For your reading pleasure here is a guest post from the lovely Lily Luchesi and a sneak peek at her new book Miranda’s Rights which is released today!
Why I Use Music In My Writing by Lily Luchesi
Art saves. It’s not just a slogan. It’s true. Even before I could read, I was always surrounded by music and I loved it. Music was happiness in my childish mind.
As I got older, immersed myself in books, fandom, and other things, music was always there. Sure, I had broadened my tastes dramatically, but music was the only constant in my life. I was the emo teen in 2006 who ringed her eyes in black mascara and blasted The Black Parade in her bedroom. I grew up, but I am still that girl inside (and outside: I still love my black mascara).
When I started writing professionally, I found concentrating to be very difficult, so I had it suggested to me to put in my headphones and leave music on in the background. I went from barely 600 words written per day to over two thousand.
Music is many things, enjoyment being the main one. But it is so much more. It is the expression of emotions that many of us cannot convey. It is life, love, grief, pain, anger, politics, and so much more. Music is everything.
I listened to so much music while writing both books in my Paranormal Detectives Series, that I made a playlist for it on YouTube, because everyone should be able to feel what I felt as I wrote about Danny and Angelica’s heartbreak and struggles while listening to these same songs.
So, if you’re in love with music like I am, be proud and own it. Whether you fall asleep with “Clair De Lune” on repeat, jam to Rascal Flatts, rock out to 80’s hair metal, twerk to Beyonce, dance with Demi Lovato, or get emo with Fall Out Boy and Twenty One Pilots, own it. Enjoy it. Know that these people are shaping your life without ever realizing it.
Music is the most primal form of art, it is love and light as well as hate and darkness, and everything in between. It helped make Stake-Out and Miranda’s Rights happen.
Please enjoy listening to this playlist as you read the Paranormal Detectives Series. I hope it enhances your reading experience just as it enhanced my writing experience.
* Youtube Playlist *
The dead don’t always rest easy…
Retired detective, Danny Mancini, is haunted by nightmares after he found out that paranormal creatures exist. All he wants is to forget them…especially a certain half-vampire. When cursed werewolves show up trying to kill him, he is forced to go back to the Paranormal Investigative Division for help against a powerful old enemy. What he was not expecting was a dead ex showing back up after twenty-six years.
Danny and Miranda sat in uncomfortable silence for a few moments, processing everything they had heard and what Danny had seen, thanks to those damned powers of his.
“Was it hard for you? Seeing it all firsthand?” Miranda asked.
He nodded. “It was intense. It was brutal and pitiful. If I had a choice, I would give up these powers forever. Angelica says they’re a blessing, but I say they’re a curse. You can’t possibly know what it’s like to have these visions. To be there, in the thick of it, watching it as it happens, knowing every evil thing said and thought. It’s like living a nightmare. Only one of my visions has ever been good.”
Miranda went and stood behind her former fiancé, placing her cold hands on his shoulders and giving him a light squeeze. “If I could take your pain away, I would.”
“If you could, I’d pay you all the money Dad left me,” he replied.
Miranda was silent, contemplating. “I could do it, you know.”
“Do what?” he asked, turning around in the chair to face her.
“Make the powers go away. Make you not feel any of these pesky fears.” Her voice was nonchalant, but her eyes were sharp. He could see that this had been a planned confrontation somehow, and he was wary. For wanting to be a lawyer, she could never hold her cards very close to her chest. That was why he’d never taught her to play poker.
“How?” He was a former cop. He could get anyone to admit anything and he planned to make Miranda spill her guts. He knew it would be easy. She had that smug look on her face he remembered from their dating years. That look meant she was ready to brag.
Her cool fingers traced along his throat, leaving behind an uncomfortable sensation.
“Let me turn you. You’ll lose your powers and fears, and then we could be together…forever. Just you and me, like it was always meant to be.”
Check out book one in the series, * Stake-Out *
About Lily
Lily Luchesi is a young author/poet born in Chicago, Illinois, now residing in Los Angeles, California. Ever since she was a toddler her mother noticed her tendency for being interested in all things “dark”. At two, she became infatuated with vampires and ghosts, and that infatuation turned into a lifestyle by the time she was twelve, and, as her family has always been what they now call “Gothic”, she doesn’t believe she shall ever change. She is also a hopeless romantic and avid music-love who will always associate vampires with love, blood, and rock and roll.
Her interest in poetry came around the same time as when she was given a book of Edgar Allan Poe’s complete work. She then realized that she had been writing her own poetry since she could hold a pen, and just had not known the correct terms. She finished her first manuscript at the age of fourteen, and now, at twenty-one, has two contributing credits in anthologies and her debut novel, Stake-Out (Paranormal Detectives Series Book One), was published by Vamptasy Publishing on May 19th, 2015. Book two, Miranda’s Rights, will be released on January 8th, 2016.
She has a short story, “Undead Ever After” in the Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly anthology Love Sucks (released on June 13th, 2015). Her first erotic short story, “Have No Fears”, was published in the Hot Ink Press anthology Naughty Bedtime Stories: In Three Words on October 10th. She will also have a short erotic horror story, “The Devil’s Dozen”, in the upcoming Hot Ink Press anthology Death, Love, Lust, which will be released in February of 2016.
Lily’s Links * Website – Amazon – Twitter – Facebook – Instagram – Goodreads *
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She’s a mercenary on a mission.
Never Again by Lily Luchesi
No Limits by Ellie Marney
