Volume 12 Rockin' the Cosmos

I was so pleased with the results of re-singing all the songs on my Volume 13 album, I decided I had just enough time before school resumes to re-sing the songs on my Volume 12 album as well. And that was a particularly difficult album to resing. But I had to do it. Because Volume 12 Rockin' the Cosmos is arguably my best album of all 14. Well, the case could be made that any of the 14 is the best of them all. But Vol. 12 was my first concept album. That is to say it tells the story of an astronaut in outerspace on a mission from earth. And I am pleased to say that yesterday I got it done. It's a great album with great songs and great lyrics. You may remember the two great outerspace songs, Space Oddity by David Bowie and Rocketman by Elton John. My Volume 12 Rockin' the Cosmos is similar to those two songs insofar as the outerspace theme, but it's an entire album of ten songs, not just a single song like each of theirs. And one of my most popular songs is on there, which was also true for Volume 13. Check it out in the margin to the right. But you'll have to scroll down a bit. Back to work tomorrow, though. The new and possibly final school year for me is about to begin.

Okay Back to the Books

As I indicated, I have revised and/or re-sung a lot of my songs, which can now be heard, not only on SoundCloud (Volumes 1 - 14), but on Spotify, YouTube, Pandora, and many other platforms, (Volumes 1 - 5). Yes, I still want to revise and/or re-sing some more songs on albums 6 - 13, but that will have to wait. For now I want to get back to my books. I had revised the heck out of all five books already, but as I revisited The Vase, sure enough, I found more prose to revise. And so that means the same thing must be true for all of them. Which I will do. So, here we go again. Starting with The Vase, which I still hope to republish one day.

Finished Revising The Vase

I know. For the umpteenth time. The writing is as polished as can be. I originally wrote this story more than ten years ago. It was well written then, but like anything, the more you do something the better it gets. And the better you get at doing it. So after all these years of revising, polishing and making the story catch up to the times, the manuscript is ready to go. Now if only an agent would request to read it, I am confident said agent will be impressed. It's an uplifting story. It features a topical issue, and has a lot of conflict. But it has a happy ending. And when finished reading it, the reader will feel good about the world. That's what I wanted and that's what I achieved.

Revising The Vase (Again)

With the horrid events of the current times, I believe The Vase is a more apt story than ever before. I seek no fortune and no fame, but it's a story that has everything to do with what is happening in Israel at the moment. For those of you who do not know, the story in The Vase, as it explains above is about the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I may not be an Israeli, and I may not be a Palestinian, but that doesn't mean I can't write. I can. And I can come up with a very interesting story, which I have. The Vase. I will finish revising it, to make it a better-written book, and maybe, just maybe, I can get another agent. Years ago, when I had an agent, she was unwilling to work with a story that involved terrorists. Hopefully that's not the mindset of all agents. Let's see.

Revisions Went Well

 These past few months, I have been revising, revising, and revising. But not just my five books. My many songs as well. To date, I have completely revised The Vase, John Dunn, Second Chance, Killer of Killers, and I am pretty close to finishing the revisions to Killer Eyes.

Now to submit them to publishers again. They are better than ever, so I am optimistic. That doesn't really mean anything, I've learned, in the publishing world. It seems that so many people fancy themselves as authors, the field is gutted with submissions, and it's a hard-pressed industry to find the gems from the seemingly millions of submissions. Of course, my five books qualify.

I have also enjoyed revising many of my songs to the point that I am emboldened to continue revising even more of them. Mostly I revise songs because I want to improve the vocals. Since I am really not a singer, many of my songs must be re-sung. And the good news is that whenever I do re-sing a song on a recording, it does end up sounding better.

Which means the recordings are vastly improved for that reason. And a great thing about SoundCloud is that you can replace any of the files, (songs) on any of the Playlists (albums) at any time, and as many times as you want, (or need to.) So that is what I've been doing.

On Volume One, Rockin the First Steps, I've revised and replaced the files of the following songs: Tell Me When, It Was a Weight, Tale of Sorrow, I'm Laughing, The Moment, It's a Win, and One Day. And the vocals sound so much better now. That is not to say I'm a good singer now, I'm not. But at least I'm hitting the notes and I stay in key.

On Volume Two, Rockin the Millennium, I've replaced the following files: Demon Dance, Inferno, and Too Late. And ditto on the way they are better. On the song Too Late, I even rearranged  it so that it's about two minutes shorter. And it's better for that reason as well.

On Volume Three, Rockin the Hard Road, I've replaced all the files. Because I re-sang all the songs. And even rearranged some. As a result, the entire album is great. Those songs are some of my all-time favorites. And I'm very happy with that album now.

And the list goes on. As I was getting better every time I recorded, the remaining albums had less songs that needed replacing, but I will still keep on revising and keep on improving. 

That's what artists do.

Rewrite of Books and Songs

 I have spent most of my time revising, re-singing, re-recording, and reposting my songs that I haven't had a lot of time to post on the Blog about my books. It's fun, though. Both are fun. That is, writing books is fun and writing music.

The funny thing is, I started writing music as a teenager so many years ago. I really only started writing books about ten years ago. So that makes sense that I've written 145 songs and five books.

Actually, I started writing my first book when I was about 8. That is I was eight years old. It was a child's effort of course, and I never finished it. But in college I actually started to write and illustrate a graphic novel.  You know....like a comic book. I almost finished it too. I got three or four "issues" done, (or was it two or three) I can't remember. That is I did the art, the writing, and everything.

But in the real comics worlds a comic book is a collaborative effort. Meaning there's a writer who writes the story. Then there are THREE artists who illustrate the story, (the penciller who creates the storyboard, then the inker who inks it, and then the colorist who, you guessed it, colors it.)

Of course there is the editor, the editor-in-chief, and the letterer who puts in the word balloons and such, and probably a lot of others also.

There are some artists who have done it all alone like Jim Lee and Frank Miller and others who excelled at doing that. They are legends who took over for the prior legends....those being Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Gene Colon, John Romita, Neil Adams, John Buscema, Jim Steranko, Jim Starlin, and the list goes on.

So, my graphic novel effort took a big pause when I got married. 

But way before that, I had started writing songs on the piano. I had a piano in my house and I had taken piano lessons, so I knew how to play it. And soon enough, I started writing some very good songs. I had written a dozen songs or so in those early years. I did not have the means to record them so I had to remember them in my mind over the years. But remember them, I did.

And then the technology caught up to me. I had become an art teacher, and I was married with a son, and there was a huge "Yamaha" store not far from my house. I dropped in one day and bought one of those Yamaha portable keyboards and bingo, the music flowed. 

I wrote the equivalent of four albums in the space of a couple months. (Yes, those albums are indeed Volumes 1, 2, 3, and 4.) As I said, I had already written a dozen songs for Volume 1, but I wrote a few more and put a total of 15 songs on Volume 1. Then I wrote enough songs for three more albums.

Then I bought another Yamaha portable keyboard, an even better one, and over the next few months I wrote the music for Volumes 5 through 13. After some years of just letting them sit on cassette tapes, and being unable to find a singer to sing them, I decided to sing them myself. 

Finally I wrote the songs for Volume 14 and all volumes are on SoundCloud now and can be accessed on the right margin of this blog. I think the songs are great, (if not the singing.) But I sing in tune and in key. So it works. And I am content. I am back to the books now. I will continue to revise Killer of Killers, Killer Eyes, The Vase, John Dunn, and Second Chance until new publishers step up. 

I'll keep you posted. Just don't hold your breath on those. I won't.