At the Risk of Repeating Myself – Music and Writing

Blog Post No. 530

I’ve written about music a lot on this website. Some of the earliest posts are about music. After ten years of posts, some ideas come around again (hopefully with a new perspective or at least expressed in a better way).

Music is a big part of my life and of my writing. Not only is my brother a musician (and a good one at that) but I grew up in a house (and car, and etc.) filled with music. My father played guitar and my mother played records. With two older brothers, I was constantly introduced to cool, new music, usually on CD with a little booklet with liner notes, pictures, and sometimes lyrics. Over the last few years, I’ve really gotten back into collecting physical media. Partly because I want to be able to reliably listen to (or watch) the things I like, but also because it’s neat to have those cases with liner notes and images.

This week’s post will be a little about music and writing in my life and a little about a few new albums I’ve physically purchased last year. In reverse order, the latest CD I’ve purchased is Expert in a Dying Field by The Beths.

Mood Altering

Blog Post No.486

I remember being in a bad mood the other day. I was driving at the time (I can’t remember where or exactly when, so you can tell it wasn’t that big a deal). I could have been on my way home from the day job (a big but decreasing stressor in my life right now) or I could have just dropped over a hundred bucks on gas. The reason doesn’t really matter much. It was fleeting (like most of my moods are). But, at the time, I remember flipping stations on the radio and stopping on a song that totally changed how I was feeling.

On fire

Blog Post No. 471

Being on fire is a weird metaphor. (Though not any weirder than all the other cliché metaphors). It can mean good, like in NBA Jam when your player literally catches on fire when you play well (or I guess in every day life when a normal person is doing well in consecutive tasks). On the other hand, fire is bad. Things on fire burn and turn to ash. Right now I’m kind of feeling both meanings of the phrase.

News, Contest, Companions

Blog No. 138

Hello regular readers (and to anyone just joining us). If you follow this blog, chances are you also follow Adventure Worlds. If you don’t, what the heck are you waiting for? Head over there and start reading all the stories we’ve posted there over the last three years (adventureworldsblog.com). For those who have spent time over there, you may have seen Monday’s news instead of the usual story. To repeat it here, due to the lack of regular submissions and most of the work falling to Christian and myself, we have officially gone to posting every other week. It’s a bit sad in that we were able to have a long run of weekly posts with very few gaps, but without content to post, we have to change the format. We could have probably kept the pace going, but the collection is nearing the final stages and we are both hard at work on our first novels. The collection is due out presently (think a month or two) and we still hope to have the novels out in the Holiday season (end of 2015, beginning of 2016).