How lovely to wake up yesterday and find that Burn Bright is shorlisted/a nominee for a Ditmar Award for Best (SFF&H genre) Novel in Australia in 2012. And to make it even more pleasing, I’m on the list with four women who are all friends. Two the novels on the shortlist have been reviewed on this site by Mandy Wrangles: The Courier’s New Bicycle and Debris. The category had over 180 eligible works this year and I’m thrilled that people saw fit to nominate Burn Bright.
To see the full list of nominees go here. To see a full list of the eligible works go here.
When Yunyu and I started collaborating on a book/song release with Burn Bright I had no idea how much fun I’d have and how interesting it would be. For those who don’t know the background, when I released Burn Bright (book 1) of my Night Creatures YA trilogy, Yunyu also released a song called Angel Arias written specifically to to accompany the book.
The song was made available for download via iTunes and Bandcamp for a small fee. We also released two videos using a sample of the music. One video was produced by Random House using a remixed version of Yunyu’s song and perfectly captured the hard core party atmosphere of Ixion. The second video was released by Yunyu and was more of a sneak peak at the song proper.
The result of all this was an enhanced reading/listening experience for the fans of the series. I still get excited every time I hear Yunyu’s song, Angel Arias, and it will forever take me back to the world I created – in the same way that songs take me back to other times in my life; past loves, experiences, places and emotions.
On the creative side, the collaboration was a wonderful, enriching experience. On the administrative/production side there were a few bumps along the way but we got there in the end. I reminded myself a few times, that nothing worth fighting for comes easily.
As the book 2 got under way, Yunyu and I revisited the music/book idea and agreed that we loved working together. For me, Yunyu (her sense of humour and crazy-
arsed brilliant mind) is nothing but a pleasure to have in my life and I hope I brought something to her in return. And so … we lined up for round two…
Things were a bit different this time. Yunyu and I planned it on the fly between us and she chose a song, already written, that fitted perfectly with the frantic flight of the my main character through the second book. The song, Bluebeard, is fierce and full of energy and fear.
This time Yunyu said we could make the song available free specially for those who purchased the book. Being the tech savant that she is, she suggested we place a QR tag in the back of the book which would allow anyone with a iPhone or Smartphone to download from the link.
This is a simple and graceful approach, and as of today our plan has been realised. Anyone who has purchased a copy of Book 2 Angel Arias, just needs to point their QR reader app at the tag in the book and it will take them to a free download link of the song. And if you’d like an idea of the kind of song it is, you can get a taste of it by watching the book trailer below made by R & D Studios (I’ll be running a feature on them soon so you can find out more about them) for book 2.
Will we do it again for book 3? Absolutely!
R & D Studios trailer for Angel Arias
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H30_T0C1LbY&feature=channel_video_title
Angel Arias Song Preview
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y07iogdHqvQ
Random House trailer for Burn Bright
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np4iHj1AIMg
