Tag Archives: music

Anything but blue…

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Had a busy weekend, which included going with some friends to hear another friend perform.

I mentioned just the other night how many wonderful, talented people I’m privileged to know. Having a friend who’s won the Washington Blues Society’s Best of the Blues Electric Guitar Award twice in a row is just one of those examples. Hearing C.D., Chris, Don, and the two Mikes play a selection of blues and blues-adjacent music for a couple of hours would brighten anyone’s week. And I’m looking forward to the new album they’re looking to release around the end of the year.

I didn’t get a lot of writing done over the weekend, but I worked a lot on writing-adjacent things. My biggest accomplishment was dropping off a new issue of the Tai-Pan at the printer Friday. My second biggest was working on the issue after that (a good chunk is now in copy edit), organizing a bunch of in-progress stories, and otherwise participating in a work party with a few other editorial board members on Saturday. Just a few hours before we ran out to be band groupies together.

And then there was the journey to the year 1876 where we moved a little closer to the nuptials of “Atlas” O’Flaherty and Miss Prudence Earwig.

The weekend wasn’t all great news. After helping a couple friends earlier in the week diagnose significant computer problems, my husband found his main computer dead when he got home Friday night. Turned out to “only” being the failure of his primary boot drive, but it still took him most of the weekend to get his system restored, pulled data out of backups and off the failed drive, and so on.

So he didn’t come with us to the work party, nor dinner and music after.

And then late at night, we got rain, ending our dry streak that was only a few days from an all time record. We didn’t get a lot of rain. And the long range forecast has no rain coming up, but this bit was quite welcome. I love the way the world smells after a rain. The sunlight looks cleaner, somehow. And I love the rain.

Pop goes the culture

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In childhood most of your cultural experiences are dictated by your family. Particularly when I was a kid, when the typical family had, at most, one TV and one stereo music system. I was lucky enough to have parents who believed in reading and being cheap, so except in those towns we lived in that were too small to have a public library, most of my childhood involved near weekly trips to the local library.

For other things, we had church music, TV, my parents’ record collection, and radio. And most of the towns we lived in were so small there was only one local AM radio station. Which didn’t really matter, because our house, like most of our neighbors’ had the TV and stereo in the same room. So you watch/listened to what Mom or Dad wanted.

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Brunching

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As Michael pointed out when we were walking home from this morning’s brunch, this week has been full of a lot of going out with friends.

I met Katrina a few years ago when we were both on staff for Conifur. Since she was living in Oregon, we only got to see her when she came up for a staff meeting, or at the con itself. Though several times she also came up to attend Writers’ Night.

She moved much further away for a while, so many of us were very sad. But now she’s nearby, again, and she brought her guy, Terry, up to Seattle to see the sights, hang out, and so on. We met them, the Oxfords, and the Jared, at one of our favorite local eateries, Palermo. Where we had a fabulous brunch and a long visit.

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It was a weirdly productive weekend, by which I mean that it was productive, but not necessarily on the projects I had hoped to make progress. I certainly did not expect to come out of the work party with plots for two more stories about a character that was originally Mark & Kristin’s one-off! I was only going to write one, count it, one sequel to Chuck’s unexpected tale answering the question “what ever happened to…” but then, before I finished that one, an entire plot for an amusing Christmas Ghost story starring the character popped in my head, insisting on being written right now…

(Some plots do that. They’re not so much like a beautiful Greek muse inspiring you to artistic greatness as they are an extremely manic man leaning over you going “Write about me! Write about me! Write about me now or I will bloody well go away and you’ll go out of your mind trying to remember what I was!!!” So I wrote that story, and I guess there was something to it because it’s up for an award, now.)

Anyway, I had tried to circle back to the original idea for the one, count it, one, story I had intended to write about this character, and I had made some progress. I wasn’t trying really hard because there are other tales that I would rather be finishing. But then, at the meeting, while we were talking about other plotlines entirely, Chuck reeled off an alternative situation, and the next thing I knew, we were all talking about what sorts of things would happen to this character in this situation. And then Keith suggested a title. And suddenly, I knew what the plot really was for this new story (which takes place after the one, count it, one, story that I meant to write) and I knew I better write all of it down before I forgot it.

Then, we all walked up to Golden City for dinner, and while discussing something else entirely (again), someone said another title for yet another story for this character.

And as soon as they said it, I had a plot. And even better, it’s one that crosses over with another character, one I created and love writing stories for but haven’t had a new plot for in a while.

So I have gone from planning to write the one story about the character, to having written one different story about him, and I have three more in some sort of progress.

I’m not crazy. Just very slightly mad.

Meanwhile, I often put together playlists for either particular stories I’m working on, or for characters I write a lot. And I had mentioned this awhile back to Jared. Specifically that I was trying to put together a playlist for a character that he created, but that I have two stories in progress for. Which made him put together a playlist that he sent me (which prompted me to send him mine). I teased him that I thought his was way too emo, and asked how anyone could write while listening to all that downer music. He became resolved to create a different playlist, one that I could not describe in such derogatory terms.

He sent it earlier this week, and I’ve been listening to it. One of the songs he put on the list was “Original Sin” recorded by Taylor Dane for the Shadow motion picture soundtrack. And while I was humming along, I realized that I hadn’t heard the song in a very long time. I was surprised to discover that the soundtrack does not seem to be in my iTunes library. But I was quite certain that I had it, and that I had included at least this one song from it in some other playlists.

It took me about a minute to find the compact disc of the album hiding in the dusty shelves (I don’t touch the discs anymore, because I thought I’d put them all into my iTunes library). This makes me realize I need to go through those shelves and figure out which other music hasn’t been digitized.

It also makes me want to make a smart playlist that pulls out things that haven’t been listened to in a long, long time.

But I’ll do that later. Maybe tomorrow night after work.