CyberMinions.net

@VickiPettersson NEON GRAVEYARD: Best Author Chat Room Experience Evah (LOL)

http://www.vickipettersson.com

 

Vicki Pettersson on Amazon

Vicki Pettersson on Facebook

Vicki Pettersson on Twitter

 

Vicki Pettersson is an uber cool Facebook and Tweetpeep to chill on-line with. I really enjoy lurking in the Vicki-Stream and getting my daily social media fix regarding updates on one of my favorite writers. If you bookmarked her blog, followed her in Twitter or was a FB-peep then you might have read her post "Two Steps Forward, One Step... Into A Chat Room" where readers and The V-Peeps discovered yesterday that Vicki was "looking forward to a live chat this afternoon (or evening if you’re an east coaster) with my self-described VPeeps. It’s been a long time coming and they plan on peppering me with questions about THE NEON GRAVEYARD as well as the concluded Zodiac series as a whole. I wouldn’t be surprised if they try to pry some information out of me about the new Celestial Blues series either, since they’ve been picking up bits and pieces about THE TAKEN here and there."

Being a Kindle junkie, book pimping, FB lurking V-Peep and huge, unrepentant Pettersson fan, I was very excited about participating in my first live author chat with Vicki. Just the thought had me tweet and FB that puppy because knowing what I know about V P meant is was going to be an interesting experience. Chicka is very entertaining on-line and so are her friends and readers. I am actually sad some of my best blog buds missed out on it because I had mad fun last night in the Vicki Pettersson author chat room. They really would have LOVED attending this virtual event. What a fun crew of V-Peeps to make the acquaintance of. Several really made an impression on me, like Debi Murray and Jann McKenzie who both checked in on me today to make sure that I, as "a virgin chat room noob," was all right. My descriptive words, not theirs... Yeah, the FB rumors are true... My "chatcherry" got popped and I did NOT know how to act the morning after (LMAO) so FUN may be an understatement... (evil grin).

I actually woke up this morning with laughter bubbling from my lips about licking cupcakes and wine slushies.

I even chuckled while brushing my teeth...

I also giggled in the shower...

I was even pleasantly surprised to find myself suddenly laughing out loud while walking down Queens Blvd on my way to Kew Gardens for a lunch date in Starbucks to blog this update for my gal pal Nickie, so GO FOLLOW @VickiPettersson because she will do another author chat eventually and you do not want to miss this (LOL).

Why? Because the teasing was marvelously off the hook yesterday and if you paid close attention to the bantering back and forth you might have noticed (between howling with laughter) that you actually got your book questions answered in spades (very happy sigh).

Book 1: The Scentof Shadows   Book 2: The Taste Of Night    Book 3: The Touch of Twilight

Book 4: City of Souls   Book 5: Cheat the Grave    Book 6: Neon Graveyard

For those of you new to reading my blog who do not know who my social media virtual gal pal Vicki is, here is the Amazon.com Author Page quote to wet your appetite for the mischief to come: "Vicki is the New York Times bestselling author of the Signs of the Zodiac novels, a six-book urban fantasy series set in her hometown of Las Vegas. Though she will always consider that glittering dustbowl home, she now splits her time between Vegas and Dallas, where she is learning to like good Tex-Mex (easy) and the Dallas Cowboys (easier than you would think). Next up is a paranormal noir trilogy called Celestial Blues, debuting in 2012."

Celestial Blues is coming and we can not wait to get our hands on it...

Newbie Warning: There are spoilers revealed in author chat rooms so DO go read the books first before diving in. A few people logged out when they realized the conversations were a furious, fabulous flow of too much information in the chaotic free for all last night. The Neon Graveyard chat meant chatting about all aspects of the novel but some people did not understand that point of order. It appears they logged in to spend time with the author and didn't realize to what extent the chatter would unfold regarding characters and plot points.

Another Noob Note: Chat rooms are an excuse for fans and friends to party hardy. The conversations will fly fast and furious and people get incessantly teased (including the quiet lurkers with interesting user names - LOL). You enter at your own risk (and you really should enter the fray - it is mad fun and you will make stellar new FB friends - LOL). Is Vicki going to do this virtual event again? You betcha. We just don't know when. ;-)

Anticipation is half the fun so repeat after me: Yes... there will be more Vicki mischief... and naughty teasing... and virtual food... and real drinks mixed... and dinner cooked... and kidlets fed... Since she is currently writing Celestial Blues and kind of taking us along for the merry-go-writing ride on her blog which is mad cool the angst of it all will provide fodder for more V-Peep teasing (so read her blog people - LOL).

FYI: There is always a wee bit of mischief afoot when teasing blogging buddies... It's what we do (and makes living our virtual life soooo much more entertaining, interesting and fun). If you are unaware of how we kinda hooked up and became virtual social media peeps you need to start with RWA NYC because Kim Harrison sent me directly to Vicki Pettersson. I will never forget her kindness in doing so. Thank you, Kim... I was completely clueless and had absolutely no idea who she was and started goofing with Vicki 5 minutes into our meeting on day one people (LOL). I have been chatting and kind of goofing and spoofing with Vicki on-line ever since. I heart Vicki. She is simply amazing.  

I heart Kim and Jocelynn too. Kim Harrison also got me reading Jocelynn Drake. I am still trying to twist my schedule so I can meet Jocelynn in person. We book club bookies are all drooling for an autographed JD book when not plotting and planning AR Road Trips to eventually get one (LOL). Those three writers are our book club bookie urban fantasy divas. They rule our Kindle apps and have us completely fascinated with figuring out Editor Diana Gill (she is a freaking uber-editor and we are in awe - LOL).

I personally take most of my "who to read next" cues from them with most of the bookies following my lead because I speed read faster than my b-club competition (evil grin), so we happily advocate book pimping the author peeps in their social media sphere as well while we do our Kim-Vicki-Jocelynn fan thing (LOL).

What can I say? They're mad fun and have great taste. The icing on the cake? They are truly nice, down to earth people who give really great writing tips and habitually blog/tweet/FB about their day. That is how we also discover the fact that their author friends are pretty nice too. We watch what they say to and about the people they like and spread the good word when we read and/or discover we like them too...

Lynn Rush is a sweetie-pie and Vicki social media hook up. I learned about her new novel from the Vicki-Stream last night and followed up on my curiosity this morning. We all know I am a Curious George kinda gal so here is the skinny on Lynn:

 

Lynn Rush on Amazon    Lynn Rush on Good Reads   Lynn Rush on B&N   Lynn Rush on Facebook

  Lynn Rush on Twitter   Lynn Rush Blog

Wasteland YouTube Trailer

 

Lynn Rush is an author, Twitter, Facebook and V-Peep with a novel coming out entitled, "Wasteland." I pre-ordered it today on Amazon.com for a future book club review. Need the e-book? Click here. Her post Not Alone made me pause because both my brick-and-mortar and virtual/blog Moms have been battling Cancer. I am glad my best girls are still with me... I understand what Lynn means about having bittersweet moments (sigh). Sometimes I think that is why we all treasure laughter so much. I am a joy-junkie. There... I said it (LOL). That is why I have been music spoofing on some of my fave authors. We have to see what we can create for Lynn because the album is due at the end of the month... We still have time to be silly (LOL).

Here is one of the songs we recently created as a wink and nod for Amy DeZellar, the author of the hilarious book Dating Amy:

 

Tann Starr - Book Club Blues - Chasing Amy 256kbps by C Tann Starr

 

I bet we can figure out a tune or two for Lynn. She has a neat Amazon bio that states, "Lynn Rush began her writing career in 2008. She has both an undergraduate and graduate degree in the mental health field and has enjoyed applying that unique knowledge to developing unique characters. A former inline speed skater and mountain biker, Lynn has been known to test the limits of her athletic endurance. So, when she is not writing, she spends time enjoying the Arizona sunshine by road biking nearly 100 miles per week with her husband of fourteen years and going on jogs with her loveable Shetland Sheep dogs." We can work with that... plus we are already lurking on her social media accounts so something is going trigger some music at some point because she is mad cool (LOL). ;-)

Pssst... Lynn is also MAD FUN to hang out with in a chat room full of wickedly delicious book banter, girlie cat fights, virtual cupcake licking, dirty martini mixing and wine slushie sharing V-Peeps (LOL). A graduate degree in a mental health field actually comes in handy with a bunch of fun, cerebral people who read the paranormal. There is nothing normal about a paranormal conversation... Why do you think we're so wild about our fave authors? They are bloody brilliant (LOL). Some of you have absolutely no idea what you are missing... If it were not for my writing mentors assigning Kim Harrison as spring reading-homework I'd still be clueless. Now, I get to enjoy amazing conversations on a daily basis because I did my writing homework. Best part? I keep making new, cool, unusually talented virtual friends.

How cool is that? VERY! A few have even converted to brick and mortar status. Sweeeeeeeeet!

Wanna get in on the next gigglefest banter? You have to watch those Vicki FB/Twitter accounts, mark the date, gather your snacks, mix your drinks, fill the cooler, kill the lights, ditch your clients-family-friends and join the V-Peeps in her next author chat room adventure... You will not be disappointed.

Psssst... You may become a wee bit addicted and make your friends mad jealous for not sharing your guilty pleasure sooner. You may also secretly wonder how to make friends with new, fascinating people and really start craving to be a very good social media V-Peep because reality V-banter is better than television.

FYI: sexy books can trigger sexy conversations... It can also inspire people to BRB because they really need to go mix another drink (LOL). For the record, Vicki had tea (seriously - it was 4pm in her time zone, unlike 7 pm for the chatting-ourselves-silly East Coasties happily running amok during the cyber par-tay. Yeah, someone asked her - that's how we all know - LOL). ;-)

I gotta go. I have an album to master. BTW, we finally named the album "Book Club Blues" and every track is dedicated to a fave author in our Kindle collection. We running amok in the studio having a field day painting with sound (silly grin). So far we have got a stellar musical tease in progress:

Amy DeZellar tunes: "Blind Date," "Chasing Amy" and "DeZellar Blues." Claire Legrand tunes: "Unicorn" and "Legrand." Jaye Wells tunes: "Jaye and Tequila" and "J W." A Pang tunes: "Hell Kitty" and "Pang in A." Vicki Pettersson tunes: "Pettersson Blue," "V-Peeps" and "Celestial Vicki." Vicki actually has four tracks but we haven't named the fourth one yet (silly grin).

There are more authors to do a music spoof on like Richelle Mead, Kim Harrison and Jocelynn Drake... We are still writing, composing, twisting, arguing, bribing, high-jacking and arranging stuff so stay tuned. It is all in good fun and did I mention social media peeps habitually tease each other? I think I did (LOL). I love having an iTunes catalog... Creating music is the best pretend job evah (next to being an artist chilling at the gallery of course - happy sigh). Besides, our evil ulterior motive for doing Book Club Blues is to change the music at our neighborhood Starbucks when we are doing book club. We can never film anything interesting for YouTube there because music other than our own would be a copyright violation (sigh). If you can NOT beat them, join them or take them over (psssst... we are opting for neighborhood domination in case you missed the mischief memo - LOL).

Last facetious thought of the day? One day I am going to have an Author Page on Amazon... Wont that be mad fun? Unleashing a Pretend Author on the unsuspecting masses because my writing mentors have given me new homework to do is a study in writers SMBD workshop hell (LOL). I will retaliate by writing them in and killing them off in multiple books (evil grin).

Um... I really am writing a couple of books actually. How can I not do that? It will be a pretend artist trifector (and keep my ADD very happy - LOL). ;-)

Did I mention I am into fun mischief? I think I did... Writing is kind of fun... That's why I blog. ;-)

 

 

 

@VickiPettersson wrote a mad cool blog post - "Writing: In Defense Of Being Loose"

 

Alexandra Sokoloff on Amazon

 

Vicki gave me something interesting to think about this afternoon. It all started while I was sitting in the corner on my favorite Starbucks stool on a break, snacking and answering FB chats, when I suddenly realized I did not make the usual rounds of my fave authors yet. It happens to be one of the things that I really love to do, sort of a scheduled writing workshop hightlight of my day, so of course I took my bloggers butt for a quick digital visit to see what's new with my social media peeps. I was plesantly surprised to discover that New York Times Bestselling Author Vicki Pettersson wrote a really eye opening, behind the scenes post about what it is like to be an author facing writing fears...

I have an inordinate amount of fun playing in my electronic sandbox, goofing in social media accounts and chatting incessantly on-line but you have to understand that blogging is not the same as writing a novel... Novels are a lot more complicated and can inspire quite a bit of angst...

Vicki's post answered a couple of questions I did not realize I had, which was very helpful, plus she recommended a very helpful book by Alexandra Sokoloff that a bunch of us are downloading. I have a couple of fave quotes from her post...

My first fave VP quote: "...I was mentally fatigued, and unsure if this story really had legs. There are risks in speaking too soon of your burgeoning story to someone else. One is that you might lose the energy to write it. (Why bother? You’ve already told it.)"

My second fave VP quote: "I’m using my fear to drive me..."

In case you guys are new to my blog and did not know this, I absolutely adore this author and am thrilled that Vicki is writing a brand new novel.

She is also sharing some very cool writing tips while plotting and planning it. According to Vicki, that "writing" statement "is premature. What I’ve really been doing for the last week and a half is imagining the world of the story. It’s not something I’ve ever written before, and frankly, I’m frightened I can’t do it. That’s a good sign. I’ve learned by now that the thing I’m most afraid to do is always the thing I need to do most."

Very well said... I'm kinda learning that as well... (sigh)

 

 

 

We're lurking on Claire Legrand's Blog... Seems "all writers are neurotic" (LOL)

Just finished running the streets with Nydia. She's taking my car home for me because I plan on hanging out in Starbucks for the rest of the evening with my yuppie Kew Garden blogging buddies and I don't want to go back outside to feed the parking meter. It's hot, hot, hot out there and freezing in here so I'm catering to my snow-bunny side (silly grin).

We're goofing in the Twitter streams looking for cool links to share before we start book club. This is going to be a mad fun Skype par-tay because each hostess is taking on a separate group of virtual bookies depending upon which author was read by whom. My book hosting partners-in-crime are setting up their laptops and all of our favorite Starbucks crazies are logging in across the globe for our next social media virtual blog war where we do our my-author-is-hotter-than-your-author routine (happy grin). We only split up the virtual bookies when there are more than 24 peeps logging into Skype. We got 89 social media confirmations today so this is going to get lively in approximately 10 minutes (LOL).

My brick and mortars are grabbing snacks and dragging tables together. We like taking over Barnes and Nobles and Starbucks to check in on our social media peeps engaged in interesting conversations. It's what we do when we're not piling on each others' futons and couches (or out running amok having play-dates). :-)

We're all pretty hot for Jeaniene Frost so I'm gonna have to write two blog posts tonight because we're still spoofing our a$$es off on Claire Legrand. Now there's a quirky distraction. We kinda don't want to leave Claire's blog just yet because she's a new fun read for us.

Go here for the skinny on Claire: http://claire-legrand.com This is an @JayeWells @amydezellar and @clairelegrand twit thing so don't forget to follow them on Twitter if you plan on keeping up with some very interesting twit-peeps.

You guys remember Jaye, right? The fun (but kinda dangerous wordsmith) reluctant adult blogger/author that almost bumped my blogger's butt off with laughter the other day? Yeah... THAT Jaye (LOL). You guys can definitely blame our curiosity regarding Amy DeZeller and Claire Legrand on Jaye Wells. We discovered them following her around cyberspace and now they're stuck with us lurking on their social media accounts because we're in love with Jaye's work and still trying to figure her out (LOL). Oh the things I could say here but wont (LOL). ;-)

Gotta give credit where credit is due and poor Jaye is inadvertently helping us grow our author tree while we impatiently wait for Silver Tongued Devil to be released. We read everything else she wrote including the anthology short (sigh). We're in Jaye Wells withdrawal with serious craving issues (like waiting for Kim, Vicki and Jocelynn to pony up some more brilliant writing while we burn through the authors they like - LOL). Because Jaye lead us to Amy we just added Dating Amy: 50 True Confessions Of A Serial Dater by Amy DeZellar to the mandatory book club line up (evil grin).

Pssst... Amy - write more books because this is flipping hilarious and downright mean in a freaky cool kinda way. I keep laughing when I think about it. What a neat surprise (said the married chick who can't believe she's telling people to buy a friggin' dating book from Hell - LMAO). My single gal pals love this puppy. So do I. The guys are running though (I don't think they really wanted to know what our latest pajama party was all about, but we told them anyway - LOL). ;-)

Amy's old site: http://www.datingamy.com and her new site: http://amydezellar.com

We will pick on Amy later after the guys weigh in... time to mess with Claire (LOL). Her new book is due out next fall but her blog is very interesting (we've been peeking at it between lurking in twit streams for a couple of hours now). ;-)

Seems Claire likes to share pictures in Tumblr that inspire her writing... You can see a sample of her Twitter link regarding her Tumblr habits here. That's kind of cool because authors like Kim Harrison inspire the cartoons in my head to run amok resulting in lots of sketch book scribbles like Trent, Denon and Newt from my uni-ball, so I get the whole visual stimulation thing. ;-)

Wanna know what makes Claire Legrand's blog fun? She gives you an idea of who she is, what she is interested in and how she does what she does. You also discover what she likes, dislikes and loves. Her writing advice/perspective aint half bad either. Check out:

1. Keep Calm and Write Your Damn Book

 

Quoting Claire: "Confession: I am a super neurotic person. This isn’t a particularly shocking revelation. Why? Because all writers are neurotic. If you are a non-writer now doubting that statement, just stop. You are wrong. You either don’t know any writers or you don’t know the writers in your life well enough to actually know them. If you are a writer now protesting that statement, just stop. You are in denial. You may pride yourself on being low-key and totally chill with shoving your words out into the world, but let’s face it — sometimes you’re really, really not."

(Pssst... chicka drew stick figure illustrations for this one. We all know how much I love art, right? How can I not link back to that? Talk about original content - LOL).

2. How Writers Evolve

Quoting Claire: "So, apparently, I can no longer write to music. Now, don’t get me wrong — I still live and breathe movie scores while brainstorming, and industrious ambient music is still my preferred background noise when editing, but drafting? Nope. No music, not anymore."

Go discover these gals for yourself. They will surprise you... ;-)