In-between the pages
In-between the Pages (Volume I)
By Jeb Wright
Welcome to my blog! This is the spot where I open up and tell you what it was like to write my novel, Blast from the Past. Before we get into all of the nuts and bolts of what it takes for a 56 year old, white dude from a small town in Kansas to decide to publish his first novel, I thought I’d tell you what inspired me to undertake this experiment of words, in the first place.
You may think it was my love of the English language, or my desire to write over the need to eat or sleep that drove my desire to create a novel. After all, I’m a writer. The only reason to write a novel would be derived from my lifelong long of reading. Right? Trust me, I wish any of those things were true. The real reason I ended up writing Blast from the Past has nothing to do with any of that. It all happened because I had a really wild time road tripping to a rock concert back in 1983.
I wish I could tell you that the band I went to see with my three friends and our thirty-something year old pot dealer was wild as hell like Motley Crue. They weren’t. It was the band Yes. While they are some of the most skilled musicians to take the stage, wild they are not. Still, what happened that night…was wild. We got high. We got drunk. We ate mushrooms. Dave and I got lost and ended up backstage and sat in the bands’ limousine. There was a broken Steppenwolf 8-track and we got lost on the way home and ended up in a redneck truck stop where attempted to dine and dash. And we would have gotten away with it if it were not for the Oklahoma Highway patrol.
I’m just scratching the surface of the wild night we had as juniors in high school going to see an old band reinvent themselves with their platinum selling album titled 90125. Yes ended up having two FM radio hits off the album. The first was the now classic “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” The other was a cool tune with an even cooler MTV video called “Leave It.”
I have a little secret. I have written three other novels. They still need work. I need to do what all writers will relate to…I need to rewrite them a few more times and get them to a completed state. Oh, they are finished…they are just not done. Anyway…with each book I wrote, I learned. My mentor, the award winning crime novelist Chad Sanborn, pushed me to get better. So, when that old itch reared it’s ugly head, I knew it was time to write again. I thought of the Yes concert. I decided this time , I was going to do it. The story ended up not being about that Yes concert at all. Well, that’s not true. A better way to explain it would be to say that the story became about much more than a Yes concert.
When I started, I didn’t have a drunken ghost. I didn’t have a protagonist so stuck in the past he was ruining his present life. I didn’t have a lady named Desiree that ruined my best friend’s life. I didn’t have anything, other than a wild night at a concert over thirty years ago.
I took that inspiration and made an outline. I weaved the Yes album 90125 into the story, almost as a character. I created a story with a message. By the time I was done, I was ready to start writing, or so I thought I was. My mentor, Chad, read it and told me I was being a wussy and taking many easy ways out. He challenged me. I was pissed off at him…more than once. But, he was correct. So, I went back and outlined the story again. I made major changes. I pushed myself until I was ready to write the tale. I made sure each chapter pushed the story forward. I made sure the characters were alive…and real. I made sure they had a reason to be in this tale.
Before my eyes, it began to take shape. I knew at that point, I was writing the best novel I was capable of. Then, I ended up writing it about a dozen more times. I’m very thrilled with what I ended up with and I am happy with the early success I am having, including being a Hot New Release in a couple of categories on Amazon. I’m confident that more great things are to come, but it all started way back in 1983 when a much younger version of me bought a ticket to see a progressive rock band play a sold out show in the state of Oklahoma. Isn’t it funny how life works out?
Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. Keep checking back and I will show you the frustration I went through trying to write this wild story. The story between the pages will hopefully give you a rare look behind the curtain and tell you the secrets that made this one a winner. I bet this is gonna be fun!
By Jeb Wright
Welcome to my blog! This is the spot where I open up and tell you what it was like to write my novel, Blast from the Past. Before we get into all of the nuts and bolts of what it takes for a 56 year old, white dude from a small town in Kansas to decide to publish his first novel, I thought I’d tell you what inspired me to undertake this experiment of words, in the first place.
You may think it was my love of the English language, or my desire to write over the need to eat or sleep that drove my desire to create a novel. After all, I’m a writer. The only reason to write a novel would be derived from my lifelong long of reading. Right? Trust me, I wish any of those things were true. The real reason I ended up writing Blast from the Past has nothing to do with any of that. It all happened because I had a really wild time road tripping to a rock concert back in 1983.
I wish I could tell you that the band I went to see with my three friends and our thirty-something year old pot dealer was wild as hell like Motley Crue. They weren’t. It was the band Yes. While they are some of the most skilled musicians to take the stage, wild they are not. Still, what happened that night…was wild. We got high. We got drunk. We ate mushrooms. Dave and I got lost and ended up backstage and sat in the bands’ limousine. There was a broken Steppenwolf 8-track and we got lost on the way home and ended up in a redneck truck stop where attempted to dine and dash. And we would have gotten away with it if it were not for the Oklahoma Highway patrol.
I’m just scratching the surface of the wild night we had as juniors in high school going to see an old band reinvent themselves with their platinum selling album titled 90125. Yes ended up having two FM radio hits off the album. The first was the now classic “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” The other was a cool tune with an even cooler MTV video called “Leave It.”
I have a little secret. I have written three other novels. They still need work. I need to do what all writers will relate to…I need to rewrite them a few more times and get them to a completed state. Oh, they are finished…they are just not done. Anyway…with each book I wrote, I learned. My mentor, the award winning crime novelist Chad Sanborn, pushed me to get better. So, when that old itch reared it’s ugly head, I knew it was time to write again. I thought of the Yes concert. I decided this time , I was going to do it. The story ended up not being about that Yes concert at all. Well, that’s not true. A better way to explain it would be to say that the story became about much more than a Yes concert.
When I started, I didn’t have a drunken ghost. I didn’t have a protagonist so stuck in the past he was ruining his present life. I didn’t have a lady named Desiree that ruined my best friend’s life. I didn’t have anything, other than a wild night at a concert over thirty years ago.
I took that inspiration and made an outline. I weaved the Yes album 90125 into the story, almost as a character. I created a story with a message. By the time I was done, I was ready to start writing, or so I thought I was. My mentor, Chad, read it and told me I was being a wussy and taking many easy ways out. He challenged me. I was pissed off at him…more than once. But, he was correct. So, I went back and outlined the story again. I made major changes. I pushed myself until I was ready to write the tale. I made sure each chapter pushed the story forward. I made sure the characters were alive…and real. I made sure they had a reason to be in this tale.
Before my eyes, it began to take shape. I knew at that point, I was writing the best novel I was capable of. Then, I ended up writing it about a dozen more times. I’m very thrilled with what I ended up with and I am happy with the early success I am having, including being a Hot New Release in a couple of categories on Amazon. I’m confident that more great things are to come, but it all started way back in 1983 when a much younger version of me bought a ticket to see a progressive rock band play a sold out show in the state of Oklahoma. Isn’t it funny how life works out?
Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. Keep checking back and I will show you the frustration I went through trying to write this wild story. The story between the pages will hopefully give you a rare look behind the curtain and tell you the secrets that made this one a winner. I bet this is gonna be fun!
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Oct 11, 2022 11:54AM
The whole "classic rock" thing - we used to call it FM radio.
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Ha Ha...KYYS KY-102 Kansas City was my station. Nowadays... i hate to admit... I am a Spotify man ha ha If you like classic rock ... i owned and operated classicrockrevisited.com for twenty years. It is still up on line. and... i like the name Dr. Detroit... lots of great stuff came out of the Motor City... I musta interviewed Uncle Ted 20 times over the years.
I remember classicrockrevisited. I used to visit quite a bit.
With all of the lip service thrown Detroit's way as the birthplace of punk (sorry New York and London...), WABX was the only station in town to play The Stooges or the MC5.
Feh...
With all of the lip service thrown Detroit's way as the birthplace of punk (sorry New York and London...), WABX was the only station in town to play The Stooges or the MC5.
Feh...
Yeah, I'm a few years younger than the good doctor, but old enough to also testify (so to speak) that that's absolutely true. WRIF wouldn't even play fucking Black Sabbath until half way through the '80s, and only after 11:00 p.m.! WABX was the only station I ever heard play the MC5, and the only one to regularly play the Stooges, until literally the last five or six years....
Liam wrote: "Yeah, I'm a few years younger than the good doctor, but old enough to also testify (so to speak) that that's absolutely true. WRIF wouldn't even play fucking Black Sabbath until half way through th..."
Testify, brother!
And if you wanted to hear any glam - and to be honest, I always did - you had to tune into CJOM, beaming their signal out of Windsor, Ontario (way down at the far left side of the dial), and DJ Ronnie Legg, who sounded like he'd just gargled with razor blades. Legg would always play the likes of the New York Dolls, Slade, T. Rex, The Sweet, etc. Somebody cue up "O Canada" already!
Testify, brother!
And if you wanted to hear any glam - and to be honest, I always did - you had to tune into CJOM, beaming their signal out of Windsor, Ontario (way down at the far left side of the dial), and DJ Ronnie Legg, who sounded like he'd just gargled with razor blades. Legg would always play the likes of the New York Dolls, Slade, T. Rex, The Sweet, etc. Somebody cue up "O Canada" already!
That might have been before my time, or at least before I was close enough to the river to pull in any of the Canadian stations. I remember driving around Wyandotte, where I spent the last couple years of the '80s finishing high school, trying to tune in CJAM without going down to Bishop Park (right on the riverbank, and the best spot) because the cops were always there, and it was already around 2 in the morning. Suddenly, through the static, we heard the dulcet tones of GG Allin singing 'Expose Yourself'. I had never heard of GG up to that point. My younger brother was with me, and we'd been to several parties that night; when we heard that song we started laughing so hard I almost ran off the road...As far as glam is concerned, the first time I heard Hanoi Rocks was on the radio- true story, I swear! There was a DJ named Randy Z on WIQB in Ann Arbor who would occasionally make some fairly bizarre choices about what to play next behind all the Foreigner, Loverboy and so on, and one day in late '84 or early '85 he actually played 'Don't You Ever Leave Me'. The fact that I was lucky enough to hear that amazes me to this day; they are still one of my favourite bands 37 years later...
Liam wrote: "That might have been before my time, or at least before I was close enough to the river to pull in any of the Canadian stations. I remember driving around Wyandotte, where I spent the last couple y..."
This is going to date me horribly (what the hell, I'll be 65 next month!), but I saw Hanoi Rocks at Traxx in December 1984. I may have already told you this. What a band and what a show! They shooda been huge!
Oh yeah, that nitwit Vince Neil killed Razzle...
This is going to date me horribly (what the hell, I'll be 65 next month!), but I saw Hanoi Rocks at Traxx in December 1984. I may have already told you this. What a band and what a show! They shooda been huge!
Oh yeah, that nitwit Vince Neil killed Razzle...
It doesn't date you that badly; I'll be 52 next month myself. We're all getting a bit old, which is actually somewhat amusing- among other things, I think all of us older punk rocker types have the hippies beat already in terms of aging gracefully, hahaha! I would have been too young for the Traxx show even had I known about it, but at least there were some great photos taken that night, which trickled into the public sphere bit by bit over the next two decades or so. Judging from those and the stories I've heard from others who were there, it must have been an amazing gig. You were one of the lucky ones; that's pretty damn cool!
My man Ricky Rat, who was not quite 18 yet at that time, used to tell an absolutely heartbreaking story about catching a ride down Gratiot with older friends, then spending the whole night begging the doorman & bouncers to let him in so he could see his favourite band. Of course they never did. My late friend Cranford Nix, who introduced me to Ricky and that whole group of people, was literally the first other person I ever met who had even heard of Hanoi Rocks...
When we all went up to Pine Knob in 1990 to see the "Escape From New York" tour, we had to drive all over downtown & the East side picking everyone up, and Ricky pointed out the by then derelict building that used to be Traxx. That was probably the first time I heard him tell that story. A year or two later they knocked it down to build a Taco Bell. The abandoned Taco Bell was demolished not long after I moved here to East Grand Blvd., sometime around 2014 or 2015. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, I guess...
Liam wrote: "It doesn't date you that badly; I'll be 52 next month myself. We're all getting a bit old, which is actually somewhat amusing- among other things, I think all of us older punk rocker types have the..."
I got carjacked at an oil change joint right across the street from Traxx after a Joan Jett show there in 1982, in the middle of a snowstorm. The Traxx parking lot was full so I parked across the street.
You wouldn't believe how many friends I had to call before one actually agreed to come pick me up. I owe you, Coop!
I got carjacked at an oil change joint right across the street from Traxx after a Joan Jett show there in 1982, in the middle of a snowstorm. The Traxx parking lot was full so I parked across the street.
You wouldn't believe how many friends I had to call before one actually agreed to come pick me up. I owe you, Coop!
Blast from the Past Blog - Inbetween the Pages
My first fiction novel Blast from the Past has officially been released!
Get your copy here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B6T3Y395
...more
Get your copy here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B6T3Y395
...more
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