Let’s welcome Barbara Meyers to West of Mars!

I do owe Barbara an official, public apology. My spam filter got a little aggressive and started dumping all correspondence from my website into spam. Imagine my surprise when I found this sitting there, just days away from being deleted entirely!

But we’re all here now, and life is good. (However, if you don’t hear back from me within a week to 10 days, drop me an email independent of the site. That should go through.)

Now that I’ve taken care of that, let’s get down to business because Barbara’s song for her forthcoming book is one of my all-time favorites. Ready?

Barbara Meyers, what song makes you think of your book?

Evanescence – My Immortal

It’s the first song I thought of when I saw the question, because it makes me think of love and the pain of loss. This song is personal to me because of a tragedy that struck our family and was played at the memorial service. Both the hero and heroine in If You Dare have lost someone important to them, and they find their way through grief together. But still, they never forget the person they loved and lost.

Wow! To be able to hear something so starkly personal and not keep the song only for that memory. That takes strength and an open heart.

The book doesn’t come out until September, but the presale is running, and so here’s what it’s about. Go preorder now and then when it arrives, it’ll be like a gift that magically shows up on your ereader! How can you resist? Your future self will thank you. Here’s why?

Can a man evolve from arrogant ass to Father of the Year?

Doug Winston looks into his newborn daughter’s eyes and vows to become the kind of man and father worthy of her. But he first must navigate the mess he’s made of his life.

Doug’s wife has left him. His baby mama dies and to avenge her death her sister, Josie, wants to prove him unfit and attain custody. The teenage son he raised despises him, the father he worships disowns him, and a child Doug never knew he’d fathered arrives on his doorstep.

As Doug embarks on his quest to live authentically, to make amends where he can and build relationships with his children and with Josie, he discovers that the father for whom he was never good enough is part of a vast criminal network.

Just as Doug and Josie cross the line from hate to love, and Doug has cobbled together the family he always wanted, can he bring the man he once idolized to justice in order to protect them all?

That’s some description, huh? I love a good redemption story.

Like I said, preorder your copy!
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As always, remember to leave a review once you’ve read the book. Reviews help in many ways! If you’re unsure your review will pass muster, I’m always willing to help out. Drop me a line, although if you don’t hear back, contact me directly!

And, as always, if you’re an author, I’d love to host you for a day. If you’re not an author but have a friend who is, send ’em on over! The only requirement is that the book be new to my readers. I’ll let you decide what exactly that means.

The world works in funny ways. I think I first really became aware of Ash Krafton through Triberr. When she released her new book, Bleeding Hearts, I realized she’s also a Pennwriter.

Triberr friends are cool. But to be BOTH a Triberr AND a Pennwriter? Well, Pennwriters… I consider Pennwriters to be MY people, you know? These are the people who (by and large) know me in real life. Many of them know what my face looks like — and the rest of me. And they suffer my often big, opinionated mouth. (Who, me? Hell, yeah!)

So when Ash announced the release of her first book, you KNOW I had to have her come by. I pretty much put it to her in those terms, too. It seems, though, that our favorite question wasn’t so easy when placed in Ash’s capable hands. Read on…

I’m sure you weren’t being mean when you asked this question, Susan. How were you to know the book was written, not with a single song in mind, but rather an entire playlist?

That means it’s going to be tough to answer this question.

Most of the songs on the Bleeding Hearts Soundtrack (not available in any store because, apparently, copyrights are ridiculously tricky things) aren’t by mainstream artists. How many readers are familiar with Lacuna Coil, Type O Negative, and Blind Guardian? Didn’t think there’d be many. And how many of you are devoted Rush fans? Yep. Thought so. (I won’t tell Geddy, though. He’d just be hurt.)

So answering this question is a lot harder than it should be. After all, if nobody’s heard of the song, then nobody’s going to relate to the book for the purpose of this article. What a failed promotional jig this would turn out to be!

Then I remembered—there *was* a band that got lots of radio play, that had Billboard-Chartable hits, that was mainstream despite their not wanting to be mainstream. There *was* a band that produced several emotional songs that really affected me in a creative way…songs like “My Immortal” and “Going Under”…and “Bring Me To Life.”

That’s it. That’s the song.

“Bring Me To Life” by Evanescence reminds me of the book every time I hear it. However, in my head, it’s not Amy Lee singing—it’s my hero, Marek.

Marek is a Demivampire who is dangerously close to Falling. If that happens, he’ll evolve into a vampire and will be lost forever. There’s slim hope for a demivamp who gets that close to the edge…unless they are found and Saved by one of the Sophia, a group of mystical oracles who are able to undo the spiritual damage responsible for a demivamp’s evolution.

Marek believes he’s too far gone to save. But that’s when Sophie finds him—and she’s not going to give up on the man she loves.

The song “Bring Me To Life” begins with the words:

How can you see into my eyes
Like open doors?
Leading you down into my core,
Where I’ve become so numb.

Without a soul,
My spirit’s sleeping somewhere cold,
Until you find it there and lead it back
Home.

Marek’s sure he’s beyond redemption when he meets Sophie. Neither of them realizes what she is at first, but he knows she’s something special. Her quirky little spurts of wisdom never fail to catch him off guard and he’s determined to find out.

As their love story progresses, Marek tells Sophie no one has ever touched his heart the way she does. It’s echoed by this line:

Frozen inside without your touch,
Without your love, darling.
Only you are the life among the dead.

Marek is desperate to rejoin the living and is confident Sophie can lead him back.

Evanescence performs the song with a haunting mixture of fierce determination and desperation, two sentiments that drive the soul of Bleeding Hearts. If the group ever re-records the song, reversing the male/female vocals, I think it would be a perfect match.

Even as it plays, “Bring Me To Life” takes me to my book every time I hear it. And, while a lot of music played in the background while I wrote Bleeding Hearts: Book One of the Demimonde, giving plenty of emotional fuel to create the character of my empathic heroine, this one seems written especially for her hero.

I’d like to dedicate this song to you, Marek.

WHAT, Ash?? MY readers not know Lacuna Coil? To not still mourn the loss of the (warped but) creative genius who was Peter Steele?

You need to hang out here more often. You just do.

But Evanescence?? Still holds a high place of regard on my iPod. Have you heard Ben Moody’s spinoff band, We are the Fallen, yet? Sounds a lot like Evanescence, but the songwriting shows who in the band has/had the chops… I may be a bigger Ben Moody fan than an Amy Lee fan, and that’s saying a lot…

Anyway, back to the book.

Hey, how’d you like the blurb?

About BLEEDING HEARTS: Book One of the Demimonde

Saving the world one damned person at a time—shy advice columnist-turned-oracle must find a way to save her dangerous demivampire lover from the fate that threatens each of his race: evolution and the destruction of his soul.

When advice columnist Sophie meets dark and alluring Marek, she learns life-changing secrets about them both—he’s a demivampire struggling to avoid evolution and she’s an empathic oracle destined to save him. Sophie possesses the rare ability to reduce the spiritual damage that causes a demivamp to Fall, making her the only thing that stands between a DV and evolution.

However, as Marek’s dangerous past propels him toward his desperate fate, his enemies make darker plans for him: once vampire, powerful Marek would be second only to the Master himself. The vamps want to cause Marek’s Fall and they intend to use Sophie to do it….

Hook up with Ash at these places:

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Buy links!!
Pink Narcissus Press
Amazon
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