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Mistletoe and Holly

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

I talked about The Terminator and kick-butt characters over on my agent’s blog today. This is a direct link that I didn’t have when I first posted this morning. If you have a chance, come over and visit and maybe comment so I don’t feel so alone. You see, Live Journal–where the blog is–was down for like 5 hours today and I’m guessing no one read the post. Considering I spent all day Sunday writing it, someone needs to read it. :-) Yes, I am begging.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, on to the blog post for today. I just downloaded Frank Sinatra’s Mistletoe and Holly and well, I’ve been playing Christmas songs for nearly 2 weeks now. It’s early, I know it, but it’s been so darn cold in MN that it feels like December!

I’ve also had a co-conspirator in this–my cable company has music channels and the traditional holiday music kicked off I think at the beginning of November. I downloaded my first holiday song shortly after that–Santa Baby by Eartha Kitt.

You might have guessed that I love Christmas music. It’s the only thing about winter I like. :-) And I’ve been known to play Dean Martin’s Baby, It’s Cold Outside at any time of year because 1) I heart Dean Martin and 2) I love that song.

There’s one pattern in all the songs I’ve mentioned–every single one is a traditional song and each one is performed by a classic artist. I love Garth Brooks, but I don’t want to listen to him sing Mistletoe and Holly. :-) Christmas means Andy Williams, Burl Ives, and Gene Autry, not any modern artist. Not for me at least.

I think it was last year (or maybe the year before), I spent weeks and weeks tracking down Christmas songs that my parents had played every year. It was no easy feat, either! I ended up buying complete CDs to find one song. I wanted Robert Goulet’s I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas, Doris Day’s Silver Bells and Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme singing Let It Snow among others. MP3s of the classics were hard to come by (hmm, maybe it was more than 2 years ago then? It doesn’t seem that long ago) and even tracking down copies of the CDs were hard. I persevered.

That doesn’t mean I’m still not adding to the holiday collection as I hear another great song that I forgot I loved. I love iTunes and Amazon–it’s making my Christmas song collection so much easier to grow

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Down Melody Lane

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

Before I get started, I wanted to let everyone know that I’ll be a guest on Thursday, October 16th at the Midnight Moon Cafe blog. You can read my interview and enter to win a copy of In the Midnight Hour, book 1 in the Light Warriors series. I’ll post again to remind y’all.

Now on with today’s blog:

I guess music has been on my mind a lot lately. Probably because I’m listening to it so much more often now than usual. What can I say? Boring project at the Evil Day Job (EDJ) and I’ve hooked my iPod up to my car stereo, so I can listen on the commute. Anyway, on Sunday evening, I decided to go through my old music and buy the MP3 versions so I could have them on hand. It was a very enlightening endeavor.

Before I began, my expectation was that I would have a ton of music I’d need to buy. I was wrong. Part of it was because I already had the songs I really loved, but the biggest reason was how much my musical taste has changed. This was something I already kind of knew. There are songs/groups I hated when I was younger that I actually listen to now and enjoy, but I guess I was kind of stunned by how many songs I looked at and went, ewww! :-)

An even bigger surprise was how many songs I had no memory of ever hearing. Wow. These songs are from back when I could remember conversations verbatim six months after having them. I can still sing commercial jingles from my grade school days even though those ads haven’t been on television in years. And I amazed my young cousin years ago when we were at a wedding and I could sing along with every single song the DJ played. :-) Despite all this, I’d look at a song and go, huh?

After sorting through everything, I ended up with a small selection to look for, maybe 10% of the total. I was able to find eight of the songs available on Amazon. I like buying music there because it’s DRM free, and after I was unable to load songs I bought on my new iPod because they were locked to the wrong format, I have become an advocate of DRM-free files. :-)

There were songs, though, that I couldn’t find and/or some of them were by pretty big artists. Smuggler’s Blues by Glen Frey and Nobody Does It Better by Carly Simon are the two that immediately come to mind. TBH, I was completely shocked that I didn’t already own a CD with Smuggler’s Blues on it–I have a ton of 80s compilations.

My next stop was iTunes. I discovered a week or so ago that some of their music is exclusive only to them. I found four more from my list there including the Carly Simon song and Lulu’s To Sir, With Love, but that still left me with half my list unfilled. Why isn’t Marrs’ Pump Up the Volume out there? Why can’t I find Glen Frey for heaven’s sake? I would have thought that I’d be able to buy any song I wanted, after all, I did find the theme song from The Banana Splits Show. This was truly a WTH moment for me.

I ended up putting these songs away, unfound and unbought. I suppose after a while, I’ll dig them out again and see if Amazon has them for sale at that time, but it was hugely disappointing not to be able to buy them and listen to them again.

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Teardrops, Guitars and Lyrics

Friday, October 10th, 2008

The other day I heard a song on the radio that had me headed over to iTunes–Teardrops On My Guitar by Taylor Swift. She’s also listed as co-writer of the song, which I kind of figured because she’s like 22 and there’s something that seems incredibly young in the lyrics.

Okay, stopped myself from digressing, but barely. :-) I always play my new music over and over for a few days and I’ve had time to think about the words to this song quite a bit. There are several aspects that intrigue me as a writer and have me thinking and that’s always a good thing. Before I start, you can find the complete lyrics at the CMT (Country Music Television) site.

For those of you who haven’t heard this song, it’s basically about unrequited love. The Point of View character (why yes, I am a writer ;-) is the singer who is talking to the man she’s in love with and he doesn’t have a clue how she feels–he’s in love with someone else.

The first idea that popped into my head was wouldn’t it be interesting to do two stories? I’d start with the man’s romance with the woman he met and fell in love with and the second book would be the singer’s story about how she found her own love. I’ll confess the reason this came so quickly to mind was that I had an idea for a set of stories like this years ago. Not exactly the same, but similar enough to remind me about them. My brain didn’t linger here long, though.

I found myself intrigued by one particular line in the song: he’s the only one who has enough of me to break my heart.

Hmm. This didn’t spark any particular ideas for a story–maybe because I was on to my third thought so quickly–but it did stop me for a minute and I decided it held Truth.

Third thought came in fast on the heels of number two and pushed it out of the spotlight. This one had to do with another set of lines in the song: he walks away so perfectly, the kind of flawless I wish I could be.

Wow. No one is perfect or flawless. We all walk around with things we could improve in ourselves and this idea is part of what made me think the person who wrote the song was young. Oops, I’m beginning to digress again. Stopping right here and moving on with my theme. Anyway, no one is flawless, but it would be interesting to explore perception versus reality, wouldn’t it? What if the point of view character–let’s call her the heroine–has this crush on the hero as a young woman, maybe even while she was still in high school, and thinks he’s perfect. What if the story takes place about ten years later and that’s when the romance happens? What if she learns he isn’t flawless and never was?

Then I started thinking about the other part of that line–the kind of flawless I wish I could be. Maybe part of what caught me on this is my own struggle with perfectionism. I spent a lot of years of my life trying to attain perfection until I had an epiphany wheeling my cart around Target one morning–there is no way to be perfect in everyone’s eyes. To use the superficial example that came to me that day, what if one person believes long hair is perfect? What if another believes only short hair is perfect? There’s no way to be perfect in both their eyes and trying to compromise on hair length would only leave both thinking there was imperfection. It was kind of an aha moment for me and one I’m still struggling with when it comes to my writing. I want my books to be perfect, but reading is so subjective, how can they ever be? I understand it intellectually, but in my heart, I’m still fighting with this.

But back to the song. It got me thinking about a heroine who thinks she has to be perfect. Where does that stem from? How does she overcome it? How does it impact her life?

Amazing how a song that’s less than four minutes long can raise so many questions and ideas. :-) Will I write any of them? I have no clue. I get characters and write their stories. There are some authors that start with concept/plot and find characters that fit, but that’s not me. I always have characters who are fully formed people come in and then they tell me what their stories are. I’ll be watching, though, to see if any new characters arrive that will play with these concepts.

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Music, Music, Music

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

I created a playlist on my iPod of the theme songs for all my stories and I listened to it yesterday. One of the things I found really interesting was how the song could pull up memories of the book for me.

Now you’re thinking, well, duh, it’s the theme song, right? It should call the story to mind.

True–to an extent.

A couple of the books just grabbed their theme song as I was writing them and wouldn’t let it go. Seriously, I wasn’t looking at music for any of my books, but the story decided it for me. On the other hand, a couple of other books didn’t pick any song–I had to figure one out because the other books had one. And as I listened yesterday, those songs didn’t make me think of the book very much.

I tried to figure out how to add this playlist to iMix so that I could share the link with the world, but my iMac didn’t have the symbol that the instructions said I needed and I gave up.

So what’s my playlist?

Girl U Want – DEVO Ravyn’s Flight (This one is the book that got me started on theme songs. I was working on the story when the song came on and it demanded to be associated with the book.)

Never Surrender – Corey Hart The Power of Two (This is another song that was chosen by the book. Every time I was uncertain where to go, I’d think of this song and it guided me.)

T-R-O-U-B-L-E – Travis Tritt Through a Crimson Veil (Not much association here. I needed a song and since Conor always thought of Mika as trouble, this seemed to work.)

Never Tear Us Apart – INXS Eternal Nights (Moderate association. I needed a theme song, but this one fit so well that it kind of took over.)

Need You Tonight – INXS Dark Awakening in Shards of Crimson (Zero association here. I just picked a song.)

Here I Go Again – Whitesnake In the Midnight Hour (Moderate association. The lyrics fit Ryne, the heroine.)

On the Dark Side – John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band In Twilight’s Shadow (Weak association. Only slightly more relevant than “I needed a song” :-)

Drops of Jupiter – Train Edge of Dawn I think that’s going to be the title of the book–I don’t have confirmation yet. (Weak association)

Iris – Goo Goo Dolls This is for the Work In Progress (WIP) (I had this song while I was working on EDGE OF DAWN so the association is strong for me and it absolutely fits both the hero and the heroine. Now if I could just get that synopsis written….)

Anyway, after listening to the playlist yesterday, I really wanted to just sit down, read all the books, and visit with my characters again. No time, of course, but it was oh, so tempting. I’ve mentioned before that when my characters leave, it’s as if my best friends are moving across the country. Reading their book is my way to “keep in touch” with them, so to speak, and the music evokes the memory (sometimes) of the hero/heroine and their story

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Mele Kalikimaka

Friday, December 21st, 2007

Yesterday, I began my quest to hunt down the Hawaiian Christmas song I’d heard on the radio over the weekend. I went to the station’s website, and while they did list the songs they played, it was only for the day, not for last Saturday. Uh-oh, I thought.

Fearing the worst, I did an online search for Hawaiian Christmas song and in a miracle of the season, I hit it on the first try. The title is Mele Kalikimaka. Half the battle was won. All that was left was figuring out who sang the version I heard and where to buy an MP3 of the song. It would turn out that my answer to both would be in the same place–Amazon.

In the back of my mind, I figured it would be Don Ho or some other Hawaiian musical artist, but I discovered the song was widely recorded by a lot of singers–a surprise to me since I’d never heard it before–and that none of them were Don Ho. :-) My top three candidates ended up being Bing Crosby (that was a surprise!), Jimmy Buffett and Chris Isaak. I decided Isaak was a long shot because I have his Heart-Shaped World CD and this didn’t sound like him.

I listened to a clip from Bing Crosby and I was pretty sure it wasn’t him, but these darn snippets are so short, it was hard to be 100% certain. I listened to Jimmy Buffett next. Hmm. Maybe. I tried Chris Isaak and I was right–it wasn’t him. I listened to a few other versions, but it was definitely between Bing and Jimmy. After listening to each clip one more time, I decided it must have been Jimmy Buffett and bought the song. If I was wrong, it was only 89 cents. :-) After listening to the entire thing, I know I picked the right song.

So Mele Kalikimaka! It’s the thing to say on a bright Hawaiian Christmas Day. :-)

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Winter Fog

Thursday, December 20th, 2007

It’s been really foggy here, although I guess technically it’s smog because we have some inversion thing going on. I don’t know if that’s what did it or if we had a light frost or something, but the tree branches here are coated white. It actually looks pretty, and considering how much I loathe winter, that’s saying something. Even my wind spinner had a coat and looked cool. I took a picture of it, but I was far too lazy to download them off the camera. :-) They might not have turned out anyway because there was no way I was actually going outside if I didn’t have to. :-) See the sentence about loathing winter.

I finally finished my first run through the galley for In Twilight’s Shadow and today I’ll begin another. I know I must have missed all kinds of stuff, so I’m hoping repetition will help. I don’t know how much help my mom is going to be because she said she kept getting caught up in the story. That’s both a good thing and a bad thing, I guess.

We have radio stations here doing nothing except Christmas music right now and I’m enjoying this. One of them played some Hawaiian Christmas song that I totally loved. It’s the first time I ever heard it and they didn’t give the title. When I have some time, I’m going to have to begin the online search for it. I see a new addition to my holiday MP3 collection.

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Search and Save

Friday, November 16th, 2007

Last night I downloaded another program that’s supposed to help keeping notes–including snips from websites. I say another program because I have like three–or is it four–that I’ve tried and don’t use. All of these previous programs had been recommended by other writers so I figured they’d work for me, too. They didn’t.

This one is free as well, although only because it was the giveaway of the day on Thursday. Normally it’s a fifty dollar thing and I wouldn’t spend that much to make notes. :-) I haven’t had a chance to use it yet, but I’ve got my fingers crossed that this one really will be the solution for me. Right now, I just save stuff to files for each book and sometimes it’s hard to find what I’m looking for–especially since I have the picture/web page file and then the file for emails. It just seems as if there should be an easier way. The demo looked cool, so hopefully this is it. We’ll see.

I reread a proposal last night that was sent to one of my editors yesterday and discovered a missing word. I didn’t see it the other ten times I read it, but after it was off, then it leaps right out at me. Sigh. I guess that’s just the way things go, huh?

In other news, one of the radio stations here has begun its all Christmas music 24 hours a day programming. Yea! I love Christmas music. Sometimes I listen to it on my MP3 player even when it’s mid-summer. :-) What can I say? Besides there’s nothing like Dean Martin crooning Baby It’s Cold Outside to make a day divine.

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The Theme From…

Saturday, July 28th, 2007

I guest blogged today at Magical Musings about a couple of my Pre-Book writing rituals. If you’re interested, head on over and check it out. :-)

One of my rituals involves finding a theme song for the book. The song for In the Midnight Hour is Here I Go Again by Whitesnake. This was the one that popped up almost from the beginning as I wrote the story and it stuck all the way through. It didn’t work that way for In Twilight’s Shadow, my June 2008 book. I thought the theme was Carry On Wayward Son by Kansas, but by the time I was 3/4 of the way through writing the story, I knew that wasn’t right. I think, and I’m still not 100% positive, that the song is going to end up being On the Dark Side by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band.

I’ve been trying to come up with Logan and Shona’s theme (and also a title for their darn story), but I haven’t had any luck. I do have Kel’s, however. (Kel, BTW, is Logan’s twin.) The working song is If Everyone Cared by Nickelback, but since I have no heroine or story for Kel yet (and I shouldn’t since Logan is first), it’ll be a while and who knows if it will stick? I’ve got Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls going through my head, so maybe that’s Logan’s song. Or maybe I just heard it on the radio recently. ;-)

Some day, I’m going to burn a CD with all my theme songs on it and just sing along with it in the car or something.

Anyway, I crossed another item off my To Do List yesterday and I hope to finish a few more this weekend. I love crossing things off. It makes me feel sooo good. :-) Things will definitely lighten up after Tuesday when In the Midnight Hour is released. I just need to have about 90% of my list completed before the 31st. Gah!

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Odds and Ends

Friday, March 23rd, 2007

Guess what I have over on my MySpace page? A movie trailer for the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie! Pretty darn cool what you can do now, isn’t it? If you want to see a preview of POC3, and if you have a high-speed connection, head on over and watch; it’s under the section marked “Movies.” The movie looks like it’s going to be fun, but how can it miss with Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom?

I also discovered a new music group that I like–Pink Martini. It was so funny how I found them too. I popped over to someone’s MySpace page to leave a Happy Birthday comment and “Let’s Never Stop Falling In Love” was set to play automatically when the page loaded. Normally, the automatic music annoys me and you’ll notice on my MySpace page it requires the play button be clicked before anything comes on. But I digress. So this song comes on automatically and I loved it. I listened to it a couple of times, then I clicked over to the artist’s MySpace page and listened to the other songs they had up on their site. My next stop was Amazon to order both of their CDs. I’d never heard of this group before, I don’t even know exactly how to describe their music because it’s a blend of styles, but it was fun and I haven’t been this excited about new music since I discovered Loreena McKennitt years ago.

I also bought some really cool planters on QVC. At least I hope they’re cool. They looked like they were on TV. These planters are made to fit over a railing, which would put them at the perfect height for tending plants on both my front porch and my deck. Every time I type something like that, I just think: Whoa! I’m so totally not into gardening–a response to being expected to weed my parents’ huge gardens as a kid–but this year all I want to do is plant flowers. Nesting, maybe? It’s just bizarre.

If I don’t blog daily like you’re used to over the next week or so or if I’m really slow on answering comments, it’ll be because I either don’t have time or don’t have energy. My family has a medical issue going on and it’s fairly serious. And I think that’s all I’m going to say on that.

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