raisins, should never sprout for they’d had their season.

The storm clouds gathered above her. Her father grunted his anger; it wasn’t enough, this revenge. They deserved worse, not this quick, painless death he’d ordered. He should have done more; she should have drawn the water slower, made them suffer.

She looked at him, felt the drops of water from the clouds plop onto her shoulder. The rain on her cheeks felt hot, then cold as it evaporated. The clouds sucked back into themselves, afraid of the power of the witch that could thirst the water from the very sky.

“I’m hungry,” she said to him as she climbed down from her beast. The earth felt good on her bare feet. She’d never been allowed to have shoes.

“Eh?” Her father gave her a sharp look. She’d never deigned speak to him except to answer yes to his whims.

“I hunger.”

Even as his mouth opened to deny her, he spilled from his beast, so many particles of sand running into his boots as they hit the ground, dumping into the sidesaddle she’d spent so many months in while they were at war. His ice green eyes shriveled and fell as tiny raisins to the earth.

She knelt to one knee and scooped them up, giving them a quick study, making sure they were indeed the seeds of his soul.

And then she popped them into her mouth, chewed. And for the first time in her forty years, she felt satisfied.
-30-

Pick it up at Amazon.

Smashwords

No fiction again this week; it’s been another hectic one. Hopefully, writing time will resume in the immediate future.

You guys know I like to find all sorts of crazy, creative ways for people to express themselves.

But heavy metal bellydancing?

Why not?

MOONHOAR is a metal bellydance duo featuring Hairy The Beast and Warta The Destroyer. Formed in New Orleans, MOONHOAR fuses various styles of bellydance with their own experimental moves to one of the most intricate and heavy music genres… metal. All of their pieces are based on dark themes found in history, mythology, or the occult. They state, “We don’t do restaurants, but we will do funerals!’

Seriously… why NOT??

(and can I learn??)

**quote from Blabbermouth.

Yeah, okay. Lame post title.

You don’t think? Read on.

Alex Lifeson, the guitar virtuoso of rock legends Rush, is the latest musician to expand into visual arts. The Kidney Foundation of Canada is offering limited-edition copies of his artwork. And I do mean limited — only 250 are being printed!

It’s pricey, too, as befits a special print for a special cause — $275 Canadian for us here in the States (shipping to the US included). The prints have an original autograph from Alex, but they do NOT come with a frame. You’ve got that expense on top of the cost of the print.

Still… I think collecting art from musicians is a cool thing to do. Go buy my books so I can, eh?

Here’s more info, from the official site.

I’ve had a crush on Machine Head’s Phil Demmel since the first time I met him, back in the early ’90s. Back when he was in Bay Area band Vio-Lence. What a classy dude, always kind to the cool-assed radio chick. My sort of hot, too.

I’ve also totally been jamming to the new Machine Head single, Darkness Within. LOVE, love, LOVE that song! It’s about music as religion and it reminds me of an essay I wrote in college (that was good enough, my prof entered it in the college-wide essay-writing contest. The winner? Something with some long, dry, academic title. Of course) about the first time I saw Alice in Chains. It was the Limelight in New York City, a long-since-shuttered nightclub that had a long and fruitful previous life as … a church. Layne Stayley up on that old altar…

Yeah. In a setting like that, you get the idea of music as religion.

I’ve also been drooling on this here blog over the wordsmithing magic that is Joel McIver.

Phil Demmel + Joel McIver = Susan in HEAVEN.

If you can’t figure it out, Joel’s penned the first-ever biography of Machine Head. Okay, so Phil shares the spotlight with the rest of the band. I can deal.

What I can’t wait to do is read.

No Kerri’s Diary this weekend. I’m off to Boy Scout Leader Training, hoping I won’t be called home early; it looks like I can do Wood Badge in the autumn if I make it to the end.

So. That means you should go visiting. I have been — join me!

At Novel Publicity, I’ve dropped in with a guest blog to talk about the value of a paid review. Now that I’m getting paid by a big, well-established company to write reviews, I’ve got a different perspective on what you’ll get out of it. And I’m not talking about a soaking for the fees, either.

Necromancy Never Pays has a thought-provoking review of King Trevor.

Another King Trevor review can be found at Shayna Gier’s blog. It’s interesting to compare the two.

Giveaways!

Shayna’s giving away e-copies of Trevor’s Song and King Trevor, so stop in and enter to win.

Want another contest? Laurie J at Laurie’s Non-paranormal Thoughts and Reviews is giving away an e-copy of Trevor’s Song. Since he’s gotta have a song before he can be crowned King, don’tcha know…

Yeah. I live outside of Pittsburgh. Outside enough to not have to send the kids to the Pittsburgh Public Schools (with apologies to my friend who teaches in one of them), but near enough to consider myself a Burgher, proud and true.

So I sorta want to gag when I envy the music lovers of Cleveland. I mean, hello? CLEVELAND??? The city that set its river on fire???

Yeah, and to add personal insult to the decades-long rivalry between the cities, I’ve got family in Cleveland.

Here’s what’s making me say such gag-inducing words as, “Oh to be in Cleveland on April 13… the day after King Trevor’s release!”

It’s Duff McKagan. I might have fallen a bit in love with him during the escapade that prompted this post… but, maybe I didn’t.

Either way, hearing that he’s going to be in Cleveland the night before the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductions, where he’ll be honored as a member of Guns ‘n Roses, made me drool. Oh, it’s not because of Axl, who intrigues the hell out of me. It’s because on the 13th, Duff took over the House of Blues (the only House of Blues I’ve ever been in, coincidentally — a fact that MUST be changed before I perish) for a one-off musical tie-in performance to his book, It’s So Easy (and other lies).

It’s a multi-media book reading, complete with music and … oh, hell. It’s some form of really avant garde performance art that will probably make perfect sense and make me swoon with the sheer creativity of the project. And when I’m done swooning, I’ll be sad I wasn’t part of it.

Except… I wasn’t be there. Couldn’t be. But man, do I want to be…

Yes, in case you missed it: ShapeShifter is a band name. It came from the desire of a young Trevor Wolff to shapeshift into his namesake and rip out the throat of the man who claimed to be his father.

That’s why I’ve stopped in at Laurie’s NON-paranormal Thoughts and Reviews today, for an interview and spotlight of Trevor’s Song. There’s an excerpt, too.

Why Trevor’s Song and not King Trevor? Because with the hullabaloo over here that I hope you’ve known nothing about (but if you’ve clicked through recently, you’ve seen it first-hand), I couldn’t get it together for King Trevor in time. Which means it’s been worse than crazy over here.

Stop in. See what’s going on. Click through to the give for Smashwords coupons for BOTH Trevor’s Song and King Trevor.

While you’re out and about, stop in at JC Cassels’ Gotta Name My Blog. I’m talking about heroes over there.

I got all excited when I saw the title of MaryLynn Bast’s new book. No Remorse.

Metallica alert!

But… nope. Here’s what song makes Mary think of her book:

Pink is my favorite female singer. I love her bad kick ass attitude and she reminds me of Amber, and her song “Perfect”, is actually a perfect for description of Amber’s life up until she meets back up with Blake.
“Made a wrong turn once or twice.
Dug my way out, blood and fire.
Bad decisions, that’s alright.
Welcome to my silly life.
Mistreated, misplaced, misunderstood!
Miss “No way, It’s all good”, it didn’t slow me down.
Mistaken, always second guessing, underestimated!
Look, I’m still around…”

Ahh, Pink’s a favorite around here. It probably doesn’t have the Family Friendly alert that the other song I linked to does…

So what’s Mary’s No Remorse about, anyway?

Due to her unusual birth, Amber has abilities no other werewolf has ever possessed. On the run since childhood, the lone wolf avoids contact with other werewolves at all cost, continually moving, constantly looking over her shoulder and always alone.

Everything changes when Amber saves a werewolf from the mere brink of death, Blake, the only werewolf to ever protect her. Love blossoms, but not without tribulations when Amber realizes she must help her new pack rescue a member who is being held hostage by a rival pack.

Warring with emotions of going from lone wolf to the pack leader’s mate, Amber must decide if she is willing to risk Blake’s life to know true family and friendship despite the fact that the Council is hell bent on locating her and will stop at nothing until she is found. Will Amber’s special abilities be enough to keep everyone safe?

Links you’d like to have:
Amazon
Book Trailer
Website
Facebook
Facebook (author page)
Twitter

Thanks to everyone who turned out and picked up copies of King Trevor yesterday, on its release day! Here’s more from Kerri’s diary, a loose-tie in. If you haven’t joined the Trevolution yet, now’s the time!

Mitchell and Daniel took off together for lunch. Mitchell said I could come, even though they’d be talking business. I had nothing better to do, so I tagged along.

It was fascinating stuff.

The jist is that they’d ordered two different new t-shirt designs to debut on this leg of the tour. One was my first drawing of Cool Dude. Trevor’s gotten some comments from people about it, and it was featured in that guitar gods interview they did with me and Trev. Mitchell had to bully JR into letting us put that shirt out. JR had been convinced that despite the magazine, no one would want a cartoon. It went against the ShapeShifter image, he’d said.

To me, that’s why Cool Dude is cool.

Still, I kept my mouth shut while they talked about this. The whole band had thought they were onto something. They fought JR and finally Mitchell threatened to fire him if JR didn’t make those t-shirts available. “It’s not like we fucking have to pay the artist a royalty!” he’d screamed.

I’d asked him why not, but he’d given me one of those looks, and I let it drop. You’d think that after doing the design for Behold Me, I’d have known better this time around. Guess not.

Needless to say, the band was right. The Cool Dude t-shirt has been selling like mad. In fact, Daniel and Mitchell looked at each other, then at me, then at each other again. I get what pregnant silence means now.

“Maybe,” I said. “But you’ll have to pay more.”

Mitchell snorted, then growled.

“Stick it,” I said. “Maybe I’ll use the royalties to fund a scholarship at Riverview Art.”

I think that idea satisfied him. I mean, the band’s doing well enough that so are we.

The other t-shirt, though… that’s the problem. It was supposed to be one of those basic wardrobe staples that no one can live without. The ShapeShifter logo at the top, and the most recent promo shot underneath. It was JR’s pet. He was convinced it’d be the band’s newest top-seller.

Can you say overstock?

Yeah. Me, too.

Since 2009, my first birthday after the publication of Demo Tapes: Year 1, I’ve been saying that all I want for my birthday is book royalties. Well, okay, I wanted iTunes gift cards as well.

It didn’t get off to a good start.

Then it dawned on me that I needed to make it easier. Give you an incentive. Last year, I released Mannequin. It’s still 99c, if you haven’t picked it up yet.

This year?

Well, I’ve been working hard on the follow-up to Trevor’s Song. So it made sense to, on my birthday, crown the king.

King Trevor. Available today at Smashwords, Kindle, CreateSpace, and Amazon. The other retailers, like B&N and Sony and Apple, are still pending.

And check out all the folk who are celebrating with me by posting about the release:
Mary at BookHounds
Me, over at the #Amwriting site
Nimrodiel at Confessions of a Literary Persuasion
JC Cassels is teasing everyone about my upcoming appearance.

Here’s a follow-up to a book I’d blogged about over a year ago (see? Publishing DOES work slowly!).

An excerpt to Zakk Wylde’s Bringing Metal to the Children is now available. It’s a Facebook page and you’ll have to like it in order to gain access to the excerpt, but it’s a lot easier than some other sites I’ve been to…

The entire book went on sale April 10 — that’s yesterday! I still think you should save your money for King Trevor tomorrow, but that’s just me…