A Post About Old Friends

Today’s post can be found at http://magicalwords.net, the group blog on the business and craft of writing fantasy that I maintain with fellow authors Faith Hunter, Misty Massey, and C. E. Murphy. The post is called “The Power of Reunions” and it’s about getting to know our characters a bit better. I hope you enjoy it.

Oh, and by the way, that new contest is still up on my website: http://www.DavidBCoe.com. Visit the site and maybe you’ll win a signed book!

A Post About the Seasons

Today’s post can be found at http://magicalwords.net, the group blog on the business and craft of writing fantasy that I maintain with fellow authors Faith Hunter, Misty Massey, and C. E. Murphy. The post is called “Writing the Seasons” and it’s about using seasonal imagery in our writing. I hope you enjoy it.

Another Concert

We went up to Nashville Monday night to see a concert at the Grand Ole Opry House.  The concert was a celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the founding of Rounder Records.  We were drawn to the concert by the headliners — Bela Fleck, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Alison Krauss and Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas.  Turns out, though, that we got both more and less than we bargained for.

It turns out that the concert was being filmed for a special that will air on National Public Television in March.   Well, we thought that might be kind of cool.  We’ve seen lots of concerts that were taped or made into DVDs and it seemed like the folks at those shows had fun.  And in fact, our introduction to the whole taping-for-TV thing included requests that we, the audience, give them a few rounds of applause that they could use to edit and fill in space as they put the show together.  Polite applause, applause with whoops and whistles, frenzied applause.  They taped them all before the show even began.  It was a little goofy, but it was fun.  The kids thought it was very cool.

Our host for the evening was Minnie Driver, the British actress, who, it seems, is also Minnie Diver, the Rounder recording artist.  I know.  I was surprised, too.  But she was the opening act.  She played four songs, all of them her own compositions.  They were fine; not outstanding, but not terrible, either.  They had a kind of standard pop/country sound.  Her band was good, although she didn’t introduce them and something about the way she spoke to them and told us about them gave us the impression that she didn’t know their names.  Weird.

After Minnie finished her set, she went backstage, changed clothes, and came back out to play emcee.  At the same time, the stage crew moved equipment around.  The first band (after her own) that she introduced was a cajun/creole group called Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas, and they rocked.  I don’t own much Zydeco music, and probably wouldn’t listen to it much if I did, but live it was terrific.  Nathan Williams and his band had the entire audience on their feet and dancing for his entire set, which also consisted of four songs.

Then we had another break, while the stage was rearranged, and Bela Fleck came out.  I was so excited — Fleck is one of my favorite musicians.  He is the most influential and accomplished banjo player this side of Earl Scruggs, and I adore his music.  At one point Jerry Douglas came out to accompany him on dobro — another thrill.  The two of them a great friends; they’ve recorded together for years.  But they only did one piece together, and after Bela had played his fourth number, he got up and left the stage.  Minnie came back out to say that they were going to take a small break and then continue with the next act, soul singer Irma Thomas.  At this point it was already approaching 10:00.  The concert had been scheduled to begin at 7:30, but hadn’t started until 8:15.  We’d heard exactly 12 songs, and Bela Fleck, who had been one of the main reasons we’d bought tickets in the first place, had been onstage and off so quickly that I almost thought he was joking when he first got up to leave.

Irma Thomas was fine.  I’m not a big fan of soul, but she was feisty and fun, and she was also given just four songs.  Another break to redo the stage, and then Mary Chapin Carpenter came out.  Her set was terrific.  Five songs this time, including her mid-90s hit “He thinks he’ll Keep Her.”  Then yet another rearranging of the stage.  And finally, at about 11:30, Alison Krauss, Jerry Douglas, and the rest of Union Station came out for their set.  They got a huge reception, of course, and they played several of my favorite songs.  But they played five and went off stage, came back on for a single encore, and were done.  Another change of the stage, a few minutes of Minnie Driver doing introductions for video segments that we wouldn’t see, but for which we were expected to applaud, and then all the major performers came out and did one last number.

We got up from our seats to leave the auditorium at 12:20, almost five hours to the minute after we had sat down.  We’d heard maybe, maybe, two and a half hours of actual music.  The rest had been delays, forced applause, stage changes, and the brief intermission.  Don’t get me wrong:  most of the music was terrific.  Bela Fleck’s four songs were wonderful; the zydeco band ad Mary Chapin Carpenter were great; AKUS was fabulous as always. But we had the kids with us, and we drove an hour and a half in each direction to see this show.  We didn’t get home until 2:00 am.  I won’t even tell you what we paid for the tickets.  And to be quite honest it wasn’t worth it.

A Little Publicity For Me!!

Hi there, all.  Hope you’re gearing up for a fun weekend.  As you do, please visit the examiner.com site to find the write-up of a recent interview I did.  Hope you enjoy the article.

Lazy Bones and the Three Stars….

My daughters swam in a meet this morning.  They did great.  Their relay teams all took first place, and between them in their individual races they took three firsts, a second, a third and a sixth.  They also had a great time.

My wife couldn’t be at the meet, because she was running (swimming?  Biking?  Doing?) what’s known as a sprint triathlon.  She had a great time, too.

And me?  I cheered.  I encouraged.  I praised.  And then I took a nap.

Thoughts on Honors Day

This is graduation weekend at my daughters middle/high school, and today was Honors Day, when students are recognized for achievements in academics, sports and community service.  I attended, because I’m on the parents’ council and our organization was sponsoring the event and the reception that followed.

I dreaded the ceremony, because it has a reputation for being long and boring.  But I enjoyed it, mostly because so many of the kids who were honored were friends of my daughter or children of friends.  It seems like a day ago that I was watching them play youth soccer and little league, or seeing them in the sixth grade play.  Now they’re juniors and seniors in college.  It goes so fast.  

My daughter was honored too, though because she’s only in eighth grade this year, she wasn’t eligible for most of the awards.  But she was chosen for a leadership position in next year’s freshman class, which is pretty cool.  Except for the fact that I REALLY can’t believe she’s about to be a freshman in high school.

As I say, it goes so fast….

Sunday Afternoon Choice…

So it comes down to this:  I have a couple of hours left in my Sunday afternoon, and I can use that time to post something here about God-knows-what, or I can take a little nap.  Actually, it’s a surprisingly easy choice. 

Later.

I’m Well Into My Dad-Teens

Today is my fourteenth Dad Day.  I’ve been a Dad for exactly 14 years and I’m hoping for lots of presents.  Yeah, yeah, that means it’s also my older daughter’s 14th birthday, but this is about me, damnit!  This is my day to celebrate me, you know?  It’s my chance to kind of, like, reflect on everything that’s cool about me being a Dad.  And there’s A LOT for me to reflect on.  

In those first few years I kind of stumbled along, making mistake after mistake, and dealing with totally gross stuff like diapers and baby food and baby puke, which looked suspiciously like baby food, but smelled worse.   It was pretty lame actually.  I was pretty lame.  But not anymore.  I’m fourteen now (in Dad years) and I know everything I need to know.  Really.  I mean, sure there are people who claim they know more than me (Than I?  Oh, what-EV-er!).  These geezers have been doing the parent thing for-like-ever.  But that doesn’t make them experts, right?  I mean, experts are people who get on TV to talk about stuff that other people want to learn about, and who wants to see geezers on TV talking about this stuff?  I don’t.

Like, the other day one of my daughters (I forget which one, and really what difference does it make?) was complaining about feeling sick and having a fever and throwing up and being achy and tired and stuff.  And I was like, “Okay, get over it already!”  I mean, ohmyGod, how much of that stuff can one person listen to, right?  And this is just what I mean.  Back when I was five or six in Dad years I would have been, like, “Oh, poor baby!  You need to lie down.  We’ll take your temperature and put a blanket on you and get you some gatorade or something.”  Lame, right?  And those geezer-guys will tell you to take a kid like that to the doctor or to read some lame All-About-Sick-Kids book.  Like I have time for that, right?  I mean you have no idea how hard it is being me.  Being fourteen in Dad years is really, really, really hard, even when you know as much as I do.

But today isn’t about the hard stuff, like, you know, kids and things.  Today is about me and my fourteen years as a Dad.  So let’s eat some cake and open presents!  

Um, will presents make my face break out…?

Fun Evening in Nashville

Nancy and I had a real treat yesterday.  We went up to Nashville to see the live radio broadcast of Garrison Keillor’s  A Prairie Home Companionat the historic Ryman Auditorium.  It was a terrific show.  Garrison’s musical guests were country music’s biggest star, Brad Paisley, and bluegrass giant Sam Bush and his band.  They did all the normal classic skits — “Guy Noire, Private Eye”; “The News From Lake Wobegone”; “The Ketchup Advisory Board”; plus a few others we hadn’t heard before.  They played some great songs, and generally put on a great show.

Keillor himself makes it clear that he owes a debt to old radio show hosts like Fred Allen, and Bob and Ray, but the fact remains that he is a unique talent in American culture.  He has a wonderful sense of humor; he’s not a great singer, but he’s good; he’s a decent writer; and his “News From Lake Wobegone” is a brilliant monologue that he does without any notes or visual cues.  I know that he doesn’t make it up on the spot.  I mean, he couldn’t, right?  But it’s all in his head, and that’s pretty stunning given how well each week’s installment of the “News” holds together.  Anyway, it was all great fun and I have no doubt that we’ll go again the next time he and his crew are in town.

After the show, we went to a restaurant called Horn of Africa, where we had a marvelous Ethiopian meal.  Truly excellent.  If you haven’t had Ethiopian cuisine, you should.  It’s spicy and delicious, and you eat it with your hands, using a special spongy bread called injera to pick up the curries and stews and lentils.  Wonderful!

Let’s Call it a Week…

This week slipped by pretty quietly. That is, until a bunch of fourteen year-old girls showed up for my older daughter’s birthday party tonight. Nothing quiet about that at all. It was supposed to be outside at a lake over in town, but the thunderstorms and tornado watch kind of changed our plans. But they’re mostly gone now, our house is returning to normal, and our daughter is very happy. So the noise was definitely worth it.

I may have some book news next week. Here’s hoping. We’ll see what happens.