Old Music for New People

On Tour with My Book

~ davidbiddle ~ Leave a comment

I am grateful as heck to all the people who have been enjoying Old Music for New People, and to the team at The Story Plant working hard to get folks to pay attention to this story that wants to touch your heart. Sometimes I get quick texts or messages on Facebook where people tell me how engrossed they are in the story or that they’re having fun with 100 pages to go.

Gender identity is the big story driver in this novel, but there’s so much more to identity than the simple binary opposites of boy or girl. I don’t want to give the story away, but when one person questions who they are, whole families (extended families, in fact) become part of the questioning process. They become part of the answer, too. Things get messy. They can be intense. But the only way people grow is through messy, intense questions and answers.

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What Does Gender Mean, Anyway?

Old Music for New People
~ davidbiddle ~ 2 Comments

I’m happy to say that my new novel Old Music for New People comes out early next week (click here to go to its main landing page). As anyone who loves teens knows, stories about young people coming of age are stories about all of us. Without doubt, my intention with this novel was to write about family, love, and the problem everyone has trying to figure out who they are in this nutso world. Old Music for New People takes place at a time well before the covid pandemic ever hit the world. Hopefully it will be a balm to readers in this time of great uncertainty. Below you will find text from a letter my publisher’s staff and I prepared to go out to editors and reviewers everywhere. I think it’s a great introduction as well for potential readers.

Dear Editors, Reviewers, (and Readers),

A few years ago, one of the younger generation in our admittedly hyper-progressive extended community declared that they were considering a gender transition. Sadly, no matter how well-meaning and supportive the rest of us wanted to be, we wound up responding somewhat incompetently in how we handled this new knowledge. It became painfully obvious to me in our collective ineptness that gender transition moments are actually huge tests of love and insight and family intelligence.

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Old Music for New People: Coming Soon

Ivy and Rita waiting for the sunrise
~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

My coming-of-age novel, Old Music for New People, will be published by the independent publishing house The Story Plant on December 7th. Go here or click on the cover widget (near the top right on the screen if you are using a big screen; probably down low on the scroll if you are using a small screen) to go to the book’s landing page. You’ll find all the links you could ever need to pre-order the paperback and digital versions now. Reviewers with NetGalley accounts can now also access the ARC (Advance Reviewer Copy) at the NetGalley site. This is my first official novel, so I can use any and all the reviews I can get.

So what’s the book about? Well, there’s a big conversation going on in this country right now about gender identity. Mainstream media tends to focus on silly issues like the bathrooms people are allowed to use and whether transgender girls should be permitted to play sports with other girls.

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