Annie and Her Dirt Bike, Japanese Rockers, a Mousy Latina, and Pineapples

Leave it to me to think that finalizing a 900+ page novel and writing for two web sites and being in a blues band and managing the sales and marketing of Solstice isn’t enough to keep myself busy with. No, apparently, I thought it’d be a bright idea to also take on the task of self-recording a pseudo-album.

But there I was, taking the last week of August and the first of September to record eight original songs and two covers using my Mac’s Garageband program, my good friend Brian’s Fender strat, my Fender bass, and some really shoddy drum work (at least until I decided to let the computer’s drum tracks do it for me) to finalize my so-called album. Oh, and some really, really bad singing on my behalf. But hey, I set it out as a goal for 2008: record the songs I’d written last year, before I forgot them or gave up on them. So there I was, doing just that.

The result was a somewhat rough mix of eclectic tunes, some of them straight-out punk rock, others more indie/alternative, and two odd covers (The Bluehearts’ “Linda Linda,” and an old Spanish song entitled “Ni Tu Ni Nadie”). I consider it a first-draft album, mostly because my guitar work is sloppy, and my vocals, well, they’re just plain bad. But at least I came up with a goofy album and band name for it! The band? The Pineapple Brigade. The album title? Pineapple Diplomacy. It makes sense. Really!

Still, my hope is to some day get a band together, and recording this proto-demo was a first step toward that. While I’m in a blues band now, my long-term goal is to form a punk/pop band to play the kind of upbeat, infectious, melodic music that I just love from bands like Dirt Bike Annie, The Snow Fairies, Deerhoof, Polysics, and GO!GO!7188! And I hope to form a band with people who just want to have fun and go nuts onstage. This isn’t about shooting for fame, fortune, or the sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll lifestyle. Certainly not at my age! ^_^ It’s about having fun, and loving the music, and occasionally putting on a crazy, energetic show at the local clubs. Because I really miss playing rock onstage, losing myself in the music, and just thrashing about like it’s no one’s business.

So sometime next week, I’ll finally be updating and setting up my MySpace page (yes, I actually have one), and uploading a few of my original songs, just for the hell of it. I hope, at some point, I can point prospective musicians toward it so they get a sense of what I like playing, and then move on from there. Because it’s so hard to find people out here in Michigan who even know who Dirt Bike Annie and GO!GO!7188! are, and I figure the best way to show them what I mean by ‘upbeat punk/pop music with a Japanese-rock flavor’ is by playing it! ^_^

Anyway, enough babbling about the Pineapple Diplomacy proto-demo.

Still plugging away with the new rewrite of Inventing Vazquez. I’m almost at the half-way point, so I’m confident that I’ll begin an agent search sometime in October or November. Recording the album really did divert a lot of time away from the book, so I’m clamping down and giving Liliana’s story the focused attention it deserves.

Still, it’s an amazingly fun and rewarding process doing this rewrite. They say that a book is always a work in progress, and working on the rewrite, I have to emphatically agree. It’s amazing how many new ideas pop out at you where you least expect them. Ideas for new jokes, quips, or more effective prose in spots you once thought were perfectly fine. I’ve stumbled into new opportunities during this rewrite, finding new spots where Liliana can demonstrate a bit more spunk and snark than her earlier draft incarnations. Although her story follows a sort of mousy-girl-finds-her-spine narrative, her actual narration was always meant to demonstrate she had a lot more brains than her early exploits suggested. Now, I think that’s finally coming out with some carefully-timed quips, sarcastic commentaries, and real-time reactions to the events unfolding before her. I guess time will tell if Liliana and I can pull it off. But I’m absolutely adoring her character, and I hope future readers will too.

Anyway, I’ll be posting my MySpace info soon, in case you want to hear some really rough punk/pop music, and some atrocious singing.

Now, I’m off to build an aircraft carrier or something.

It's official! Solstice is obscure!

Who would have thought? Solstice was voted the Top Obscure Feminist SF Novel at Feminist SF – The Blog!

I wanted to take this chance to thank everyone who voted for my novel. Thank you so much! The surprising success Solstice has managed would never have been possible without the help and support of you, my friends, family, and readers. And a special thanks to the folks over at Feminist SF for holding this vote.

So what’s next? Well, hopefully this will give Solstice some much-needed exposure, now that things have been kind of quiet for it for a while. Regardless, I think making it to this Top 10 list will only help down the road, especially when contacting an agent regarding Inventing Vazquez.

Speaking of which, I’m about 20 percent through the next re-write, and pleased with the progress and results. I’m focusing now on making the writing as tight and descriptive as possible, and am confident I’ll have an agent-ready draft within a couple of months. That’s the hope, anyway.

Unfortunately, I seem to have a real knack for distracting myself with other fun stuff. Aside from now writing for Urban Molecule, I’ve officially joined another band. Well, it’s the same line-up I was in with last year at the blues competition, but this time we’re under a new name and a new direction. And, if that weren’t enough, I’ve finally figured out the wonders of recording music on Garageband on my Mac, and have started recording my own songs. It’s amazing what you can do with a little laptop and a $90 pre-amp… I’m really excited about this, because one of my goals for 2008 was to record my own ‘album’, and I think now I have the motivation and gear to do so. Plus, I relish the challenge of self-recording an album and playing all the instruments myself. Since I’m nowhere near as good a guitarist or drummer as I am a bassist, I’m sure it’ll sound like crap, but I’m not too worried. It’s not like I’m going to make a career out of it ^_^;

Anyway, thank you all again for helping to give Solstice this humble recognition.