Can You Feel the Music?

When I first started writing toward publication, I couldn't comprehend the idea of writing to music. I thought it would be distracting and I'd end up typing song lyrics instead of the words that were meant for my manuscript.

Then... the manuscript stalled for me. A friend suggested writing to music. I cringed. And then I agreed to try it--if she could recommend some non-classical instrumental-only stuff. So began my love affair with Apocalyptica, but also... I finished the manuscript and developed an addiction to writing to music.

I moved on from instrumental-only and created playlists for every manuscript. When I first began doing it, I tried to make each playlist completely unique, but I found that didn't work for me. Too different meant that it was a distraction, just as I'd always feared. Then, rather than trying to make everything different, I just picked songs that spoke to me AND to the story. In the end, that means a lot of my playlists feature the same artists, and often the same songs, over and over.

Now, that seems logical enough, but the funny part is that I can tell them apart. If I have on the wrong playlist (even if 50% of the artists/songs are the same) it distracts me and I can't sink into the music to write what I'm working on. For me, the playlist itself--the very order and slight variety of songs--speaks to the story. It's my entry point to the world, and without it the writing is harder.

The playlist for Pretty Souls was one of the first I created. For fun, I want to play a little game. Some of you have read Pretty Souls, but for those who haven't, here's the blurb:

My life followed a simple pattern. 

Run to keep my inner wolf asleep. 

Make sure my blood-sucking foster sister, Cass, feeds. 

Hunt for supernatural trouble when we should be sleeping. 

Keep my grades up and my head down. 

It was mostly a game. 

Until people started wandering around like living zombies. 

Until people I care about started getting hurt. 

Until the menace came knocking on my front door. 

Game’s over. 

Time for the soul-stealer to realize just because he’s hunting something doesn’t make it prey. 

Cass and I bite back. 

~The Paranormal Response Team~ 

Saving the World Before Breakfast

There is also an excerpt here.


With what you know of the story, what song (or songs) would you have put on the playlist? 

(At the end of the week, I'll post the actual playlist I made when I wrote the book. And if anyone nails one of the songs, I'll draw one of the "right" answers randomly and give away some sort of prize--to be discussed with the winner. As a hint, there are no Apocalyptica songs on the soundtrack, but there's one below just because I love them.)

News!

It isn't huge news, but I'm excited nonetheless.

First, to everyone who voted for Pretty Souls (and anyone else who cares), I'm pleased to announce that it won the September cover contest at You Gotta Read Reviews! Thanks to everyone who voted :)

Second, I sent my new YA novel off to my beta readers last night. Everyone promised to have it back to me in time for me to make changes before NaNoWriMo hits (you know, so I can send it out while I'm going crazy writing). So, keep your fingers crossed for me that they like it and that the editor I'm planning to send to falls in love with it too.

Julie Particka Gets Comfy

Hi all! I'm Julie Particka, author of the Paranormal Response Team series (Book 1--Pretty Souls is available now from Decadent Publishing). I also write adult fiction under another name, but I talk about that a lot as is, so I'm going to stick with being this me while I'm here. Hope that's okay.

Honestly I hate introductory posts. I'd much rather just settle into a new place and get comfy. So I'm going to pretend it's just you and me hanging out.

You: Tell me about yourself.

Me: I'm the youngest of six kids and the only one that was planned. No, seriously. My five siblings were born in a six-year span, and then my parents waited seven years to have me. I look at it this way, they're Polish and Catholic. It took them five times to figure out what they were doing and at that point, the church kept telling them not to stop.

Anyway, basically I was raised in an environment with five moms (fortunately my brother never took on the mantle of playing dad)...which messes with a kid's head a bit. (That whole "it takes a village" thing? Yeah, I don't buy it.) Anyway, I tended to spend a lot of time with books to escape the everyday, and in the process fell in love with the...non-everyday. Sci-fi, fantasy, talking animals...I ate it all up (at different times).

After years of trying to be all serious and Plan B about my future, plan A (writing) started to crop up more and more. Then I ended up a stay-at-home mom and decided I was taking the opportunity to give Plan A a chance.

You: LOL that's awesome. So tell me about Pretty Souls and the Paranormal Response Team.

The PRT came into being in a rather bass-ackwards way. My husband and I were watching a show called The Middleman (never heard of it? Don't worry, not many have. Hence why it was canceled.) and it had the tagline "Saving the world so you don't have to". Which also happens to be the tagline for a series of books by a woman who used to be in my writing group. We started talking about how taglines get re-used and blah, blah, blah. And, somewhere in this conversation, I changed the tagline to "Saving the world before breakfast". (Yeah, I think I might have been hungry at the time.) Anyway, I liked it so much I wrote it down and pinned it to my handy-dandy little board.

I was working on a different project at the time, but the tagline kept staring at me. Little by little pieces started to fall into place. First, I knew it had to be about teenagers. Somehow, the "before breakfast" thing just screamed "before school" to me. Then I had this image of a group arguing about naming their little "super group" (which is basically the naming scene that made it into the book). And then two of my nieces came into play.

We were at a family party, and I was watching them and thought to myself "They could be sisters, but they aren't." It was a total lightbulb moment. So I have two foster sisters and I knew there was going to be a supernatural element somehow. Generally, werewolves and vampires are shown as enemies in fiction, and I loved the idea of going against that stereotype. That's where the PRT came from. It's envisioned as a 5 book series (I'm hoping to submit book 2 this fall).

Pretty Souls is the first book, and really anything I tell you is going to be what is in the trailer. So just to make things pretty, go ahead and check this out.

If you hate trailers, the book deals with my two heroines--Elle and Cass--tracking down a demon spawn who is ripping the souls from people in their town. Along the way they have to deal with school, tutors, bullies, and boy troubles. It's available from Decadent Publishing as well as Amazon and a bunch of other places. I hope you'll check it out!