Drunk short animals

by Juliet

Cute stories about one's kid are like stories about one's dog or a slide-show of family trips to Disneyland: lovely to recall in the privacy of one's home but best not inflicted upon unsuspecting readers.
(Besides, my now-nineteen-year-old doesn’t relish his mom giving away his secrets...like how he used to prance around the house in the nude, brandishing his Nerf bow and arrows. Or how, when he deigned to put on clothes at all, he dressed as Robin, complete with cape, for a little over two years. He would tell all who would listen that Robin was very important, because Robin was Batman’s psychic --by which he meant sidekick. Cute, huh?)

Okay, enough. Sorry about that.

(Above, my boy with his grandma. No longer Batman's psychic.)

So instead, I’ll just ‘fess up: I never used to like kids.

I mean, I liked the concept of children. They're the future, they're full of wonder, they're innocent miracles, etcetera, etcetera. But when it came down to actually spending time with kids...not so much.

However, since my own kid was a kid, and I liked him, then I liked kid. And now whenever I see children I remember my boy at that age, and I get all gooey and nostalgic, and end up not unlike a big old puddle of melted candy.

Here’s what I learned:

1. Kids are nuts. It’s like they’re on drugs, or drunk, or schizophrenic. Or all three at once. They talk to themselves, see imaginary people, twirl around until they throw up just to see what it feels like. Seriously, watch a kid for a while in a public setting, and then imagine a grown up acting like that. They’d be arrested for their own protection.
2. In order to talk to kids, it’s best to act crazy yourself. If a kid’s wearing a pink dress, go, “Duuude. Nice pants you’re wearing. I like that color green.” Usually this inspires them to correct you, which give them the satisfaction of knowing that even though they still pee in their pants, at least they’re smarter than a certain grown up they could mention. If, on the other hand, they just stare at you with an uncomprehending look on their face, they’re not worth your time. If they laugh and get the joke, you should make a note to check in with them ten or twenty years down the line, as they might just turn out to be a really interesting human.
3. As a corollary to the above: kids are boring if you try to talk to them about anything important. They couldn’t care less about recent events in Egypt, and they have absolutely no opinion about the use (and overuse) of adverbs in fiction. But if you go with the crazy, they’re highly entertaining. Bored at a party? Find the six year old and ask them when they were last on Mars. Or how long they think horses can hold their breath. Or whether the Cookie Monster and Elmo should get married. They’ll have an opinion, guaranteed.
4. Kids are little savages. They have no idea how polite company works. It is their parents’ job to train them in the ways of our cultural norms. Unfortunately, many parents fall short in that regard, so a lot of kids don’t know they’re not supposed to sit on top of the table while sticking a fork in their eyes and spitting into the gravy. Sometimes, you have to be the force of cultural tradition, which is an uncomfortable place for those of us who like to think of ourselves as iconoclasts and rebels. In short, children act like children. And sometimes adults act like children. And that means YOU have to act like an adult, which is a major drag.
5. Children don’t actually need a reason for stuff, and they’re easy to trick. I didn’t want to fall into the “Because I said so” trap with my son, so instead I’d say “I’ll tell you later. Like when you get to college.” This became a useful trope in our household. I would tell my son: “Don’t pick your nose. That’s for college.” “Don’t sit on the table and put the fork in your eye and spit in the gravy, you can do that all you want when you’re in college.” “Don’t pee in your pants….” You get the idea. By the time they actually get to college, peer pressure will do your job for you. Plus, this way kids grow up thinking college is this awesome hedonistic world of pants-peeing and nose-picking and sitting on tables while spitting and inflicting injuries. In addition to taking care of your immediate explanatory needs, this method causes them to aspire to a university education. High expectations makes for good parenting, or so they say.

Soooo, I like to bring these posts back to writing. I know, I know, hard to imagine the connection, right? Here goes: While writing, it’s best to bring out the inner crazy, indulge that long-ago child that didn’t realize there were so many limits. Like children, writers often appear to be drunk, or high, or schizophrenic -- we talk to ourselves and spend our days with imaginary figures, and imagine a world of pure possibility. It's a thing of beauty.

Just remember to keep it in check while in public, or you’ll be arrested.

(At left, the author as a kid, with her dog Princess-- otherwise known as a talking horse from Mars.)

On Clocks

A few years ago, a friend came over with her baby. The child was perhaps two, a solid little toddler. I did a quick baby-proofing, and decided that as long as she didn't stick her fingers into our uncovered outlets, we were pretty safe.

Then we started chatting, and seconds later, the child wandered out of the bathroom carrying the sharp hair scissors I keep on the bottom shelf of the open cabinet. It had never crossed my mind.

No harm, no foul. She wasn't injured. Her mother laughed. But it proved something to me. I am not a natural mother.

Perhaps I spent too much time as a babysitter in my youth? I wore out all my mothering-ness? I babysat from the age of twelve to twenty-two. That's ten years of spit-up, diaper-changes, and juice-boxes, and I was only a nights/weekends kind of gal, nothing like actual parenting.

Did I wear out that part of myself?

I heard my clock tick once. About four years ago, the alarm (which had never made as much as a peep before) rang, and I couldn't find the snooze button.

As I do with all new things, I got REALLY excited about it. I researched every option available to my partner and me, finally figuring out that the perfect combination of ease and affordability came with knowing the donor. The procedure, to be legally protected, had to take place in a doctor's office (whew), and it would be a little less than fifteen grand, which was the low-end starting price for every other option, it seemed.

So we thought about it. Who would be the best person to tap (as it were)? We ran through our mutual friends and came up with one name. Rob. I'd known him for twenty years, and loved him like a brother (really, only like a brother). He was married to a woman he loved who already had almost-grown children--Rob and she weren't interested in having any more. But maybe he wouldn't mind being a bio-dad?

I called him. I can't even remember what I said, and I'm sure I bargled it all up, but after he talked to his wife, he agreed. With happiness! He was excited! How great it would be to be the special relative, to have a little piece of him running around.

Then my alarm stopped ringing. Jobs were gained. And lost. The money was never there (and while charging a pair of shoes might be all right for some, I couldn't imagine putting the cost of optional pregnancy on a credit card). Time passed.

I lost interest, probably when I started something new: photography, or spinning (recently it's weaving that has my attention). My wife (who was fine with anything and left the whole thing in my court) asked, "Hey, what about Rob?" I shrugged and stayed up too late reading about how to make artisan bread.

And after a while, Rob asked, "Hey, what about me?"

I said, "Well. About that, what you were going to give us? We'll pass." Of course, I said it much better than that. I was sensitive. Loving in my let-down. But that's what it came down to. I'd wanted a baby like I'd wanted my iPad, probably for about the same length of time. Then I got an iPad, and used it for a while and actually wrote two books on it, but now it really only comes in handy for playing Scrabble on planes.

Think if I'd treated a child like that. I'd get two books out of it, and then shelve it under a stack of trade journals. Then CPS would haul me away, and I'd get another book out of that . . . Well, perhaps I should rethink . . .

It makes me sound hard, doesn't it? I don't feel hard, but I can admit it appears that I am. I have all the love in the world for my nephew Isaac, who truly is the smartest almost-two year old in the whole wide world. He will be the first banjo-playing-rock-star-astro-physicist-president, I just know it. I love being with him.

But then I love going home and having a glass of wine and staying up too late, just for fun. And outside in the back yard, in the grass, next to the broken vacuum cleaner, the old gas grill, and the lawnmower with the broken chain, my clock rests. In peace.

How I Came To Write YA

by Sophie

CHILDREN

Sharp-eyed readers will note that I've used a different head shot than usual, above.

This one was the result of a makeover of sorts, performed by my daughter. At the time, my mind was on other things; if memory serves, my cousin Maureen was visiting, the wine was flowing, and we were solving the world's problems as we are ever wont to do when we are together. My daughter was experimenting on us, giving us makeovers with her tubs of hair accessories and pins and flowers, and as you can see she went for a sort of Pan/Bacchus look, no doubt inspired as the antithesis of my usual role of buzz-kill, nag, harridan - e.g., Mom.

If you allow me to rhapsodize about my children, we'll be here eternally, so I'll shift the focus slightly. Come back with me, if you will, to the long hot summer of 2008. I was a newly minted professional author, with a deal under my belt and some time on my hands and an itch to be writing something new. I was returning from one of my earliest book-event trips to L.A., and if my eyes were still starry and my enthusiasm dewy, perhaps I can be forgiven, for at that time everything seemed possible and I'd yet to encounter my first dreadful review, my first remaindered book, my first missed deadline, my first dark hour of the author's soul. All I knew was that I wanted to do something new.

"How about YA?" my agent suggested.

Now I had been in the young adult business for a while, but never as an author. My children were 13 and 15, and while I hadn't made an utter hash of their parenting, I was experienced enough to recognized I'd failed them frequently and dramatically. In short, I did not feel that I understood their tender psyches, much less those of their entire generation. Leave it to the Twilight-spinners, was my initial thought; I did not have entree into the Babysitters Clubs or the dens of the Spy Kids; the British boarding schools or the dystopian mazes.

But the idea lodged and grew, like the bit of grit that irritates its oyster-y host until something shimmery begins to form. Why not me, demanded the internal voice; why shouldn't I try to create something, a blend of who I had once been and who my children and their friends were now? Why not seize upon what I remembered best about being 14, 15, 16 - the anguish and the fear and the other-ness, as well as the brief and splendid moments when I saw with great clarity that I could be someone who mattered, despite my awkwardness and inauspicious beginnings?

I wrote my first young adult novel in a burst of ignorant fervor in the late summer and early fall of that year. It started with a tiny germ of an idea and picked up themes and plot points like a snowball being rolled around the yard. I listened to my kids' Pandora stations and stalked their Facebook pages and kept coming back when they rebuffed my requests for a back-stage pass to what's current in their world.

My book sold right away, in a small but satisfying pileup of mild interest. Later, things got dicey; my story required major revisions and an entirely fresh re-imagining before it was deemed ready for a youthful audience. I wrapped up the journey I began in BANISHED in a second book, UNFORSAKEN. Only when I typed "The End" on the second did I feel that I was starting to know what I was doing, a tiny small bit.

This week I'm putting the finishing touches on a proposal for a new young adult novel, for the same intrepid publisher that's stuck by me in my education as a YA author. Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to the publication of UNFORSAKEN in October, which has been going through the final passes in-house before the ARCs are released into the wild. Reader response has been enthusiastic, and some days, I'm able to believe that my awkward childhood put me in good stead to give something back to a whole new generation of readers.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (I actually live in a 60's era ranch house so perhaps you'll forgive the figure of speech) the true inspirations for every YA book I write have just gone to bed. Midnight is moments away, and as I get into my own bed I'll practice my nightly gratitude for the blessings that make the telling of every tale that much richer. A mother's wish is that she could erase every hurt and vanquish every antagonist, that she could make for her children a smooth and easy path. But of course that's impossible - fresh hurt and indignation and resolve is the birthright of every generation. It's how we learn, how we grow, and eventually we have to deafen ourselves to the parents on the sidelines and strike out on our own.

Writing YA has let me linger a little longer. Even after my own darlings have left my house for their own adventures, I hope to be writing the stories that keep me in the nether place between child and adult, between daughter and mother. And of course they are there in every word I write.

Words and Music

The Pens welcome mystery writer Peggy Ehrhart today. Peggy writes mysteries about a blues-singer sleuth—and has been known to play a mean blues guitar herself. The second in the series, Got No Friend Anyhow, came out just a few weeks ago!

Elvis Costello once observed that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. In other words. . . pointless.  Every art form is its own thing, and if you want to experience music you should go listen to some. You won’t find it in a book.

It’s fortunate I didn’t come across Costello’s words ten years ago—though being from the “question authority” generation, I probably would have just ignored them. My drive to become a mystery writer overlapped quite early with a parallel drive to put into words the sensations I experienced while listening to music. Sitting in the audience while some guitar hero poured out his soul through his fingers should have been ecstasy enough in itself.  But since I have the writer gene, a voice in my head would be whispering, “You won’t be really happy until you figure out how to capture this experience in words.”

So I created a mystery series that took the reader into the grungy world of a struggling Manhattan blues band. I used all my descriptive abilities to make the reader understand why my blues-singer sleuth, Elizabeth “Maxx” Maxwell, was willing to give up the comforts of a conventional life to pursue her dream of leading her own band. I also wanted the reader to understand Maxx’s inability to resist the allure of guitar players, an allure that arises in large part from the magical sounds they spin from their fingers. My own guitar-playing habit, which started because my son was taking lessons and they looked like fun, made me all the more determined to capture in words the sounds I struggled so hard to make my fingers produce.

In defense of my efforts I’d like to try to refute Costello’s observation. Writing is a representational art, and thus it has to be about something. If it’s about a character taking a sea voyage, for example, the reader needs to voyage along with the character: to smell the salt air, feel the thud of the waves against the prow, hear the seagulls cawing overhead—not to mention see the ocean’s surface froth into little whitecaps and squint as the sun glints off the water.

Similarly, if a scene takes place in a blues club, the reader needs to smell the sweat and cigarette smoke, feel and taste that draft of cold beer as it slides down the protagonist’s throat, see the featured guitar player strut across the stage with his gleaming Stratocaster guitar, and, above all, hear the funky jangle or the sweet growl of the notes he teases from his strings.

There are lots of us out there—people who didn’t get Elvis Costello’s message or who refuse to believe it. In the July/August 2008 issue of CrimeSpree Magazine I published an article called “Musical Mystery Tour.” In it I discussed an exhaustive roster of mystery writers who set their stories in the world of popular music.  (There’s a whole parallel universe of mystery writers whose victims meet their fate on opera stages or in orchestras.) And I’ve been on a number of panels at mystery conferences devoted to mysteries with music, most recently at Left Coast Crime in 2010. There, our panel was moderated by Bill Moody, who writes the Evan Horne mystery series. Evan Horne, a jazz pianist, solves fascinating crimes that take him into the lives of jazz icons from the past. And Bill himself is a jazz drummer.

So I don’t believe that writing about music is like dancing about architecture—but, in fact, if the Alvin Ailey company announced a new production titled “Notre Dame Cathedral,” I’d reserve a seat in the front row.

Peggy Ehrhart is a former English professor who writes mysteries and plays blues guitar. She has published in the field of medieval literature and has won awards for fiction. She writes the Maxx Maxwell mystery series, published by Five Star/Gale/Cengage and so far consisting of Sweet Man Is Gone (2008) and Got No Friend Anyhow (2011). Sweet Man Is Gone is now available in Kindle and a variety of other ebook formats. Visit Peggy at www.PeggyEhrhart.com.

There's a Time and a Place for Everything

by Gigi

As the character Chef on South Park used to say, "There's a time and a place for everything: It's called College."

In college, I wore Birkenstocks on a daily basis, attended numerous Indigo Girls concerts, and played acoustic guitar.

For photography class, I took "artistic" photos of my guitar, like the two below. (Those were shot on black and white 35mm film, so I had no idea what the light would turn out like until I developed the film myself in the darkroom.)

A college photo experiment: "guitar as spaceship"

My Birkenstocks now sit next to the back door as my garden shoes, most of my folk music CDs never made it onto my computer, and I don't sit around playing music with people like I used to do in the dorms during college.

Another college photo: "while my guitar gently weeps"

These days, the biggest way music makes its way into my life is as the background music to my art and my writing.

When I work on a design project, I listen to KEXP online. My favorite DJ is John in the Morning, on the air from 6 - 10 am Pacific Time, who never fails to provide an energetic mix that's a great supplement to coffee.

When I write, I listen to something mellow-yet-amazing like Brian Eno -- or sometimes rain sounds (helpful via headphones while working at a cafe when you can't quite concentrate).

When I edit, though, what I discovered is that I find myself thinking again and again of specific songs. While finishing up my first mystery novel, I decided to make a soundtrack. Here are a few of the tracks:

Chaiyya Chaiyya Bollywood Joint by A.R. Rahman -- I admit I stole this one from Spike Lee, who used it for the opening scene of Inside Man. He was so right. It's an awesome theatrical song for a sweeping scene in a book or film.

This Year by the Mountain Goats --  Angsty acoustic guitar rock for when the heroine Jaya is at the end of her rope. "I'm gonna make it through this year if it kills me..."

Catch the Wind by Donovan -- My folk music roots made me think of this song for an introspective scene along the windswept cliffs of the Highlands of Scotland.

Jogi by Punjabi MC -- Because Jaya loves Bhangra music.

Abel by The National --  Another angsty song. Novels are all about conflict, after all. "Everything has gone down wrong..."

And finishing things up: You are My Joy by The Reindeer Section. Yup, in addition to mystery, I've gotta have some romance.

A photo of one of the walls in my office

p.s. For anyone in the San Francisco Bay Area, we'd love you to join us TONIGHT at 7 pm for Rachael Herron's book launch party at BookShop West Portal in San Francisco. There might even be some music!

If Music Be the Food of Love, Martha is Seriously Screwed

Picture this.

It's 1996. The morning after prom. I float home, barefoot, dangling my plum slingbacks off my fingers.

My girlfriend calls, squealing, "How was it?"
I tell her it was nice.
She asks, "What was the first slow song you danced to?"
"......"

She is appalled. But I can't remember.

"But that's going to end up being your song," she insists. "Your song forever! It will always be the first song you danced to and it's the song you have to dance to at your wedding and your 50th wedding anniversary and now you don't know it!"

It was our second date, so she was being presumptuous. But still.

Oops.

Fast forward fifteen years.

That boy who took me to prom?

We're married. We're still together. We still have no idea what songs we have danced to - not a one.

Not a song from Prom Night. Not a song from our wedding. (There was music there...I think.) Not a song from the time we took ballroom dancing lessons. Not a song from the surprise 30th birthday party he threw me when he rented out a small dance floor in a swanky Union Square hotel.

I wondered if there was something wrong with me. Other people seemed so affected by music, by its message and its promise. They could hear a song on the radio and be transported to another time and place. Feel the swell of emotion as fresh as the day they earned it.

Songs don't do that for me.

But I remember the corsage he bought me. How he borrowed his stepfather's truck so he wouldn't have to drive me in his piece-o-crap pickup. Ordering a tuna croissant sandwich at Red Robin (oh yeah, people, this was swank.) The Paris-themed decorations that couldn't cover the scent of chlorine at the aquatic center. How we were so tired we decided to take a nap before heading to the after party. The way ESPN kicked on like an alarm at six, making us realize we'd overslept. How nervous he looked sitting across the booth from me at Dennys. How nervous I felt as to whether he'd call me again.

There isn't a song to capture it all. It's okay that I don't remember.

A Musical Portal

by Lisa Hughey

For me, music isn’t JUST music. The beginning notes of a song can completely transport me to another time and place. The memories of my life are all wrapped up in music and just hearing a song evokes all the emotions of that time.


Pachabel’s Canon reminds me of my wedding. And yes I realize that probably ninety percent of couples use this song in their wedding. I don’t care. I loved it before I got married. I loved it when I got married and I STILL love that song. It’s beautiful.



Band on the Run brings back the summer I spent in a hot, humid gym practicing high school gymnastics (for the record-I sucked. I was afraid of falling down or off of things and hurting myself.) The ceiling fans would twirl halfheartedly pushing around the sweltering air and whoever was in charge was in LOVE with Paul McCartney. I swear to God, that song would play over and over and over for three hours. I canNOT stand it.


Running with the Devil reminds me of driving to my Grandfather’s funeral in a big old boat of a Cadillac and my 18 month old son asked my dad to play Beauty and the Goldfish (Hootie and the Blowfish). When he didn’t have it (of course not), my boys sang the song to my parents and I laughed while I cried.


When my daughter was five, she and her pals would come with me on errands after I picked them up from kindergarden. We would belt out Sheryl Crow’s Soak Up the Sun while driving to Costco and then move on to Push by Matchbox 20. Years later, we still turn up the radio and sing loudly but now it’s likely to be Cee Lo Green and Lady Gaga. Singing along with them brings me joy, every single time.


Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas singing Smooth plunges me right back into elementary school age children and rotating summer Happy Hours on Friday nights because we couldn’t afford to get a babysitter and go out to eat. Instead the kids swam and the parents drank margaritas and danced on the grass.


And Teena Marie’s (RIP) Lovergirl ports me right back to college and having fun with my girlfriends, shoes off, dancing on chairs and singing into our fists at the top of our lungs. We were young, happy, carefree and life was FUN.



My life is a lot different now (not better or worse, just different), but for four minutes and 26 seconds I remember exactly how I felt back then. And it rocked.

The Best Bad Music Weekend Ever

L.G.C. Smith

I’m writing this in the Nashville airport after the best weekend I’ve had in a lot of stressful months. One might think, considering where I am, that my days and nights had been filled with wonderful live music. The live part is fairly accurate, but wonderfully unique hits the mark closer than an unqualified wonderful.

The inn where I stayed with my group of Very Special Writer Friends had a music room with a grand piano, an acoustic guitar, a mandolin, a folk instrument I’ve forgotten the name of, a big harp and a little harp. That’s as technical as I can get at this point in my life. Deb brought an electric guitar that her husband built to sound like a 1966 Strat. I heard that phrase a lot. The guitar had a nice tone. Not that anyone present had the chops to do much with it. That wasn’t the point.

The point was to have fun, and Mary has been taking guitar lessons for a year. She deemed the rest of us a supportive audience for her public premier. I felt honored and proud of her as she played four or five Eagle’s songs. Even with a broken finger on her right hand, she acquitted herself well. It was fun. That was the point.

Jules played the piano and a bunch of the rest of us sang, and I use that word loosely, show tunes. I know very few show tunes. Not my genre. Again, not the point. Nor was it the point to discover the exact limits of my out-of-voice range though I now know I can’t reliably hit an E anymore, and a lot of the Ds were downright wobbly. No, the point was that we sang pretty badly, and it was still fun. No judgment. Just doing. Not unlike preschool in some respects, except that I’m a lot less worried about other people’s opinions now than I was when I was four.

As we sat upstairs in a cozy library filled with comfy sofas and armchairs, loads of snacks, coffee, and tea on hand, a mandolin lesson went on down in the music room. Now there we heard some wonderful music, wild, climbing melodies that seemed ready to leap into the treetops and dance on up to the sun. But they came in fits and starts, as lessons are wont to do. I loved them better for that.

There was canned music, too: Elvis snapping out “Jailhouse Rock” in the ladies room at the BrickTop steakhouse; the soothing bluegrass our hosts put on the house music system. Then some of us wanted to hit the honkytonks.

We ended up in Tootsies Orchid Lounge that just happened to have the worst band in America on show. After half an hour of desultory warming up, they launched into the crappiest country rock imaginable. And again, that it was crap didn’t matter as much as just going and seeing what we could find. Plus, I got a good reminder that I don’t go to small, crowded clubs that draw a lot of bachelorette parties for several reasons besides being old enough to receive AARP junk mail. Public vomit, crowd farts, anonymous groping, screeching feedback. All endurable once a decade or so, and possibly worth it had the music been good.

I used to think music had to be at least marginally good to be enjoyable. Ha. In my life, music hasn’t been about performance for a long, long time. It’s about participating. Listening. Playing. Singing. Sharing. When it all works – yay! When it falls a little short of ideal – well, that works, too.

Nicole Peeler belly dances, listens to baaad music, and still teaches at a prestigious university

So one day Rachael and Sophie and I were talking about great bloggers and --swear to God-- we all stopped, gaped at each other, and said, why hasn't Nicole Peeler blogged for the Pens? WTF? Do you think she could take time out of her busy schedule of belly dancing and molding young minds and writing smut to be our guest on Pensfatales?

Nicole said yes, of course, because she is all kinds of awesome and her superhero quality is to be funny and creative and genius on demand.

Check out her Jane True series of Urban Fantasy novels -- you'll thank me. Really. Nicole is h-o-t hot, and so are her books.

Nicole:

Well hello there, Pen Fatales and Readers! I am stupidly excited to be here. I haven’t had the chance to meet all of the Pens, yet, but if I were to begin waxing poetic about Juliet Blackwell, Sophie Littlefield, and Rachael Herron, I would have to write an EPIC. An epic, people. Because that’s how much I adore them.

So when Juliet asked me to guest blog here, I was super excited. I also knew I had to really dig deep, and really share. Nothing else would do for the Pens but brutal honesty. And so that’s what I did.

I like a lot of music. In fact, I would say that, for the most part, I’m pretty hip, pretty happening, pretty “in the now” when it comes to music. Except for one secret I keep buried . . . a secret so dark, so painful, I keep it hidden for fear of reprisal.

I freaking love Roxette.

I love them. I’m sorry. I know that’s like claiming allegiance to Twinkies, or to Hanson, but it’s true. I love the saccharine gooey sweetness that is Roxette. And here’s what I love about them:

• I love that I can take a power stance, and sing along with their songs in a REALLY dramatic way. The way I might, in other scenarios, herald the impending apocalypse, or sing of my lover having fallen on the battlefield, or announce that Sarah Palin has become our President.

• I love that the lyrics often mean absolutely nothing when you actually think about them. Roxette presents us with a philosophical conundrum akin to Schrödinger’s cat: If a song is sung about nothing, but with tremendous passion, does that song actually come to mean something?

• I love all of that spikey, spikey hair.

If you’re still not convinced, try it out. First, take a power stance--legs apart, arms akimbo, and head back so you’re READY TO WAIL. Now play this song and sing along as loudly as you can:

Enjoy the drama and the meaningless, all while imagining your own hair in all its potentially spikey glory. It’s infectious! Granted, it’s infectious in the same way that sexually transmitted diseases are infectious (caught doing things we know we shouldn’t be doing, with people we certainly shouldn’t be doing them with) and yet it’s SO MUCH FUN.

At least it is to me.

Stop judging, meanies.

Cuz I bet y’all have your own secret sin music! But who is brave enough to share?


Bio: Nicole Peeler writes the Jane True series of Urban Fantasy for Orbit Books. She’s also an assistant professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at Seton Hill University, where she mentors up and coming writers in SHU’s MFA in popular fiction. In her spare time, she travels compulsively and belly dances badly, but with great enthusiasm. You can find out more about Nicole and her books at http://nicolepeeler.com.

So I Married A Musician

--Adrienne Miller

I don't have great deal of musical talent. And that's probably being generous. I can't say that I don't have any. About a year ago I discovered that I have a knack for the harmonica and there are a couple of lullabies that, if I sing them really softly, my kids will settle down. So, hey, that's something. But other than that, I've got nothing.

I can't sing. I can't keep a beat going on my own for more than thirty seconds. I tried to play the clarinet when I was in sixth grade and was politely asked at semester's end by the music teacher to find another elective. (Which reminds me, I should totally do a post some time about all the things I've tried and been asked to never do again. The list is surprisingly long. When I fail, I do it spectacularly.)

But I love music. It's my go-to inspiration, my muse. Drop me in the middle of nowhere and as long as I have my ipod, I'm good. Some people need silence to create, but not me. Just about everything in my life plays to a soundtrack. Stories, car trips, even laundry day, they all have their own playlist. 

So, it shouldn't come as a surprise that I married a musician, and a really good one to boot. Tom is the opposite of me in so many ways. He's a self taught musician who can play just about anything with strings-guitar, bass, piano, ukulele. Oh, and drums too. He writes music. He improvises. He has a freakin' degree in jazz theory. I didn't even know there was a theory behind jazz, let alone a degree you could earn in it.

It became apparent pretty early in our relationship though that we did not hear or experience music the same way. I listen to a song the same way I look at a painting like Van Gough's Starlight Over The Rhone. I see it as one thing. I feel frenzy in it, the crazy. I'm moved by the visceral reaction I have to it.

Tom, on the other hand, sees each individual stroke, each little brush of paint. There is no totality. It's not a painting, it's a thousand touches of paint. He might see them as cleverly applied, but they don't fill him with abstract inspiration. 

This has led to a couple of polite disagreements about music in our household. We each have the bands and playlists that can only be turned on when the other one is out. There was the time I told him we had to leave a Dream Theater concert at intermission if there was going to be any hope of saving our marriage, or the time that I drank my way through a night at a combo jazz club just to keep my sanity. 

It goes both ways, of course. There are bands of mine he outright hates - Foo Fighters,  Kate Bush, Counting Crows - all for things he sees as 'musical sins'. And here you didn't even know there was divine morality in notes, did you? He teases me mercilessly about my love for Damien Rice. After seeing on iTunes that a song of his was twenty-one minutes long, he commented, "What is it, five minutes of singing and another sixteen of him quietly weeping in the corner?"

Will we last? Probably. But where some people advise that separate bathrooms or bank accounts make for a happy marriage, I advocate for separate playlists.