Tag Archives: fly-by

Fly-By: Slow music week

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Yeah, as always, the first couple of weeks of the new year are always scant when it comes to new releases.  I’ve been busy doing a lot of book editing, so instead I’ve been listening to random things here and there.   Not much to report on, sadly.

However, I did notice that my birthday (next Friday) will contain releases by Chairlift, Savages, Shearwater, Steven Wilson, Suede, Tortoise and Tricky, so there may be a bit of mp3 purchasing and stream listening going on this coming week.

Hopefully I shall have more to report by then!

I should, however, share this absoutely darling three-piece that I found on NoiseTrade the other week called (appropriately) The Feels:

Until next time!

 

[Of course, I could comment on the passing of Lemmy and David Bowie.  I sort of knew about Motorhead, and that they appeared on a quite hilarious episode of The Young Ones singing “Ace of Spades”, and I have all kinds of fond memories watching David Bowie’s videos back in the day.  I was actually quite a passive fan, liking many of his singles but never quite getting around to buying the albums until 1997’s Earthling.  (For a while I also had a lingering dislike of Hunky Dory due to my freshman year roommate in college listening to it on endless repeat, much to my severe annoyance.)  Still, I definitely appreciate all that both men have given to the music field.  They will be sadly missed.]

Update for Today 1: I have a shiny new book!

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Yes, as a matter of fact I do have a music post coming up later today! Now that things have finally quieted down some for me, it’s time to get started on the weekly music posts again!

But first, check it: I just released my first novel today!

ados 072515 ps template 1 pm02

Smashwords
Barnes & Noble
Kobo
Also available in iBook (through iTunes) and other fine establishments, including your local brick-and-mortar bookstores that carry e-books on their websites!

It’s not available on Amazon just yet (there’s a few hurdles I need to jump over first), but the Smashwords site does offer the mobi format, so Kindle users are not left out. 🙂

It’s also not yet available as a trade paperback, but I will be working towards that within the next month or so.  Stay tuned for details!

***

Heh.  Okay, I promise I’ll try to keep the shameless plugging to a minimum from now on.  I’ve set up a “Buy Stuff” page here at WiS, which I hope to fill up with other lovely novel and nonfic projects I have in store for the future.  And don’t forget to come over and visit my writing blog, Welcome to Bridgetown, if you are so inclined!

Stay tuned for a music post later today!

Oh yeah, that’s right. I have a blog thingie!

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Hi gang!  Humblest apologies for leaving you in the lurch for nigh on a month.  It’s been quite busy here in Spare Oom, between the Day Job, prepping A Division of Souls for publication, and going to Outside Lands, I’m afraid I’ve been a bit lax in the blogosphere.  That’s hopefully going to change this week, as I now have a Best Laid Plan to post here on a weekly basis again.  [That on top of said Day Job, promoting ADoS and prepping The Persistence of Memories next, among other things.  Thus calling it a Best Laid Plan.  And you know how those often work out for me.]  [ANYWAY]

Speaking of Best Laid Plans, my plan to use my nicer camera at Outside Lands was sadly put aside during the very first band I saw (The Family Crest), in which I was told by OL Security to put it away, as it was bigger than acceptable.  I called bullshit on it, but as mentioned elsewhere, I don’t want to be that photographer, and duly put it away.  It put a bit of a damper on my mood, but it didn’t ruin it.  Instead I just chose to enjoy the weekend, eat horrible food, and get a nice sunburn in the process.  I just don’t have any decent pictures to post.  Sorry about that.

In other music news, I’ve been a bit backed up in my downloads as of late.  This past summer has been a bit thin in the release area, which is actually kind of expected, considering Q3 releases don’t kick into high gear until late August.  I’ll go through my collection in a day or so and report on what I’ve enjoyed so far.

Until then, enjoy a great track from The Family Crest, with a video filmed about three blocks away from our apartment!  That’s Geary Boulevard, and he’s walking from 22nd Avenue (he lights up in front of Sakana Bune, which is our favorite sushi boat restaurant) and ends up at the Blarney Stone the next block over.  At the end you can also see the 38 Muni go by.  🙂

Fly-By: Still here, still rockin’ out, just super busy

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Hey gang!  Sorry to keep you waiting for another WiS blog update, but in the past few weeks I’ve given myself a ridiculously tight deadline:  I will, with Best Laid Plans finally coming to fruition, be self-releasing Book I of the Bridgetown Trilogy in the Mendaihu Universe (aka A Division of Souls).  I am doing nearly all the work myself: the final line edit, the e-book cover, the formatting, the uploading to the e-pub site, and so on.  The deadline I’ve given myself is 8/20, with the drop date of the book being 3 September.

In other words, I’m going to be stupidly busy in the next couple of weeks.  I’ll be scarce here, but once it’s released, I should have more time to entertain and educate you here at this here blog.

In the meantime, here’s some tunage that’s been on heavy rotation here in Joncworld to tide you over.  See you soon!

Fly-By: Still Here, Just Busy

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Hey there!

Sorry I haven’t been able to update at all this week…I’ve had an extremely busy few weeks with Day Jobbery stuff — training, office visits, and whatnot — which has put a bit of a strain on my writing schedule.  You probably know already that I hate it when that happens, but it is what it is.  The plus side is that the remaining time I do have for writing is not being wasted–I’m getting a lot of new fiction done longhand!  Woohoo!

That said–I’ll also be on a mini-vacation at the beginning of April, so I won’t be able to update then either.  SO!  This means that you will most likely be seeing the next update from me around 7 April or thereafter.

In the meantime, y’all play nice until I return!

Coming Soon: End of Year Review and Compilation

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Well hi there!  Sorry to keep you waiting.  Things have been busy here in Spare Oom with various projects, but I can see clarity at the end of this crazy tunnel, so we shall expect to see an update here soon!

Considering it’s now December, this of course means you’ll be seeing all sorts of End of Year Best-Of lists from all the music blogs and sites, and this one will be no different.  We’ve seen some really great albums in 2014, and I’ll be going over a few within the next few weeks.  I’ll also be creating my end-of-year compilation, which I will also share with you once it’s finished.

Thanks for waiting!  See you soon!

Fly-By: Where I’ve Been, Where I’m Going

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Oof–Sorry for the huge gap in updating, folks! It’s been one hell of a crazy month and a half, as I’ve been quite busy with all sorts of things:

–As you know, Q4 tends to be all sorts of wacky in whatever job you’re in, and my job is no different. There’s only so many hours in a day, and unfortunately WiS had been squeezed out of the equation.
–I’ve been focusing primarily on my newest fiction project Two Thousand;
–I took part in Inktober and got nearly to the end before it too got squeezed out, but not before it re-awoke my long-dormant love for drawing. I now own some pretty nifty art pens that I shall be using more often.
–I’ve also been squeaking in some extra personal journaling that’s putting a lot of thoughts and ideas into order.

So! What does all this mean? Where am I going from here? What’s the plan, Stan?

Okay, let’s see what we have:

1. Some semblance of scheduling for posting. At present I’ve scheduled the weekends for WiS and WtBT updates, as I seem to have more time then.
2. A wider range of things to post about. I’ll still be talking music here as always, but I think I’d like to, shall we say, expand my palate. Talk about different genres other than my beloved college radio or stuff wot I listened to while writing.
3. Maybe utilizing the internal editor a bit more. Certainly I try not to write epic posts about whatever I’m in the mood to write about, though that doesn’t always happen. I tend to write very beefy articles by default. I’d like to try shorter passages as well. [This would also give me reason to write more articles during the week, as I wouldn’t be spending nearly as much time on them.]

I also have a few other ideas floating around…maybe another Blogging the [band] series? New Release reviews? Bargain Bin Finds? About Collecting Music? Request Line (suggest I write about a band/song/etc.)? We shall see.

There’s also the fact that I only got about halfway with my Britpop Meme posts before I got sidetracked. I promise I shall continue that as well.

Thank you for your patience! We shall (hopefully) have another update this weekend!

Fly-By: brb, heading to the UK for Worldcon

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Hi there!  Sorry to keep you waiting on a new post.  I’ve had a somewhat busy schedule the last few weeks and have not had the time to post anything new.  Vacation starts in just a few days and I’ve been squeezing as many last-minute things in as I can.

We’ll be heading to the UK this weekend for Worldcon and much sightseeing, so I don’t believe I’ll have time to update the site during that time.  I will have access to do so, but it’s a matter of finding the time at that point, so thought I’d warn you ahead of time.  We shall see.

We’ll be in London the entire time, which means that I will most likely be taking all kinds of music-related pictures and posting them here upon return.  That, in fact, was one of the main plans of mine outside of the convention, because I’m a dork like that. 🙂

See you on the flip side!

Fly-by and Shameless Plug Time!

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Yeah, best laid plans and all that…I had some interesting ideas to toy with for a new post, but kind of got distracted by my Great Office Cleanup Project.  In short, I decided that my old arrangement of printed manuscripts on the bottom shelf (and partially blocked by a file box) and unsorted piles of stuff on the shelf above wasn’t working.  What I thought would take one day ended up taking both Saturday and Sunday, as the cleanup also included the partially obscured bookcase next to the loveseat, the four small storage boxes next to the desk, and the rest of the tall black bookshelf.

All told, I got rid of about twenty ancient spiral notebooks, most of them over a decade old, that I haven’t used in ages–I ripped out what few pages I did use and sorted them into their proper piles and threw the remains in the recycling.  There’s also a box full of stuff that can either be shredded or tossed, and one final smaller box of non-writing personal bits and bobs that I need to sort through.  I reorganized by putting all related project stuff together, putting trunked and unimportant projects down on the bottom shelf, and current projects up on the second.  All poetry and journals are together on another shelf, and all the reference books are up on top.  In short, it’s still a bit messy, but at least I know where the hell everything is now!

We shall return to our regularly scheduled writing this week, and I’m planning to get another post out ASAP. Thanks again for your patience!

 

That said…

SHAMELESS PLUG TIME!

Please check out the Kickstarter for Decomposure’s latest possible album project!

I’m plugging his project for two three reasons:

1.  I’m a big fan of his music, and it’s worth checking out, especially 2012’s Eating Chicken.  He’s done everything from experimental sound textures to lovely balladry to quirky angular pop.  He’s quite the excellent songwriter and I love what he’s done creatively.

2. I like the idea he came up with for this current project, as it’s got some parallels to what I’m doing here with Walk in Silence, by revisiting his childhood via roadtrip and writing an album about it.  I’m quite curious as to how this will unfold and would love to hear new music from him.

3.  Like many creative people, he actually records music as a labor of love, as he actually has a full-time career outside of the music field.  I’ll pay forward to anyone who’s that dedicated to their craft.

So yeah–check it out, and give him some love and cash if you can! 🙂

Fly-by: I’m wide awake and these memories can’t wait

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So where have I been for the past month? I had planned on getting some blogging done here, but as you can see, there’s been a bit of a delay. A good delay, though. Since my last entry here, I’ve been working hard at the Walk in Silence outline. It’s quite long at 30+ pages and around 11k words (granted, a lot of those are song and album titles I may use), and I just finished it up a few days ago.  That took a lot of my time, because I didn’t want to forget any details.  Am I going to use all of it?  Probably not…I can already see a few places where I’ve repeated myself, and I can fix that when I come to the writing part of it.

So how am I going to write this, anyway?  I have absolutely no background in writing nonfiction other than blog posts here and elsewhere, where I wax poetic either about past personal events or write overviews about albums and/or bands.  But really…I had no background writing science fiction and fantasy before I started the Mendaihu Trilogy, so I have to start somewhere, right?  And I figure–just start at the beginning, let it flow and not worry too much about the wording just yet.  Just like my fiction.

I started writing it just a few days ago and I only have about 1500 words so far, but once I get back into the groove of writing again, I’m sure the word count will rise.

So yes…that’s what I’ve been doing.  I wanted to give as much focus to the outline as possible and prep myself for the Big Writing Push, and because of that, a lot of my blog posting fell by the wayside.  [I’ve also been filling in for a vacationing coworker and doing double-duty for the last two weeks, so there’s been absolutely no downtime during the day to sneak in some extra work.  She’s returning tomorrow, so I’ll have more breathing room quite soon.]

 

So!  That being said…as mentioned over at the other blog, starting soon I’ll be working on new blog posts very soon, perhaps starting off once a week and maybe expanding further down the line.  I still have a backlog of ideas I’d like to hit on, so expect to see those quite soon!