E-Books and Cowboy Boots

I've spent most of the day preparing everything for New York Comic-Con! I will shortly have a post up specifically about that (tomorrow or Sunday), and you'll want to watch for that, trust me. It will be exciting and fun to be at the Javits with everybody.

But if you're not in New York, no fear! As mentioned last post, Taconum Carnival and Rhythm Buster are both available in print. Also, Taconum Carnival will be available shortly in e-book format! Kindle will reflect in forty eight hours or so, and Nook and iTunes will hopefully be shortly behind that. If anybody has trouble downloading their copy, please let me know. (RB200X will take a bit longer to convert; I have to strip the 'gameness' from the file.)

It's no secret that I listen to music when I write. As a musician, I let the music become one with the story and carry it forward. Every one of my books has had a soundtrack. When I was writing the original Taconum Carnival, I listened to a lot of the Harmony series of J-Pop instrumentals. Rhythm Buster 200X was certainly conceived by a lot of DDR music, but I ended up actually writing to the Rewrite visual novel soundtrack. Last year's Cosmic was written mostly to 90's boy band music, but that was on purpose.

I'm not going to give away too much of the idea for this year's NaNo, save for that it's a sequel to Cosmic (but people already knew that). What they don't know is that I am currently constructing a playlist for this year...that consists entirely of 90's country music.*

That may seem weird to some, but it will fit in with the story. 90's country marked a shift in the style of the genre and how it was marketed. Listen to Taylor Swift? Carrie Underwood? Keith Urban, Zac Brown Band, Lady Antebellum? You have George Strait, Garth Brooks, Jo Dee Messina, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw and several others to thank for kind of paving the way. (Shania Twain released one album in a pop and country version. There you go.)

So as November comes and you start seeing word counts up here, expect to see a bit or two about the music. I'll share as much as I can without totally spoiling the story.

* In Cosmic, culture ends at the New Year, 2000, also known as Y2K. That's why there's the 90's boy bands, and the 90's country: we can't go any sooner than that.