KATE EVANGELISTA- TASTE Book Trailer and Excerpt Reveal

Are you excited for a little TASTE? Here is a teaser to whet your appetite for Kate Evangelista's novel TASTE, to be released by CRESCENT MOON PRESS on May 1, 2012. So, feast your eyes on this amazing trailer…and dream of flesh.


  

Song Credits: "Hunger" © Noelle Pico.

Wasn’t that trailer haunting? The song, HUNGER gave me the chills. It’s available for download from the amazingly talented Noelle Pico. For more on this talented songwriter, please check out her SOV post.


Still not sated? Need another bite?

At Barinkoff Academy, there's only one rule: no students on campus after curfew. Phoenix McKay soon finds out why when she is left behind at sunset. A group calling themselves night students threaten to taste her flesh until she is saved by a mysterious, alluring boy. With his pale skin, dark eyes, and mesmerizing voice, Demitri is both irresistible and impenetrable. He warns her to stay away from his dangerous world of flesh eaters. Unfortunately, the gorgeous and playful Luka has other plans.

When Phoenix is caught between her physical and her emotional attraction, she becomes the keeper of a deadly secret that will rock the foundations of an ancient civilization living beneath Barinkoff Academy. Phoenix doesn’t realize until it is too late that the closer she gets to both Demitri and Luka the more she is plunging them all into a centuries old feud.

TASTE

 Excerpt 2

I sat up and followed Calixta’s gaze upward. I rubbed my eyes. I didn’t know what I was seeing at first. A statue? ¬My brain refused to snap together coherent thoughts. I didn’t realize I’d fallen so close to one of the garden benches until I stared up at the boy that sat on one. He was strikingly beautiful. His tumble of blonde hair curled just above his sculpted cheekbones. He wore a silk shirt and a loosened cravat, like he’d become bored while dressing and decided to leave himself in disarray. His ivory skin and frozen position was what had me mistaking him for something carved from marble by Michelangelo. Then he sighed—a lonely, breathy proof of life. If I had to imagine what Lucifer looked like before he fell from heaven, the boy on the bench would certainly fulfill that image. My brain told me I had to look away, but I couldn’t.

“Luka,” Calixta said again, her voice unsure, almost nervous. It no longer contained the steel and bite she had threatened me with, which made me wonder who the boy was.

He leaned on his hands and crossed his legs, all the while keeping his eyes fixed on the night sky. His movements spoke of elegance and control. I’d encountered many people with breeding before, but his took on the air of arrogance and self-assuredness of someone used to getting what he wanted when he wanted it.

I only realized I’d been holding my breath when my lungs protested. I exhaled. My heart sputtered and restarted with a vengeance. Luka tore his gaze away from the stars and settled it on me. I’d expected pitch-black irises, like the other Night Students, but blue ice stared back at me.

“Human,” he whispered.

He reached out, and with a finger, followed an invisible trail down my cheek. I stiffened. His touch, cooler than Demitri’s, caused warm sparks to blossom on my face. He lifted his finger to his lips and licked its tip. He might as well have licked me from the way my body shivered.

Luka’s curious gaze held mine. “Leave us,” he said, but not to me.

“But—” Calixta protested like a spoiled child.

He spoke in a language I hadn’t heard before, remaining calm yet firm. The words had a rolling cadence I couldn’t quite follow, like rumbling thunder in the distance. They contained a harsh sensuality. The consonants were hard and the vowels were long and lilting.

Footsteps retreated behind me.

Luka reached out again.

It took me a minute to realize he wanted to help me up. I hesitated. He smiled. I smiled back timidly and took his hand, completely dazzled. Even with my uniform soaked from melted snow, I didn’t feel cold—all my attention was on him and the way his callused hand felt on mine. Without moving much from his seated position, he helped me stand.

“What’s your name?” he asked. He had a voice like a familiar lullaby. It filled my heart to the brim with comfort.

I swallowed and tried to stop gawking. “Phoenix.”

“The bird that rose from the ashes.” Luka bent his head and kissed the back of my hand. “It’s a pleasure meeting you.”

My cheeks warmed. My head reeled, not knowing what to think. I couldn’t understand why I felt drawn to him. And the strange connection frightened me.

From behind, someone gripped my arms and yanked me away before I could sort out the feelings Luka inspired in me. I found myself behind a towering figure yet again. Recognizing the blue-black silk for hair tied at the nape, relief washed over me. Calixta hadn’t come back to finish me off.

Demitri’s large hand wrapped around my wrist. Unlike the night before, no calm existed in his demeanor. He trembled like a junky in need of a fix. The coiled power in his tense muscles vibrated into me.

“What are you doing here?” Demitri asked.

I didn’t know he’d spoken to me until I saw his expressionless profile. I sighed.

“Phoenix.”

I flinched. The ruthless way he said my name punched all the air out of me. “You owe me answers,” I said with as much bravado as I could muster.

“I owe you nothing.” He glared. “In fact, you owe me your life.”

“I don’t think so.”

Ignoring my indignation, he faced Luka, who’d remained seated on the bench during my exchange with Demitri. “Why is she with you, Luka?”

“I wasn’t going to taste her, if that’s what you’re implying,” Luka said. “Although, she is simply delicious. I wouldn’t mind if you left us alone.”

There it was again. Taste. The word that kept coming up between these Night Students and I was connected to it in an increasingly uncomfortable way. To taste meant to sample, but what? My flesh? They had to be joking because the alternative wasn’t funny.

“The sins of the father …” Demitri left his sentence unfinished.

Luka’s smile shifted into a snarl. “Obey my command.” His chin lifted. “Kneel.”

Demitri’s stance went rigid. His grip tightened around my wrist.

Okay, weird just got weirder. Why would Luka want Demitri to kneel before him? I thought back to Eli and the others bowing to Demitri when he questioned them, but they didn’t kneel. Seriously? Were they all living on a different planet or something?

“Kneel.” Luka’s detestable smirk made his features sinister rather than angelic. The real Lucifer: a fallen angel.

Without letting go of my wrist, Demitri knelt down on one knee and bowed his head, his free hand flat at the center of his chest. “Your command has been obeyed,” he said formally.

Luka nodded once.

Demitri stood up and pulled me toward the school without telling me where we were going. Not having the time to thank Luka for saving me from Calixta, I risked a glance back. Luka smiled at me. His smile spoke of whispers, secrets, and promises to be shared on a later date. (hint, hint, wink)

When Kate Evangelista was told she had a knack for writing stories, she did the next best thing: entered medical school. After realizing she wasn't going to be the next Doogie Howser, M.D., Kate wandered into the Literature department of her university and never looked back. Today, she is in possession of a piece of paper that says to the world she owns a Literature degree. To make matters worse, she took Master's courses in creative writing. In the end, she realized to be a writer, none of what she had mattered. What really mattered? Writing. Plain and simple, honest to God, sitting in front of her computer, writing. Today, she has four completed Young Adult novels.

 
 
Author Website:
Twitter: @KateEvangelista
Facebook:
Find Taste on Goodreads
Crescent Moon Press page for Taste

SHARING OUR VOICES- NOELLE PICO

I'd like to introduce Noelle Pico @thenoeychu to Sharing Our Voices. I'm a huge fan of Noelle's music. When I listen to her, my creativity is sparked. I get lost in my own world, only snapping back to reality when the song ends. She is source of inspiration for me, and I feel honored to have her here to share her gift with others.

Thank you, Noey, and welcome.

When Angie asked me over to write for Sharing Our Voices, I honestly wasn’t sure how to go about this post. Having followed the features that have been shared so far, wonderful posts about stories and characters and the things that influence these into being… I wasn’t sure how a musician could fit into the mix.

And then I remembered that musicians are storytellers as well.

I have had music in my life for as long as I can remember. When I search my memories, the houses I have lived in have never once been absent of song. This is a thing I thank my parents for, though not so much for music created by their hands (those are the things my brothers and I have done) but more because all throughout, they encouraged the art of listening.

My parents’ personal collection of cassette tapes are a memory of drawers crammed to the hilt – a library of small plastic cases that were to me things to wonder at. It’s a sort of magic, I guess, to have looked at the fine, thin strips of black wound into rolls easily spanned by the length of my thumb; to know how much music was held within. I continue the tradition today, though CDs have replaced cassettes and the albums of my favorites are hoarded like treasures, stacked proudly on my shelves between books and tucked in special boxes.

The road trips we used to take are best recounted through the albums that my family and I all but memorized word for word, note for note: an end-of-summer trip washed over with rain are the songs from the first albums of the All-American Rejects and Dashboard Confessional; a lengthy weekend tucked away in the silence of a resort can be brought back by that one international release by the Irish group Bellefire (a handful of their songs were familiar covers that my parents particularly enjoyed). Drives to hockey practice in college were accompanied by female voices: Vienna Teng’s soothing tones set lyrics of a poetic bent to the keys of a piano, Maria Mena’s bluntly honest declarations of relationships gone wrong were documented by guitar riffs and husky vocals; and Tori Amos’ richly textured landscapes drew together fables and flights of fancy that were still somehow rooted in the very real world.

There are others still, from years before and the day more recently gone by: train rides to and from graduate studies classes were punctuated by the French pop band KYO, the setting sun dipping behind my city’s skyline. Tunes from the Spanish rock group Motel kept me company as I sat in the back seat of a friend’s van as we drove out of town to her family beach house. Japanese Rock prompts me to nod my head as I wait in line at the queue of vans that serve as my means of transport home.

I sit in a coffee shop, walk the sidewalks, browse bookshelves – and always, I carry music with me.


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Cover, “With A Smile” by The Eraserheads // First shared on 14 February 2012, Valentine’s Day offering on Tumblr.

I wrote my first song when I was seven years old.

Thinking back to the tiny girl sitting at the back of a van, I recall the welcome flurry of noise generated by my brothers and cousins. We are parked outside of a botica, one of the small-town pharmacies found in the province where both of my parents’ trace their roots to. This family trip is not out of the ordinary. It is just another summer break away from the hectic frenzy of life in Manila.

Though I confess to being a city girl by trade and at heart, if there is anything that I appreciate about the small town called Bacolod City, it is that the pace slows significantly the moment you find yourself there. Perhaps it is just that, being out of town, cut off from the demands of your life, you are offered a reprieve; a place and time to think – whether you seek it out or not.

Now, I can’t remember what it was that prompted a desire to write music. I just knew that as I let my mind wander over the collective noise of nearly ten children, I happened to look down at the single page of Hallmark stickers that my mother had given me earlier that morning.

And as cartoon bears declared words of encouragement waving brightly colored streamers or through thought bubbles over their heads, a tune rolled over merrily in my mind.

I have them still; the stickers, I mean. They are preserved in a notebook at home, the sheen of their glossy finish now dull, their colors faded with time. Though I often offer a half-embarrassed smile when my mom asks me to sing it publicly, I cannot deny that there has been nothing quite like that first moment of discovery where a seven year old learned that this – songs – was something that she could do.



“Coffee and Nonsense”, original composition // Piano demo.

Writing music is not unlike telling a story. Take any song and in it you will find landscapes and characters and narratives and concepts that resonate in their universality. Always, you will find that as a cohesive whole it speaks and breathes and relates, because music – no matter the language it is written in – once it touches you, it echoes the things that you know and feel. It is your witness, your mirror image, your darkest incarnation, your best friend.

There are words that I want to share, from a musician who I both admire and respect, but I can’t remember the exact entirety of them, so I’ll paraphrase as best as I can:

Tracing the progression of a musician’s craft through the songs they create is not unlike following the progress of the individual; of a life. The songs you write at seven are not the same ones you write when you are thirteen or sixteen or twenty-five. This is not to say that you will not wrestle with the same angels or battle the same ghosts – it is just that the way you handle these experiences, how you express these insights in reference to the world around you and most importantly to yourself – these will not be the same.

As I look back at a personal timeline chronicled by the songs that I have written over the course of twenty years, I not only see how the music I write today is a far cry from the quick children’s jingle put together from words printed on Hallmark stickers – words of encouragement, of love, of pride. Today, I have learned to understand how the music I create is part and parcel of the person I not only am, but the one I strive to be.

When people ask what it is that I do, I tell them simply: I write about people and about feelings; about people who make me feel and what they make me feel. When I set my fingers over the piano keys or curl these around a pen, I tell the music all the things that my heart knows. At all times, all that has ever been asked of me is that if I must tell a story, then I must tell it as truthfully as I can. In return, the music takes my hand and offers me a tune.



“SALISI”, original composition // First shared on 7 December 2011, featured on #upstairsintheworkshop: volume 1.

I hope everyone enjoyed Noelle's music as much as I do. I think she's wicked talented. She asked me to share with everyone that the studio version of SALISI and Hunger (which is featured on Kate Evangelista's trailer for her novel, TASTE) will be available for purchase on April 16th at http://sheisnoelle.bandcamp.com

I can't wait.

To learn more about this amazing artist, please check her out on tumblr: her name is Noelle