Tag: novels

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.

Tiny Tuesday!

Today when I took Debby to an appointment, I was in the vicinity of a Burlington department store and dashed in to look for something I wanted in their home goods section, which I found. Would you not know that area is right next to toys? Naturally, I had to walk through, and I’m glad I did. I found a deeply discounted doll–formerly unknown to me–that’s part of Mattel’s Inspiring Women™ series, Madam C.J. Walker.

Beautiful doll to portray the story of an interesting, real person.

It’s cool, because in the Neverending Saga, one of my characters is connected to a family who’s lived on the Mississippi Delta for several generations. In my research, I didn’t find Madam C.J. Walker, so she was a fun discovery today.

Meanwhile, I’m nearing the end of this section of my CDs that I’ve enjoyed as my playlist for a few hours over the past three days.

Van Halen: Self-Titled (1978); Van Halen II (1979) Women and Children First (1980); Fair Warning (1981); Diver Down (1982); 1984 (1984); 5150 (1986); OU812 (1988); For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge (1991); The Best of Both Worlds, 2-CD set(2004).

I’m missing a few and will watch for them in used CD sections at our local music stores. Below is the introduction to “Women In Love,” a piece of music that’s among my favorites. I mean, to me, the entire song is good, but I love the slow intro.

Mood: Monday

This painting is in the public domain.

The Primrose Girl
oil on canvas
William Ward Laing, English, ca 1873 to 1902

Today is National Primrose Day for the flower lovers among you.

I didn’t watch the Grammys last night, but congratulations to Miley Cyrus for her first Grammy wins, Best Pop Solo Performance and Record of the Year, for her song “Flowers.” I read a brief history of the song at some point recently. It originally had a sad trajectory, then somewhere in the process she turned it into a song of empowerment after a broken relationship. That and being catchy definitely worked to the song’s advantage.


Fun photo thinking back to that day in October 2009 when my Miley Cyrus doll and I went shopping. Now I wish our nearby antique mall still existed. Debby and I loved browsing there. It was a great place to find unique gifts. Too late, I realize I could have had a lot of fun posing my dolls among the antiques and collectibles. Missed opportunities.

The way I’m structuring the seventh novel in the Neverending Saga is tricky, and I’m working it out as I go. Even if it has to change, I’m going to be thinking of “Flowers” when I get to the character who’s made some big changes in her life between the sixth book and this one. I want her to have that spirit.

ETA: Oh, for crap’s sake. Just read this reference on a post-Grammy sum-up of how well women fared in the awards last night: –From Eilish’s heart-stopping performance of “What Was I Made For?”—wearing cat’s-eye sunglasses and a 1960s sweater like Peggy Olson from “Mad Men”—

If only they’d done their homework, they’d have understood Billie Eilish’s outfit was a tribute to Barbie, the film, and the Barbie doll. The photo from the Grammys:


Photo by Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse, Getty Images

Eilish was wearing classic Barbie!

Poodle Parade Barbie, my 1995 reproduction of the 1965 original


Shared this version because the film version makes me cry, and I still haven’t seen the movie yet.

Under The Rug

The most recent writing playlist features an indie/folk band from L.A. who’s now in Austin, Texas, a mecca for indie artists. Under The Rug showed up in my Instagram feed once. I liked what I heard, subscribed to their newsletter, which is by turns informative and entertaining. And I began buying their CDs instead of streaming them, which was cool because I got a few free gifts here and there and a lot of interesting stories they share with their fans. Plus they’ve signed all their CDs. (I do have a fourth one on the way to complete my collection.)


Under The Rug: Pale King


Under The Rug: Dear Adeline

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Under The Rug: Homesick For Another World

Below is the song that introduced me to the band (in a different video they shot in their living room) on Instagram. The commentary going up the left side of this one (part of the video) makes me laugh: pretty much the trajectory of all comment threads everywhere. Strangers running the gamut from I love you./You suck./DM me for this product I sell./This is the worst song./This is the best song./You’re still doing this?/Check out my site./I met you once./You guys are sell-outs./I want to date you./I think I dated you./I have a friend who dated you.

I’ve finished the “U” section in the CD binders. DO YOU KNOW WHO’S NEXT? (That’s excited uppercase.) I’m about to pull their CDs and see if I can get them in some kind of chronological order (some are in the binder; some in cardboard sleeves that go in the box under the binders) and then get back to writing Chapter 3.

ETA on 2/11/24: I’ve now acquired and listened to Under The Rug’s second CD Too Far Away, so my collection of four is complete.