This is just a quick update for those wondering why I haven’t posted anything in a while. There’s snaps of food I’ve cooked, a rare recording of the current state of my sax playing as of right now (and a discussion of an online course in jazz improvisation I’m taking with Gary Burton, yes, that Gary Burton), and a little discussion of my writing.
In middle school, and early on in high school, I remember loving Saturday Night Live… which, for me, means “classic” SNL which, because I was born in 1974, means John Lovitz, Phil Hartman, Dennis Miller, Victoria Jackson (sigh) Jan Hooks, and Dana Carvey, mainly. But a highlight of the show–and what I always wished they’d include more of–was seeing (or at least hearing) Lenny Pickett wail on the tenor saxophone, as he did on the closing tune, week after week: http://youtu.be/lPAeCZZstK4 I’d wait through the R.E.M. and Randy Travis and Linda Ronstadt for those little clips of the house band… they were …
So, a couple of my stories have been released into the wild… er, I mean, published in different books this month, both of which are available digitally, which means yes, you can go and buy them right now! Like, right now. (Just what you were hoping I’d say, right?) The first story is titled “The Rite,” a weird story that is about a famous ballet that caused a famous musical riot when it premiered in Paris a hundred years ago, and the pagan/magical roots of the musical content, as well as questions of the composer’s (Igor Stravinsky’s) uncertainty regarding how to …
This story appeared in the second volume of Machine of Death stories, titled This Is How You Die: Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death (2013). I actually got the idea for this story back when I was writing something else for Volume 1, but decided not to write it at the time because I was already knee-deep in the original story. Originally, I envisioned it as being from the point of view of a foreign aid worker, probably someone working with Médecins Sans Frontières. The story never got written, at least not for the first Machine of Death …
The Humble eBook Bundle II includes one of my stories. It’s still available for a short time more, and is pay-as-you-like. More info in the full post.