Tag: Kenny Rogers

Friday Fare, Internet Articles, Random

Friday Fare: What’s new and what’s random

Michelle Kubitz

Friday FareFriday Fare is my “best of” when it comes to Internet links that I’ve read this week.  Here are the articles that caught my attention and maybe made me a smarter person this week:

Today’s post is where Kenny Rogers and mysteries meet!  OK – not really, but that might give you an idea where my mind has been this week.

My writers group (we call ourselves the Rochester Literary Guild or “Guilders”) has been having a HOT debate about this current ad from IBM Watson.  It features a conversation between Watson and Bob Dylan.  (To say that Bob Dylan is something of a patron saint to the Guilders might be conjecture, but I’m not too far from the truth.)  The main question that we’re kicking around?  Why would Bob do this?  But man … I love to hear The Man speak.  I love his facial expressions as Watson poses his questions and opinions to him.

Kenny Rogers!  Mr. Rogers’ recent retirement announcement prompted me to “Like” him on Facebook.  Considering that my brother and I used to stand on my parents’ fireplace bench and pretend that we were Kenny Rogers and Dottie West (this was at the tender ages of 15 and 17 … no, wait!  We were only toddlers.  I swear.), I’m surprised that I hadn’t liked Kenny’s FB page before.  I’m not sure what I was waiting for – I don’t know if Kenny runs his own social media (I’m sure not), but whoever is posting on this page links to the most RANDOM articles and memes on the Internet.  It’s like reading this particular type of blog post.  Seemingly every 20 minutes.  Love it.

Finally – the other article I read this week recapped Ernest Hemingway’s life as a young man in Michigan.  The author’s premise for this piece was the notion that when most people think of Hemingway, the Paris years and his time in Havana automatically spring to mind.  The New York Times’ author went back to Hemingway’s Michigan haunts – the places that deeply inspired “The Nick Adams Stories.”  It’s a quietly moving piece about a larger than life author.

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Listening to:  Nothing that is too notable.  If anyone has good listening suggestions, hit me up on Twitter @shelleybakes or leave a comment! (Jerry Johnson … I’m looking at you … 🙂 And bird call recordings do not count.)

Reading:  I DEVOURED Jenny Milchman’s first book “Cover of Snow.”  There were a couple bumpy patches at the beginning of the book, but as soon as I realized that it had more to do with the fact that I was reading on my Kindle versus an author error, I powered through.  I’m still thinking of a couple of the herrings that she buried.  Thankful that I have a mystery loving mother-in-law who has this book on hold at the library and will email me her thoughts as well.  Ms. Milchman has been featured on any number of mystery genre blogs because of how she toured to support her debut novel.  In summary, as a debut novelist, her publishing house wasn’t pouring advertising dollars towards her book.  So Ms. Milchman and her husband loaded up their kids and drove cross-country to support her book.  Her account of the “world’s longest book tour” can be found here.

Fiction Update: Toasted Graham Latte – here I come!  (See last week’s post for this random shout out to Starbucks.)  I’m on page 112 of 122 for “Dragonfly.”  I should be able to knock the rest of these pages out today / this weekend.  There will be a post next week that discusses my next steps and some of the … well, I’ll be honest – anxiety that I’m feeling about what needs to happen next.  (OK – maybe anxiety is too strong of a word, but I’m the mama of two toddlers.  I don’t have a lot of time on my hands and I want to make sure that the time I have is used as efficiently as possible.)

Happy Friday, friends!

Process, Random

Novel Playlists

Michelle Kubitz

When I was a kid, my brother and I would regularly climb up on the bench seat of my parents’ stone fireplace and entertain the masses (eh-herm, my parents and maybe the dog) with our performance of Kenny Rogers / Dottie West songs. Another early musical memory that I have is cranking up my parents’ 8-track player and blasting Eddie Rabbit’s “I Love a Rainy Night” and then go hide under the couch. Because – you know, after the second or third time that this happened, I’m sure that my parents had no clue who the perpetrator was.

OK – so I’ve established that I was a goofy kid. The other thing? While I didn’t turn out to be a virtuoso musician, music is something that’s really important in my life and to my creative presence as a writer.

In September, Sisters in Crime had an interesting group of questions for its blog hop and since I’m apparently immune to deadlines – I figured I’d respond to one of the blog prompts: Do you listen to music while writing?

Oh absolutely, I listen to music while I’m writing. I currently have over 130 hours of music saved up in Windows Media Player and if I’m working on my day job or if I’m writing fiction, there is always music playing. I also have a little mp3 player that has a mix of music on it – that’s for airplane rides, gym trips, and writing evenings at Panera Bread when I’m not feeling the easy listening that pipes through their speakers or I want to tune out the noise that’s around me.

What’s on your playlist?

Before I delve into my personal playlists that I’ve constructed from my Works in Progress (WIPs), there’s one author who really does playlists well: Deborah Harkness. In fact, when I met her at a book signing – I stuttered my thanks for introducing me to the music of Florence + the Machine. “Of course!” she replied.

Ms. Harkness is the author of the “All Souls Trilogy” that chronicles the journey of Diana Bishop, a thoroughly American witch, and Matthew Clairmont, a mysterious and prestigious biochemist who also happens to be a vampire.

Harkness’s playlists are stunning and chronicle her inspiration for her individual characters, as well as the books themselves. As someone who is an avid reader and as someone who really loves music, Deb Harkness’s Spotify playlists are a little piece of heaven. (Find Ms. Harkness here on Spotify.)

Two of my WIPs have their own playlists. The music therein serves a couple of purposes – one is to evoke a certain feeling in me while I write. It’s not unheard of for me to play a certain song over and over again while I’m writing a certain scene or trying to get into a character’s head. The other purpose is to mentally transport myself to a certain time and place that inspired me in the first place. My novel “Afterlife” is set in 2002-03. No, I’m not going through and finding the “NOW” CD compilations from that time, but I remember what CDs I was obsessed with when I was 25 years old. Listening to Moby’s “Play” album transports me back to the tiny house that I rented when I was a broke journalist. U2’s “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” had been out for a couple years at that point, but I had just discovered that album – the song “In A Little While” in particular.

There is a tricky father-daughter relationship that weaves its way through my story. One day I was scrolling through my mp3 player and came across Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son.” That was like a visceral punch to the gut. The anguish in Stevens’ voice helps me understand some of my characters’ misunderstandings. Pearl Jam’s “Man of the Hour” also helps.

So yes – music is a constant of days and of my work.

What about the rest of you? Anyone else out there who builds playlists for their writing lives?