Hi there, blog readers. Remember me?
Sorry for the long silence, but I am busy with the current work in progress. When it’s completed, this will be my eighth published book and my seventh novel. As you may remember, this book is the first of what I’ve planned for a five-part mystery series.
As of today, corrections have been marked on the first draft and I’m busy making the changes to print out the second draft. I’ll repeat the process and then hopefully send off a third draft soon to my editors.
Life has been pretty busy with work (you know, that struggle for the legal tender stuff that Jackson Browne sang about). And speaking of music… I’ve just written my first liner notes for a song!
Music has been an important part of my life for as long as I can remember. It was as strong a pull on me as art was growing up, and in one point of my early career I’d hope to illustrate record albums for a living. Well, we know how that story ended up being written, don’t we.
Anyway, it was an honor to be asked by progressive rock great Magellan to listen to the band’s new release, “War Drum (This Ain’t America)” and write my interpretation of what I was hearing. The process included plugging in headphones (a true necessity for total immersion) and just replaying over and over an early version of the song. As I listened I jotted keywords that came to mind about the imagery Trent Gardner‘s music and lyrics conjured up. Soon patterns of ideas jelled and I began writing the piece. The ideas flowed, then I edited them back like a returning tide. Again, I repeated this process. Before submitting it, I slept on the final version and waited until the next morning to see if the cadence—the music—was still in the writing from the night before. There was a bit of last minute tweaking before the final shipping.
Today I got to hear the completed song for the first time. Wow! Chicago‘s lead guitarist Keith Howland added a smoking riff to what I’d heard before. LOVED it!
You can listen to “War Drum (This Ain’t America)” at Soundcloud HERE. Tomorrow (Sept. 9, 2015) it becomes available worldwide at iTunes and Amazon.
So, back to this editing…
