When Jonah was here for my house concert, he did a lot of patter and talking between song sets. I personally found this fascinating and almost better than the songs themselves. I mean, I like the songs, don't get me wrong, but to me the best part of a concert is getting to know the artist a little better.
(On one of my first not-quite-dates with the husband - aside, I was dating someone else at the time, but husband tagged along with us, and I sat between the two men, and both me and the husband consider the concert fondly and part of several long-standing personal jokes. Ok, when is this aside going to end? - we went to see Spin Doctors, Gin Blossoms and Cracker in concert. With some weird flavor of the month drummer named Vince performing in between. He was terrible. Just so you know. I don't think I've ever, ever seen a more terrible musical act, and that includes the 2nd grade piano recitals that I've been dragged to. No one should ever be dragged to those who loves music and is not related to the performers. Anyway, Cracker was very, very tired of being on tour and tried to get the audience cheering about them only having four more days until their tour was over. The audience, needless to say, was unimpressed. I mean, I'm sorry they were tired, I really, really am, but we paid just as much for our tickets as the people in Vancouver who were their 2nd tour stop, so we felt a little ripped off. Or at least I did. And I never, ever bought another Cracker album. I'm sure that, financially speaking, this didn't hurt them any... but it just goes to show you... knowing how to talk to your audience is IMPORTANT.)
Ok... now that my cold medicine has had it's say in my morning...
What the hell was I talking about? Oh! Right.
Jonah said, "The thing about doing this for a while is that I get to begin a lot of stories with 'well, it was the first time I did this...' and then tell an interesting story about the first time I wrote a song about a ghost. Or the first time I performed a song cover. Or the first time a political group in Germany wrote me to ask if they could use my music as a rallying soundtrack."
I've been doing this writing gig for a while now. And the publishing gig for almost two years. Well, two years in May. So I'm starting to collect my own set of "firsts."
The first week on the "trying to treat this writing thing like an actual job..." I had to take my first sick day.
Really, that just doesn't sound like a cool story. But my whole house has the flu. Like, the actual flu. Not man-flu or a bad cold, but actual influenza. Really? I didn't know people actually got the flu anymore... I thought it was just what people said when they had a cold and wanted to feel like they deserved to take some time off. (Personally, I believe that having a cold is damn miserable and we SHOULD take sick days for that, but for whatever reason, "society" has decided that "just a cold" is "wimping out." Whatev.)
Despite that, I got a story out the door last night... so, there's that. I also finished up my first ultra-short for the collection Elizabeth L. Brooks and I are working on together. (So did she. So, since those are "due" each Wednesday, we're both ahead of schedule. Yay!)
I've talked over my ideas for a story with Liz and agreed to beta read and help her edit her story in a few weeks.
I've put together a couple of guest posts for this blog - they'll start airing on January 17th and right now I have a guest blogger every Thursday until March 7th, so that's cool.
In the meanwhile, I need to get lots of rest and drink lots of fluids and not kill the other two sick people in my house because we're all exceptionally cranky.
Because really... killing someone would be a first. So would going to prison, but I think I'll give it a miss.
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