ZF-360: The Playlist

I just this minute finished red pen revisions of my latest manuscript. Long-time readers of this blog will remember ZF-360, my retelling of Mozart's Magic Flute, set in modern-day Manhattan and Kashkawan among the Irish Travellers. 

Well, I've entirely rewritten it, and I'm very happy with it now. Irish folk music figures heavily in the story; my male lead plays in a Celtic fusion band and receives an Abell ZF-360 pennywhistle as a gift.

As I went through the printed manuscript today, catching tiny errors on virtually every page, I also made a list of all the songs I mention in the story. Most are Irish folk songs, but some are not. Here's the playlist, with links where available:

"Katie Campbell's Rambles"

"The Green Gates"

"Bold Doherty"

"Summer is Coming"

"The Water is Wide"

"My Funny Valentine" 

"Clohinne Winds"

"As I Roved Out"

"Strange Fruit"

"Body and Soul"

"Stella By Starlight"

"Ships Are Sailing"

"The Lakes of Coolfin"

"Horo Johnny"

"I's the B'y"

"The Creggan White Hare"

"The Dawning of the Day"

"The Flower of Magherally"

"Green Grow the Rushes" 

"An Paistin Fionn"

"Rant and Roar"

"Blackbirds and Thrushes"

"The Waxies' Dargle"

"The Wind that Shakes the Barley"

"The Lark Ascending"

Blackbird

I wrote a post about writing and the loss of my father at Mommy Authors. I'd love to know what you think.

In Memoriam

Michael Stanley Tanner

11 August 1946 - 3 March 2013

"Spring and Fall"

To a young child 

Margaret, are you grieving 
Over Goldengrove unleaving? 
Leaves, like the things of man, you 
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? 
Ah! as the heart grows older 
It will come to such sights colder 
By and by, nor spare a sigh 
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; 
And yet you will weep and know why. 
Now no matter, child, the name: 
Sorrow’s springs are the same. 
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed 
What heart heard of, ghost guessed: 
It is the blight man was born for, 
It is Margaret you mourn for.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1880

I'll miss you, Dad.

I Never Metafiction I Didn't Like (Repost)

I originally wrote this post almost five years ago, but I felt like reposting it today. I'm off to LTUE tomorrow, and I'll report in when I get back. In the meantime, enjoy!

I've been pondering all things meta this week.

Well, not all things. But definitely many things meta-related-to-the-arts.

I've been playing a game inside my head as I've done the dishes or driven people to sports practices or tried to get back to sleep in the middle of the night after going to the bathroom for the fourteenth time.

(It's just one of the many crazy games I play all alone in this head o' mine, another being "List all the adjectives with the suffix '-id.'")

The game is this: list all the films about film. Now all the songs about songs. Now all the poems about poetry. Now all the theater about theater. And now (my favorite part) all the fiction about fiction.*

Ready? Go.

Films About Film
(or TV About TV)

The Player
Singin' in the Rain
The Truman Show
30 Rock
Studio 60
The Simpsons
Stranger than Fiction (borderline: a film about fiction writing)

Songs About Songs, Singers, and/or Singing

"Hey, Mister Tambourine Man" (The Byrds)
"Thank You for the Music" (ABBA)
"Sing a Song" (Earth, Wind, and Fire)
"I Write the Songs" (Barry Manilow)
"If Music Be the Food of Love" (Shakespeare/Purcell)
"Piano Man" (Billy Joel)
"Rock and Roll Band" (Boston)
"Killing Me Softly" (Roberta Flack)
"The Day the Music Died" (Don McLean)
"This is Not a Love Song" (Public Image, Ltd.)

Poems About Poetry

"Essay on Criticism" (Alexander Pope)
"Don Juan" (parts of it; Lord Byron)
"Ars Poetica" (Archibald MacLeish)
"The Uses of Poetry" (William Carlos Williams)
"There is no frigate like a book" (Emily Dickinson)
"The High-Toned Old Christian Woman" (Wallace Stevens)

Theater About Theater

All That Jazz (Well, okay. It's a film about theater.)
Kiss Me, Kate
The Taming of the Shrew
The Producers
A Chorus Line
42nd Street
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Hamlet
Picasso at the Lapin Agile
The Mousetrap

Fiction About Fiction (and this would be my wheelhouse, people)

The Princess Bride (William Goldman)
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (Susanna Clarke)
Little, Big (John Crowley)
Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer)
The Decameron (Giovanni Boccaccio)
Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes)
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (Italo Calvino)
Anything written by Jasper Fforde
The Neverending Story (Michael Ende)
English Music (Peter Ackroyd)
The Thirteenth Tale (Diane Setterfield)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
An awful lot of Kurt Vonnegut
And a whole bunch of that Pratchett genius
Leaf by Niggle (J.R.R. Tolkien)
A Series of Unfortunate Events (Lemony Snicket)
Atonement (Ian MacEwan)
The Dark Tower, etc. (Stephen King)
Possession (A.S. Byatt)
The Book of Three (Lloyd Alexander)
A Princess of Roumania, etc. (Paul Park)

What about you? Can you add to the lists?

*LDS readers, here's a fun study topic: revelation about revelation. And extra credit: revelation about Revelation.

Good News!

My author copies of The Book of Jer3miah: Premonition arrived late yesterday. What a thrill! I am delighted with how it turned out. The official publication date is March 4th, but apparently it's in stock and available right here. Treat yourself to a copy, and the next time I see you, I'll sign it! 

Intrigued by the cover, but want to know more about the story? Watch this:

Last bit of fun for today: the winner of the free e-copy of Michelle Muto's Don't Fear the Reaper is Rhi R.! Congratulations! PM me your email address, and I will make sure you get the download code as soon as possible.