World o' words: What I'm up to right now

1. Editing my friend Jeannette's novel. It's beautifully written and incredibly strong, but it needs content organising to get it ready for an agent and then to a publisher's desk.

2. Editing my friend Erika's 9K mystery story: she writes in the "crip noir" genre, since she's been wheelchair-bound since birth. A damned good story, but needs editing before submission.

3. Was working with the first round of my excellent Egmont editor Greg Ferguson's edits to Dark in the Park; there will almost surely be a second round (although the edits were tiny, more clarification than actual rewriting), and I have an introduction to write.

4. Soon there will be first-pass pages for While My Guitar Gently Weeps. YES. And I have the cover, but I'm not allowed to share yet, and that had better change PDQ, because it kicks serious ass.

5. Finished my loving friend-look at Neil Gaiman, "A Night on the Tiles", for Green Man Review. Neil got to approve it first, and did, bless him: when the man tells me it's "beautifully written", I preen. Oh, and HUZZAH! for both a strong opening for "Coraline" and oh, yeah, winning the Newbery for The Graveyard Book.

6. To do for Green Man: my retrospective on Steeleye Span, reviewing a book about Led Zepellin, a look at the history of Donovan.

7. Sitting down with Peter S. Beagle (hallo, darling Uncle Fox, if you're by any chance reading this!) and a tape recorder. The 23 August issue of Green Man is the official Summer Queen Deborah Grabien issue. Yay me! Peter's interviewing me for it.

8. Working on Kinkaid #7, Even It Up. New tour bus, old guitars.

And in the realm of visual words, Rocker Chick Media is putting together two book trailers: one for While My Guitar Gently Weeps, which will be available for public viewing. And one for Marlene Stringer, literary agent extraordinaire, to use as a pitch tool for Julian Dawson's monumental, staggering biography of Nicky Hopkins, a subject very close indeed to my heart. That one won't be for public view, which is a shame. It's going to be beautiful.

At this moment in time, I'm slacking. Playing music - my guitars were suddenly calling my name, especially my PRS.

In which the writer feels cold for a moment

You know what kind of sucks? Writing JP Kinkaid wondering if his MS is jumping from r/r to progressive.

This is the problem with writing what's real for the character, and why being a writer wannabe is a waste of time and energy. When you're in service to the story, there are times you're going to bleed.

And that's just the way it is, says the woman who's been in relapse mode for the past five days, and who is wondering the same thing about her own phasing.

Back to working on book.

Whoohoo! Rock & Roll Never Forgets reviews!

From Publishers Weekly (they spelled Kinkaid wrong, and have been contacted about fixing that):

Grabien (New-Slain Knight) builds the rocking first of a new series around guitarist John “JP” Kincaid, a member of Blacklight, a legendary British rock group on a par with the Rolling Stones. In New York City, where Blacklight has come to perform, sleazy celebrity journalist Perry Dillon interviews a reluctant JP for an unauthorized tell-all bio of the band. When Perry turns up dead in JP's dressing room, JP's longtime girlfriend, Bree Godwin, becomes the prime suspect. Perry had found some skeletons in JP's past about Bree, not to mention JP's estranged wife, Cilla, and drug-related issues. The investigation by NYPD Lt. Patrick Ormand inspires JP to rethink the last 25 years—a rollercoaster ride of sold-out concerts, drug rehab and enduring love. JP decides it takes more than just “sitting on my bum” to find the real killer. Grabien has created a down-to-earth hero who delivers a brisk upbeat message. (July)

From Kirkus (who have the rep for basically hating everything:

An aging rock star and his live-in lady become involved in a murder.

John “JP” Kinkaid plays the guitar in Blacklight, a wildly successful British rock band with more than a passing resemblance to the Rolling Stones. Although still married to drug-addicted Cilla, he’s lived for 25 years with Bree Godwin, a very private person who’s supported him through drug and alcoholic addiction and a diagnosis of MS. Their good life in San Francisco is shaken up by unauthorized biographer Perry Dillon. Since Blacklight has limited Dillon’s access, band members are doubly shocked when he’s found murdered backstage at Madison Square Garden.

Bree, who rarely goes on tours, is a person of interest to NYPD Homicide Detective Patrick Ormand because she discovered the body. The crisis forces JP to take a long look at the life he’s been leading, and he doesn’t like what he sees. He realizes that Bree has always supported him while he took her for granted, even returning to Cilla several times for short periods when she begged for his help. Something in the background of the other equally impure band members may be the motive for Dillon’s murder.

The author of the Haunted Ballad series (New-Slain Knight, 2007, etc.) comes up with something worlds apart but equally pleasing: a deft mystery nicely integrated with a fascinating backstage look at a rock star’s life.

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You know what I really love (beside the fact that both reviews are essentially raves)? That they get it. The Chronicles were a what-if look at a happy ending that didn't happen, and came out of asking myself "Ok, what would we have been like thirty years later had things gone differently?"

And both reviewers got the "coming of age in your fifties" thing.

I seem to have written it right.

Busy busy busy, now with non-fiction!

I've got three - yep, three - non-fiction music-related pieces up at the brand new shiny spanking issue of Green Man Review.

Love and Crit and the Whole Damned Thing is a rumination on the differences between cerebral and visceral absorption of music. It's centered around a nifty conversation with David Smay, author of Swordfishtrombones, his look at the Tom Waits album of the same name.

I review two CDs, both of them projects helmed by Danny Carnahan (his Celtic Grateful Dead tribute band, Wake the Dead, and his combo Camogie):

And, finally, I review a sampler by the band Silverwheel.

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In the fiction realm, I have two pieces of short fiction, both inspired (memo: I really dislike that word, but I'm damned if I can think of a synonym at the moment) by Richard Thompson songs. One, The Ties That Bind, I may have already linked to; it's an O Henryish look at poverty in America and what it does to relationships. The second, Sunrise, is a look at a selkie who has done his time on land, and is heading back to the water.

Update on Kinkaid 6, aka Uncle John's Band: we've reached the projected 2/3 point in the book (61,000 words and change! 67%! YAY!) and we're heading for the straightaway (should I do a Kinkaid with The Race Is On as the title? Hmmm). And the Shiny New Project, a not-Kinkaid called These Dreams, has its prologue done. Need to be switching back and forth between the two books, and it's likely to be insanity-inducing. I'm just lucky I've got sixteen wonderful WIP readers for that new one...

Anyway. Back to work.