Nothing Has Changed (But I Know It Has)
How can I put into words What my heart feels? It's the deepest thing When somebody you love dies – Ian Hunter, “Michael Picasso” Sometimes I think the hardest part of death is just grasping the simple reality of it. One minute a person who fills a space in your heart is here, and the next they’re not. In the song quoted above, the great Ian Hunter was writing about the death of his good friend and longtime collaborator Mick Ronson, who first gained fame as part of David Bowie’s “Spiders From Mars” band during the Ziggy Stardust years. “Michael...
Read MoreEarthquakes
Growing up in California, you get used to earthquakes. They’re impossible to predict, but you always know another one will come eventually. All you can do is prepare as best you can and then try to ride it out, both the initial jolt, and the inevitable aftershocks. My mother is the reason I am a writer. That simple sentence carries within it a multitude of dimensions, most of which we won’t explore here, but its fundamental truth is inescapable. My mother is the reason I am a writer. And now she’s gone. Mom left us a month ago today, slipping...
Read MoreI Need to Know Who the Drummer Is
One of my regular music publicist correspondents sent me an electronic one-sheet recently that caught my interest, so, as I always do, I requested a physical copy of the album he was pitching. I don’t review downloads or streams because that’s a one-dimensional experience, pure sound with no context. A physical release provides artwork and packaging, production and musician credits, and hopefully lyrics—each for me an integral, irreplaceable part of experiencing an album. In this particular case, after receiving said physical copy I fired off a slightly cranky e-mail about the fact that it included no lyrics, credits, or liner...
Read MoreTom Petty: Making Magic
It’s a mark of respect, this business of obsessively listening to our musical idols’ songs in the days after they pass, but also a ritual of mourning. We listen to remember—mourning the artist through their creations—but also to remind ourselves of the inescapable march of time—mourning not just the loss of the artist’s voice, but of the years that have brought us, too, that many steps closer to the great beyond. Tom Petty was a dozen years older than me, but the gap never seemed wide, maybe because I have a brother born the same year as TP (1950), but...
Read MoreNever Break the Chain
Writing a book is a journey culminating in a moment not unlike a key one in this very story: the author hands his or her baby off to the reader, saying "Here. This is yours now." Today we arrive at that moment: the publication of Never Break the Chain, the sequel to Believe in Me. Set among the Malibu mansions and Hollywood rock clubs of California’s southland, Never Break the Chain finds Tim Green’s grief over the loss of his father spinning into an obsessive quest to track down the wayward mother who deserted him almost three decades before. It’s...
Read MoreDrawing Winners, Jacket Quotes & You
Thanks to all who entered our drawing for one of three copies of the new Tim Green novel Never Break the Chain. The winners are: Melissa Arian Kristine Waldenburg and an unidentified third winner who hasn't replied to my email yet... (hint hint) As we rush headlong toward Publication Day next Tuesday, September 5, here’s a peek at one part of the book you haven’t seen yet: the back cover. If you’ve read the excerpt we shared earlier this week, you’ve already met the guitar featured above. The conventions of dramatic form would suggest that a notable object introduced in...
Read MoreOutside Looking In
Never Break the Chain once again finds Tim Green on the outside looking in. In Believe in Me, Tim has just lost his father, and longs to find a way into the road family he discovers on tour with Jordan Lee and his band Stormseye. In Never Break the Chain, Tim resolves to track down his long-absent mother at the same time he’s propelled headlong into the midst of a new kind of family, one that this time is both metaphorical (a band) and literal (the band’s new lead singer is the son of the lead guitarist). The opening chapter...
Read MoreCan of Worms, Opened
One of the things that made me want to interview musicians in the first place (a story told in My Heart Sing the Harmony) is that I enjoy reading the resulting interviews so much. Ditto for author interviews, so it didn’t take much convincing for me to sit for an interview about Never Break the Chain. It was a fun opportunity to explore the story behind the story; I think my favorite bit is about sending Tim Green off on a quest in search of his long-lost mother and my recognition that “peeling the lid off that particular psychological can...
Read MoreThe Wrapping on the Package
The cover of the book is like the wrapping on the package—except it’s permanent. It needs to convey something essential about the story within—mood or themes or a moment or all of the above—without giving anything big away. Most of all, it should spike curiosity. Why this cover? What’s the significance of this image and what is it trying to tell me about the story I’m going to find inside? The initial concept for the cover of Never Break the Chain zeroed in on one of the elements of the story that carries over from Believe in Me -- the...
Read MoreWhat’s in a Name?
Last time around we unveiled the basic outline of the new Tim Green story coming this September. This time we ask, with apologies to Mr. Shakespeare and his roses, “What’s in a name?” A lot, actually. Of the many aspects of writing with the potential to frustrate, naming things—characters, places, the books themselves—is the one that typically gives me the most heartburn. In the earliest drafts of Believe in Me, Jordan Lee and Tim Green each had different last names. The smaller the characters, the less weight their names ultimately carry, but with major characters, you want their names to...
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