Did some of you enjoy the excerpt from Hastings?! I hope you did! I’m super excited about this one. I intend to have a lot of fun writing it! Be prepared for lots of verbal sparring between our protagonists. Oh, and also look for an upcoming poll (as soon as I figure out how to do one) concerning naming one of the characters. I’m in a pickle about what to call someone.
I was listening to McCartney: The Lyrics again today and the episode was on Here Today. Are you familiar with that song? Paul wrote it as a love letter to John Lennon after he was killed. I still remember John Lennon’s murder. It happened when I was heavily in my Beatles phase. So the whole episode was filled with stories about the two of them. I think a lot of us, at least me, forget they were childhood friends. They were just young teens when they met and had all sorts of adventures together, and grew up together. That song always makes me sad, but in a good way. I remember seeing him sing it in concert. It’s just him and a guitar in the spotlight. Very moving.
The next episode was Live and Let Die. Story about that: I have loved Paul McCartney since I was about 12 or 13. I finally had the chance to see him (years ago now) but I couldn’t find anyone to go with me. He was literally half an hour away and I wasn’t going to see him. The day of the concert I said fuck this, went on StubHub and bought two tickets (for about half price, actually), and when my son came home from school I told him, we’re going to see Paul McCartney. He didn’t want to go (he was in middle school), but I made him. He fell asleep half way through (Paul likes to give you your money’s worth), but when the pyrotechnics started on “Live and Let Die” he woke up (along with all the other sleeping kids) and he loved it. And he loves to tell people now that Paul McCartney was his first concert. So I got to check one off my bucket list.
Anyway, as I was listening to Paul talk about writing the song, and hearing snippets of the song played throughout the episode, it struck me that this is Hastings’s song! I like to have songs on playlists that represent characters. I have them for most of my books. “The House That Built Me” was Conn’s song in Cherry Pie, for instance. (Future post on character playlists, maybe?) “Live and Let Die” will now officially be Hastings’s song. Now I have to find songs for the other main characters. This is an integral part of getting me quickly into the mood of the story and the character’s heads. I don’t use them for the secondary characters, just my main love interests. It’s like a shorthand to jog my creativity. You may not remember, but in the first book Hastings had a speaking role in, Fight for Love, he says, “I always get to kill them.” So when I heard the lyrics, “if this ever changing world in which we live in, makes you give it a cry…say live and let die” I immediately thought of Hastings. Perfect.
My Favorite Things This Week:
This clip of Kermit the Frog doing “Same As It Ever Was” from the Talking Heads. I can’t get enough of it. I don’t like the original song, but I could listen to Kermit do it all day long. lol I just saw something on Instagram where someone was saying what we need right now is a muppet remake of a classic film, with some big star in it, similar to A Muppet Christmas Carol (one of my favorite Christmas films. I will fight you over this.) Take my money and more muppets!!
This short article on Medieval dog names (Joliboye?! Bestofall?! I call dibs on these for my future dogs.) And this fabulous song, also dog related.
New Book Rec: Powerless* by Lauren Roberts . I read it on vacation and loved it. It’s clearly heavily influenced by The Hunger Games*, but don’t let that deter you in a “I’ve already read something like that” way. It’s different enough to stand on its own. The main characters are really well drawn and fleshed out, and you fall in love with them and root for them. Even though it’s in first person, which I don’t usually like, you get two first person point of views. And you know going in that’s it’s a cliffhanger. It clearly says the first book in yada yada, so that was no surprise. I can’t wait to read the next one, Reckless*!
*Amazon Associate links. I may get a commission if you by anything after you click on these links.
Quote of the Week:
Don’t do what you can do—try what you can’t do.
William Faulkner