The Backstory: Dream On by Terry Tyler

Terry Tyler is an independent British author who wants to get you hooked on her books. She’s written here to tell us about the inspiration for Dream On, but she’s finalizing the sequel, Full Circle which will be published in the next month or so. Dream On sounds like a fun ride—but let’s have Terry tell us about it.

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Terry: Dream On is most definitely rock fiction, as it is about wannabe rock star Dave Bentley, and his Viking-orientated rock band, Thor; it’s also contemporary women’s fiction, as the other two main characters are Janice, the long-suffering mother of Dave’s son (Harley, David’s son…), and singer songwriter Ariel, who is the love of his life. Much of the novel is about Dave’s relationships with them. It’s quite funny, too…!

What made me write Dream On? It’s a story I’ve told in a couple of interviews in the past, so I apologise if you’ve read a condensed version before.

I’ve known quite a few struggling musicians over the years, gone to lots of rock gigs, and frequented rock music orientated pubs. In Northampton (England), where I used to live, the main one is called The King Billy—the inspiration for Dave’s local, The Romany, in Dream On.

In 1995 I was sitting in The King Billy with my sister, Julia, and we were looking at two guys at the bar. They were both tall, fair, nice looking and leather jacketed, with long hair—very much ‘all man’, almost like latter-day Vikings who’d been born in the wrong era. Because it’s the sort of thing we do, we started to weave a story around them. They became Dave Bentley, and his sidekick Shane Cowley, of rock band Thor. I’d already written a few novels, and the very next day I started on Rock ‘n’ Roll Dreams—all about Dave, Thor, Janice, and the love of Dave’s life, singer songwriter Amber Fox (later to be renamed Ariel). I wrote the novel for my own amusement, and for my sister, brother and sister-in-law—they were the only people who ever read it. Between 1993 and 2000 I wrote about nine novels, but Rock ‘n’ Roll Dreams was the one they all liked the best.

By coincidence, a few years later I got to know the Dave Bentley and Shane Cowley characters—who were actually called ‘Lockey’ and ‘Stodge’—typical biker nicknames! They weren’t rock musicians at all! Their real names were Martyn (with a ‘Y’, he always said—so we called him ‘Myartin’), and Alan. In 1999 I married Alan (the Shane character), and Myartin was the best man at our wedding. The marriage only lasted a few years, but I thought I’d put that in as a little coincidental aside—it’s funny how life works out, isn’t it :).

In 2010, very happily married to my new and much lovelier husband, I started writing again, and publishing my books on Amazon. I had always thought of re-writing Rock ‘n’ Roll Dreams, but, although I have a cupboard full of old, yellowing manuscripts, I could only find half of it. I wonder what happened to the rest…I never found it, so I re-wrote it from memory. I brought it up to date, with the inclusion of such things as the TV talent show, and the bit where one of the characters (I won’t say which one!) gets dragged onto The Jeremy Kyle Show. My sister Julia ‘test-read’ it—at the time there was only a mention of the Jeremy Kyle Show appearance; she thought this had massive potential, so I turned it into a whole scene, and developed the circumstances that led to it into a sub plot.

To sum up, if you’re into rock music or have ever known any struggling musicians, you will like Dream On—and it’s also very much a book for people who like to read about relationship tangles and dilemmas, too! Dave is torn between his love for Janice and his son, and his obsession with Ariel. He’s a thoroughly nice guy, though a tad misguided, while Janice is a favourite amongst those who have already read the book, and Ariel is so much more than just a pretty face.

I have just finished the sequel, Full Circle, which is now having its final proofread, and and the cover is being agonised over! I hope it will be out by mid-April. Julia has test read that, too, and likes it even more than Dream On! Whereas Dream On is told from the points of view of Dave, Janice and Ariel, in Full Circle Shane gets a look in, too—I loved writing about his womanising ways, and thought he was worthy of star billing in the sequel.

I hope you have found this interesting, and thank you for reading! Thanks also, Behind Blue Eyes people, for inviting me to your blog!

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Dream On: Amazon UK Canada

Visit the Author’s blog and Goodreads profile. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

The Backstory: Lore of Fei by Kathleen S. Allen

Kathleen S. Allen has the writing bug. She ignored it until she no longer could. In her own words:

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Kathleen: Once upon a time there was a little girl who had an imagination too big to be contained in her little head. She found her Muse and began to make up stories about pictures she saw in books. When she was four she learned to write. She began to write poetry and short stories and when she was eight she put together a collection of poetry she had written into a “book” and gave it away to friends and family as gifts.

At the age of fifteen she published her first poem in a national magazine and at the age of seventeen she wrote her first novel. She began to publish short stories and poetry on a regular basis. She dreamed of becoming a writer (little did she know, she already was one). The Muse smiled. Naysayers told her to do something more practical. To stop dreaming. She listened because the naysayers seemed so wise and knowledgeable and so she put her pen down vowing never to pick it up again. But, the Muse was too strong to stay silent. The Muse whispered stories to her. So, in secret, at night when everyone was asleep, she wrote her stories and her poems. No one knew she never stopped writing, she just pretended to.

Years passed and she managed to suppress the Muse but she was still there, a small tiny voice whispering in her ear. When her children begged her to write down the stories she told to them at bedtime she decided to listen to the Muse once more.

And published her first novel.

Then, her second.

A third. Fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, twelfth. Three more are on their way. More short stories, flash fiction, essays, blogs, guest posts, interviews. She writes every day. The Muse hoped that her voice would no longer be silenced.

The little girl with the imagination too big to be contained in her little head now believes.

The stories she tells are ones that have to be told.

To inform. To entertain. To enjoy. To ponder over.

She continues to write.

Because she is a writer.

And that’s what writers do.

The Muse’s voice is loud and clear.

And will not be silenced.

Ever again.

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Lore of Fei: Amazon | Muse It Up Publishgin

Watch the trailer for Lore of Fei, a Young Adult faerie fantasy novel, soon to be followed by its sequel War of Fei. Visit the Kathleen’s website and Goodreads profile for more information. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

Classic Albums Live—Ten Years Strong

Classic Albums Live started ten years ago as a collection of Toronto’s best session musicians putting together a recreation of classic rock records of distinction. Their promise was a ‘note for note, cut for cut’ delivery of whatever album they were playing that night, but in reality, you got so much more: after the featured LP had ended and the band took a well-derserved intermission break, you often got another full hour of hits from the band they were paying tribute to.

For me, my love of this organisation started at the Phoenix Club, another Toronto landmark that is a part of my family history. Like the iconic El Mocambo once had a German swing hall where my parents met on a blind date in the 1950s,  the Phoenix was the former home of the Club-Harmonie, a German cultural centre where I spent many happy hours as a child at concerts, parties, and dances. Resurrected as a nightclub with live events, it was the perfect location for Crag Martin’s CAL series of concerts, a decent-sized venue with an upstairs viewing balcony and enough space to watch or dance along.  I have fond memories of seeing Who’s Next, Dark Side of the Moon, Harvest, The Wall, Crime of the Century, Rubber Soul, among many shows caught there. My two favourites were both Pink Floyd shows, one because Dark Side of the Moon was accompanied by a television playing The Wizard of Oz on each side of the stage, and The Wall because of the chorus of children singing along to Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2. Brilliant theatrics all around.

Photo by Anne-Marie Klein : The left side of the stage at Roy Thompson Hall for CAL’s performance of Sgt. Pepper

In the past year, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing A Night at the Opera at the iconic and acoustically perfect Massey Hall, and just two weeks ago, had the utter joy of seeing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band performed at Roy Thompson Hall, which is home to the Toronto Symphony. What you realise after just seeing one of the shows is that the ‘note for note, cut for cut’ tag line is not so easily done outside the studio, and that an instrument or musician is often on the stage for just a few seconds to add that extra sound before (s)he disappears again. You also appreciate the majesty of a singer’s voice, as was the case with Freddie Mercury, by seeing how many substitutes it takes to fully deliver his incredible range. For Sgt. Pepper, it took an ensemble of 16 musicians from the first song to the last, and a vast array of guitars, woodwinds, a harp, a sitar, and a few different keyboard and percussion set-ups. My favourite number, and the one I was most looking forward to, was Mr. Kite, and the circus tempo and chaotic whirlwind of sounds did not disappoint. The second half of the show was mostly lifted from Magical Mystery Tour, which was a brilliant choice for encore numbers.

Photo by Anne-Marie Klein : The right side of the stage at Roy Thompson Hall for CAL’s performance of Sgt. Pepper

If you take a look at CAL’s website, you will see that they have now expanded to cities across North America, delivering their shows to a wider audience than those of us who regularly saw them at the Phoenix in the early 2000s. The selection of LPs has grown from those early days as well, and the venues are now bigger. As they mark their tenth anniversary, I am happy for two things— live music still has a place in Toronto, and there is still a great hunger for hearing those brilliant snapshots from the musical past, note for note, cut for cut.

The Backstory: SHOES HAIR NAILS by Deborah Batterman

Deborah Batterman is very patient. She was our very first backstory submission—and we are just publishing it now, several months later (mea maxima culpa). In this collection of short stories, she explores contrasts between images and symbols. In her own words, the Backstory to SHOES HAIR NAILS…

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I was at work on a novel, and I’d published several short stories, when the idea began to simmer: do I have enough stories for a collection, and is there a unifying thread to them? I did not envision a collection of connected stories, but, as I began looking at which ones I thought I’d include and which ones I’d leave out, a pattern began to emerge: the stories I felt were the strongest were framed around symbols in our everyday world, in an attempt to get past the surface association. The title stories, for example, might, at first glance, conjure images of frivolousness and vanity. And, yet, by putting them center stage, at the heart of the collection, I’m asking readers to leave aside presumptions, step into narratives built around those very images, see them in a different light—one that goes deeper to reveal the underlying metaphors.

The narrator in “Hair,” for example, comes of age in a tale braided between ‘two mothers’, the one who abandoned her and the one (a hairdresser) who took care of her. In “Vegas,” you have a character who thinks he can rattle his father out of an encroaching dementia by taking him to the place he loved visiting most, a fabricated city that it is much about possibility as it is a kind of last-chance saloon. What I think makes the story resonate—and lifts ‘Vegas’ as a symbol from cliché to metaphor—is the irony that comes into play, especially in an environment not known for subtlety. Stories for me often begin with images, sometimes in the form of a line that pops into my head—”The last time I saw my mother I was propped on a phone book in a red leather chair at Jeanie’s Hair Salon.” Another story, “Twin Tales,” opens with a phrase—How could this be happening?—an allusion, it soon becomes clear, to the events of 9/11. Here you have an ordinary woman doing a very ordinary thing (walking her dog) on a day that would prove to be anything but ordinary.

Collectively, the stories seem to ask these questions: How do everyday events — the backdrop to so much that shapes our lives—drive our narratives? How is the subtle power of narrative shaped by the interplay between the mundane and the unexpected? What compels individuals to act the way they do? Growing up in a solid middle class Brooklyn neighborhood, I was so often struck by the daily ‘dramas’ of my immediate world: a neighbor’s husband takes off one day, never to return; an aunt walks out on three young children; a classmate who is emotionally/intellectually challenged (we did use the word ‘retarded’ without apology) is ridiculed. Scenarios that leave their imprint become the core of fiction. So when I’m asked about the autobiographical elements in my own stories, “Shoes,” in particular, the answer just rolls off my tongue: yes, the genesis of the story was my mother’s death and the months of cancer preceding it; and, yes, my parents’ relationship saddened me. The rest, as the saying goes, is fiction.

As a final thought, the cover would have to be a much a part of the backstory as the stories themselves: shoes as symbol are as much metaphor (from Cinderella to Christian Louboutin) as they are utilitarian, and a shoe on the cover would seem to cancel out arbitrary distinctions between ‘literary’ women’s fiction and ‘chick’ lit. At least that’s my hope.

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Purchase SHOES HAIR NAILS (print or digital): Amazon

Watch the trailer “Stories are what we live by”. Read more about Deborah at her website, on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter.

A Book Review from eBookBuilders' Deena Rae

In October, I was the guest on the wonderful Bluebonnets, Bagpipes, and Books podcast to celebrate Rocktober. Before the interview, I sent one of the hosts, the lovely Deena Rae, an advance copy of the book. For those of you who don’t know Deena, she is a great supporter of authors, editors, and readers, and she frequently shares her formatting expertise on the podcasts as well as on her commercial website . She finished the book after the podcast, and has just posted a review of it on her eBookBuilders website. Enjoy her unique reaction to the book!