Wanna Chance to Win a $20 Gift Certificate...

to the book vendor of your choice? One of the authors at Drollerie Press is hosting a blog contest. Review a Drollerie Press book by October 10 and be entered in a drawing to win. You can read about it here.

Cover Art for New Holiday Romance!

I have just been sent the cover art for my new holiday romance so I'm bragging and posting it everywhere. It will be published through Drollerie Press, soon. I'll be sure to let you know when it's officially out!

September Drollerie Press Blog Tour – How Music Influences Our Writing

As posted on my blogetary...

Drollerie Press (which is having a live chat on Sunday, September 27 at 4 pm Eastern and will be giving away books during the chat) is hosting yet another blog tour and the September theme is how music influences our writing. For this tour, a number of Drollerie Press authors are hosting each other on our blogs. I am hosting Isabelle Santiago.

Isabelle Santiago is a romance writer who likes to mix it up. The author of “Surfacing,” “Cinematic Royalty” and “Dark Hollywood Nights,” she is not content to write the typical alpha male/lady in distress tales of love and/or lust. She instead writes more unconventional, and even uncomfortable, love stories. And while the settings of these romances vary from historical to fantasy to crime to YA to regular old contemporary, they all carry in common the demand from the hero and heroine to be more. As she notes on her website, the heroine doesn’t choose between bad and good, but between good and better. Every decision brings change, and sometimes sacrifice. People get hurt and life doesn’t always offer a happy ending, but not everyone is looking for a typical romance, either.

Isabelle’s upcoming story through Drollerie Press, “Zerah’s Chosen,” is the first of a series and is high fantasy involving elementals, prophecies and forbidden love. It will be exciting to see what she does with it.

For now, I have the pleasure of hosting her here as she discusses how music has influenced her writing. Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce, Isabelle Santiago.

_______________________________________________________

About two years ago I was introduced to the amazing world of fanmixes. What is a fanmix, you say? Ahhh, well, let me share the incredible magic of this form of fanatical expression.

A fanmix is like a mixtape, devoted to your favorite fandom. It can be about anything. A major character, a couple, an unconventional couple (not someone who ever hooked up in said movie, tv show, or book), a friendship, or even a particular episode or book from a series.

I, being the music junkie that I am, find this whole concept to be deliciously addictive.

Livejournal has a great community for fanmixes. And I’ve seen a mix for just about everything you can imagine. Which of course, got me searching through my music archive for songs I could put together in some sort of fanmix. The mixes usually tell some sort of story. A progression of the story told, or some new story, from the mixer’s point of view.

Mine turned out more like a soundtrack, chronicling the relationship of two characters in my fantasy series. They’re best friends, but he’s very much in love with her, and she’s very much in love with someone else. Ahhh… isn’t that what makes so much wonderfully angsty music? As an author, I use music all the time to help me create moods, but this differed in that I searched out music specific to two people and their character and relationship arc. What I found was absolute magic and loads of inspiration.

Here’s just a sampling of the songs that made the cut:

Near to You – A Fine Frenzy:

Near to you, I am healing
But it’s taking so long
‘Cause though he’s gone
And you are wonderful
It’s hard to move on
Yet, I’m better near to you.

You and I have something different
And I’m enjoying it cautiously
I’m battle scarred, I am working oh so hard
To get back to who I used to be

Vermillion Pt 2. – Slipknot:

I’d do anything to have her to myself,
Just to have her for myself
Now I don’t know what to do
I don’t know what to do
When she makes me sad.
She is everything to me
The unrequited dream
The song that no one sings
The unattainable
She’s the myth that I have to believe in
All I need to make it real is one more reason
I don’t know what to do.

She is the Sunlight – Trading Yesterday:

And if loving her is
Is a heartache for me
And if holding her means
I have to bleed
Then I am the martyr
Love is to blame
She is the healing
And I the pain

She lives in a daydream.
I don’t belong.
She is the sunlight.
The sun is gone.

And the song I consider their theme song, the one I listen to and it still gives me goosebumps because I picture them perfectly -

Recessional – Vienna Teng:

“It’s so beautiful here”, she says, “this moment now.”
And this moment, now.
And I never thought I would find her here: flannel and satin, my four walls transformed.
But she’s looking at me, straight to center. No room at all for any other thought.
And I know I don’t want this.
Oh, I swear I don’t want this.
There’s a reason not to want this but I forgot…

In the end, I created a nifty little CD cover for it on Photoshop, loaded it onto a playlist, and play it on repeat whenever I’m away from my WIP. It always manages to make me want to rush back to it. And who knows? Someday soon, after their story is revealed to the world, I might share this fanmix/soundtrack as a friendly bonus for those who grow to love these two characters as much as I did.

---

Isabelle Santiago
Because not every girl dreams of prince charming…
website: http://twistedfairytale.net
blog: http://twistedfairytale.net/blog/
myspace: http://www.myspace.com/isabellesantiago

Another Blog Contest!

I have been remiss in announcing another blog contest going on that will be over by midnight September 30. I blogged about it a little bit here (after I announced the winner of the last blog contest). And you can see a copy of the September issue of Aoife’s Kiss down below.

If you're interested in reading a little bit of the issue online then check it out here.

And if you're tired of reading about blog contests from me, then read this here.

I promise I'll be blogging about more writerly stuff soon. I've just been pre-occupied