Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

Digger came back into town the next day. When I walked into the lobby of the Copley Square hotel, he was already sitting there with a bunch of papers spread out on a low table. I wasn’t sure, but I thought he was wearing the same thing he had been the day he’d come to the door at the Allston house. Maybe the clothes just looked the same.

What ensued was a mind-numbing two hours of financial details but at the end of it, I had to admit, I was impressed. He had even made projections based on potential sales and income and had ideas for how that money could be spent. “I want you to start thinking about buying a house,” he said, “to give you collateral and make your assets less liquid. If, of course, these sales figures bear out.”

That put me outside the realm of known reality, alright.

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

Well, we set a goal for Web Serial Writing Month to post 3 times a week, plus two liner notes posts, which would have been 16 total posts for the month. However thanks to reader donations triggering bonus posts, it was actually an 18 post month!

I hope everyone enjoyed all the plotty goodness. There’s a lot coming up now, too, with the Christmas show, Daron’s growing “to do” list, what’s going on with Digger, stuff still going on with Ziggy (of course). We’re going back to two posts a week now (Mondays,Thursday), with a third triggered anytime we hit the $25 plateau.

One thing I added in the tip jar is the ability to set up regular donations via Paypal. Want to give $2 per month? $1 per week? There are buttons now that let you “set it and forget it.”

Thanks everyone for your support and all the comments this month! It’s been fun! And thanks to the folks at Epiguide for organizing WeSeWriMo!

Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

It was two o’clock when I went up to the studio, and from the look of the pile of gear inside the door Chris had been there and then left.

I set about setting up his Roland D-50 for myself on the off chance that I might have to play it. I was never a virtuoso at the keys but I could hold my own, especially with the right hand.

Getting the keyboard onto the stand with only one hand to grip with was awkward, but I managed to do it without damaging myself or the equipment. I ran through some scales. The phantom left hand twitched in my head, but I kept on. Now how did that chord progression go? I switched the timbre to a power chord sort of sound and sang a snippet of the song I’d been working on last night. Now I could build that transition from verse to chorus, and I sang a lead line over the backing, what I would have played if I’d had a guitar in my hands. I went back and tried it at the beginning, first verse, transition, second verse, chorus, third verse…

I heard a click then a bass note behind me–Bart picking up the line–and I stopped. I turned around and he was sitting on his practice amp with his Rickenbacker in his lap. “Did I startle you?” he said. “Try that again.”

“No.”

“C’mon, that sounded hot. I wanna try it.”

“No. I’m…” I felt like I was blushing again, second time this afternoon. “I’m not ready for anyone to hear that one yet.”

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

Digger met me for lunch at the Imperial Tea House, a big two-story Chinese restaurant around the corner from the loft. I shuffled my feet a little faster down the street when I saw him, standing under their bright red awning in the wintry drizzle, the lapels of his collar hunched up around his neck.

“Hey, kiddo.”

“What are you doing out here? You could wait inside.”

“Wanted to be sure I had the right place. Figured I’d see ya if you went walking by.”

A surly waiter in a tuxedo showed us to a table under a wall sculpture of a phoenix that looked like it had seen better days. The paint on its light bulb eyes was scratched and the wings were chipped like an old plate. I remembered there was a carton of uneaten lo mein in the fridge at the loft waiting for me and ordered General Gao’s chicken.

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Mirrored from Why I Like Baseball.

Zombies are in these days. There are zombies in Jane Austen novels, in movie after movie, and even in romance novels now. Zombies are hip. That’s what I think every time I look back and see the Red Sox are still clinging on without completely fading this season.

This is remarkable given the sheer number of players they’ve had on the DL or lost for the season. With a 73-55 record, they’d be in FIRST PLACE in either of the other two American League divisions as of today! (And be only half a game back in two of the NL’s divisions, as well.) This is not exactly the usual showing of a gritty team barely holding it together.

Maybe it’s that Terry Francona finally picked up the Bigelow Green Tea sponsorship that Joe Torre started in New York.

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

I tried to sleep, I mean really tried.

Lay down, closed my eyes, recited the circle of fifths, tried to remember as many alternate tunings as I could, stuff that put me to sleep during theory class but which didn’t work now.

I kept flashing on that moment, his hand reaching toward me and me pulling back like he was red hot. At that moment I hadn’t thought,” gee, now I’ve got to keep my distance, I can’t let him just do this…” It wasn’t anything like that. I did not intend anything by it; I jerked away pure, simple reflex: don’t touch me.

But lying there alone I was wishing it could have been another way.

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

(Thanks to all who donated so that all readers could enjoy this piece, the SPIN cover article that Daron was refusing to read the rest of. It actually cuts off just before Bart’s Q&A, but it was at 3000 words and I had to stop somewhere or this would never get posted!)

Fly Me to the Moon
by Jonathan McCabe

Nowhere to hide. That’s what any self-respecting rock journalist thinks upon boarding a tour bus. Going with a band on their bus is better than a backstage pass. On a tour bus, there is nowhere your subjects can go to escape or disappear–a writer’s dream.

By the time I climb the stairs of the gleaming, garishly painted chariot that Moondog Three are temporarily calling home, though, I’m fairly sure these guys are not trying to hide from me. Maybe it’s because they’re still so new to the publicity game, they haven’t learned to be evasive yet.

And maybe it’s because they’re just like that. A open book. Everything they say seems completely on the up and up, if I can overlook the fact that all four of them use stage names. An open book, and this is their story.

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

The doorbell woke me up a few hours later and I knew Digger was back. Everyone in the band had a key to the house and wouldn’t have rung it. I started changing my clothes, then remembered I’d put these on clean before I fell asleep. The hair on the back of my head was still damp, like I hadn’t moved since I lay down. The sky was dark outside the window.

When I came down the stairs I was suddenly hyper aware of the graffiti in the stairwell, the pile of Colin’s dirty laundry at the bottom of the steps, the fact that most of our furniture had come off the street or from Salvation Army. No one expects their parents to see them live like this, I think. Not that I really gave a flying fuck what Digger thought of the place. And yet.

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(Continuing the weekly serial by Cecilia Tan! Need to start at the beginning? Click here.)

56: Jorin

Sergetten spoke to the royal messenger alone and returned to me in a foul temper.

“Eyes down. No, close them. Don’t you dare look at me. Peek and I shall know, and your punishment shall be severe. On the floor. Hands and knees. Do not move. Don’t even tremble.”

I did as he asked, but I could not stop the sudden hammering of my heart. I tried to draw deep breaths, reassuring myself I had done nothing to draw this ire. I was burning with curiosity over what the messenger must have said, but either he would tell me when he wanted to, or he would not. This was certainly not the time to ask.

I heard him moving back and forth at the work table, opening and closing things, and ruffling the pages of a book. A sulfrous, burnt scent came to me as he set to doing something. Burning the message? Brewing something?

Don’t look, I told myself, though my head had cocked a little at the smell. Don’t look, don’t look.

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Mirrored from Circlet Press: Welcome to Circlet 2.0.

Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

The splint was already itching by the time we left the hospital. I paid cash and they gave me the paperwork for a local HMO to fill out. The managerial part of my brain was saying we ought to get a group plan, for all of us, but it was drowned out by the jumble of thoughts I was having about Digger. What did he want? Why was he here now? What was I going to say to him?

Bart’s car was in the driveway behind what must have been Digger’s rental, a just-washed-looking Ford Taurus. Inside we found Bart, Michelle, and Ziggy sitting with Digger in the living room, laughing. Knowing Digger, he might have been telling dirty jokes, or embarrassing tales of my childhood. I didn’t want to know.

And there was no hiding the splint. Bart saw it immediately and said “Oh my god.”

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