Sean Markey |

So one of my best pals, Clayton, is in a band  called Say Never.  They recently came out with their first record.  It’s extremely good.  They have a full time cellist, and male and female vocalists,  so there’s a lot of dynamics, a lot of range with the song writing and vocals that really comes through.

You can listen  to a few songs here (links to myspace), including one called September.  A little story about that:

Back when I lived in Florida, before I wrote stories, I wrote lyrics.  I played drums in whatever the band of the month was that I was in (with Clayton), and wrote songs.  This particular song just kept being good, which is why, all these years later, it made it on to his album.  If you can’t guess, it’s mostly about September 11th.  I read a news article about a man who called his wife from one of the planes, but she didn’t answer, so he left a message.

What do you say to someone in a situation like that?  What words are good enough to convey everything you’ve ever wanted to say, knowing it will be the last thing you say?

Check out the song here

Check out the lyrics here

So my awesome  wife, Beth, has created a site for writers (of any kind).   It’s called the Fiction Writing Directorate,  but I am certain the site can help writers of non-fiction, term papers, blogs, etc.  The Directorate is part motivation, part community, part story, and part role playing.  There are regular exercises (geared toward fiction  writers) and places where you can discuss your weekly writing goals, and get support from the various characters at the directorate, as well as the other agents (a.k.a. other writers playing along).

Check it out.  It’s really a lot of fun.  And tell a friend.  This is a “more the merrier” kind of situation.

Back this week with notable releases from December 8, 2009.

Puddle of Mudd – Vol. 4: Love and Hate

Puddle of Mudd is what you’d get if you mixed Alice In Chains and the Beastie Boys together.  It’s like the color orange: It’s not quite red, not quite yellow, and nothing rhymes with it.  The vocals are dirty and grungy, the lyrics on par with what you might hear  attending a Friday night party at a frat house (which, don’t worry, I never have):

A long time ago in a galaxy far A-WASTED

It’s not a very pretty sight, but is about what you’d expect from Puddle of Mudd’s fourth album.  Hey, at least they’re consistent!

30 Seconds to Mars – This is War

Does no one take you seriously as an artist?  Are you in a band and also you were in Fight Club?  Hey, You’re Jared Leto!  Congratulations on being one of the prettiest boys on the planet.  What’s that?  Need a little street cred?  It’s okay, just hire Kanye West to “sing” on your new album.  Unfortunately that collaboration (Hurricane) is the best track on the album.

“This is War” is more like the first 30STM album (self titled) than their second (A Beautiful Lie).  The songs are self indulgent, the vocals are overly processed, and the lyrics are like a bad Epic Fantasy novel that takes place ON A SPACE SHIP.  It’s the kind of bad that’s almost good, like drinking black coffee and watching movies with laughably awful dialogue.

Timbaland – Shock Value II

Timbaland is SO THANKFUL for autotune.  Imagine being the definitive composer of a generation, and having NO SINGING ABILITY whatsoever.  It’s like if Beethoven was composing and also deaf.  JUST IMAGINE IT!  Well, no longer.  With Shock Value II, Timbaland proves that he has no talent in naming albums.  No wait.  I meant, with Shock Value II Timbaland proves that he knows more famous people than you ever will.  There are questionable guest spots (Miley Cyrus, Jo-jo), obvious ones (Justin TImberlake and Nelly Furtado), and even an interesting one or two (Chris Daughtry and The Fray).

The autotune is slathered on thick, like special sauce on your Mcdonald’s hamburger.  I could probably do a whole post on this album, and I will.  Check back tomorrow for a special extended review of Shock Value II.

Glee Cast: The Music, Volume 2

Chorus kids sing your favorite hits.  It’s not as bad as Kidz Bop, and, as you might imagine, does not compare to the original songs.  Listening to this album is like this: If somebody made delicious chocolate chip cookies, put them in a ziploc bag, sealed it up, and left it for a week.  And then you come along and eat the bag the cookies were stored in.  “Gosh,” you might say, “I bet these cookies were delicious, but THIS BAG SOUNDS LIKE CRAP.”

Until next time, kids…

Daryl Gregory is one of my all time favorite authors.  His first book, Pandemonium, was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson award, and the World Fantasy award.  His short fiction has been published in F&SF and Asimovs.  If you’ve never read a Daryl Gregory story, check out (FREE) “Second Person, Present Tense.” I first met Daryl at World Fantasy Calgary, and can tell you he’s probably one of the nicest, coolest people you’ll ever meet, which is probably why he agreed to this interview for my little corner of webspace.

Sean: Your new book, The Devil’s Alphabet coming out on November 24, 2009.  Can you give us the ‘elevator pitch’ for it?

Daryl Gregory: Hard SF Southern Gothic Murder Mystery. With heart.

S: Will fans of  Pandemonium find any other similar themes/characters/worlds etc. in The Devil’s Alphabet?

DG: The two books aren’t part of a series, so there’s no overlap with characters or plot. However,they do share a world, in a way. Both books take as a starting point the real world, and then change only one thing. In Pandemonium, it was the demons. In The Devil’s Alphabet, it’s the Changes, a disease that transformed most of a small mountain town, but then never spread any further.
 

S: Was The Devil’s Alphabet  easier or more difficult to write than your first novel?

DG: Yes.

S: Could you explain that?

DG: I was happy with how Pandemonium had turned out, so it was easier to write the second knowing it was at least possible for me to write a novel. I learned how to structure a book, and to pace it, and develop character over hundreds of pages instead of tens.

But it was harder to write The Devil’s Alphabet in that I decided to throw out some of my most-used tricks. Pandemonium was concerned with pop culture, and the main character, Del, and his brother banter in that kind of 21st century, smart-ass, irony-drenched way of people who know everything’s a reference to something else, and true emotion must be carefully masked.

With TDA, I wanted to write a more timeless book, something that concentrated on family and community, and was told through the point of view of someone who hasn’t figured himself out, who feels disconnected. The main character still has difficulty expressing emotions, but for different reasons.

Come to think of it, maybe all my characters have trouble expression emotion. Oh well, that can’t have anything to do with me.

S: What’s the one drink someone could buy you at a convention or a singing that you wouldn’t be ale to turn down?

DG: Westmalle Tripel. It’s a Belgian abbey  beer, made by monks who are obviously guided by a higher power.

S: This isn’t really a question, but HOLY CRAP the cover of The Devil’s Alphabet freaks me out!!  Your thoughts?

DG: Hey, it freaked ME out when I first saw it. I think that was the art director’s goal: to freak people out, to get them to pause a moment as they pass it on the racks, then reach out and turn it upside down to figure out what’s going on, and thereby lure them into reading the back copy and maybe flip through a few pages. And I have to admit, The Devil’s Alphabet IS a freaky-deaky book. It’s about transformation and the horror of strange bodies, and coming to love the strangeness. I have come to love the strangeness of the cover.

S: If the city was in trouble, and the mayor dialed your office, which super hero (existing or made-up-on-the-spot) would he find at the other end of the line?

DG: I have to admit there’s a character that I made up my freshman year in college for a roleplaying game called Champions that I still think of fondly. He is Traveler, the teleporting, staff-wielding albino martial artist! Kind of a cross between Nightcrawler and Elric with a stick. When I taught my kids how to play Champions a few years ago, I brought him back for a cameo as a non-playing character.

So yeah. Traveler. I’m a geek.

And also a Rainbow.

A storm drifted near the mountains to the east of Salt Lake City.  First there was the rainbow, blooming from the mountain.  Then there was a sort of hazy rainbow just to the right of the original one.  You can’t see it in my picture unfortunately.  I like to think it was a ghost.

The rainbows stuck around for over an hour, until the clouds came closer and caught the colors from the sunset.  The camera, as good as it is, doesn’t do justice to being there.

Sorry about that.

The view from an office building of a very large cloud.

My new cellphone’s camera is vastly superior to my old one.

Exciting.

on making things tough, it sure is thorough.

Had a surprise visit from my student teaching supervisor from Westminster College.  That in itself is an adventure, but things went well.  I did good teachery things, got some good feedback: everything was okay.

However, at about 2:30, my throat started to really really hurt.

“No,” I thought, “surely not.  I was JUST SICK FOR TWO WEEKS STRAIGHT.”  Yeah well, now I am, again.  Starts with the sore throat.  We’ll see where it ends up.

At least it is the end of the week…

Well,

Woke up this morning with a pretty unpleasant feeling in my sinuses.  Some quick Web-MD-ing and I’m pretty sure I’ve got a sinus infection.

I’ve never been kicked in the face by a horse before, but I’m going to use my imagination here, and tell you that’s about how I feel right now.  In a few minutes I’m leaving for urgentcare to get this thing treated.  Feel free to leave lots of love and such in the comments.

***

In other news, I finished week two of student teaching.  That’s pretty awesome.  2/10.  I still have to teach for an additional six weeks after the first 10 weeks, but that’s a different story.  I keep meaning to post some thoughts on it all, but I also keep feeling worse.  I’ll just sum it up to say things are going as well as can be expected.  I have a very interesting group of students, an amazing mentor, and I’m learning a lot.  I had my first evaluation last Wednesday, and it went well.  I’ve got a long way to go, but I’ve come a very long way too, so it was a pretty satisfying result.

And if I can get ‘passing marks’ on an eval when I felt as bad as I did, well, it gives me hope to how I’ll do… you know, when I am 100% there.  Expect amazing things.

I am.  Someday…

in need of a paint job.  So could you please stop WET- SANDING it?

Woke up at 3:30 a.m. with that feeling.  Yes, let me tell you about it.  It hangs over you like a cartoon storm cloud and everything’s just a little dimmer.  You try to ignore it and tell yourself it will be all right, but you know in a few days you will be confined to a bed, as helpless as a six year old, and every cell in your body will ache.  Your throat feels like the kind of car that’s “much roomier than it looks on the inside” and all that extra space is just raw and swollen.

Okay, I’ll stop.

The worst part of it all is the waking up at 3:30 part, but I have to teach today.  It has been my experience that, when sick, you hit a kind of stride about five hours after being awake, so I figured OH WELL I guess I will just wait it out and see if I can at least pretend I’m not sick while teaching my students about how to write a story and also the sun does not revolve around the earth.

Anyway, I have to go get ready now.

Don’t forget about my newly published story, Shatter Shatter at Brain Harvest, ok?

Radiohead has released a new song.  It was written by Yorke after hearing an interview with Harry Patch, the last living UK WWI vet.  The song was recorded for an upcoming album, but released in honor of Patch after his recent death.

The song “Harry Patch (In Memory of)” is available for download on Radiohead’s official website for 1 GBP.  All proceeds benefit the Royal British Legion.

The new song is hushed, like whispering at a funeral.  The music has round edges, swelling in and out–a soundtrack for quietly floating away.  Trills and flourishes crescendo and release, to fall back on the main melody.  Open the cage and let the doves out.  Thom Yorke is on his best behavior, here, trading the crazy for the sweet.