Tunes for Tuesday #2







Tunes for Tuesday is a feature here at Midnight Reads where each week a playlist from a book we have read or want to read will be featured.

This week we are playing songs from Josephine Angelini's STARCROSSED which we love here at Midnight Reads!!

STARCROSSED Playlist

Tear You Apart ~ She Wants Revenge

Pretty much sums up Lucas and Helen's first meeting in the hallway at school!

Heartbeats ~ Jose Gonzales

This song inspired the scene between Helen and Lucas after they fall out of the sky. Especially the line "two hearts in one body".

Heart Skipped a Beat ~ The XX

After Helen and Lucas blow up the air mattress, when he goes up to the roof to sleep alone she can hear him moving around up there...yowza. 

Starlight ~ Muse

Helen's first flying lesson with Lucas. So joyous!

Mistaken For Strangers ~ The National

This song feels to me like how Helen feels walking through the dry lands and the "graveyard of love". It's like she's lost and totally alone, even a little manic.

Hey ~ The Pixies

I had this song on when I wrote the bit about Lucas calling to Helen down the hallway at school when she has been avoiding him. I had Lucas shout "Hey!" just like the first word of the song.

She's My Baby ~ Mazzy Star

I wrote the scene of Lucas walking around in the storm for Helen, while I was listening to this. The heavy beat is a little like the sound of his feet thumpig the ground in "super-massive state".

Cycling Trivialities ~ Jose Gonzales

I listened to this song on repeat when I wrote the action sequence at the end between Hector and Creon, and then the following scene between Hector and Lucas on the steps of the library.

All I Need ~ Radiohead

The very last page of the book! This is what I listened to when I was picturing Lucas sitting on Helen's window's walk, watching the sun come up.

Midnight Reads would like to to thank Josephine Angelini for sharing her playlist with us along with the reasons behind her song choices and how they influenced STARCROSSED!

Artist Feature ~ Ollerina Art ~ Interview & Giveaway



Hi Karen thank you for stopping by the blog to answer questions about Ollerina Art.
Let's get started :)

How long have you been working as an artist?

I've been doing art all my life but after graduating from art school I tried various things from painting commissions to making children's clothes. It's taken me a while to focus but I've been working on Ollerina Art for seven years.

Where did you study?

I studied fine art at The Kent Institute of Art and Design in Canterbury and later did a Masters in Communication Design at The Manchester Metropolitan University.





You have said that your son influenced your robot images, do family and friends often influence your art?

Yes my son did influence my robot picture. He has the best imagination I've ever come across and I am stockpiling sheets of paper with ideas he's come up with for future work, things like The Penguin Inventor making an army of friendly robot penguin helpers! So watch this space.

My partner is also an artist and I am always interrupting his TV to ask about lighting or make him draw on my work if I'm having trouble. I've got a lot of friends who are artists too including my brother so I'm surrounded by it which I love. I'll pretty much get ideas from anyone though, you never know what someone will say to conjure up an image!

Dark Fairy and Soft Silence seem really popular (I have these two, I love them) which you produced for Rebel Books. I know you had a brief of 'dark fairy' to follow but did anything else influence these images?

For Dark Fairy and Soft Silence I got a brief and a sample image of the kind of thing they were after.

I usually do image searches on the Internet for example 'Dark Fairy' to see what comes up and I collect several images to provide inspiration, one could be the colours I want another could be some butterfly wings etc...

Which books have you produced art for?

I haven't produced any images for any other books though it was an aspiration to produce a children's picture book that created Ollerina Art. Ollerina was and still is a character I invented. It's no longer a picture book and will probably take me another ten years to get right but it keeps me entertained.



What is a typical working day for you?

My typical working day starts when the kids go to bed and ends when my eyes start to close. I guess it will be like this until my youngest starts school. Though I do have a friend who sets her alarm for 2am and works through the night to the sound of night time radio until the kids wake up. I'm not sure I have this in me but it's something to think about.

Who is your favourite artist?

I don't have a single favourite artist because there are just too many out there but a current favourite of mine is Camilla d'Errico. My latest inspiration book purchases include Duddle's The Pirate Cruncher. Enrique Fernandez's L'ile Sans Sourire. And The Art of Kung Fu Panda. I am also a huge fan of Disney but I get a lot of my inspiration from artists from The Golden Age of illustration approx 1900-1930. These include artists like Arthur Rackham, Harry Rountree, Mabel Lucie Attwell, Hilda Cowham and tons more who's illustration skills are just awesome.

Can you share with us what you are working on at the moment?

At the moment I am working on some self initiated images, a Halloween picture with trick or treat pixies and a giant spider! An Alice in Wonderland illustration and a more design based image with a branch full of wood spirits (spirited away style).







Thank you for stopping by the blog today to answer questions about your art work. We are looking forward to seeing your new work!

And now for the giveaway!!

Karen has kindly sent several pieces of art work to us here at Midnight Reads for you too try and win. As much as we would have loved to keep it all ourselves we have split the art work up to have a first a second prize:~

1st Prize:~

2nd Prize:~

Giveaway Rules

To enter just leave a comment below and please state your country.

Only one entry per person.

You DO NOT have to follow Midnight Reads to enter.

The 1st prize will only go to a UK address due to postage costs.

The 2nd prize will only go to an overseas address, we didn't want to leave you out!

To allow this to happen we will develop our own number system and winners will be picked at random.

If nobody overseas enters the 2nd prize will go to a UK winner.

Winners will have a week to reply before another winner is chosen.

Giveaway closes 31st May.

Feel free to let others know about this giveaway but please note that only your comment below counts as an entry for your chance to win the giveaway.

Giveaway is now over! CONGRATULATIONS to the winners!!

In My Mailbox 9




In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted every Sunday over at The Story Siren. A great meme which allows bloggers to share what they receive/buy/borrow each week.



For Review







Title: The Alchemist and the Angel

Author: Joanne Owen

This edition published: 2011

By: Orion

Everything changes for orphaned Jan when his beloved uncle, Gustav—anatomist, natural scientist and aspiring alchemist—enlists his help in a quest to create a life-generating serum. To test the serum, they must follow a set of ancient instructions and play a dangerous game of bringing the inanimate to life. . . . When Gustav dies suddenly, it’s up to Jan to continue his work—little does he know that his beautiful, calculating aunt dreams of using the serum for her own purposes—eternal life.

Under the facade of her grief, she convinces Jan they must move from Vienna to Prague, and when she mysteriously disappears, Jan searches for her. In the plague-ridden ghettos and the court of the mad Emperor Rudolf, he must pit his wits against an extraordinary cast of characters and events. His only ally is Zuzana, a girl with secrets of her own.

Set against the vivid backdrop of 16th century Prague and the equally breathtaking Vienna, a magical, historical adventure.




Title: A Monster Calls
Autor: Patrick Ness
From an original idea by: Siobhan Dowd
Published: May 2011
By: Walker Books


The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do. But it isn’t the monster Conor's been expecting. He's been expecting the one from his nightmare, the one he's had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming... The monster in his back garden, though, this monster is something different. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor. It wants the truth.

Costa Award winner Patrick Ness spins a tale from the final idea of much-loved Carnegie Medal winner Siobhan Dowd, whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself. Darkly mischievous and painfully funny, A Monster Calls is an extraordinarily moving novel of coming to terms with loss from two of our finest writers for young adults.





Title: Amy Roger's Epic Detour

Author: Morgan Matson

Published: July 2011

By: Simon and Schuster

Amy Curry thinks her life sucks. Her mom decides to move from California to Connecticut to start anew--just in time for Amy's senior year. Her dad recently died in a car accident. So Amy embarks on a road trip to escape from it all, driving cross-country from the home she's always known toward her new life. Joining Amy on the road trip is Roger, the son of Amy's mother's old friend. Amy hasn't seen him in years, and she is less than thrilled to be driving across the country with a guy she barely knows. So she's surprised to find that she is developing a crush on him. At the same time, she's coming to terms with her father's death and how to put her own life back together after the accident. Told in traditional narrative as well as scraps from the road--diner napkins, motel receipts, postcards--this is the story of one girl's journey to find herself.

Bought




Title: Ballad
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
This edition published: May 2011
By: Scholastic


In this mesmerizing sequel to Lament, music prodigy James Morgan and his best friend, Deirdre, join a private conservatory for musicians. James' musical talent attracts Nuala, a soul-snatching faerie muse who fosters and feeds on the creative energies of exceptional humans until they die. Composing beautiful music together unexpectedly leads to mutual admiration and love. Haunted by fiery visions of death, James realizes that Deirdre and Nuala are being hunted by the Fey and plunges into a soul-scorching battle with the Queen of the Fey to save their lives.

Title: Bite Club

Author: Rachel Caine

Published: May 2011

By: Allison & Busby

 
Morganville, Texas, is a quiet college town where humans and vampires live in relative peace. But lately a great deal of blood is being spilled - not in a feeding frenzy, but for someone's twisted idea of entertainment.
After discovering that vampires populate Morganville - and surviving a number of adventures with her new night-dwelling friends - college student Claire Danvers has come to realise that for the most part, the undead just want to live their lives.
But someone else wants them to get ready to rumble.
There's a new extreme sport being broadcast over the Internet: bare-knuckle fights pitting captured vampires against one another - or, worse, against humans. Tracking the signal leads Claire - accompanied by a loyal group of friends and frenemies - to discover that what started as an online brawl will soon threaten everyone in Morganville. And if they want to survive, they'll have to do a lot more than fight...







Title: Ghost Town
Author: Rachel Caine
Published: October 2010
By: Allison & Busby


I just had to but this when I saw that there was no title or design. If only it was signed :)


The fragile peace between humans and vampires in Morganville is in trouble, and when Claire takes drastic action, she's put under serious pressure to re-establish the barriers that keep the town residents inside, and wipe the memories of those who leave. But working with her half-crazy vampire boss Myrnin means that things don't always turn out as planned ... and as the people of Morganville begin acting strangely, Claire and her friends must solve the mystery and try to put things right. But one by one, her allies are turning on her ... even the ones she trusts most.

So that's what I got In My Mailbox, what did you get in yours?

Happy reading!!