Book Update: Coming Soon to Popdose

In my last post, I posed the idea of publishing my first (and to this point, only) novel on Popdose. After some careful consideration, I'm moving forward with this project. Not sure of the launch date, but I hope to begin weekly installments sometime in May. Each installment will include three chapters of the book, as well as songs that will fit organically into the contents. By the end of the summer, I hope that I'll have entertained people and given them a pretty cool playlist of great songs from the decade I came of age: the 1980s.

No, it won't be all new wave or hair metal. Anyone who knew me back in the day will recall my two crates full of LPs, as well as multiple cases of cassette tapes. I hope to cull from my collection to provide the soundtrack  to the book.

What does this have to do with Basement Songs the book? Plenty. If you were a reader of the column when it ran on Popdose, you'll know that I managed to find a way to work music into the narrative each week. I took great pride in managing to do that and I look forward to doing that again.

I hope you'll check back for updates and read the series over the summer. 

More to come. I'm excited. Are you?

I'll leave you with this spectacular Los Lobos song I rediscovered while combing through the Malchus archives. I have to warn you, you won't be able to sit down once you start the music.

Aloha!

The Strange Sad Life of a Writer

So look, it's not that I don't love you. I do! But I've been working. Hard. That screenplay I completed? Yeah, it took something out of me. And as soon as I got notes about it, well, I dove right back in.

I just killed a spider, by the way.

Where was I? Oh right, the screenplay.

I dove back in. I obsessed. I took every single not I received to heart and just began... thinking. How do I apply these notes to the script? How can I make the script better?

Plus, I watched about 10 Philip Seymour Hoffman films, began a new podcast about The Americans (maybe you've heard of it, it's called Comrades), wrote some reviews, went to some swim meets (my daughter is an awesome swimmer, by the way; don't tell her I said that), wrote this year's Great Strides fundraising letter, worried like hell when Jacob got pneumonia, did my taxes, and of course, I worked. I think I read something? Long Day's Journey Into Night, that's it.

I could go on making excuses, but this laptop keeps shocking me. That can't be good.

Oh right! I had this idea and I want you to tell me what you think.

I wrote a novel a few years ago and I'm thinking of publishing it on Popdose as a sort of multimedia project. I'm going to do a little revising and reset it in the 80s. Then, like the Basement Songs column, I'll include music in each chapter (if it is applicable).

Thoughts? Let me know.

Aloha