I’ve been enjoying some new music and it got me thinking about why we like certain music. I know that where and how we are raised has a huge impact on what we might choose. The choices are amazing. I do watch American Idol, but not until the auditions are over. I don’t want to hear the begging and crying, I want to hear the singers sing.
When I’m driving and want to just think or work on my books in my head, I will not always listen to music, but one of my favorite things to listen to is Enigma ~ Deep Forest. There are some Pigmy songs that totally transport me to the fantasy world I like to write.
Our favorite music is often generational. If you were in school during the eighties then you can really appreciate those artists. My brother and his wife are seven years younger than I am and they love YES. My brother in law, older has everything Bob Dylan ever recorded.
I like to think that my taste is eclectic. I love so many songs from the sixties, seventies and beyond. I buy new artist all the time. I will even listen to gangster rap, not often, but sometimes if there is something interesting musically in how it affects me. I’m the one who can spend a couple of hours at B&N listening to all the new CD’s trying to discover some one that catches my ear.
I also love the oldies, Ella and Miles and Chet Baker. Trumpet, pure and bluesy just turns me on…let me qualify that I don’t like too much percussion. Of the new guys, I’m huge on Chris Botti and Rick Braun. I also have a real thing for a lot of James Taylor songs. His voice is so smooth, he sings as if it is breathing to him, effortlessly. His song the secret of life…I will listen over and over to remember to enjoy the ride.
Rhianna
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
BLOG STORIES
As you may have noticed, I don’t blog with any real regularity. I am not good at coming up with fun stuff to wax philosophic or even wittily about, except as part of a conversation. I am a person that thrives in a lively debate or making snarky comments about inconsequential parts of life with friends or family to bounce against or sometimes to cross swords in a lively fencing of words and humor. I don’t claim to be the smartest wit, but I come close to the smartest ass in the group.
Witty repartee in the context of a story or characters ranting, well that’s another thing completely. I can character rant and snort with the best of them. I have been told that I am easily amused, and there are times it is undoubtedly true. I love the absurd, unless it brings someone to my emergency room. Okay, even then…like the kid who swallowed three quarters, cause he didn’t have pockets. Heck, we were pulling vibrators out of butts, long before ER or Grey’s Anatomy made us laugh over it. Of course, they weren’t as small as they are now. Or the old gentleman who put his hearing aid batteries in his ears instead of the hearing aid. I thought we were a society where bigger is better, right? No, now we are the sleek and skinny world of Apple and unhealthy thin super models. ( I love apple products, so keep me in mind when you start to give out IPODS or I- anything. )
I like to create characters that can appreciate the absurd as equally as they do ordinary beauties. The man who likes a crooked smile or mascara that runs. He’s the one whose lips quirk listening into other conversations at a café. Or she keeps spraining her ankles wearing heels.
You see, that is not what the good bloggers do. Very few of them tell character driven or action adventure or even paranormal suspense stories on a daily or even weekly basis. They review life, books or music from their own perspective, even if it is under the name anonymous, it is still from their own point of view.
My point? I am not a consistent blogger. I’ll just call them updates and while I catch up on my story telling in a novel way… (Couldn’t resist)… There may be weeks in between.
Rhianna Samuels
Witty repartee in the context of a story or characters ranting, well that’s another thing completely. I can character rant and snort with the best of them. I have been told that I am easily amused, and there are times it is undoubtedly true. I love the absurd, unless it brings someone to my emergency room. Okay, even then…like the kid who swallowed three quarters, cause he didn’t have pockets. Heck, we were pulling vibrators out of butts, long before ER or Grey’s Anatomy made us laugh over it. Of course, they weren’t as small as they are now. Or the old gentleman who put his hearing aid batteries in his ears instead of the hearing aid. I thought we were a society where bigger is better, right? No, now we are the sleek and skinny world of Apple and unhealthy thin super models. ( I love apple products, so keep me in mind when you start to give out IPODS or I- anything. )
I like to create characters that can appreciate the absurd as equally as they do ordinary beauties. The man who likes a crooked smile or mascara that runs. He’s the one whose lips quirk listening into other conversations at a café. Or she keeps spraining her ankles wearing heels.
You see, that is not what the good bloggers do. Very few of them tell character driven or action adventure or even paranormal suspense stories on a daily or even weekly basis. They review life, books or music from their own perspective, even if it is under the name anonymous, it is still from their own point of view.
My point? I am not a consistent blogger. I’ll just call them updates and while I catch up on my story telling in a novel way… (Couldn’t resist)… There may be weeks in between.
Rhianna Samuels
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
The trip and back
I was gone to a funeral for the weekend, the trip started on New Years Eve, which I don’t recommend as a traveling day. Mostly, because you can’t catch a deal on a decent hotel and it’s expensive to pay maximum price. None of the big hotels have a funeral price. Oh well.
It was a sad occasion to reunite with family. After the service was over, we met with some of our cousins. We were in a small east Texas town, that has turned into one of those historical villages, with antique stores and bed and breakfasts abounding.
My older brother arranged to have a cottage for everyone to get together and got me a room in a B&B. I ended up in a two room cottage, which at one time was the slave quarters, the bed was so high, I needed a trampoline to get up on the thing and they didn’t have a foot stool to help. I managed. My nephew shared the cottage for one night, he was in the room that had bloomers decorating the walls. I asked him what he thought of that… he answered…”They didn’t fit”… he’s sixteen.” He is very funny. There was a clawfoot tub behind a curtain in his room and the bathroom was built to look like an out house. The Christmas fairy had a Santa clause decorations seizure in his room and a gingerbread one in mine. It made the whole trip surreal.
One of my cousins is a very lovely woman, whose mother is a full blooded Comanche. I talked her into teaching me a couple of cuss words in the native tongue. It required some coaxing, because she is very sweet and kept giving me other words, until I asked specifically for the words I wanted. Another one of my cousins is from a little town about an hour from where we were. He’s the fire chief, battalion chief and arson investigator. I was asking him how often he had to investigate arson in his little town and he told me it was more often then you’d suspect.
Last story, I promise. The rented car I drove for the trip had a Magellan. I have never used a GPS before and I’m totally thrilled to have gotten it for the trip down, because I was alone and there were many turn offs and twist and turns and that lady gave me a heads up for all of them. On the down, I picked up my sisters suitcase, she lives about an hour south of me and she hitched a ride with my brother down and drove back with me. I plugged in my destination and don’t ya know that it took me home, but bypassed her town and I had to drive south again to take her fanny home before the trip was finally done.
I know that is sounds weird, but that kind of thing seems to happen regularly. It is Saturn in my planets…Muuahahahah!
Rhianna
PS good news. I won the NOR award for Romantic Suspense Fall 2008 and came in second for Paranormal Romance for Shaking Off the Dust. *happy dance*
It was a sad occasion to reunite with family. After the service was over, we met with some of our cousins. We were in a small east Texas town, that has turned into one of those historical villages, with antique stores and bed and breakfasts abounding.
My older brother arranged to have a cottage for everyone to get together and got me a room in a B&B. I ended up in a two room cottage, which at one time was the slave quarters, the bed was so high, I needed a trampoline to get up on the thing and they didn’t have a foot stool to help. I managed. My nephew shared the cottage for one night, he was in the room that had bloomers decorating the walls. I asked him what he thought of that… he answered…”They didn’t fit”… he’s sixteen.” He is very funny. There was a clawfoot tub behind a curtain in his room and the bathroom was built to look like an out house. The Christmas fairy had a Santa clause decorations seizure in his room and a gingerbread one in mine. It made the whole trip surreal.
One of my cousins is a very lovely woman, whose mother is a full blooded Comanche. I talked her into teaching me a couple of cuss words in the native tongue. It required some coaxing, because she is very sweet and kept giving me other words, until I asked specifically for the words I wanted. Another one of my cousins is from a little town about an hour from where we were. He’s the fire chief, battalion chief and arson investigator. I was asking him how often he had to investigate arson in his little town and he told me it was more often then you’d suspect.
Last story, I promise. The rented car I drove for the trip had a Magellan. I have never used a GPS before and I’m totally thrilled to have gotten it for the trip down, because I was alone and there were many turn offs and twist and turns and that lady gave me a heads up for all of them. On the down, I picked up my sisters suitcase, she lives about an hour south of me and she hitched a ride with my brother down and drove back with me. I plugged in my destination and don’t ya know that it took me home, but bypassed her town and I had to drive south again to take her fanny home before the trip was finally done.
I know that is sounds weird, but that kind of thing seems to happen regularly. It is Saturn in my planets…Muuahahahah!
Rhianna
PS good news. I won the NOR award for Romantic Suspense Fall 2008 and came in second for Paranormal Romance for Shaking Off the Dust. *happy dance*
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