Right, time for a Sam Pick! Sam doesn't have precisely the same voracious musical habits as Hansen, mostly because he doesn't need to, since Hansen's kind of dictatorial about music like that, but he does have a few bands that work for him. (Outside of Johnny Cash. As he will repeatedly remind anyone who asks.) One of those is Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Odds are good he found them thanks to Hansen, but Sam's not too proud to admit it.

So another song from the EQUILIBRIUM Mixed Tape -- full listing in the back of EQUILIBRIUM -- BRMC's "We're All In Love":



And yeah, that's another band I really like. Admittedly, I'm going through the mixed tape listing and picking out the ones I think are the most fun -- as in bands I actually listen to regularly. I've actually seen these guys three times, and would pay for thirty more.

As a side note, thanks very much to everyone who checked out EQUILIBRIUM. It made the LI bestseller list for its first week, which kind of has me floored, seeing as it's my first -- not to mention a bit, uh, dorky and weird for this particular genre. If you're considering it but not totally sure yet, check out the EQUILIBRIUM page here to learn more about these imaginary people for whom I have actual playlists, check out excerpts, all that good stuff. Also, there's a big version of that fabulous cover. :D

Or, if you're already convinced, check it out at Loose Id:

I do this confusing two penname thing, but it's not a secret or anything -- I'm proud of what both of my personalities do. (Ha!) I suppose my bothering with two names might seem weird unless someone's read stuff by both, then it becomes obvious that the readers of one aren't likely to have much in common with the readers of the other. I do it so as not to burn myself and any readers nice enough to give me a chance by giving false expectations. If you read KV Taylor you can be pretty sure things are going to get ugly and frightening somewhere... and probably stay that way. If you read Katey Hawthorne, it's a good bet you will come out with far less psychological trauma. The idea, in fact, is that I'd hope people would come out with a smile.

Both write a lot about sex, though.

So this is a long way of explaining why my GoodReads profile looks so barren. I want to interact with book people, to be easy to find and get hold of for the GoodReads community. It's such a cool way to meet people with similar interests. But at the same time, there's no point in my reviewing everything I read on two profiles -- in fact, it'd skew the rankings in a weird way. So finally, I've gone in and updated my original GoodReads profile, the one with which I review everything I read, with proper shelves. It's definitely not a complete listing of Stuff I've Read since I started it, but I'm trying to keep up.

The ones relevant to Katey Hawthorne are:

Romance
LGBTQ
and
Comics, Graphic Novels, and Trade Paperbacks

That last one is getting a lot of action lately because I got a ton of GNs and TPBs for a recent birthday. Yay!

The only thing weird that I do is that I don't star reviews from someone with whom I have a contract. (Currently: Belfire Press and Loose Id). I feel like if I'm giving 3 stars + I'm being self-serving, and if I'm tempted to do 1 or 2 I'm not being supportive. And we need all the support we can get. But I do comment on those books with complete honesty, just because I love talking about books. I mean, what's a writer if they're not a reader first, right?

So I'm one of those people who can't write a book without music blaring. I know that distracts the hell out of some people, but I'm at once incredibly focused and a little bit mad when I write -- perhaps why I tend to write a lot of pulp, as it makes me feel at home in that way. Anyhow, as a result of this practice, I end up with playlists in iTunes for everything. While I'm writing or editing a given project, the list goes everywhere with me. It plays at my desk, the headphones go into the iPhone for grocery shopping, it plugs into my truck for driving.

It's like athletes who have songs they have to listen to that get them into the zone on the sidelines. Only, uh, dorkier.

So with EQUILIBRIUM, my awesome editor Raven suggested we do a playlist in the back of the book, just for fun. How convenient that I had it ready, complete with picks by both Hansen and Sam! Of course, let's do it. So in the back of your book you'll see a little section labeled "Equilibrium Mixed Tape". Because yeah, when I was a kid, we made mixed tapes, dammit.

Just for fun, I thought I'd drop a couple of them here in blog posts. This one is a Hansen Band, Arctic Monkeys. Sometimes the bands/artists that work for given characters or stories aren't really my favorites (sometimes I end up liking things I didn't originally because of a character or story, even), but I genuinely adore the AMs. Just saw them live here in DC a few months back, and it was killer.

So here we go, a Hansen Pick from the Equilibrium Mixed Tape: "Temptation Greets You Like Your Naughty Friend"



... it should pretty much be his theme song, I'm thinking.

Gosh, I guess it's official: EQUILIBRIUM must be earth-shatteringly awesome. It had a birthday quake.

(Yeah, I know, lame joke. But seriously, that quake knocked a bunch of crap over on my desk and emptied out the Pentagon -- kinda in my back yard. I live on the east coast; I did not sign up for this.)

It's that time, my friends. EQUILIBRIUM, my first paranormal romance, is live and available from the wonderful folk at Loose Id. It's full of electricity, fire, fights, sex, friendship, hot soccer players -- er, loads of great things, really! I hope it amuses -- if you snag it, let me know what you think.

Want more info? We've got that! Check out the EQUILIBRIUM page right here at Superpowered Love and see if it looks like your kind of thing. There are character sketches, excerpts, blurbs, all kinds of good stuff. Give it a shot! You never know, they might convince you.

And at the very least, you might enjoy refreshing the page for Honeyed Fox Ale, the beer of choice in Marietta Falls, WV since 1863, to see what sorts of interesting slogans they come up with. I hear it changes the more you refresh. Poor little fox, he's so done in... explains some of those shocking slogans, really.

I realized that in my haste to get on with the superhero science and perfect the EQUILIBRIUM pages, I didn't really have anything about myself here on the site. I mean, there are links in the sidebar to other places where I do random absurd things on the net, but I think one is expected to have a little bit of information. With my first release impending, I really should have my shit together here.

Except, what do you say about yourself? If I thought I was interesting, I wouldn't write about imaginary people, would I?

No, but here I am, all the same! So in an effort to introduce myself to anyone who stumbles by, perhaps after seeing the shiny cover for EQUILIBRIUM on the Loose Id site, or maybe after the (holy god, so soon!) release, I thought I'd do a hello post.

So hi! I'm Katey. I'm about to turn 31, and I live just outside Washington, DC. I like to read George RR Martin, Frank Herbert, Georgette Heyer, Henry James, Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, Wendy Pini, Jane Austen. I have a congenital Spider-Man addiction, passed down to me from my father; I have a lot of his old comics bagged and boarded on my shelves. I visited F. Scott Fitzgerald's grave earlier this year and left him a thank you letter. He is my favorite writer ever.

I write horror and dark fantasy as KV Taylor, and my first dark fantasy novel is up for preorder right now. It's about fucked up Appalachian fae and contains an extremely broken love story and lots of knives. I just sold another about vampires that might be even more fucked up. My favorite vampire movie is 30 Days of Night, because I like the blood on the snow. I like the graphic novels, too. I run Fae Awareness Month in June. These are my two favorite monsters -- and anyone who says the fae aren't monstrous has been reading too much Yeats.

I was raised by hunters, and have been quietly but intensely vegetarian for over half my life; I live with a man who was raised strictly vegetarian Hindu, and cannot get enough cow into his system. I don't generally rant about politics, but I do care about human rights, and occasionally throw stuff out in that vein. I can be expected to write a post or two a year mocking bisexual stereotypes, as I feel it's important to represent both personally and through my fiction that that shit is not okay. (All sorts of stereotypes, but we all have a soft spot for our own, don't we?)

I like Sapphire and Tonic, Black Bush on the rocks, and decent wine. Coffee is nice, too. I quit smoking when I got married, but I cheat when I drink too much. I didn't believe in happy endings until I met my husband; I still don't write them all the time, but I save them up for romance. Everyone else finds her annoying, but I'm pretty sure I only like Sookie Stackhouse because Anna Paquin is so goddamn hot. Franz Liszt is my dead boyfriend. I've spent days in libraries in Philly and DC reading through old newspapers just to get the weather right on a given day in a historical.

I wrote EQUILIBRIUM for my best friend. A lot of Sam came directly from her (with permission, of course). My aunt printed out a poster for me to give her for her birthday.

This is what my desk looks like right now:


I can't resist speedsters. This is the toy I just bought while on a roadtrip to Cleveland, perched atop my corkboard:


No idea if any of that stuff is any more interesting than the bio page. But I hope it's at least marginally more entertaining, and will serve as a proper introduction. If you see this, please link me back to your introduction, give it to me in the comments, or drop me an email. It's like a virtual handshake, that way. :D

The Superpowered Science page is ready for the world!

Lucky, lucky me, I have an in with the premier superpowers research association in the world -- which happens to be right here in Washington, DC. How convenient.

But that's not how I have the in. I have it because Irene Ballagh, Neuronaut-in-Chief at the Hamiltonian Society, is an old friend, and she's written up an explanation of how awakened superpowers work -- or as near as we can get with the information we have, anyhow. The Hamiltonian Neuronautics Society is of course controversial. In some quarters they're laughed at -- superpowers? No such thing! In some they're hated -- they're not supposed to prove this stuff, let alone write it down.  And in most, well, people just pretend they don't exist. But still Ballagh and her tireless staff of researchers and scientists carry on. Lucky for us.

Check out what she has to say about electric and thermomanipulators on the Superpowered Science page, if you're wondering how they do what they do. Believe it or not, right?

(Seriously though, thanks very much to Irene Ballagh, who is an honest-to-god neuroscientist, for creating the awakened version of superhero science just for Equilibrium -- and everything that's to follow. Neuroscientists: they make the best writers. They are also badasses. Facts are awesome things.)

So it's the first anniversary of Mina Kelly's TEASE, and she has an extremely cool contest running. You can get stories, books, movies, and the best thing ever, she's going to sponsor a seal pup in the winner's name! (Look, if you can't get a hot selkie from the ocean, at least get an adorable seal pup.)

Check it out here!

... and I have no idea why I'm telling everyone about this because I want it for myself. Dammit!

I have been given the go-ahead to say for sure that Equilibrium has a cover. You can check it out on the Equilibrium page, if you like, but there's a cute little version over there on the side bar too. -------->

If it looks like the cover of the hottest comic book ever, well, that's totally what I meant to write, so yay! Thanks to the mighty P.L. Nunn for the shiny, man. Many, many thanks. Above and beyond thanks.

If you're interested in how my addiction to superpowers reflects in my work daily, check out this post at the general writing blog of my alter-ego. Just here for the superpowered hotness? Hey, I'd be the last to blame you. Glory in the awesome that is Hansen and Sam on their very own cover, my friends. I know I am. <3