So I couldn't...post on Friday because I was on vacation, but I took some lovely pictures I'll be putting up on my portfolio on Devinart.
Music and Media
Here's a wonderful Ted Talk about domestic violence.
And while we're talking about domestic violence, I saw this video onBuzzfeed about domestic violence in public and how people react, when its guy-on-girl/girl-on-guy.
The video is presented by the Mankind Initiative which aims to help men in domestic violence situations.
I created a "research template" for writers. Here's the PDF version. I can also send it to anyone who thinks it might be useful. Let me know what you think and if I can improve it!
This post detailing more of the battle between Amazon and Hachette. In short, Amazon is basically trying to gain more control of the publishing industry (despite already owning a large portion of e-book sales) and is punishing publishers, authors, and customers in its quest for dominance and money.
Another Contently post on how freelance designers are using social media to fight plagiarism.
New York Times' interactive calculator on whether its better to buy or rent a home.
Websites to Look At
Who Pays Writers?tries to figure out how much writers make and offers tips and suggestions to writers. They also have a magazine aimed at helping writers as well.
Old Magazine Articles- They have tons of free old magazine articles available online. Writing historical fiction and trying to find out something from a particular time or era? Or just curious? Well look no further!
Crisis Textline- is a free crisis hotline aimed at teens with help and support available 24/7.
Perdue Owl offers lots of hints and suggestions not only for research papers, but for researching as well for fiction writers (well you can take it that way).
Ever thought that reading would be more interesting if you had some kind of music to go along with it? No? Well maybe you've thought that you know a particular song goes just well with this passage and only if you could share it with the world.
There's website, Booktrack, that allows users to listen to books and texts with synchronized movie-style soundtracks and sounds. Apparently you can buy books with soundtracks already loaded (for example, the Power of Six comes with over 70 different musical scores and sounds, according to The Atlantic), create your own for books, or even add music and sounds to books and documents you originally create. According to The Atlantic:
It takes about six weeks to produce the nine hour-long track for a typical book. Booktrack has a small in-house team, but the bulk of the labor is done at outside production companies like Park Road Post, which has won Academy Awards for sound mixing. Creative designers read each book and determine what music and sounds should be used, and where. It all comes together with a composer, an audio technician, and sometimes, a sound producer. Cameron said it was only natural to seek out sound experts from the film industry, and they try to work with writers when they can.
How does the book know when to fire the gun? It reads your mind. Almost. By calculating your reading speed from when you turn the page, it gauges when you'll reach the word or group of words that trips a sound effect. For slow readers, the background music plays on a loop, idling euphoniously, until you get to one of the trigger words.
Booktrack tries to help improve literacy According to Forbes.com, it reports that the National Endowment for the Arts reports that 33% of high school and 42% of college students never read a book after graduation. And with these numbers, educators are looking for more ways to engage students with reading (with reading showing not only increased test scores, but other benefits as well).
So in comes Booktrack, hoping to help educations tackle the non-reading trends among young adults. Booktrack Classroom gives students free access to ebooks with soundtracks for reading or creating their own.
The thinking goes that with videos, radio, TV, video games, and interactive media, students have a hard time engaging in silent reading with a book that requires longer attention spans and less interactive parts to keep them engaged. So Booktrack figures that by adding music and sound, it'll help keep their attention. According to their press release:
The announcement follows findings from a research project conducted by a team of experts from the University of Auckland that shows how reading with Booktrack increases reading comprehension and engagement. Of the 260 students in the randomized study, those who read the syllabus text incorporating Booktrack’s synchronized soundtrack spent 30% more time reading and registered up to 17% higher comprehension in comparison with the control group.
A second study was conducted with students with reading difficulties, with an even greater impact. This group had up to 18% higher comprehension and 35% higher satisfaction. The studies were led by Dave Hithersay, head of Biology at Auckland’s Mt Roskill Grammar School.
From my own experience, I know when reading a book, my English teachers have often played corresponding movies and soundtracks (usually not while we were actually reading) or would find some way to make it more interesting (because apparently just reading on its own can't be entertaining). In any case, its a nice idea. Creating your own Booktrack? Going on from education, we've now come to the what if I actually want to do this and create my own Booktrack? part.
Booktrack’s expansion into education builds on the company’s recent successful fundraising round where it secured US$3million from global investors, led by Sparkbox Ventures. It allows the company to build on its recent growth with Booktrack Studio, which provides self-published writers with the ability to add soundtracks to their ebooks. In just over five months since its launch, over 300,000 users have created more than 3,600 Booktracks in 30 different languages and have spent more than 2.5 years reading.
Anyways, according to the website, its fairly simple. "1. Copy your existing work, type an original story, or use a royalty free text to get started. 2. Add music, ambient sounds, and effects from our free library of 1,000s of tracks to create an immersive soundtrack for your text. 3. Publish your story for our community of readers to enjoy and share." But of course, we all know that it is never as simple as they say. So if you really want to create your own booktrack, there's this handy-dandy little guide on how to make yours nice or you can check out their author's blog.
Booktrack isn't such a new idea
Even though this is totally relevant, but I feel I must mention audiobooks. If you've ever listened to an audiobook, you'll probably notice that there's usually a little bit of music and sound involved. Usually in between the reader actually reading, sometimes to indicate a break or to introduce a chapter or whatever.
Authors in the past have also made use of creating soundtracks to go along with their books. Author Glen Duncan collarbated with Stephen Coates to create soundtracks to go with the novels I, Lucifer and The Last Werewolf. Jeff VanderMeer has also created soundtracks to go with his books.
And besides that, is a habit for writers now days to seek out music that goes along with their books. For Those Crazy Years, I found some wonderful playlists on Spotify (I think under a genre called electro swing) that works perfectly with my 1920s steam/deco punk story. Many of my writing friends have also created playlists on 8tracks that go along with their books. And this Amazon post lists some other books that have soundtracks created with the story in mind. Other tibits
You can watch this Tedtalk by Booktrack's co-founder Paul Cameron.
And although I think this is a pretty neat idea, and I could see how it could be appealing to some, I would think that overall, it would just be too distracting. Unless maybe you're already in a situation that is distracting and you want something to listen to. Besides that, if you're looking to buy a book with a Booktrack, it costs extra (obviously, but would you really want to spend a couple extra dollars on it?). In any case, the app for it is available for both Apple and Androids so you can download it for yourself and check it out. And I might have to as well just to see if it really does work nicely or not.
So what do you think? Would you like to add music and sounds to your own book or read a book with a soundtrack ebbed in it? Do you think it says something about society went we're using soundtracks to help engage readers, or do you think its a smart or stupid idea?
So everyone, this is exciting! Because not only am I doing my first ever cover reveal, but its for this lovely author who wrote this really awesome sounding book and LOOK AT THAT COVER PEOPLE. Its so pretty. But anyways, take a moment to look at all this awesomeness, AND check out the giveaway at the bottom!
Title: Forever Kinda Love Author: Clara Stone Release date: August 15th, 2014 Genre: Contemporary Romance Age Group: Mature Young Adult Cover Design:Regina Wamba at Mae I Design & Photography
Ebook will be available at: Kindle | Nook | Kobo |Smashwords |Paperback
FOREVER KINDA LOVE Synopsis:
Life’s. Little. Surprises.
The last thing seven-year-old Carrigan "Ace" Casper foresaw was an eight-
year-old Heath Lovelly walking into her life the day her mother died. From
that moment on, Heath sticks by her side, slowly becoming her strength, her
confidant, and her entire world. What she doesn’t know is, she's his saving grace,
too.
Ten years later, Ace is handed another crippling challenge that threatens
everything in her almost perfect life. Only, this time, she doesn't turn to Heath,
hiding the truth instead. But Heath knows Ace too well and won't back down
easily. He's ready to do whatever it takes and will stay by her side until she
accepts that their love is the kinda love worth fighting for.
Will he be her forever triumph or her unexpected downfall?
Two lives.
One story.
And an unexpected journey to falling in love.
*** Follow this book's Story board at: http://pinterest.com/pkanaparti/forev... ***
**Mature Content Warning** 17+ for language and sexual content.
About the Author:
Priya Kanaparti lives in the
beautiful city of Boise, ID. Unlike what most believe about Idaho, it’s more than
a sack full of potatoes. When she’s not writing, you’ll catch Priya reading YA and
NA books, mostly romance, and enjoying time with her family. She is a proud CW
TV addict.
She also write Mature YA and New Adult romance under the name Clara Stone.
She is published through Reuts Publications.
The Brits have established a website chock full of literature and other documents from the British Library's collection on Romantic and Victorian writers. You can check it out here.
There's an awesome website you can buy books from for REALLY cheap. You can check out Book Outlet here.
So I don't know if you've heard about the kidnapped girls over in Nigeria, but my professors at my school are calling for letters of support and encouragement to the families of the kidnapped girls. It doesn't have to be long or anything overly done. In fact, you can just write a short email/letter and send it to me through the contact page and I'll make sure to forward it on to my professors to send to the families in Nigeria!
It doesn't cost you anything and will only take a few minutes of your time. All letters are due by May 30th.
I know it doesn't seem like the most helpful thing we can do, but for the majority of those who can't fly over there and help look for ourselves or whatever else would be helpful, I think this is pretty good. Those families would really appreciate knowing that we care, even if we can't help them indirectly. None of us would like it if that happened to us!
What exactly are you talking about Sareh? Well here's some news articles to catch you up!
Basically what happened is that there's an extremist terrorist group in Africa called Boko Haram. And this group kidnapped nearly 300 girls from a school and is hiding them somewhere in jungle and is planning to sell them as slaves.
Welcome back to this weekly post of random stuff for me to share from around the internet!
I got a Twitter!
So follow me for everything interesting, randomness, and for the fun of it and I'll probably follow you back!
https://twitter.com/SarehLovasen Web Posts To Take a Look At!
This Contently Postintroduced me to this new thing Facebook is trying called Facebook Newswire. Apparently its trying to compete with Twitter as a place for breaking news and the like, and wants to attract more companies to it.
This post discusses the if Buzzfeed really knows the secret to getting things viral and other ways that Buzzfeed is changing the way we see news and media.
And as much as I all know we don't like taking finals at school, don't be like these college students who ordered a hit on themselves in order to avoid their finals!
If you haven't heard ofLindsey Stirling, check out her youtube channel now! She's an awesome violinist who can dance and play the violin at the same time! Wow!
Here's a new song by her that I just discovered! "Shatter Me"!
Websites and Other Randomness to Look at
Wasn't exactly sure if this counts as a website yet or not, but there's a kickstarter program called Storium that kinda reminds me of a role playing game or Dungeons and Dragons. But either way, you can check it out for yourself by clicking here.
If you're a graphic designer or an artist, check out AIGA- the professional organization for artists and designers!
There's a website devoted to books that work on paper and wouldn't work well as ebooks. You can check out Wink-Books by clicking on its name (<---).
This picture about the opening ceremony of Woodstock! Wow, that's a lot of people!
Story Time!
So I also recently posted a revamped story on Wattpad, called Those Crazy Years, that I'm really excited about! Its an exciting story about an alternative universe of the 1920s filled with magic, international intrigue, mobsters, spies, and mystery!
It was fashionable, you see, to kill.
In high style of the day, the Skylarks of New Haven have taken the city by storm. They were the bee’s knees, the big cheese, and everyone wanted to be just like them. They could sing, dance, act, anything they set their mind to, these girls could do. Everyone loved them and no one dared breathed a bad word about them. They seduced everyone and were called the “It” girls. Sexy, smart, fashionable.
But like everyone, they each had their own secrets. And sometimes secrets have a nasty way of revealing themselves. Its been over a year since James Royston disappeared while on a mission to save his kidnapped bride, and now his sister Juliet is determined to find them no matter the cost. But it could very much cost her life.
Thrown into a dangerous game of international intrigue, lies, forbidden romances, magic, and crime lords, Juliet will have to keep her wits about her if she’s to save her brother. But Juliet’s new friends have dug themselves into a deeper hole then anyone could imagine, and it might just take an outsider to save them. In those days it might have been fashionable, but now they call it, those crazy years.
Well that's all today! If you have more you'd like to share (whether its a new book you just discover, got published, music you want to share, an article, pictures, whatever) just let me know either in the comments or through the contact form underneath the author page!
