Tag: novels

So far on midweek Wednesday


I no longer have any James Taylor on vinyl, but I think I lost at least my original Sweet Baby James to someone who “borrowed” it. A few incidents like that are why I stopped loaning albums and books to anyone who isn’t named “Lynne.” Lynne might forget she borrowed something (she’d be the first to say so!) but if I reminded her, she’d absolutely return it.

A bit of wisdom age afforded me: People who deliberately steal stuff from you are not your friends and will also lie to you and about you.

I lost 17 Three Dog Night albums to the Harvey flood and was able to save four on vinyl; replaced the drowned It Ain’t Easy with this CD; and acquired The Best of Three Dog Night to give me at least some of the songs I loved listening to. In time, I’ll decide which of their albums I want to replace, though it won’t be all of the live ones and imports (I had those because 3DN was among a small group of artists for whom I collected everything, including rarities–not a goal, anymore).

When listening to their music, I can always identify which of Three Dog Night’s three singers (Cory Wells, Danny Hutton, or Chuck Negron) takes the lead on any song. The three of them worked with Brian Wilson when the Beach Boys were making their Wild Honey album, and Brian’s sometime-collaborator Van Dyke Parks said he (Van Dyke) was part of creating the name “Three Dog Night.”

Decades later, Danny Hutton is still part of Brian’s group of friends and revolving musicians. In sadder news, it was announced that Brian’s second wife, Melinda Ledbetter Wilson, who’s credited with changing and improving his life starting in the 1980s, died unexpectedly yesterday. If you like musician docudramas/biopics, their story is portrayed in the film Love & Mercy.

Three Dog Night didn’t write their own music, but they sure had the pipes to sing other artists’ songs and make them hits. RIP, Cory Wells, along with your bandmates Jimmy Greenspoon, Joe Shermie, and Floyd Sneed, and your fishing buddy Rob Grill of the Grass Roots. I was a fan of you all.

Here’s Chuck taking the lead on this blast-from-the-past version of “Easy To Be Hard,” written for the musical Hair.

ETA 2/11/24: Acquired another Three Dog Night compilation, The Complete Hit Singles. It’s basically what’s on The Best of Three Dog Night plus one song. That’s all right.

Midweek inventory


I think all the new or replacement Springsteen CDs* have trickled in from their various sources, and I’ve been listening to them when I have time to write. It’s kind of funny, because as I told Lynne and Tom, the character I’m writing has little interest in contemporary music from any of the decades written so far in the Neverending Saga, so while *I* enjoy Bruce Springsteen (and the E Street Band)’s music, it doesn’t really speak to who and what I’m writing.

HOWEVER, coincidentally, my Hell’s Kitchen musician character was born in March 1949 and grew up in Manhattan, while Bruce was born in September of ’49 and grew up in Freehold, New Jersey. That means these two boys from working class families, one fictional, one real, were roughly an hour apart by car (and separated by the watery Hudson River and a couple of bays). Though their lives are mostly dissimilar and their music is different, they’re both storytellers. As I write, my character’s ears are keenly attuned to and inspired by the music playing, and he keeps wanting to take over the story.

Creatively, it’s not a bad problem to have. I hope my characters keep bugging me for as long as I’m around. Any family or friends who understand me may need to tell any healthcare providers that not everything I say is indicative of dementia. Since my early teens, I’ve had a condition that Lynne and I call “Characters,” common among poets, playwrights, songwriters, and fiction writers.

*From Bruce Springsteen with and without the E Street Band:
Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J./Bruce Springsteen: The Wild, The Innocent, & The E Street Shuffle/The River/Nebraska/Born In The U.S.A./Tunnel of Love/Devils & Dust/Wrecking Ball/High Hopes/Letter To You/Only The Strong Survive

Dedicated to Elle from DFS. (They’ve got me addicted to romance.)

Tiny Tuesday!

It’s funny how these miniatures have come to me at different times and from different sources through the years (they are all pencil sharpeners) because their functions seem to have converged in what I’m writing now. If I wrote Disney movies, they’d all come to life and offer sage advice and guidance.


The Coffee Grinder, The Victrola Phonograph, The Movie Projector, and The Typewriter: Coming Eventually To An Anthropomorphized Novel Near You.

Meanwhile, the recent playlist provided by Harry Styles:

Harry Styles plus Fine Line plus Harry’s House

This One Direction song is allegedly on some most-hated lists. I don’t hate it at all, and I probably need to acquire some One Direction music. (I’m generally years behind any trend.) The version here is acoustic, but I’m wondering about that electric piano/keyboard. Maybe acoustic and unplugged aren’t the same?

Mood: Monday

Photo previously posted here was of the painting Rain in the City, by artist Katharina Valeeva, oil on carboard, 2020.

It’s a dreary day in Houston with chilly rain. It wasn’t raining yesterday when I was listening to these CDs while I researched a few things for the Neverending Saga, but I’d hoped to find a photo of one of my own paintings to accompany this music for Mood: Monday.


Cat Stevens, Greatest Hits; Sting, Brand New Day; Mercury Falling; Fields of Gold: The Best of Sting 1984 – 1994

I’d used a lyric from Sting’s song “Fragile” on a 4×6 canvas sometime between 1997 and 2001. I don’t have a photo of it. I thought I knew who I gave it to, but apparently not, and no one else I’ve asked has it. I didn’t want it back–just hoped to get a photo of it. If my memory is accurate, the lines I used were “On and on the rain will fall/like tears from a star.” I have a vague memory of what the painting looked like, but maybe I dreamed the whole thing!

After all, who wouldn’t dream of Sting. =)

They got a name for the winners in the world


Delta, side-eyeing me and speaking for the pack: “We will not be moving from the heater or taking questions at this time.” I think Delta has recently been reading over my shoulder while I was writing.

Below is my writing playlist for the day, and Steely Dan had me so mellow that I might as well have been stoned. Gwen Stefani got me back to the manuscript! The Steely Dan shown here is a collection, but I’m very sure that a million years later, if someone brought in the albums Can’t Buy A Thrill or Aja, I’d be able to sing along, every word to every song. Music memory’s a funny thing.


Smashing Pumpkins, 2-CD set, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness; Steely Dan, The Definitive Collection; Gwen Stefani, Love, Angel, Music, Baby.

So much good music, but school loyalty mandates that I link to the tune I’ve chosen. Roll Tide, and we’ll miss you, Coach Saban. I was there for some of the Bear Bryant years, and you, too, became a coaching legend. Tip of the houndstooth hat to you.

Then there was Thursday

Several errands/appointments accomplished today, and though it was overcast, it was nice to be out in temperatures that aren’t brutal, especially when reading messages from family all over the country who’ve been getting it so much worse than we have in Texas (like in Colorado, Wisconsin, Utah–though the snowboarder likes it–and New Jersey) .

Speaking of New Jersey…

I’ll go ahead and put this here as the music I’ve been listening to for the last few days of writing that may continue into my first crack at the manuscript tomorrow (tomorrow’s photo is reserved for whatever theme Photo Friday throws at us).


All Bruce Springsteen: Born to Run; Darkness on the Edge of Town; Human Touch; Lucky Town; Greatest Hits; The Ghost of Tom Joad; The Rising; Magic; Working On a Dream; and Western Stars.

This doesn’t include my drowned albums Nebraska, Dancing In The Dark, The River, and Born In The USA, all of which WILL need to come back to me in some format. Bruce always feels uniquely mine in a way few other artists do. I found him at the beginning of his recording career on my own, no recommendations or friend influences, thanks to Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., and I believed in his gifts long before anyone I knew got on board. The time when The River was new and I listened to it nonstop included an ex I’d rather forget, with whom I also saw Bruce in concert. Bruce is way more powerful than bad memories and poor judgment.

One time when I was at Half Acre Wood, I discovered that Lynne has a great live set on vinyl that I’ll find used at a sane price some day. I was dazzled when I wrote to it on one of my visits.

There’s nobody like Bruce.

A fun dedication between characters: “Let’s Be Friends.”

ETA on 1/19: After finishing up my Bruce collection, I just hit “Place Order Now.” I’ll soon have the Bruce Springsteen I lost and several I never owned. Art that brings me this kind of joy and comfort is so worth it.

Tiny Tuesday!

When I started the sixth book in the Neverending Saga, I checked all the previous novels to see which characters got the first (or first couple) of chapters from among the four characters who are allowed points of view in the series. That’s when I realized someone was way overdue, so it was an easy choice. By choosing that narrative voice, there was also a natural best choice for beginning the seventh novel.

Early in his life, this character began to think of himself as a lone crow. He was kidding himself, and I think he’s only now beginning to realize it. Crows aren’t loners. Not only do they stay in units that can include family members from multiple generations, but they’re monogamous and mate for life.

The birds in the corvid family hold endless fascination for me. They include choughs, crows, jackdaws, jays, magpies, nutcrackers, ravens, rooks, and treepies, but not grackles or the various blackbirds who come from other groups.

I like grackles, but there are a lot of parking lots and public areas in Houston where so many grackles gather that a walk is laced with all the suspense of a Hitchcock movie.

Of the corvids, I’m most drawn to crows and ravens. Debby gave me a beautiful drum with a raven on it.

It’s actually been a great rhythm instrument for me to use when I pause while writing the “Lone” Crow. The back of the drum is as beautiful as the front.

Far more musical than me playing the raven drum would be:


Frank Sinatra, The Columbia Years three-CD set; Patti Smith, Gone Again; Soundgarden, Superunknown and King Animal; Spin Doctors, Pocket Full of Kryptonite; and The Very Best of Dusty Springfield.

Right now I’m midway into listening to a group of ten CDs from another “S” artist, though it’s distressing me a bit when I realize all of the Harvey-drowned albums I haven’t replaced from this particular collection. Can you guess the artist?

More to come; gotta get back to my crow.

There’s a fun song by the Wilderbeats performed for children that will help you identify a crow versus a raven. Now that I think of it, I have a character who likes to sing to children. But I digress.

ETA: I almost never remember the significance of this date to me personally. I’m mostly glad about that. ♥

Saturday Night’s Alright for Writing

Apologies to Sir Elton John for misappropriating this title from the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album, “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting.” To add insult to injury, I’m not listening to Elton John today. I’m listening to this.


Frank Sinatra’s four-CD collection The Best of the Columbia Years, 1943 to 1952

Frank has helped give me a productive writing day, but he may have gotten some assistance from a couple of father and daughter muses.

Funny story: This young lady has a little friend who loves Elton John and does not love horses at all.

I don’t ride but I like horses, and I also like dolls, Frank, and Elton. In fact, also from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is a song I’ve used as a theme song for this kilted gent (who I originally wrote in 1971, and boy has his character gotten a lot more story since then) from the first time I heard it on the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album (thanks, Debbie M!) after seeing Elton John on his 1974 North American Tour (oh, the story I could tell about that fun and crazy night, David K).

I can see by your eyes you must be lying
When you think I don’t have a clue
Baby, you’re crazy, if you think that you can fool me
Because I’ve seen that movie, too
The one where the players are acting surprised
Saying love’s just a four letter word
Between forcing smiles, with the knives in their eyes
Well their actions become so absurd
So keep your auditions for somebody
Who hasn’t got so much to lose
‘Cause you can tell by the lines I’m reciting
That I’ve seen that movie, too
So keep your auditions for somebody
Who hasn’t got so much to lose
‘Cause you can tell by the lines I’m reciting
I’ve seen that movie, too
It’s a habit I have, I don’t get pushed around
Stop twinkling the star like you do
I’m not the blueprint
For all of your B films
Because I’ve seen that movie, too
The one where the players are acting surprised
Saying love’s just a four letter word
Between forcing smiles, oh, with the knives in their eyes
Oh, their actions become so absurd
So keep your auditions for somebody
Who hasn’t got so much to lose
‘Cause you can tell by the lines I’m reciting
That I’ve seen that movie, too
So keep your auditions for somebody
Who hasn’t got so much to lose
‘Cause you can tell by the lines I’m reciting
I’ve seen that movie, too
So keep your auditions for somebody
Who hasn’t got so much to lose
‘Cause you can tell by the lines I’m reciting
I’ve seen that movie, too
So keep your auditions for somebody
Who hasn’t got so much to lose
‘Cause you can tell by the lines I’m reciting
I’ve seen that movie, too

Songwriters: Elton John & Bernie Taupin

Bonus Friday post


Listening to Carly Simon’s two-CD Anthology. These songs evoke certain times and relationships in my life when I first heard them, beginning when I was a young teen and into young adulthood.

It’s a little hard to focus on the character I’m writing when this music makes me think so much about Carly Simon’s memoir and Pattie Boyd’s memoir, both of which shared stories that made me hurt for them and the price love exacts from women who love men whose creativity and talent have brought them fame. Their stories aren’t my stories, but they do evoke my characters’ stories. In the end, after all, even if my life and circumstances and stories are different from those characters’, or Carly Simon’s or Pattie Boyd’s, a heart that loves is a heart that loves, and loss is loss.

Fortunately, the next to last song, “Actress,” made me laugh and drew me back into the world of the Neverending Saga, and it was time to write again, to the next music. Stay tuned.

And enjoy this song from a movie (Heartburn) that, while brutally eye-opening for me, was a film that promised something I needed to believe in: starting over.