Inspire (The Muse #1) by Cora Carmack (Blog Tour +Guest Post)

Title: Inspire (Muse #1) 
Author: Cora Carmack
Pages: 284
Genre: New Adult/Paranormal
Release Date: December 15, 2014
Buy: Amazon| Kobo| 

Summary (Goodreads)

Kalliope lives with one purpose.

To inspire.

As an immortal muse, she doesn’t have any other choice. It’s part of how she was made. Musicians, artists, actors—they use her to advance their art, and she uses them to survive. She moves from one artist to the next, never staying long enough to get attached. But all she wants is a different life— a normal one. She’s spent thousands of years living lie after lie, and now she’s ready for something real.

Sweet, sexy, and steady, Wilder Bell feels more real than anything else in her long existence. And most importantly… he’s not an artist. He doesn’t want her for her ability. But she can’t turn off the way she influences people, not even to save a man she might love. Because in small doses, she can help make something beautiful, but her ability has just as much capacity to destroy as it does to create. The longer she stays, the more obsessed Wilder will become. It’s happened before, and it never turns out well for the mortal.

Her presence may inspire genius.

But it breeds madness, too.

Review: 

Cora Carmack, Inspire has given me all the feels! When I first heard about the series coming out and the unique plot line that it had I knew I was going to love it (since I love her other books). Add this book immediately on your to be read piles because it is totally worth the read, I could not put this book down. It will leave you speechless and wanting more! 

Kalli, is an immortal Muse who spends her life from artist to artist, with not getting attached to any of them. It hard not to like Kalli because being inside her  head makes you feel like she is making a lot of mistakes and doesn't care who she hurts. But you can see her struggle as part of the story. Wilder Bell is starting a new life, going to college and working to be able to get to his goal for his little sister Gwen. Wilder is on my list of Book Boyfriends since he is tattooed, talented and sexy! I just loved him! Their attraction was just electric that you can devour these pages. Got all fuzzy in from all those scenes!

The secondary characters were very well developed and added great scenes to the story. Kalli's friend Lennox, Wilder's friend Rook who is another very interesting character and his mother who is very protective of him. Gwen was very adorable and added the lighter side to the story, that can make you life when you read it! It was so diverse that Cora knows how to create!

I am going to be very excited to read the second book because now I need it after finishing Inspire. I need more Kalli and Wilder right about now since that ending!! Go add this book to your e-reader right now!!

About Cora Carmack:

Cora Carmack is a twenty-something writer who likes to write about twenty-something characters. She's done a multitude of things in her life-- boring jobs (like working retail), Fun jobs (like working in a theatre), stressful jobs (like teaching), and dream jobs (like writing). She enjoys placing her characters in the most awkward situations possible, and then trying to help them get a boyfriend out of it. Awkward people need love, too. Her first book, LOSING IT, was a New York Times and USA Today bestseller.

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GUEST POST

So, I love Greek mythology. I was fascinated by it when I was younger. It was my favorite thing to teach when I taught high school (for a whopping two years). But it is SERIOUSLY messed up. In writing INSPIRE, I had tons of information about Greek mythology in my head already. I did even more research. Then I just kind of let all that go and wrote my story. I didn’t want to be hemmed in by following myths exactly as they had been told. For one, many of the myths are obscure and unclear and have multiple versions. That’s what comes from being passed down through generations by word of mouth. Stuff gets changed and forgotten. So I merely used the myths as a starting point, and then created a world and a character of my own in Kalliope.

All that being said… Greek mythology is just too much fun to not talk about. So, lets talk about some of the weirder aspects and myths from those crazy Greeks.

Medusa had snakes for hair.

Aside from the fact that she could turn people into stone by looking them in the eye (which I’m sure made dating a nightmare), let’s just think about how impractical this must have been.  Did she have to feed the snakes? If so, where did the snake's, erm, waste go? Did Medusa just have snakes pooping on her head all the time? And you know how cats will try and wake you up when they're hungry - did the snakes do that too? What about when they shed their skin? I just have so many questions about the logistics.

Cronus ate his own children.

So Cronus heard a prophecy that one of his children would usurp his throne, and to prevent this from happening….he ate all of his children. Because that’s totally a rational response. I mean, I can kind of understand being afraid that one of your kids will overthrow you, but resorting to cannibalism to prevent it is a little extreme. What baffles me even more, though, is how Zeus survived - his mother delivered him in secret and then gave Cronus a rock wrapped in baby clothes. And Cronus ate it and DIDN’T REALIZE IT WAS A ROCK INSTEAD OF A BABY.  Dude.

Medea gave really terrible wedding gifts.

Medea did a lot of pretty messed up stuff, mostly because she was in love with Jason. But then Jason left her for another woman, and you better believe that shit hit the fan. In classic mean girl fashion, Medea acted all friendly to Glauce (Jason’s new side chick) and gave her a really gorgeous dress and coronet to wear for her upcoming wedding. But surprise! They were covered in poison, and when Glauce put them on, she spontaneously burst into flames. Medea then killed her own children to REALLY piss off Jason, and then rode off in a dragon-drawn chariot, probably flipping everyone off while the song “Boss Ass Bitch” blasted in the background.

Zeus had a longer list of ex-lovers than Taylor Swift (not that I don’t love me some Tay-Tay).

(Take a second and think of the song Blank Space being sung by the King of the Gods and let me know if you laugh as hard as I did.)

Zeus was, for lack of a better word, a manwhore. Everyone called him Father, and most of them were correct - Zeus was everyone’s baby daddy and he didn’t care who knew it. It didn’t matter if you were immortal or not; if Zeus wanted to sleep with you, he was gonna sleep with you, even if he had to take the form of an animal to do it. What an asshole.

There’s something called a “hippalectryon.”

And it’s half horse, half rooster. To me, this looks like a freakier version of Buckbeak the Hippogriff from Harry Potter, and I just cannot even.

Only in Greek Mythology can you be a place AND a person!

Tartarus is a place. The darkest, deepest pit of the Underworld. Hell if you will. But somehow… Gaia (who was the Earth. Literally. But also the Father of the Titans) manages to make a child with Tartarus. That child is the monsters of all monsters, the Typhon, who among other things, had dragon heads for fingers.

Aphrodite, goddess of love, came from testicles 

I’m not even joking. I wish I were. Cronus (we’ve already discussed how cray-cray he was) is jealous of his father Gaius and his power. And his mother, angry with her husband for imprisoning some of her more monster-ish children, convinces Cronus to attack and castrate his father. Cronus then throws his father’s junk in the ocean. The sea foams up and out pops Aphrodite. I’m just gonna let that sink in for a bit.

In Greek Mythology, you don’t have to be born from a mother’s womb

Nope. Not even close. Adonis was born from a tree! That tree used to be his mother, who slept with her own father. But that’s another story. TREE!

Athena was born from papa Zeus’s head. Just sprung up right from his skull. And you thought the birth of baby Renesmee was creepy. IMAGINE THAT. *shudders*

  

Why be born once when you can be born three times?

So the myths on this are contradictory and a little unclear. But there was this dude Dionysus. God of Wine (and Theatre!). Imagine the festival at Woodstock in human form and you’ve got Dionysus. Dude was a little wild. He had an affair with Persephone, and when Hades found out, he was naturally angry at his wife’s unfaithfulness. He had the titans tear Dionysus into pieces and eat them (why all the eating? Gah). But tricky Persephone managed to save his heart and gave it to Dionysus’s father Zeus, who then slept with a mortal woman named Semele and somehow impregnated her with said heart. Who knows? Then Zeus’s wife Hera found out. And as always, she was angry and decided to get her revenge. She befriended Semele and convinced her to ask Zeus to reveal himself in full god form to her. When he did so, the sight of Zeus was too much for her and she literally burst into flames. Before she died though, Zeus took Dionysus from her womb (that’s birth #2!). Then just in case little baby D wasn’t done baking yet, he sowed the child up in his own thigh until the child was healthy enough to be birthed for a third time. FROM A THIGH.

Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships, was hatched. Not born.

Again, there’s some dissent here about exact lineage. Zeus might have changed into the form of a swan and impregnated the woman Leda. Because that makes sense. Story goes that she was just chilling naked by the lake, like you do. She sees an eagle chasing a swan (that’s Zeus) who leaps into her arms to get away. And somehow the sex just happens.*GIANT SHRUG* OR… in another version, Zeus might have impregnated the goddess Nemesis while she was in goose form. Because sometimes you just feel like being a goose. Either way… the woman often hailed as the most beautiful in all of Greece came from an egg.

Most of that was probably a lot more than you wanted to know. But I just find it so hilarious the ways in which modern society has romanticized the Greek gods as these ethereal figures. I’m guilty of it, too! When in reality, their lives and stories were FAR from pretty. But let’s all just agree to go back to pretending like we don’t know any of the information above.

Okay? Okay.

P.S. I promise there is no eating of people, mystifying births, or castration of any kind in INSPIRE. You have my word.