Music Recommendation: For My Pain...

I believe that many people in the metal world, especially the symphonic metal world, will have heard of Finnish songwriter and keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen's band Nightwish - they're pretty big, and that's because they're pretty damn awesome. But compared to Nightwish's huge success, not many people seem to have heard of Holopainen's other band, "For My Pain...". I only discovered them maybe about half an hour ago through Mr Holopainen's website; I have been a Nightwish fan for almost a year now and I haven't heard of For My Pain before. It seems they only released on album, "Fallen" in 2003, but the website doesn't list a date for the band breaking up, so technically they're still around here... somewhere. Maybe.

Firstly it is necessary to point out that For My Pain... is not Nightwish. The most obvious difference is the vocals; male vocalist Juha Kylmänen sings for them as opposed to Tarja Turunen (or later Anette Olzon or Floor Jansen). There are obviously other differences - I do not think I would class this as symphonic metal like Nightwish, the style is quite different - but I haven't listened to them enough to be able to spot them.

Either way, I have listened to a couple of their songs and they seem pretty good. Personally I prefer Nightwish - by a huge margin. But still, it isn't bad, and is quite possibly underrated. I think most of the songs from the album Fallen are on YouTube. I personally like the songs "Dancer In The Dark" and "Tomorrow Is A Closed Gate" although I haven't had chance to listen to them all yet. But basically, if you like Nightwish, or in fact any sort of metal, go and listen to For My Pain...

Mid-Month Update

So now we are halfway through November, and halfway through NaNoWriMo, so every novel written by NaNoWriMo participants should, by now, be at least 25,000 words in length - halfway to that winning 50,000. Of course, there will be people who are nowhere near that and people who have given up, and people who are a couple of thousand words behind. At just over 18,000 words, I am one of those people.

Now, it could be worse. The last time I took part in November NaNoWriMo, I think I got about 5,000 words - definitely no more than 10,000. I had exams to revise for. I had no time for writing. Technically, I don't have any time for writing this year. With a new part-time job, school, actually having a bit of a social life for the first time in my life (which is basically watching old Dr Who episodes with my boyfriend - although I'm still slightly surprised I can actually say that) and starting driving lessons, more is going on in my life right now than has ever gone on before. It's a bit tiring. It might be alright if I'd kept up from the beginning and not skipped a couple of days, but now I'm trying to catch up more than the required daily word count, and I don't have time.

According to the stats graph on my account on my website, I will finish my novel on the 14th of December (this year, luckily - I'm not doing that badly) if I carry on the way I am, and I need to write 2,119 words every day to finish on time. I don't think I'll make it, but that's not to say I'm going to give up! Wish me luck, and I may well cross that 50,000 word line yet!

Note: I said before that I should be at 25,000 words by now - well, it seems now that I checked on the website that I lied. Today's target word count is 26,666. Which means I am about 8,000 words behind. I think I will definitely need that luck you were just in the process of wishing me. :P

The Time Lords?

So I found this song here, right here (please click here and press play on the thing that says "listen"!) on tumblr and I reblogged it. I since found out that it's a real song, called Doctorin' The TARDIS, by The Time Lords.

Except it's not.

Because HERE is the original (below) and the song which plays from the link above is NOT the same. Notice the different introduction? Notice the different guitar-y bit? Notice the verses with lyrics? Those are not in the original, it is not the same.

Now, I'm not saying anything bad about either song. I just have a question I want to ask.

And my question is this: where on Earth did the one in the top link come from? I looked up covers of the original song and none of them match this one. So who made it and where did it come from??

And more importantly: WHERE CAN I DOWNLOAD IT???

In the meantime, if you don't know the answer to these questions, which you probably don't, just listen and bask in the awesomeness of a song about Dr Who. :)

Emma Blackery's Thoughts On Google+

And I must say, I think I agree with her.

The Last Dream: NaNoWriMo 2013

When all else fails, you still have your dreams... don't you?

When you have come to despise the fairy-tale figures that dominated your entire childhood, it's just your luck that the alien invasion that comes to tear your world apart brings the characters that have haunted you for years quite literally to your doorstep - and right after you discovered your sister has been lying to you (again). Seriously, it's just not your day, is it?

I thought I'd share the synopsis and cover art for the novel I'm writing for NaNoWriMo this year - The Last Dream, originally called The Cloudmaker. The inspiration for it came from driving past a small white building in a field in Scotland somewhere between Edinburgh and the English border which I think was some sort of mini power station (I can't really remember what it looked like so I can't tell you what it was), but it looked to me like it should be a cloud factory. I was annoyed at myself for wanting to write about this cloud maker for NaNoWriMo, because I'd wanted to write a novel about a fangirl this year. And then I had a weird dream which involved an alien invasion, and I'd wanted to do my NaNoWriMo novel about that too. So, I combined the three together, and this is the result. :)

Will be the result. Will be the result, when it's done. (I'm currently about 2,000 words behind but there we go).

The book cover is a pretty picture of some clouds that I found on Google Images, and I used the programme Paint and the font Shelley Volante BT (the Nightwish font) for the text.

Also, I am putting the link to my NaNoWriMo profile in the list of links down on the left of the home page. Visit it if you wish. :)

A Fictional Setting Brought To Life

This photo appeared on Kristin Cashore's blog a day or two ago. It is my belief from this blog that she's in Iceland at the moment, and this is one of the pictures she took of her travels. If you have read Fire you may well know what I thought of as soon as I saw this picture (particularly because of the rocks):

Kristin Cashore, you have found The Dells.

It made me very happy, so I thought I'd share. :) The blog post this picture is on can be found here.

Song Recommendation: Paradise (What About Us?)

I was literally in hysterics when I heard about this song coming out. It is the new single (released about two months ago now, I think - I'm only just getting around to blogging about it) of Within Temptation and Tarja Turunen. You might wonder what sets this song apart from other songs - what exactly had me hyperventilating, when the song wasn't even out yet? Well, Within Temptation are awesome. They are my favourite band. Fair enough, you might think. Nightwish are also awesome, they are my second favourite band. What does that have to do with anything, you might ask. Well Tarja is the ex-lead singer of Nightwish. Tarja is also awesome. And awesome + awesome = CRAZY AWESOME! Knowing that a song that was practically a collaboration between my two favourite bands was like a dream come true.

And "Paradise (What About Us?)" well and truly lived up to expectations. It's amazing. (Dr Who fans - notice that there's a sort of background noise in the build up that sounds kind of like a TARDIS?) I think I am slightly in love with it. This song on repeat = perfection. I simply cannot wait to hear Within Temptation's new album (rumoured to be out in January, I believe), and Tarja's new solo album has been out since August, methinks.