Darin Kennedy's Blog, page 11

Mussorgsky Mondays – Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”

The year was 1994, and though a big fan of progressive rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer, I had never heard their version of Pictures at an Exhibition, or any version for that matter. I was Mussorgsky naive, but that all changed with their ninth–and unfortunately, final–studio album, In The Hot Seat. Ten tracks of music the likes of which they don’t make anymore, and one bonus track from their 4-disc set, The Return of the Manticore. This bonus track was their 1994 version of their 1971 work, a prog rock version Pictures at an Exhibition, and marked the first time I ever heard the “Promenade” melody, the strange tune of “The Gnome,” Greg Lake’s haunting lyrics on “The Sage,” the cavorting sounds of “Baba Yaga’s Hut,” and the triumphant ending of “The Gates of Kiev.” It was life changing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to that album, but that led to hearing the original 1971 recording, which led to seeing the Columbus Orchestra in Georgia play the Ravel orchestration of Mussorgsky’s piece, which led to me purchasing multiple CD’s of the work and listening till I knew every note. My love for this particular piece of music eventually led to the novel which awaits release later this year from Curiosity Quills.

In a way, this is the answer to my own particular Mussorgsky Riddle: Why write such a book?

And it all began with the last track of the last studio album of one of the greatest progressive rock bands in history.

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Emerson, Lake & Palmer. (The link only includes the first two movements of the song, but you’ll get the feel for what I’m talking about. If you find the full thing on YouTube, let me know and I’ll update the link.)

Mussorgsky Mondays – A Night of Mussorgsky, courtesy of the North Carolina Symphony in Raleigh, NC

Sometimes life deals you up happy little coincidences.

For instance, days after placing a novel based on one of your favorite pieces of music of all time with a fantastic publisher, one of your best friends calls and says “Hey, the North Carolina Symphony is playing Pictures at an Exhibition in two weeks. Wanna go?”

The answer? Well, of course.

Thanks to Alisa Hassinger for a great weekend and getting us our excellent box seats. Thanks also to Jewell Carr and others that held down the fort in my absence.

So, this was my third live performance of Pictures at an Exhibition.

The first was years ago, in Columbus, GA. (Yes, they have a symphony, and they’re quite good.) I went with my good friends Jen and Ben Frank and enjoyed the show, though at the time, I was only familiar with the Emerson, Lake & Palmer prog rock version. Still, loved the music, and a seed was planted.

The second was a last minute spontaneous drive to uptown Charlotte by myself to see the Charlotte Symphony play the piece when I was still in the midst of writing the novel in 2011. That was a great evening, and another great performance.

But last night (29 Mar 2014) was the one for the books. After spending years immersed in this piece of music, to hear the conductor come out and guarantee a “picturesque” evening was enough to get my heart racing. His description of the paintings coming alive in the music, his confidence that they had this one down, and his proclamation that Mussorgsky’s original piano piece coupled with Ravel’s orchestration made for an almost perfect piece of music all fanned the flames at my core.

And they hadn’t even played a note yet.

The trumpet solo on “Promenade,” the tight syncopation of “Gnomus,” the beautiful saxophone of “The Old Castle,” the intricate woodwinds in “Tuileries,” the crescendo/decrescendo of “Bydlo,” the near impossible feat of pulling off the “Ballet of Unhatched Chicks”, the literal lows and highs of “Goldenberg and Schmuyle,” the flight of fancy in “The Marketplace at Limoges,” the depths of despair in “The Catacombs,” the 100 years too early rock and roll of “Baba Yaga’s Hut,” and the triumph of “The Great Gates of Kiev” all came through with brilliance and passion. Well worth the drive and I’d do it again tonight if they’d play it again.

It’s rare in life that a person gets to experience “live and in person” something they are truly passionate about. After four years of working on The Mussorgsky Riddle, to see this performance was truly a celebration and as Mussorgsky “promenaded” his way through “The Bogatyr Gates” last night, I walked right through the Gates as well.

Also, not sure if they picked this piece for this date or not, but (as followers of my blog already know) two weeks ago was Modest Mussorgsky’s 175th birthday and this June will be the 140th anniversary of his completing the original score. So happy birthday again, and happy anniversary, Mr. Mussorgsky. They did you proud last night.

To the North Carolina Symphony, thank you for such a great performance. I’ll be back. Perhaps a little Rimsky-Korsakov???

Mussorgsky Mondays – A Night of Mussorgsky, courtesy of the Carolina Symphony in Raleigh, NC

Sometimes life deals you up happy little coincidences.

For instance, days after placing a novel based on one of your favorite pieces of music of all time with a fantastic publisher, one of your best friends calls and says “Hey, the Carolina Symphony is playing Pictures at an Exhibition in two weeks. Wanna go?”

The answer? Well, of course.

Thanks to Alisa Hassinger for a great weekend and getting us our excellent box seats. Thanks also to Jewell Carr and others that held down the fort in my absence.

So, this was my third live performance of Pictures at an Exhibition.

The first was years ago, in Columbus, GA. (Yes, they have a symphony, and they’re quite good.) I went with my good friends Jen and Ben Frank and enjoyed the show, though at the time, I was only familiar with the Emerson, Lake & Palmer prog rock version. Still, loved the music, and a seed was planted.

The second was a last minute spontaneous drive to uptown Charlotte by myself to see the Charlotte Symphony play the piece when I was still in the midst of writing the novel in 2011. That was a great evening, and another great performance.

But last night (29 Mar 2014) was the one for the books. After spending years immersed in this piece of music, to hear the conductor come out and guarantee a “picturesque” evening was enough to get my heart racing. His description of the paintings coming alive in the music, his confidence that they had this one down, and his proclamation that Mussorgsky’s original piano piece coupled with Ravel’s orchestration made for an almost perfect piece of music all fanned the flames at my core.

And they hadn’t even played a note yet.

The trumpet solo on “Promenade,” the tight syncopation of “Gnomus,” the beautiful saxophone of “The Old Castle,” the intricate woodwinds in “Tuileries,” the crescendo/decrescendo of “Bydlo,” the near impossible feat of pulling off the “Ballet of Unhatched Chicks”, the literal lows and highs of “Goldenberg and Schmuyle,” the flight of fancy in “The Marketplace at Limoges,” the depths of despair in “The Catacombs,” the 100 years too early rock and roll of “Baba Yaga’s Hut,” and the triumph of “The Great Gates of Kiev” all came through with brilliance and passion. Well worth the drive and I’d do it again tonight if they’d play it again.

It’s rare in life that a person gets to experience “live and in person” something they are truly passionate about. After four years of working on The Mussorgsky Riddle, to see this performance was truly a celebration and as Mussorgsky “promenaded” his way through “The Bogatyr Gates” last night, I walked right through the Gates as well.

Also, not sure if they picked this piece for this date or not, but (as followers of my blog already know) two weeks ago was Modest Mussorgsky’s 175th birthday and this June will be the 140th anniversary of his completing the original score. So happy birthday again, and happy anniversary, Mr. Mussorgsky. They did you proud last night.

To the Carolina Symphony, thank you for such a great performance. I’ll be back. Perhaps a little Rimsky-Korsakov???

Mussorgsky Mondays – Night on Bald Mountain

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Mussorgsky Mondays.

The two links below will take you two different versions of the piece being discussed.

My original plan was to start us down the path of Pictures at an Exhibition, the magnum opus that was the driving force behind my upcoming novel, The Mussorgsky Riddle, but we are actually going to start with Night on Bald Mountain, which most of us know from Disney’s Fantasia - the quite possibly terrifying scene is available on Vimeo at the link (orchestrated by twentieth-century composer Leopold Stokowski, who also conducted a popular version of Pictures at an Exhibition…).

Why start with this piece? Modest Mussorgsky wrote Night on Bald Mountain in 1867, but that version is rarely played in favor of this version from 1886, which was arranged by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Most of us have at least heard this haunting melody and I must admit, it has haunted my dreams at least once.

Why does this particular combination of composers interest me so? Well… I’ll tell you. The Mussorgsky Riddle is Pictures at an Exhibition meets Scheherazade, at least from a thematic background. And who were the two composers for those two works? Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. Here they are working “together” to create a piece of music that has endured for over 130 years and is still played by orchestras across the world every year.

Mussorgsky’s works are awesome in their own right, but often, he seems to gain power when another set of eyes comes behind him. Pictures at an Exhibition in particular is an example of this. Mussorgsky originally wrote Pictures as a piano piece, albeit an extremely complex one. Arranged for orchestra by many over the years, it is Ravel’s orchestration that most have heard, from symphony goers to commercial watchers to Looney Tunes fans. And at some point, I’ll bring in the first version I ever heard, from way back in my Wake Forest days, the art rock version by the band Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, which first introduced me to this incredible piece of music and this extraordinary composer.

If you saw my post from last week, you’ll note that Modest Mussorgsky just “celebrated” his 175th birthday, so let’s all raise a glass (which he did on more than one occasion) and celebrate his life with his masterpiece, Night on Bald Mountain.

Gardening

So, it occurred to me that being an author in the 21st century is a lot like being a gardener.

Your main crop is your novel. Like tomatoes, or any other plant, this needs sunlight and water (your time in the chair), fertilizer (time spent reading, with other writers, in critique groups, etc.), weeding (editing out those pesky adverbs, etc.) and eventually you take the product to market to sell.  But these days, it isn’t good enough to just grow good tomatoes. You have to tend to the zucchini (your Facebook), the squash (Twitter), and the strawberries (your website) as well as cater to your customers and make sure the environment around your various beds is clean and pleasant. It would be so easy if all you had to do was just grow your tomatoes, wouldn’t it? (not really, actually… growing tomatoes in this metaphorical exercise is actually quite hard… but I digress)

As of last week, I’m working to increase my gardening presence. My tomatoes are robust, I’m tending to my strawberries more, I’ve always been good at growing zucchini, but my squash skills are the pits – I can never remember to tweet – Hey, if I have something to say, I’ll say it!

Add to that the green bean patch (Pinterest) which I’m trying to learn and all the other new plants I plan to check out (Reddit, Goodreads, Shelfari, etc.), and it seems like there’s not much time to grow tomatoes anymore.

My lesson from all this: Make sure you spend time on your tomatoes. That’s what you sell. Everything else is just to get people in the door.

In other words, I’ve been tending to other projects this week, but back at the editing this weekend for sure. We’ve got a book to launch and a whole bunch of tomato lovers to feed this fall/winter!

Have a great weekend everyone!

 

Happy 175th Birthday, Modest Mussorgsky!

Happy 175th Birthday, Modest Mussorgsky!

Copied from Wikipedia:

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (Russian: Модест Петрович Мусоргский, IPA: [mɐˈdest ˈmusərkskʲɪj]; 21 March [O.S. 9 March] 1839 – 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1881) was a Russian composer, one of the group known as “The Five“. He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period. He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music.

Many of his works were inspired by Russian history, Russian folklore, and other nationalist themes. Such works include the opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral tone poem Night on Bald Mountain, and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition.

For many years Mussorgsky’s works were mainly known in versions revised or completed by other composers. Many of his most important compositions have recently come into their own in their original forms, and some of the original scores are now also available.

From Darin: I have long been a fan of Modest Mussorgsky’s work, particularly Pictures at an Exhibition, and his dramatic use of music to tell a story without words. These incredible melodies, along with the compelling names of the various movements of Pictures, were among the first inspirations for my novel, The Mussorgsky Riddle. Truth be told, it all came to me when I was reading the back of the Pictures  CD a few years ago and a simple connection formed in my head: “These are chapter titles.” From there, months and months of brainstorming of how to bring this piece of music to life eventually led to the novel being published by Curiosity Quills Press Fall/Winter 2014.

From Viktor Hartmann’s original paintings to Mussorgsky’s piano to Ravel’s orchestration to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s rock album, to my novel… Who knows what might come next?

Here’s to you, Modest Mussorgsky. I hope I did you proud.

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for…

Or at least the moment I’ve been waiting for.

Disclaimer: These are the scrambled thoughts of a man who is simultaneously exhilarated and exhausted, triumphant and tired, dauntless and overwhelmed.

My writer’s group gathered last night around the incomparable Gail Martin last night for our monthly meeting to discuss publishing, marketing and other facets of this writing business. The talk surrounded such things as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Goodreads, Shelfari, Reddit, and others, but as always we started our gathering with announcements, and this month, boy did I have an announcement to make.

On 28 Feb 2014, Lisa Gus at Curiosity Quills Press contacted my agent, Stacey Donaghy, with an offer to publish The Mussorgsky Riddle. On 13 Mar 2014, we accepted her kind offer. It’s been a long haul, this hike from novice writer to not so novice writer, unagented to agented, unpublished to contracted with a traditional publisher, but at every step, it’s been the same mantra.

Patience, Darin. Patience.

Don’t get me wrong. I am beyond thrilled and can’t wait to hold this book that took me over two years to complete in my hand, but having had a week for it to sink in, I’ve had many thoughts about the experience. I fully expected to sit down tonight and turn out a full on Kool and the Gang, Celebrate Good Times blog post, but as I sit here and listen to the 80′s shuffle echoing from my AppleTV, I became a little nostalgic–I know… that never happens–and this is what came out.

I’ve read stories of all the “overnight” successes who have been working at their craft for years, and though I have done anything but “arrive,” I get it. I’ve been writing for almost exactly ten years now, having written the first word of Pawn’s Gambit as I sat in a MIG hangar in northern Iraq and stared at Mars and it’s baleful red eye every night back in 2004 on the back end of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Since that time I’ve written two complete novels, am currently on the last chapter of a third, have written half of a fourth (the sequel to PG), written and published 19 short stories among six small publishers as well as Chess Life magazine, attended half a dozen writer’s conference, met countless authors in local and national writers groups, participated in (and ran for two years) a writers group that critiques four writer’s works per month, and led a successful small critique group out of my home for last few years. And all this with a full time job and still needing to sleep and eat occasionally.

The constant along the entire way: waiting.

There is counterproductive waiting. Waiting till I had time to write. (honestly, med school and residency had a lot to do with that) Waiting till I felt like writing before sitting down at the computer. Waiting till I had everything all worked out in a story.

As a dyed in the wool procrastinator, I know all about that kind of waiting.

And have I been impatience at times? Maybe. But I digress.

There is productive waiting. Keeping your eye on the ball. Being patient. Waiting for the right story idea. The right word. The right ending. The right agent. The right publisher.

There’s a lot to be said for patience, as I have no doubt that the waiting has just begun. As I start the editing process to get my manuscript up to speed for CQ standards, I know that more is on the way. Waiting for first edits. For second edits. For the cover. ARCs. First reviews. First sales. First royalties.

These are all good things to wait for, but as I sit here and take a deep breath, I realized one important thing.

You have to enjoy the waiting.

Mountain top experiences are just that. Brief views of breathtaking beauty punctuating miles of often brutal hiking. But despite the blisters and leg cramps,  there is joy not only in the vistas from the mountaintops, but from the water of a valley stream, the green of the forest, the camaraderie of your fellow hikers.

A few quick thank yous to my fellow hikers, because you can never say thank you enough.

To Lisa Gus at CQ for giving me a chance.

To my Captain, Stacey Donaghy, for being the absolute best advocate for my work I could have imagined.

To my friends among Charlotte Writers, for being my Charlotte family. You all are the best. Don’t ever forget it.

To other friends, both near and far, for a million things, many of which neither of us may even remember anymore.

To my family, for their LITERALLY never ending support. You are on every page.

To God, for giving me at least my fair share of patience.

And lastly, to one of my favorite movies, for teaching me five simple words: Never give up. Never surrender.

On another night, I will type my “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” post, but for tonight, thoughtful introspection is the order of the evening.

 

Good night! And remember, if your dreams don’t scare you, you’re not dreaming big enough.

“The Eye of the Beholder”

Cosmic Horror Anthology

Feb 2014 – Dark Hall Press

Just another day on the Toronto subway, or so Patrick thought.

Compelled by the mysterious words of stranger after stranger he meets,

he braves the darkened subway tunnel to find his destiny,

a destiny chosen for him by an ancient power, neither of which he can escape.

Two new acceptances! Callooh! Callay!

Great news this week! Found out earlier this week that my story “The Eye of the Beholder” was accepted into Dark Hall Press‘s Cosmic Horror Anthology and just got my e-mail from Emby Press that my story “Middle Ground” was accepted into their Steampunk Monster Hunter Anthology, The Dark Monocle. Very exciting. Both of these anthologies are due out in early 2014. Special thanks to William Renehan at Dark Hall and Miles Boothe at Emby for believing in these stories.

And now we return you to your regular scheduled programming while I return to Operation: Ghost Story. Closing in on the climax of the story and can’t get there fast enough!

Oh yeah. A quick shout out to all my friends either at or watching the game today. Go Panthers!

Darin

 

So what I told you was true, from a certain “point of view”

What starting a new novel feels like…

I haven’t looked, for I fear I would go down the rabbit hole only to reappear just before bedtime, but I suspect there are exactly  1 bazillion blogs out there on point of view and the advantages and disadvantages. My writer’s group and I were discussing this last night, and I thought I would take a moment to share my thoughts on the subject.

First – to anyone who is not familiar with what I’m talking about, point of view, or POV, is one of the basic characteristics of your storytelling for a particular story. You may remember some of this from your middle school and high school English classes. First person is “I did that,” second person is “you did that,” and third person is “he/she/it did that.” Then there is tense: “I do that” is present tense and “I did that” is past. I suppose “I will do that” is future, but if you anyone is out there writing in second person or future tense (or both – wow…) they are braver than me.

So, what’s the big deal? I basically wanted to share my story and where I’m at today.

The first thing I ever wrote since starting down this path called “WRITER” (i.e. not counting anything that I wrote prior to 2003) was my first novel, Pawn’s Gambit. A broad contemporary fantasy epic with a complex story, multiple characters both good and bad, and important things happening that my main character wasn’t privy to all but required third person. In a first person story, unless you are changing who the first person POV character is (which you can do, of course), you can’t see anything that is happening that your POV character isn’t present for in one way or another. This can be limiting, but also can help. My second novel, The Mussorgsky Riddle, is all first person, as it deals with the main character (a psychic detective of sorts) and how she perceives what is happening to her over the course of the story, both in the real world and in the mind of another character. My current novel is interesting, in that the source material I’m drawing from for inspiration was written in third person, past tense, and I’m writing my “version” of this story in first person present tense.

Another interesting thing I’ve discovered is that for me, third person lends itself very well to past tense and I have trouble doing it in present tense, though it can be done well. First person on the other hand sounds so much more pleasing in my head when I do it in present tense. It’s almost like the reader riding along and encountering the story with the character. So that third person past tense for first novel, and first person present tense for second and third novels. My short stories? Well, they’ve been all over the place, but it’s usually been one of the above. I contemplated doing my recent story, “The Eye of the Beholder,” (which was just picked up for Dark Hall Press’s Cosmic Horror Anthology) as second person, present tense, just to get the full gross out effect of the last page, but from what I understand, it’s hard to sell second person, so I stuck with what I knew.

The main thing I’ve learned? Likely there is a best POV for each story. It may be governed by what a particular writer is best at doing, but I believe it has mostly to do with the story you are trying to tell. Can you imagine trying to tell the story from Star Wars from a lone first person POV? Gah. Now admittedly, J.K. Rowling did an outstanding job keeping everything in the Potterverse down to only what Harry could see or what he was present for, but even then she went 3rd person, past tense with a close, non-omniscient narrator. If Harry didn’t know it or couldn’t figure it out, the narrator wouldn’t spill it. That’s one of the many things she did well in that series, and one of the many skills she brought to the table that made her series so successful.

Omniscient vs. Close is a discussion for another time. My friend, Jay, thinks that omniscient narrators may have their day again, but for now, third person POV out there seems to be sticking close to the focus characters senses and thoughts. Probably more of a trend than a rule. (It’s sold in the past. Don’t believe me? Go read some Tolkien.)

So, your homework. Take a look at your story. You may find, as I did with Mussorgsky a few years back when I was in about 10,000 words, that your third person past tense story is screaming out to be first person present tense. Don’t be afraid. It’s not as hard as it sounds. Just change almost every subject and verb for 30-50 pages, read it through a couple times, and drive on. If I can do it, so can you.

And now, I’m off to Starbucks, for some first person, present tense words are itching to fly out my fingers and onto the screen.

Happy Writing!

Darin