Coming "Home" to Maine...
Well...here we are again.
I guess I have to figure out where I am before I even start writing, but not knowing hasn't stopped me before.
No, I have not run into this young lady, but where I am, I've seen lots of interesting folks, young and old alike, running about a place that most used to flee in terror the day after Labor Day.
I managed a few days' vacation of sorts back in Maine, which, while not my home state is pretty close to Vermont in a lot of ways. There certainly our differences, but I will let historians and storytellers give you those.
I present to you, my old friend and colleague, John MacDonald.
It's not quite all like that, but coming back here has given me a chance to start thinking about the pact of my life, and hopefully one that has let me knock if back a gear.
Yeah, right.
It's full fucking speed ahead, and arm the photon torpedoes.
The few days off I get from the Radio PA Network, and other things let me do something a little different. For once I didn't have to drive foot to the floor to get to New England. I took a slower pace, and let things sink in, so to speak.
This is partly a technique I'm developing for a new story. I do not expect this to come out for some time; I've learned one thing...it's perfectly fine to let the new idea cook, let the characters form up, and allow a storyline to shake itself out.
I have also had to research some things. I got the chance to do a quick in and out in Boston to check out Ronnie Earl & the Broadcasters at the tiny Regent Theatre in Arlington, MA.
He kicked ass. But you can check it out there.
I also got the chance to bring along and have dinner with my old Rocky Horror mate and longtime friend Sara...she introduced me to the Japanese hotpot (well done, that small place on Mass. Ave.) and offered me a lot more of the culture that I'm doing wrong.
Her assistance in placing you in Japan for many stories is a needed thing. Sara's also pulled zero punches in telling me what she thinks of my work.
As much as it can suck, that's why you need an unbiased editor. You need that written or verbal kick in the balls. You sometimes need a Simon Cowell sound-alike to tell you what you don't want to hear.
This is the bane of self-publishing. Too many people believe their words are "God's" words, and no one can change them, ever.
A few dollars for a professional editor is money well spent, and you can write it off. Do that.
A cover. Oh, the people whose stories have been crushed by the lack of that visual. Think of lousy book covers, ones that look like a child played around with Photoshop and it got thrown against the wall.
My publisher, Sunbury Press Books (the parent of Brown Posey Press, my imprint) does offer such services, but I was very lucky to find Mitch Bentley.
Shameless plug alert!
He has done all my covers, and will do the new one for Searching for Roy Buchanan, which is coming out...well...sometime this fall.
I'm honestly not gonna hurry, even though my ego and most of the rest of me is screaming, NOW!!!
I'm in the second edit of a book that I began in 2007. The story has come a very long way since then, numerous rewrites, changes in style, new scenes, new songs, a lot of alterations.
If you don't know yet: elevator pitch coming.
A 15-year-old Japanese girl named Aki has inherited the ability to time travel from her mother; however, the woman and her husband die before Aki may be instructed in its use.
She and her two older brothers have a breakdown of their vehicle, and they come across strange little old dude who is a retired blues musician. He offers to teach Aki's brother Hiro guitar and schools all of them in the music.
Aki tests her powers, and in a series of at-times dangerous misadventures, the three pass through time, meet legends, those never well known, and regain their unique selves.
And there's two more to follow...maybe more after that.
While here, I did an interview with my old friend Chris White on WMPG Radio in Portland; the Monday Night Talk Radio Club was thirty minutes of interesting and fun community radio; saw my old Rocky Horror/Radio friend DJPJ and we hung for a time.
I traveled up to Bath, near the scenes of many years of vacations, where I once lived, to WJTO, which I managed for Bob Bittner. Bob and his wife Raisa are living a quiet life up in the midcoast, always a pleasure to see them.
Some secondary road traveling up to Saint Joseph's, where I had the pleasure of having lunch with Dr. Edward Rielly, my former English prof, recently retired. Anyone who attended SJC would have met him, and come away with a good feeling. I certainly always did.
The good doctor has taken an interest in my writing...he read an early draft of Searching... a long time ago, and he offered important advice. He's read my others...he liked Parasite Girls, A Moment in the Sun, and he really liked the latest, Live from the Cafe.
He isn't the first to say this could be a film or a TV show. You know, it could.
Development time! Where be developers? Need some help here.
He is also a most accomplished and prolific author.
The man. We have admitted that each have so many projects to get to!
Yeah, that is so, but this is what drives me, and has the past 12 years or so. I have to keep at it. To me, beyond working in broadcasting for all this time, here is the other way to make a difference.
You might not get this, or you might. I tend to think the current generations might support me on this one: life is not about all the money you make, and how much shit you have, and how many men/women you pull.
To me, it's about making a difference.
I've had some really odd moments in my life where I could have made a difference, and failed. And where I did. Little things.
Those little things do mean something for others. And if you know you did a right thing, it's not for you to put up on a board, but it's okay to remember it, and know that you can do more.
Broadcasting offers little things. Playing a request (not exactly do-able in commercial radio anymore), getting in a shoutout, doing something behind the scenes to help the talent, being the setup person. That's how you do it.
If you're a grunt doing the setup at a remote, you make a difference. Do it well.
If you are the front person for a station somewhere, you represent them. Do it right.
Anyway, I digress.
Being here in Maine, I am reminded I want to be back in New England, but the cost of doing so makes it prohibitive, unless you choose an outlying area. That is unlikely to be a consideration for another 20 years, but whatever.
I'm good where I am now, and hope to stay that way.
But the writing, always the writing.
Where are we now?
Searching... is being made ready. Aki and the gang are going to get their coming out party very soon. The question will be: do I focus the next 2-3 years on the sequel, and the end of the trilogy?
The goal for what I call the Sweet Dreams Series is three, with potentially three more, after the gang is allowed to grow up a little more.
Then I have a non-SDS pipeline of young/new/adult stories, dealing with human conditions, coming of age, social issues, and just fucking life in general.
Getting these to the next level is a problem. An agent would do; another publisher, a bigger one, would do. Someone with hooks into the TV/Film/Graphic Novel worlds would do.
I'll find a way to obnoxiously blast you with this story, and all that can follow.
If anything, I'm encouraged to know my style is changing, for the better. I don't like asking people to buy my books; I realize money is not free, and if you chance across this blog, do you really want to spend money on someone you do not know?
Perhaps you do. Now, you can also go to brownposeypress.com -- you can see my latest works, and those of my colleagues.
The work does not stop, and the writing does not, either. This is what I plan to leave behind; I hope to have a record that says, even if not bestsellers, they were good enough that someone liked them.
I do realize that some people will get uncomfy with my writing, and some of the scenes, etc. Fine. Life is that way...often.
The relief I do get is that certain subjects I do handle with a certain ability, but not always from experience. Perhaps more from instinct, or, what I might have liked, had it gone that way.
Either way...the new one's coming out soon. I've enjoyed being back in the green areas of New England, and I hope one day to come back home to this part of the world for good. I have more places to see, and get to. I'm confident that'll happen when the time is right.
In the meantime, back to the editing I go.
Peace, Out.
