When life's kicking your butt, how about a theme song? [2]

I'm making a few changes in my life this year. It only makes sense I have a theme song. Think Ally McBeal and her dancing baby song (hooked on a feeling). The right song can really hit the spot. So I'm throwing out this challenge, monthly. Pick a theme song and then when you need a boost, or need a specific motivator, maybe a certain song inspires you to tackle your most dreaded chore like balancing your checkbook, choose that one. Maybe you're down and there's a song that always makes you smile, there you go.

For February, the month of hearts and jewelry commercials, I'm going with "Just Do It" (get your minds out of the gutter people). I want a song that gets my body moving so my mind can take a break for a bit. I choose Drive By by Train. After my divorce I found this song and danced my way into healing smiles. My sister pick is Best I Ever Had by Gavin Degraw. Five-year-old John chose I Knew You Were Trouble by Taylor Swift. My mom had the hardest time picking only one song, the woman gave me a playlist. I gave her a limit and she went with Your Sex is on Fire by Kings of Leon. Perfect for February, gotta say. And lastly, Will chooses I'm Having a Bad Bad Day by Pharrell Williams from the Despicable Me soundtrack. He loves it because Gru makes a kid cry and then freeze rays a bunch of coffee customers. The kid races around the room and can't stop having the best time!

You can find January's playlist HERE. I loved the songs everyone mentioned in last month's theme song post. I actually listened to those more than my pick. So suggest more or do a theme song post of your own. Either way, I'll add them to the month's playlist. In other news, I just published my third novel. Shadow Town is the first installment in the Maggie Lane Chronicles. There's romance, humor, monsters both human and otherwise, snark, and a few hot guys. I promised my dad I would write a regular book one day. I forgot to tell him this isn't it. I gotta get on that. I hope you all have a wonderful month. Just Do It! (take that however you like)

You can find February's working playlist on youtube HERE.
.

Book News!!! Shadow Town is out!

I'm giddy, folks. Shadow Town: Maggie Lane Chronicles #1 is finally on Amazon and Smashwords. Maggie has a special place in my heart. She's a hard girl who'd rather knuckle punch her best friend than give him a hug. She's always torn between running, fighting, and mouthing off. Sometimes she does all three at the same time. I'm afraid long term exposure to her attitude problem has severely affected my sass level. This is my first venture into New Adult, but I must confess I wrote this story before I knew what that was.

I'm planning a blog tour the last week of February (2/24-2/28). Here's the awesome cover Jaclyn Canada over at JC's Book Haven created and a little blurb. If you would like to join the tour leave a blog post comment or email me.

Foul-mouth Maggie Lane can find anyone she sets her sights on. And it hasn't worked out well for the nineteen-year-old. Despite her vow to quit sleuthing, a waitress at her night job goes missing. Worse, her hot new neighbor, a Shadow, eats away at her life-hardened heart. Will she be strong enough to face the demons she unearths?

Football movies that are AWESOME!

It's football mania here in Washington. My mom, sister, and five year old son are hardcore Seahawks fans. I'm a hardcore sports movie fan. Not the same thing at all. But there are moments in the games that are so huge or so agonizing, I grin ear to ear at the story quality of it all. When the ball sails past outstretched fingertips, I imagine the guy ten years from now replaying that one snapshot of his life. When Richard Sherman leaped into the air and changed impending heartache into insane joy, I wanted to shout, "That's a movie moment!" But that's lame. I know. I'm a movie geek, not a football girl. So here are a few of my very favorite football movies. Oh, and the smack talking Sherman lives off of is totally movie magic too. Love it!

How about you? Are you a football fan? If so, good luck enduring the next two weeks until the Superbowl. Maybe check out one of these movies to hold you over until then.

Think Out Loud [40] Sing!

Will had his first choir concert tonight. His first choir concert ever! I could have cried, I loved it so much! I loved watching him tiptoe to find me in the crowded audience. He's shy and he prefers people didn't sing in public, but there he stood singing with his class. There are moments in life you want to bottle and keep forever. When my grandma's dementia started eating away at her precious bottle of amazing moments, she remembered Will. She'd met him twice and he beat out almost a century of living. John gets his chance to turn me into a bouncing, cheering mom next month when he starts soccer. I'm so ready to be a sports mom. I'm totally going to make up songs for him.

Think Out Loud is a little meme with a grand idea! Post whatever the heck you want. Step outside your blogger world, or not. Share whatever you want. See, grand. Come and join us. We're cool people.

Can't go wrong with Ilona Andrews! robgirlbooks' Review of Gunmetal Magic!!

4 STARS!! Gunmetal Magic (Kate Daniels 5.5) by Ilona Andrews is so much fun! I could tag along with Andrea Nash all day every day. The girl is plain awesome. Andrea has had a crap life, I'm talking shapeshifter-style crap life. You know shifters never grow up skipping through daisies or humming lullabies while hanging up the laundry. To survive, Andrea chose a very human existence, but the humans she gave her blood, sweat, and tears to betrayed her and the animal inside found a foothold both in her psyche and in the real world. She can no longer hide behind her pretty face and mad skills with guns. Then throw in Raphael. Oh my goodness, not only is he amazingly hot and lethal, but Andrea loves him like she's never loved anything or anyone in her entire life. Problem is, she messes up, he messes up, and they're both total jerks about it. They threaten and fight, then they're hot for each other, then the day starts over. Throw in a big world ending type catastrophe that must be stopped and you have Gunmetal Magic. I loved this story, but I had a couple issues. One, it felt like a novella despite being over 300 pages long. Two, the timeline threw me for a loop. There's an actual novella (Magic Gifts) that takes place in the middle of this story. You can't read both at the same time and it is cool getting to see a scene from various angles, but I'm just not a fan of splitting stories this way so that one ends up stealing a little bit of the thunder from the other. I will say that the romance in Gunmetal was spot on for me. There is so much tension between Andrea and Raphael that as a reader you growl along with them. You squeal and sigh. In the end, I was exhausted and saying to myself, "It's all good." Can't go wrong with a read that does that.

If you haven't started this series and you're a fan of fantasy, urban fantasy, kick ass heroines, amazing writing, hot shifter men who need to be brought down a notch, uh, what was I saying? Right, read this series! Start with Magic Bites. Keep going. After book 5, read Gunmetal Magic and the novella Magic Gifts. Move on to book 6 and then wait with the rest of us for the next one.

Sidekick Showcase [42] New Year's Resolutoin

Sidekick Showcase, previously known as Sidekick Saturday, is a weekly bookish meme, hosted here by Jaclyn at JC's Book Haven. There are many secondary characters that are as great as the primaries. In some cases, the sidekicks actually steal the show and you like them better than the heroine or hero. Maybe they didn't have enough page time for how great they were. Anyone can play along! I will post my Sidekicks on Saturday, then whichever day during the week that you would like to post yours, you can put your link in on my page. Just do the following:

• Choose a sidekick *or someone other than the hero or heroine* that you would like to put in the spotlight that fit's in the week's topic

• Share a picture (if you can) and information about the character

• Give the title and author of a book the character can be found in

• Please don't include too many spoilers when describing why the character is such a great sidekick

• The day of your post, put your link in below and grab the code for your post so you can see the others that post theirs throughout the week as well

For the rest of January we're choosing side characters who could use a New Year's Resolution or two! My first thought went to Adrian from Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy and Bloodlines world. There's the drinking and partying and flippant attitude. But I love him that way and I love his journey to better and worse times. So my real pick is someone I cannot stand. He had potential for a minute, but then I wanted him to be my best friend's boyfriend just so I could kick his ass. Nick from Kim Harrison's The Hollows (books 1&2 because I'm behind on the series, but I hear he just gets less likeable) needs some serious resolutions starting with staying away from demons and artifacts and ancient books and magic and curiosity and his own spineless personality. Basically he needs a personality overhaul, but a few resolutions might make him more tolerable and less ass kickable. Okay, so when I picture Nick I see him as a younger Sean Penn. I have no idea how Harrison actually describes him, but to me he's not straight up lickable, but he's still pretty appealing.

“The demon's eyes flicked to mine, his smile widening. "This is Nicholas Gregory Sparagmos's room," he said, and my breath caught. "Delightful, just delightful! What are you doing in Nicky's room, Rachel? Ooooh, he summoned you to the West Coast, didn't he? Did you kill him? Good for you for taking care of that little problem! I should give you a bunny. Where is he? Stuffed in a closet?" ~ Algaliarept, Black Magic Sanction, Kim Harrison”
― Kim Harrison

Georges Biard [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Think Out Loud [39] Name Calling, Terms of Endearment, & Other Bad Behavior

This week a twenty-something woman called me sweetie on the phone. There are times when terms of endearment are sweet, and times when they are laser beams into a person's skull. Guess which one I experienced. It got me thinking back on times when a few words, and one time one simple word, sent me spiraling into a total fit. 

Years ago on an exercise walk in my old neighborhood I crossed paths with a woman walking her dog. She took issue with me being on the same sidewalk and moved across the street. A minute later, a pit bull with no owner and no collar rounded the corner. I casually stepped into the street as if I didn't care the dog was only a block and a half ahead. Halfway to the other sidewalk, the woman with the dog yelled, "Lady, do not come over here!" Oh, did that piss me off. I can't remember exactly what I said, but it amounted to "Sure, I'll be a chew toy so you and your dog can get to safety." A second after my rant I looked back at her sour face and yelled, "And don't call me lady!"

Again, years ago when I was very pregnant with my oldest, a massive truck backed out of a driveway right in front of my car. I had to screech to a stop, so of course, I honked, but this time it wasn't to get pissy, it was to tell the driver his reverse lights were out. 

"Hey, your reverse-"

"Shut the F up, you F-ing C-word." 

"But your lights-"

He flipped me off.

I blame the hormones and the fact that the C-word is the worst thing to call a person, but I had to pull over because the asshole hurt my feelings. I looked at his crappy tan house, "Your house sucks and you're mean and you're going to a special hell for calling a pregnant woman the C-word." He was long gone, but I felt a little better.

My sister was teasing me (not unusual) and called me a lazy slut. 

"I am not lazy! You're a lazy slut."

"Sloth, Robyn."

"Oh. Still."

"You're okay with being called a slut." I shrugged. So slut was totally okay with me, but lazy got me riled.

How about you all? Do you have seemingly harmless trigger words? Have you been insulted and had no response until the person was long gone? 

Think Out Loud is an "anything you want to post" meme. Join us. We're cool people.

YA with a New Adult edge to it! robgirlbooks' review of Where the Stars Still Shine by Trish Doller

5 STARS! Where the Stars Still Shine by Trish Doller stole my attention from the start with a character so full of flaws and beauty I just had to spend more time with her. Callie sees her world through a veil of jaded innocence. On one end, she's experienced terrible trauma due to a transient life with her mother, leaving her outlook on life a kind of loveless jagged knife. On the other end, she remains a loyal daughter to the one person in her life who should have kept her safe. And you glean all this in the first couple pages. I read this book at breakneck speed because after a tangle with the cops, Callie is rescued from her kidnapping mother and returned to her loving father. Now that she's living the life she always should have had, can she learn how to really live?

I loved traipsing through Callie's gritty world of pain and hope. She never had hope before, but slowly glimmers of possibility are revealed to her and her first reaction is always so pure, but it's her second and third reactions that get her into trouble. She's part exhilaration, part terror. She's lived eons in her seventeen years, and yet sometimes she's such a child. The family her mother forced her to leave behind is plain awesome. The town she returns to is plain cool. I want to go there, be adopted (sorry mom), and find myself a hot diver. Doesn't have to be Alex. Just because he's so beautiful, women of all walks of life stop and drool, so what, right? 

If you're looking for an emotional YA contemporary with an edge to it, give Where the Stars Still Shine a try. I have to push Doller's other book too because I still think about Something Like Normal. Both books have flawed characters that draw you in. They both pull at your heartstrings and show regular folk in hard situations. They're both sexy and raw. I only wish Doller already had a long list of books waiting for me to fall in love with because I'm sure I would.

Sidekick Showcase [41] Party Animal!!

Sidekick Showcase, previously known as Sidekick Saturday, is a weekly bookish meme, hosted here by Jaclyn at JC's Book Haven. There are many secondary characters that are as great as the primaries. In some cases, the sidekicks actually steal the show and you like them better than the heroine or hero. Maybe they didn't have enough page time for how great they were. Anyone can play along! I will post my Sidekicks on Saturday, then whichever day during the week that you would like to post yours, you can put your link in on my page. Just do the following:

• Choose a sidekick *or someone other than the hero or heroine* that you would like to put in the spotlight that fit's in the week's topic

• Share a picture (if you can) and information about the character

• Give the title and author of a book the character can be found in

• Please don't include too many spoilers when describing why the character is such a great sidekick

• The day of your post, put your link in below and grab the code for your post so you can see the others that post theirs throughout the week as well

This week's challenge is Party Animal. I wandered through my books on Goodreads until one person/neurotic vampire came to mind. Peter from Richelle Mead's Succubus books was turned at 40, so he's always going to have a receding hair line, wrinkles, and the body he had his last breath. And he is not cool with that. So combine all that with a male vampire version of Martha Stuart. Peter loves to throw parties. He lives (er, sort of) for special occasions. The holidays turn him into a hot mess! I wish so bad Mead would do a spin off of this series. I want more Carter, Roman, and the vamp boys Peter and Cody. 

"I ended up being only about fifteen minutes late for my friend Peter’s shindig. He answered his door before I could even knock. Taking in his billowing white hat and Kiss the Cook apron, I said, “I’m sorry. No one told me Iron Chef was being filmed here tonight.” “You’re late,” he chided, waving a wooden spoon in the air."

Mead, Richelle (2010-04-29). Succubus Blues (Georgina Kincaid) (Kindle Locations 4824-4827). Kensington Publishing Corp. Kindle Edition. 

"There had always been an unspoken mystery between Peter and me concerning which of us was the oldest of the mortals-turned-immortals in our little circle. Neither of us would openly admit our age, so we’d never really determined who had the most centuries. One night, after a bottle of tequila, we’d started playing a “Do you remember when…” sort of game. We’d only gotten back as far as the Industrial Revolution before passing out."

Mead, Richelle (2010-04-29). Succubus Blues (Georgina Kincaid) (Kindle Locations 662-665). Kensington Publishing Corp. Kindle Edition. 

Think Out Loud [38] Movie Disasters!

This is my first TOL of the year, and I was going to write about altruism and how I've been a total slacker about giving my time. But...that's not fun at all! Thankfully my sister and I fell into the past a few hours ago and started talking about bad movie choices. She took my mom to see Scream. My mom leaned over after the bloody opener, "I don't think I'm going to make it through the movie." My mom is not a horror movie girl. Just having World War Z under her roof (because I got it for Christmas) is unsettling for her. I laughed at my sister, maybe pointed my finger at her, but then I remembered a few of my movie faux pas. 

I was ten years old and a total movie nut. Luckily on Guam, one ticket bought you a double feature. So my sister and I went to see Beverly Hills Cop and some other movie. The other movie was totally wholesome, no nudity, no swearing, and very little violence. That's exactly how I worded it to my bigwig CPA stepfather who then took his clients to see ... Beverly Hills Cop because I mixed up the movie titles. Thankfully the shocked and appalled clients were racist, otherwise I might have felt bad. 

I was in second fourth grade (flunked first fourth grade due to my accident and dyslexia and possibly my bad attitude). My teacher who rocked even though her punishments were straight out of the Middle Ages took us on a field trip to see Red Sonja. I know, crazy! Anyways, I loved the movie so much. How could I not? First, I was at the movies and not stuck in class where no doubt I would spend at least one period on my knees holding up a bible on each hand. Second, Red Sonja had a sword. Enough said. So I told my dad how awesome the movie was. I mean I gushed about it. Did my dad hurry on over and bring the entire family with him? Yes, he did. Not a year has gone by where my dad forgets to ask me in a mocking tone if I have any movie recommendations for him.

I was nineteen and in college. My dad visited me in Hawaii. If you know me, then you know I was a pretty innocent kid. So when I saw a preview for Threesome, I really thought it was about three friends having fun. Wrong kind of fun!! Ugh. So, yes. I took my dad to see Threesome. Enough said other than to mention my dad leaned over after the movie, "Robyn, it's not really like that in college, is it?" I had no words. 

I plan to post more movie reviews this year. You are forewarned. If you haven't given this meme a shot, get on with it already. You'll be hooked.