Geonn Cannon's Blog, page 8

The reviews are still coming in for The Rise and Fall of Radiation Canary, and they’ve all been glowing! Best-reviewed book I’ve ever written. Oddly, I don’t feel proud of myself. I feel happy that people seem to love these four girls as much as I do.  There was some anxiety putting it out there, but reviewers have been putting my fears at ease left and right. So thank you!

The most recent review on Amazon UK mentioned wishing the band was real. I am right there with you! I wish I could pop in a CD and listen to “Say a Prayer (If You’ve Got One)” or “Scene of the Crime.” Unfortunately, short of putting together a Monkees-type dream band, it’s not going to happen any time soon (although if anyone out there has a guitar, a cello, a violin, keyboards, and a set of drums and wants to give it a go, by all means…!)

So the next best thing is to listen to music that resembles Radiation Canary. Artists who, if you close your eyes and let your mind wander a bit, recreate a little bit of what you’d hear on a Radiation Canary album. I’ve been doing it myself so it’s only fair that I share some of the playlist I’ve created so you can go out and, through the power of YouTube or iTunes, make your own!

1) Brandi Carlile – The matron saint of Radiation Canary. She was the basis of Lana Kent’s character, the Seattle rocker with a guitar and curly dark hair. Her voice isn’t quite Lana Kent’s, but the power behind it definitely fits. “The Story” is definitely Karen’s anthem (“These stories don’t mean anything if you’ve got no one to tell them to” makes me think about her journal every time I hear it), and I can hear Lana bringing an entire venue to tears with “Just Kids” and “That Year.”

2) Coldplay – They have a nice balance of hard, noisy music with quiet and introspective songs. Radiation Canary would bring down the house with “Fix You,” and “Viva la Vida” seems custom-made for Karen and Lana to duet. Chris Martin’s voice may be too masculine for the girls (well, usually ;D) but if you want an idea of how they sound you could do worse than popping in “Viva la Vida (or Death and All His Friends).”

3) David Bowie – Perhaps an unusual choice, but definitely a right one. A few of his rarer songs – “Conversation Piece” and “Everyone Says Hi”, both from the deluxe version of Heathen – could definitely fit into the Radiation Canary oeuvre. The first features all the right instruments, and it’s perfectly easy to see the ladies playing along as Lana sings.

4) Sara Bareilles – This would be the Nessa-heavy songs, with a strong focus on the piano and Nessa’s vocals. “King of Anything” is a great example of how Radiation Canary puts together a song, along with “Love Song.” I also think Lana could convince her to sing “Sweet As Whole” in concert.

5) Emilie Autumn – I have a very clear mental image of Radiation Canary performing her cover of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” with Karen killing a cello, Lana dancing, and Codie performing vocals. Her songs tend to be a bit more baroque and Gothic than I imagine Radiation Canary to be, but for the occasional song it definitely fits.

6) Andrew Bird – Definitely, without a doubt, Andrew Bird. With his violin and crazy literate lyrics, he fits. “Fake Palindromes” is a definite Radiation Canary song, along with… well, too many to list.

There you have it! Maybe not a definitive list, but more than enough for you to go out and explore and maybe get a feel for what the girls would sound like if they did, in some magical alternate reality, exist. And if anyone does create that dream band, I’ll be first in line to buy tickets. ;D

Okay, folks! Claire Lance #3 Confused by Shadows is now available! It’s the midpoint of the series, and it has some pretty large implications for Lance’s journey and Faye Mallory’s pursuit. I know the wait for these novels has seemed endless at times, with Only Flame and Air always right on the edge of release, but now there have been two books in only two months! So to give people a chance to catch up, to give Lance a chance to breathe, and to help get the timeline of the series back on track a little, Lance is going to take a little break. I’m sure your pocketbooks won’t mind. ::g::

It fits well, too, since book 3 covers a good part of Lance’s year, and the gap in story between 3 and 4 is larger than with the first two books. There’s a bit of a time jump from one to the other. So the wait will make the story even better.

So be on the lookout for the penultimate chapter in the Claire Lance series, Chasing Dragons, available in January 2014, followed a little bit later that year by the final chapter of the journey, What Matter Wounds.

Another two weeks have gone by, so you all MUST be wondering when the heck my latest novel will come out. I mean, I’ve really been slacking this last fortnight. Well, wait no longer! Today (no fooling!) marks the release of the third novel in the Claire Lance series, Confused by Shadows!

“When Claire Lance decides to stop running, she just wants a home, a job, and someplace she can feel safe. She doesn’t want or need to fall in love, but Jodie Curran doesn’t give her much of an option. Lance unexpectedly finds herself slowly being pulled into her first relationship since Elaine. Soon she finds her blissful new life threatened by the mysterious forces converging around Jodie and, when she learns the truth about what’s going on, she may find herself in more danger than ever. Surrounded on all fronts, by the police and an ever-obsessed Faye Mallory, Lance may have finally reached the end of her long road.”

This marks the mid-point of the Lance series, so naturally you can expect some big-time decisions to be made, some important elements to come into play, all sorts of things leading up to the grand finale in Book 5. And don’t forget to shop the rest of my store if you click that option… the Supposed Crime section has all kinds of goodies, including Forever Burn, a firefighter romance with supernatural elements, two lesbian romance novels by C.E. Case and, coming soon, two new ebook releases by Lara Zielinsky! Not to mention ALL of my other books. One-stop shopping!

http://astore.amazon.com/squsisl-20/d...

or

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...

The Radiation Canary Cover contest has come to a close! And the winners, in no particular order, are…!

deathcurse

KCConnor26

Julia P. Lynde

Janice Dianne Jewell

Kristin O’Neall

Congratulations! To collect your prize, just leave a comment here or drop me an email to let me know how to get your prize to you. It’s shiny, it’s 8×10, it’s the Radiation Canary autographed cover! Thank you all for your wonderful reviews, especially the two I got on Radiation Canary itself. So happy to see that people like it as much as I do.

And there’s no contest to go along with it, because the release is an event in and of itself… the third novel in the Claire Lance series is available TOMORROW at some point (Amazon’s been a little tetchy in making stuff available, so if you can’t find it just give it a few hours and search again). It IS available RIGHT NOW at Smashwords if you want to get a copy for your Nook, Kobo, or other sundry devices. This is the big tipping point of the Lance series, folks. Lance has some big decisions to make!

Now that The Rise and Fall of Radiation Canary is out at long last, a certain question might start popping up and I want to address it right out of the gate. That question is…

Which of your universes does this band belong to?

That’s an excellent question, and I’m not just saying so because I asked it to myself. I’m currently writing three different series that exist in their own universes. Squire’s Isle is the main universe. It’s like ours, maybe a bit more fairy-tale, but generally just left of real life. Sure, there’s the occasional ghost and things go a lot better for the characters than they might if they were real. But for the most part, it’s the real world.

Secondly, I have Underdogs. Again, it’s like the real world but with a “secret history” of canidae (thanks to Jo Graham for that phrase!). See, everything about the world is normal except for the fact that werewolves really do exist. Like Squire’s Isle, it exists in the Pacific Northwest, but geography is all they share. Squire’s Isle has no were-people.

Thirdly is the Riley Parra series, which is off in its own little supernatural corner. It’s not entering into this discussion, so I’ll just set them aside for the time being.

Radiation Canary is a band in the real world. No superpowers, no demons or werewolves, just four girls in a band. Patricia and Jill’s son Michael attended a Radiation Canary concert. So case-closed, Radiation Canary is Squire’s Isle, right? Right! But also wrong.

About 3/4 of the way through the book, there’s a brief cameo by a “large dog” that appears backstage at a Canary concert. People who read the short story “Howl at the Moon” will view the scene from another angle and realize that the large dog is none other than Ariadne Willow in her wolf guise, hot on the trail of a case. So that seals the deal. Radiation Canary is an Underdogs story! Right! But also… wrong.

Radiation Canary belongs in both Squire’s Isle and Underdogs universes. I debated this with myself for a while, and I decided that it makes sense for a group as famous as Radiation Canary gets to exist in both universes. After all, they’re not so different… in one, there are werewolves. In the other, not. The universes are alike enough that the formation of Radiation Canary was unaffected. So Ari can attend a Canary concert, and Michael Colby can take his girlfriend to see that same concert, but Ari and Michael will never cross paths. They exist just to the left of each other.

It’s like the Doctor Who episode where he meets Nixon and watches the moon landing. The President and that historic moment are so huge that they happened in both our real world and a world where a Time Lord flies around time and space in a police box.

So to put it simply, no matter what world they were born into, Karen, Lana, Nessa, and Codie were destined to meet up and play music together. They might even exist in the Riley Parra universe, but I doubt Riley listens to them. ::g::

As of today, I’ve written and released 14 novels. On the Air, Gemini, Tilting at Windmills, Only Flame and Air, World on Fire, The Following Sea, Riley Parra Seasons 1-4, Gunfire Echoes, Wolf at the Door, Railroad Spine, and Underdogs. Way back when I realized I might be making a living at this, I wondered how many novels I would need before I considered it a true oeuvre. For some reason, I chose fourteen. Once I had fourteen novels, I would be able to relax and declare myself an author. So that time has come and now…

On March 15, my fifteenth novel The Rise and Fall of Radiation Canary is going to be released on Kindle and other ebook formats. It sort of feels like the start of a new era. I love all the books I’ve written up to this point (even the ones that aren’t out yet… Underdogs: Beware of Wolf blows the first one out of the water in my humble and biased opinion). But there’s just something about Radiation Canary. The characters, the stories, the world I created… for some reason it feels like THE Novel. The one I’ve been practicing for with my other novels. I’m so proud of it. And I think for a long time, when people ask which of my novels is my favorite, I’m going to have to say Radiation Canary just because it won’t let me go.

In my first fourteen novels, I wrote romances, action, westerns, steampunk, horror, supernatural thrillers, mysteries, ongoing series… Maybe in my next 14 I’ll try comedy and scifi just to tick all the boxes. I know for sure part of my next 14 will involve at least two (or three or four) more Underdogs novels, Riley Parra Season 5, and Radiation Canary Bonus Tracks. And what else? A Railroad Spine sequel? A book about a female safecracker being caught in the Great Seattle Fire? A story about a female soldier (because apparently I have a really big following in the armed forces, and I could not be more thrilled/humbled by that)?

Time will tell. But it’s good to know that the muse seems to be just getting started with me. The fact that my fifteen novel is my favorite – and will hopefully become the favorite of lots of people – is very heartening.

The contest has been running for a week, and already there’s a frontrunner in the contest! Someone went back and left a mind-boggling ELEVEN reviews on her past purchases. Since she asked, and other people might be interested in knowing, every review is a different entry. So right now there’s a very good chance she could get all five covers if I picked randomly!

All you have to do is leave a review on Amazon, Smashwords, Kobobooks, BN.com, anywhere, wherever you got your copy of the book you want to review. Even if you didn’t love it, just be honest with how you felt. Of the eleven reviews the frontrunner left, most were four-star (and one was three-star, gasp, how dare she?!? ::g::).

Also, a review was left for Gunfire Echoes on BN.com on 3/3, but there’s no identifying information. So while that person is technically in the contest, there’s no way to identify them as a winner! So remember, when you leave your review, be sure to post a comment here, on my Livejournal, or on Twitter so I’ll be able to enter you in the contest.

The winners will be revealed here on my blog on April 1! So get those reviews in, and be sure to check out The Rise and Fall of Radiation Canary when it’s released on March 15!