My novel, Old Music for New People, is driven in part by its characters’ thoughts and feelings about specific songs and musicians (baseball and food also have prominent roles in the plot). Many of the stories I write, whether long or short, have music painted into them. Sometimes I wonder if I’m a bit too hopeful about the idea of using words to describe what music does to characters emotionally and philosophically–and what it does to readers as well in their everyday lives.
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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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I was so happy to see my story, “Animals with Nowhere to Go”, published this month (January) at Jerry Jazz Musician. I wrote “Animals” specifically to enter the Jerry Jazz 55th short fiction contest last fall. Even though it only wound up short-listed (go to “Chromesthesia “ here to read the wonderful winning story by Shannan Brady) it is an honor to see my work alongside so many other great creative people’s.
I discovered Jerry Jazz about fifteen years ago while researching material for my novel Notes on the Golden Country (still a few years to go before it’s out). At the time, I was writing a rather freeform essay on the effect that Ralph Ellison’s work had on American literature. You can read that brief essay here. JJM is a wonderful repository for all things Ralph Waldo Ellison. I’d found my people.
I am a writer who has a tendency to connect his fiction and essays to musical questions and mysteries. I often go find the Jerry Jazz Musician website whenever I’m feeling beat up and ragged out from projects I’m working on. It’s a great source of inspiration for jazz culture lovers on all sorts of levels with poetry, essays, fiction, photos, videos, and book reviews on everyone from John Coltrane and Thelonius Monk to James Baldwin and jazz chronicler Gary Giddins.
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Today marks the 44th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix’s death. He left this world when he was just 27. Thanks to my good friend Derrick Baldwin for reminding me of this. Derrick is one helluva keyboardist and I love it when his band gets him to sing.
Some people think you’re pathetic if you gush even just a smidge about Jimi. Those people don’t know shit and probably think people on “America’s Got Talent” are artists to follow for life. There’s more to art, though, than standing on stage and having yourself electrified into people’s homes.
Watch the video below and listen to what Jimi says about practicing. What separates Continue reading
Below is the first clip I want to offer. It starts out with a Joni Mitchell interview and ends with a weird video rendition of “Voodoo Chile.” Note how “Mitch” appears to know Italian. That’s impressive as hell.
Joni and Jimi were both on the rise in the late 1960s when they met. We all know how much Jimi revered the Beatles and Bob Dylan. It’s likely he respected a lot of the other innovators of that era as well. And there were many. Certainly by the time Jimi and Joni met, it was clear that Joni’s ability to mix complex melodies with real poetry (not just lyrics) was worthy of Hendrix’s attention.
Joni says that Jimi recorded her concert using a big reel-to-reel tape recorder and Continue reading
My novel, Beyond the Will of God, is now posted at NoiseTrade.com, an amazing website that lets artists offer their music and books to people for free. You can find all sorts of weird and amazing leading edge work at that site offered by everyone from 17-year-old guitar geniuses to hard-to-categorize 56-year-old psychedelic novelists writing for uncompromising lovers of music and weird ideas.
Beyond the Will of God was published on July 4, 2012. It’s been downloaded over 10,000 times from Amazon and even won the Indie Book-of-the-Month Award at WriteReadRate.com (sadly, now defunct). If you go to the NoiseTrade page for the book you’ll find some excellent quotes by respected reviewers. BWG Continue reading
I’ve got a guest post called “Sex, Drugs, Metaphysics, and Rock ‘n’ Roll” over at Roz Morris’s website My Memories of a Future Life. It’s a quick-read, but provides a tour of some of the recordings that influenced me as I worked directly on my novel Beyond the Will of God.
Roz runs a great shop and offers a feature setup weekly for authors to highlight their musical influences called “The Undercover Soundtrack.” You really ought to subscribe and check out some of the past features. Check out the link list at the beginning of each post. It’s a quick resource of all the links in a post that allows you to quickly follow each track the author refers to in their text. Also, one of the coolest things about Roz’s music site is the list of all the previous references you will find at the very bottom of the page. She’s posted so many great pieces on authors’ musical influences, if you just think of a musician or composer, you’ll likely find multiple links to their work in this massive database.
Roz is also the author of the “how to” book Nail Your Novel. It’s a fabulous resource if you’re struggling through writing a novel or if you know someone else who is (hint: give books by independently published authors for the holidays). I bought Nail Your Novel, first because I thought it was a manual on how to make love to an e-book, but also because the notes Continue reading
A friend recently sent me a link to a very moving first-hand remembrance of Jeff Buckley called “Be Your Husband” from over at PurpleClover.com. The piece stayed with me all day until I recalled an alternative prologue to my novel Beyond the Will of God written a few years before I went to press with it. I decided against this particular prologue because at the time I didn’t want to insult the memory of Jeff. I hope that is not your perception here. I offer it just because I think it’s a great tribute in and of itself, and, in the end, this same spirit finds its way into my novel — a spirit you should not forget.
On May 29, 1997, exactly 660 days after the day Jerry Garcia died, Jeff Buckley decided to cool off in the Mississippi River on his way to a recording session in Memphis, Tennessee. According to the only eyewitness, Buckley, fully clothed, waded into the Mississippi for a swim right around dusk. He went out to where the water came up to his waist, lay back, began to float and sing at the top of Continue reading
My novel, Beyond the Will of God, won the E-Book of the month award at the innovative book site, “IWriteReadRate.com.” I am grateful and indebted to all who voted for this funky little psychedelic mystery. Here’s a clip from the IWRR announcement:
It was a close run race last month, with the most total votes yet – great stuff! Without further ado, the winner is…
Beyond the Will of God: A Psychedelic Mystery by David Biddle
Congratulations to David and we hope that he will find the critique helpful to support his writing journey, and continue to inspire his creativity and dedication for literature.
His winning ebook will be the featured one on the iWRR homepage during the current month. David joins our previous winners – to discover who they were, click here.
You can pick the book up through the IWRR site for $0.99. That’s a pretty good deal. I’m raising it back to $4.99 at Amazon later this week. It will go to $6.99 by the end of Continue reading