Tuesday, March 6, 2018

25 Songs, 25 Days, Day 5: A song that reminds you of a best friend.

Welcome to my Month of Music! We're going to talk about one of my biggest muses this month: music. I found this fun little challenge on Facebook, where I will be playing this little game all month on my official author page. Give it a look and play along, and who knows? Maybe you'll get some free books along the way!

I met my best friend in 1980, which means we are in our 38th year. When your friendship approaches its own mid-life, you have scads of songs that go with all kinds of memories, each as important as the last. In fact, when you're as close as my bestie and I have been, there are more things that remind you of your friend/friendship than not.

Jeff is so intrinsically a part of my life he lands in book after book. People told me going into it that having a gay BFF is cliche, but I've never ever let that stop me from planting these magical supporting characters in every. single. book. Having a gay BFF isn't a "cliche," it's simply a fact of life, and those of us lucky enough to have one to call our own believe that EVERYONE should have a gay bestie - because they make life better and fuller and more colorful in every single way.

To prove this, I wrote our story. Kinda. One book in particular where I honored my rich history with the bestie was THE LEFTOVER CLUB, where I lifted many experiences from my past to craft the ultimate story of unrequited love. We were teens in the 1980s, so anything cool I knew about anything was because of my bestie. I plug it all into THE LEFTOVER CLUB, from our favorite shows and movies to our favorite songs.

It is in honor of our 80s childhood, our shared love of all things GG, and the sheer meaning of the song that I present the anthem of all best friends:



Also to honor all BFFs everywhere, today you can download THE LEFTOVER CLUB for *free*. Maybe you could read it with your own best friend. ;)

Monday, March 5, 2018

25 Songs, 25 Days, Day 5: A song that is often stuck in your head.

Welcome to my Month of Music! We're going to talk about one of my biggest muses this month: music. I found this fun little challenge on Facebook, where I will be playing this little game all month on my official author page. Give it a look and play along, and who knows? Maybe you'll get some free books along the way!

A lot of songs get stuck in my head that I don't want to get stuck there, hence the dreaded earworm. It can often depend on the mood of the day, or what my bestie has recently showed me and it's stuck in a loop in my brain. If you've ever shuddered at the phrase, "The cat came back," or "what does the fox say?" you have felt my pain.

And I can't even TALK about the Bird. My sons use this against me. It's not even fair.

But there is a song that is kind of my mental go-to when chaos abounds, and it started way back in the early 1990s. I was a young mother, part of the working poor, paying my dues working at Burger King because it was full-time work that was easy to get and easy to keep. I worked at a restaurant in Fresno that was right in the hub of activity, so the lunch rushes were ridiculous. We'd have a line inside the restaurant that wound all the way out the door, with cars twenty-deep in the drive-thru. Many times I would be at the drive-thru window because I was quick, efficient and could keep the line moving and our drive-thru times down. If I wasn't on the window, I was expediting the orders. It could get very stressful very quickly.

Because I'm a daydreamer, my brain keeps churning no matter what's going on around me. It quickly came to the rescue playing an upbeat song that kept me from losing my mind in the middle of the hectic rushes.



Shiny, Happy People? How could one stress out listening to THAT?

Much later I learned that the song was, in fact, ironic. The title and the slogan were taken from a Chinese propaganda poster, and the timing of the song was a few years after the Tiananmen Square uprising... which is a far, far, FAR cry from a busy afternoon at a Burger King.

It still comes to mind whenever I get stressed and need to center, but in a weird way it also makes me remember that the battles I often fight are miniscule in comparison to many world problems.

Perspective, courtesy of a sugary pop song written in the vein of the Monkees.

Shrewd, REM. Very, very shrewd.

Sunday, March 4, 2018

25 Songs, 25 Days, Day 4: A song that calms you down.

Welcome to my Month of Music! We're going to talk about one of my biggest muses this month: music. I found this fun little challenge on Facebook, where I will be playing this little game all month on my official author page. Give it a look and play along, and who knows? Maybe you'll get some free books along the way!

Honestly this one is a poser. Not sure I have any I listen to just to "calm down." Much of I listen to stirs emotion rather than calms. But I do have one song I have on every edit/writing playlist. It's an instrumental by Buckethead, and I tend to listen to it on repeat when I get into The Zone.

So we'll go with that.

25 Songs, 25 Days, Day 3: A song that reminds you of one/both of your parents.

Welcome to my Month of Music! We're going to talk about one of my biggest muses this month: music. I found this fun little challenge on Facebook, where I will be playing this little game all month on my official author page. Give it a look and play along, and who knows? Maybe you'll get some free books along the way!

I grew up with parents who loved Country Western music. I mean the twangier the better. I escaped as soon as I could, at the age of nine, courtesy of them gifting me my own little radio for Christmas. I found rock and forged my own path, because even at nine that was something I knew I needed to do.

To my mom's credit, she did attempt to learn and like some of my music. It wasn't easy. When I gave her my Christmas list in the early 1980s for bands like Journey and Air Supply, she would turn to my aunt wondering, "What's an air supply?"

One song, however, she absolutely fell in love with - and it had nothing whatsoever to do with me. She found it all on her own, working long hours at a convenience store, with a top 40 channel to keep her company. When I listen to the lyrics, I feel so sad that they resonated with her so strongly, because it really drives it home how lonely she was and how much she sacrificed to keep surviving somehow. After my dad died in 1980, leaving her alone to raise a pre-teen daughter, where she had to scrimp and manage all on her own with very little help, a working woman without a choice, with none of her own family around her to lessen the burden... it was a hard life.

This song reminds me of that. It makes me sad, so I don't listen to it very often. I can only hope that wherever her spirit wandered, she no longer has to wonder about any of these things... that's she's surrounded with the love and support she often didn't get in her life here on Earth.

Thinking of you, Mama. <3

Friday, March 2, 2018

25 Songs, 25 Days, Day 2: A song that reminds you of your most recent ex

Welcome to my Month of Music! We're going to talk about one of my biggest muses this month: music. I found this fun little challenge on Facebook, where I will be playing this little game all month on my official author page. Give it a look and play along, and who knows? Maybe you'll get some free books along the way!

So many songs could describe so many past loves, but one song in particular has always made the rotation whenever my heart gets trampled, since it's not so much about the person who left, but the shell of a person they left behind.

In fact, if you ever hear me playing this in my room, behind closed doors, singing my little heart out though pain might be strangling me to do it, just leave wine and chocolate by the door.

This song is my Angst Anthem because it's not afraid to stack the pain right in front of you, forcing you to punch your way through. My favorite part is the twist of hope at the end, which makes it even more painfully poignant. We can mourn the loss of love without giving up on love itself, and that's a beautiful and necessary sentiment.

Enjoy "Wasted Time," by the Eagles.

Thursday, March 1, 2018

25 Songs, 25 Days, Day 1: A song from your childhood

Welcome to my Month of Music! We're going to talk about one of my biggest muses this month: music. I found this fun little challenge on Facebook, where I will be playing this little game all month on my official author page. Give it a look and play along, and who knows? Maybe you'll get some free books along the way!

Music was such a huge part of my childhood it's hard to pick just one, so let's start from the beginning: the first album I bought for myself.

It was 1979 and I was at my babysitter's house. She put on an album of music I had never heard before, full of fun and bouncy music that immediately made my soul happy.



Yes, it's disco. No, I'm not ashamed of my unabashed love for it.

One song in particular captured my ear in a big way. I could have listened to it over and over and over again, just that one song. So naturally after I left my babysitter's, I had one option. I had to buy the album so I could do just that. I had plenty of records in that time, but they were mostly castoffs - except for my Monkees record which had been given to me by a friend who understood just how much I would love it. (#groupiegirl forever)

This one I bought with purpose, for a reason. I HAD to hear that song again.



"Angeleyes" is perhaps my favorite ABBA song, though I have many. Even when I was nine years old, something in my old soul must have felt a connection with the story told in the song, of a young girl who succumbed to a charming man with bewitching eyes. Ultimately she learns he's a player, because she gets to watch him turn those charms to other girls, and she has to get over her impossible crush, pick up the pieces and move on.

I've had a lot of experience with that since then, so maybe it was a harbinger of things to come. I'm all about the eyes as we know. Abs, asses, youth will change, but the eyes never do. And I'm (still) a sucker for a man who understands how to wield this power.

Recently I learned the backstory of ABBA, which is a #girlpower story if ever there was one. What these two women had to do and sacrifice for their fame, and just how much it cost them, is as heartbreaking as falling for that playah with the sexy eyes. It cast even more shadow on a sad tale told through ironically upbeat music.

This molded me as an artist, I feel. I can tell my tales through sex and humor, but I'm not afraid to rip some scars raw. It is this angst that I bring to my soulful-eyed book boyfriends who have a hard time committing themselves to just one gal.

Y'all know who I'm talking about.

We all have known and loved a guy like this, but when I was nine I was still buckling in for the ride. I knew he was coming, and I knew it would hurt, but I was ready to experience it anyway if it meant I could capture that crush for just one second.

In that way, Vanni was born in thought way back in 1979.

Have a listen and feel free to share a favorite or significant song through your childhood. :)