Tag: novels

I can’t write

Credit: CSA Images/CSA Images
Copyright: ©CSA Images/CSA Images

ETA: Before I woke up Sunday morning after I posted this, I dreamed. In the dream, I saw this typewriter and what was on the paper, then I saw that I had 30 comments. I was so shocked! It was like the days of yore either on LiveJournal or when I linked to my blog from Facebook and Twitter.

When I read the first comment, it said, “I know exactly what you’re talking about. It happens to me, too.” It was signed with one of my character’s names, but in my dream, I knew it wasn’t my character. Just a coincidence. I woke myself up and thought, Not your character and not a coincidence. You know who it was.

I do. ❤️

Absolutely perfect

Minna’s Next Move

I have an important chapter to focus on today. On instinct, I plucked these three CDs out of the binder. Two were burned for me by Marika many years ago when she found out I loved “Twin Peaks,” both the TV series and its music. They are joined by my official “Twin Peaks” soundtrack, with music by the late Angelo Badalamenti and lyrics by the brilliant David Lynch. The soundtrack has only three pieces with vocals by the late Julee Cruise; Marika tracked down thirteen more for her custom CD (I’ll provide the track list below).

It’s the best music I can listen to while writing today for several reasons, but one in particular. My Director is working on a film post-production, and he’d asked The Musician to compose a haunting score. There’s probably no music more haunting than these two CDs of “Twin Peaks” music, making them surreal and ideal.

Sometime during the pandemic or post-pandemic, Marika pitched me the idea of “Ghost Girl” music, and we often sent each other song titles that on the surface were light or pop songs, but if you turned the singer or the subject into Ghost Girl, they took on an entirely new mood and meaning. Wherever she travels among the stars of the Universe, I’m betting Marika still likes hearing some good Ghost Girl songs.

Julee Cruise “Twin Peaks” Music
1. Falling
2. The Nightingale
3. Floating
4. I Remember
5. Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart
6. Mysteries of Love
7. Into The Night
8. I Float Alone
9. The Swan
10. The World Spins
11. This Is Our Night
12. The Space For Love
13. Movin’ In On You
14. Friends For Life
15. Up In Flames
16. Kool Kat Walk

I don’t have a track list for Marika’s mix CD titled Julee Cruise/Big Band, and I don’t currently have the time it would take to figure out her lyrics so I could research and identify all the songs on this CD. The mood of her work is equally haunting to the “Twin Peaks” music. The CD shifts gears on the seventh song, but it still works with the overall mood of this section of my novel.

1. Needs research
2. Julee Cruise, “She Would Die For Love”
3. Julee Cruise, needs research
4. Julee Cruise, “Questions In A World of Blue Lyrics”
5. Julee Cruise, “The Voice of Love”
6. Julee Cruise, “Bei Mir Bistu Shein”
7. Frank Sinatra, “Witchcraft”
8. Frank Sinatra, “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning”
9. Needs research
10. Glen Miller, “String of Pearls”
11. Needs research
12. Needs research
13. Frank Sinatra, “Summer Wind”
14. Frank Sinatra and Nancy Sinatra, “Somethin’ Stupid”
15. Frank Sinatra, “It Happened In Monterey”
16. Alison Moyet (I think), “That Ole Devil Called Love”
17. Needs research
18. repeat of Frank Sinatra, “Summer Wind” (guess Marika really liked this one)
19. “Here’s To The Losers,” this version is more mellow than Frank Sinatra’s, could be James Darren playing “Vic Fontaine” on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 06, Episode 26, ‘Tears of the Prophets,'” which would be a clever move on Marika’s part
20. “Danke Schoen,” by a female vocalist; Brenda Lee did a version, but this doesn’t sound like her
21. “Fever,” most likely Peggy Lee’s version, doesn’t sound like Patti Page, and I can’t find Julie London’s rendition

ETA: It turned out to be a much longer writing day than I expected, partially because I updated my concordance with all the new names and places that are part of Book 7 in progress. Always good to hear music from Brahms, Beethoven, Schumann, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Gershwin, Ravel, Tchaikovsky, Grieg and Chopin. These CDs probably should have been used for writing a different character, but it’s okay to mix things up a little.

A bit of Thursday

The good stuff: Tom worked a half-day so that he and I could go into the old ‘hood to see our friend Larry and get haircuts. Spending time with Larry is always fun and full of conversations about a random range of topics. Somewhere in the middle of it, he dropped the information that his partner has for years been a collector of Barbies. I had no idea. It sounds like the collection is one I’d be likely to drool over, so I hope to see at least some of it one day and promise not to drool on anything.

Afterward, we picked up dinner-to-go from one of our favorite restaurants and were home in time to feed the very aggrieved dogs who were sure they’d been abandoned (as if Debby isn’t here for them when needed).

The eh stuff: Not a lot of writing got done, but while I thought about writing, I did some coloring. It’s unfinished, and at some point, I got very frustrated with the pens I was using and slapped on a bunch of star stickers to cover up some of the coloring that displeased me. I don’t like that either. I’ll take a couple of days away from that activity before I decide what to do to fix it.

In any case, even that ended the day on a much higher note than how I started it, dealing with the frustrations of canceling a website I’m tired of overpaying for and no longer using. Technology…. I understand exactly how this woman feels.


Photo © My Computer Works®

Midweek again

Errands and other matters to tend to today, but when I strategized about writing or actually wrote, these were the playlist. Two of my favorite lyricists and artists, spanning decades of my life. I’ve also enjoyed several books about them.


Neil Young’s Harvest and After The Gold Rush, and Warren Zevon’s Warren Zevon, Excitable Boy, and The Wind.

ETA: The Z in Zevon makes it official; I’ve gone through the CD’s in my alphabetical binders and those with hardcovers that are kept in a separate box in the same cabinet. It was poignant for the last song to be from Zevon’s last record The Wind before his death, “Keep Me In Your Heart.”

Hold me in your thoughts, take me to your dreams
Touch me as I fall into view
When the winter comes keep the fires lit
And I will be right next to you

Tiny Tuesday!


Eighth row on the floor. Back in October of 2020, I was going through bins of stuff that I’ve collected since I was a teenager, and that’s when I found these tucked into some other stuff. A day can simultaneously seem like one of the best and worst of your life, but I was relieved to see I still had the tickets. Time has given me perspective, and you know what? The day still has that best/worst feeling. Fortunately for me, feelings can be processed through fiction and have a little less power.

Speaking of writing, the recent playlist.


Rufus Wainwright, Want One; The Wallflowers, Bringing Down The Horse and (Breach); Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot; Hank Williams, Icon; Brian Wilson, Brian Wilson Presents Smile, a 2004 collection of 17 works Brian created for the unreleased Smile LP in the 1960s and an accompanying booklet. Though many of the songs were later released on other Beach Boys albums, these versions are more like what Brian planned before his breakdown. The collection is a gift for fans and critics who always regretted that Smile wasn’t released.

These last two will start the Tuesday writing playlist.

Dennis Wilson, Pacific Ocean Blue, a 2-CD set that includes POB plus 4 bonus tracks, and a second disk, Bambu, the Caribou sessions, that includes 18 works Dennis intended to be on his second (unreleased) album, plus a bonus track of the late Taylor Hawkins (Foo Fighters) adding vocals to “Holy Man.” This was a beautiful composition Dennis wrote with Gregg Jakobson. Dennis and Gregg left it off POB because they never wrote lyrics, and Dennis died in 1983 without producing a second solo album. In 2008, when it was decided to put together a second album of Dennis’s music, Jakobson commissioned Taylor to write lyrics and add vocals to “Holy Man.” The first time I stumbled over the song, Taylor’s voice sounds so much like Dennis’s that I wondered how I never knew Dennis put vocals to it. A little research enlightened me that the vocalist and lyricist was Taylor. When Taylor died in March of 2022, it was a huge loss to music; to me, it felt like losing a part of Dennis again.

My second album of the day will be Paul McCartney and Wings, Band on the Run. Originally released in 1973, this one is the 25th Anniversary Edition, and includes a second disk with more than 50 minutes of voices of the band and some of the celebrities on the cover along with previously unreleased versions of some BOTR tracks. This year, the 50th Anniversary Edition has come out with more extras. (I don’t have it.)

Here’s the posthumous Dennis Wilson/Taylor Hawkins collaboration on “Holy Man.”

Mood: Monday

For today’s art, please click here to see Kathie McCurdy’s Pennies in the Fountain from 2012.

Today is National Lost Penny Day, and I started my online search for art with pennies. I was mostly scrutinizing paintings of fountains, and in my brief quest, I noted that artists who paint fountains seem not to include coins in the water. In a later search, I found McCurdy’s art, linked above.

This observation led me to the realization that in life, I don’t trust fountains that don’t have at least a few pennies thrown in. Do all the humans who look into that fountain lack the urge to make a wish, express a hope, dream the impossible? That fountain must have an off-putting vibe.

If you find a penny, do you pick it up? I do. I have great affection for the simple penny and oh, my, the places it may have been and the hands that might have held it. A penny is full of endless stories and connections.

I say a penny is never lost, merely on a journey we don’t know about… And just like that, a character is tapping on my brain.

Hearts and no flowers

A few of my little stone and crystal friends because the Internet is full of hearts right now.


Labradorite and rose quartz


A couple of river rocks


Healerite and goldstone


Black moonstone and amethyst


Amazonite and white banded carnelian

They remind me there are so many variations on love in the Neverending Saga. Love can be…complicated.

The perfect music for writing on an overcast, drizzly day when my characters are grappling with love and all it demands and provides is music by the great Texas blues guitarists, the Vaughan brothers. I’ll always miss Stevie Ray and wonder what music he’d have created if he hadn’t died too soon. The biography Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan, by Alan Paul and Andy Aledort, is a good account of him if you like biographies. Many years ago, I wrote a musician who turned his life around from a very dark place, and Stevie Ray Vaughan later proved to me that not only could it be done, he dedicated so much time to helping others who grappled with addictions.


Jimmie Vaughan, Strange Pleasure; The Vaughan Brothers, Family Style; Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, Greatest Hits, The Sky Is Crying, and The Real Deal: Greatest Hits 2; various artists including Jimmie Vaughan, A Tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan.

ETA: Oops, missed one. Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble’s In Step.

In the live version (below) of “Look At Little Sister,” watch for the smoothest guitar switch ever after a string breaks (around 2:40). I freely confess to having a moment like this in the Saga as tribute to Stevie Ray and the guitar techs who make live music fun for us all. I’m so glad Tom and I (with Lynne) got to see Stevie Ray in person after we moved to Texas.

Pick One, No. 11

Question 658: Rubik’s Cube or Magic 8-Ball? (and why…)

Goodness. I could never solve a Rubik’s Cube. I’m not sure if I’m spatially challenged or impatient, but my first efforts took too much effort and thought. (I do a word puzzle among several other online games every morning and compare the results with Timothy and Jim, who do the same games. One of those word puzzles requires more strategy than the others, and isn’t my strongest game.)

So of course, I’m choosing Magic 8-Ball. What exactly is it that I use my most creative time for? I choose words from millions of words and string them together into stories that bring people and events to life all by means of ideas in my head. Is it not in the very NAME of the object: MAGIC?

Let’s put that question to Magic 8-Ball.

The answer?

I rest my case.

ETA: Later edited to add this to my Numbers Photo Series as No. 11. Also it’s Pick One No. 11. See? Magic.