At long last a LiveJournal by Jeri Smith-Ready

I'm back! Bring on the Night is finished and turned in. Forks sticking out of it and everything. I am very happy with how it's turned out so far (realizing, of course, that I am in for the usual massive rewrite). For the second book in a row, I came up with an ending that changed almost everything I thought was true about its sequel. All part of the adventure, right?

Anyway, appearing today at Stephanie Kuehnert's blog, "Life, Words, & Rock 'n' Roll," is the hero of my WVMP Radio urban fantasy series, vampire DJ Shane McAllister (why I feel like I need to keep introducing him to you is beyond me. But you might be new, so hi!).

Shane is sharing his "ballad," a story of a pivotal point in his life and the music that formed the background, or, in his case, the foreground. It's all part of Stephanie's cyber-launch party celebrating the release of her amazing new novel, Ballads of Suburbia (which I talked about a few weeks ago).

Shane discusses how seeing Purple Rain changed his life, and not in the way he planned.  If you leave a comment at Stephanie's blog, you can be entered to win a choice of Wicked Game, Bad to the Bone (signed, of course), or $20 worth of WVMP merchandise (new stuff added recently, including dog T-shirts and "Feed the Need" baby bibs).

Only three weeks until my next deadline (revisions for Shade), and loads of e-mail, etc., to catch up on before I go all hermit again. We should be getting our first foster cat either this week or next, so I'll have fun stories about her. In the meantime, go visit Twinkle's page and say, "Aww!"

I pledge to do my civic duty this election season, not by proselytizing on who you should vote for (Seriously, is anyone still undecided at this point? What are you waiting for, a neon sign from God?).

No, I'll do my duty by being a big fat noodge every day until the last state passes its voter registration deadline. I'll list the states every day (except today, because it's still open everywhere) whose registration is still open and highlighting those whose deadline comes the following day. 

This will require meticulous record-keeping on my part, not to mention creativity to come up with new ways to bug the pants off you about registering to vote.  I hope you appreciate my sacrifice, and show that appreciation by purchasing my upcoming novel The Reawakened, which is chock full of hot political issues like torture, military occupations, and pyrokinetics (setting stuff on fire with one's mind is the big sleeper wedge issue of '08--just wait and see).

Don't worry--it won't be painful. It'll be video-riffic, starting with today's entry, "Five Friends (Uncensored)." Enjoy!

Today I'm filling in all the little blanks in Bad to the Bone, all the spots I put in brackets, things to look up later. Some are easy and quick, like sunrise/sunset times and moon phases. Others involve inserting descriptions, like Youngstown at night.

Many are music-related. I had to find a band with a cool Halloween song from either the 80s or 90s that was playing a date in Baltimore in the months following October 30, 2007 (long story). It took nearly an hour to find "(Everyday Is) Halloween" by Ministry (who played Ram's Head Live in April, FWIW).

Here's a video, complete with great moments from horror films of the distant and not-so-distant past (warning: some are scary/gory--duh):



More later!