We eventually got to actually rehearsing. To placate Louis we ran through the opening three songs, first one at a time with some chit-chat between, and then all three in a row. When the doors were shut and the house lights were off, it was as dark as a cave in the hangar, which was the point. Louis made us stop after that and they spent an hour moving lights around because of how we’d changed where we’d be standing from the original plan..
They also drew a straight line in masking tape across the front of the stage, delineating where the edge was going to be once they got rid of the curved front. I felt a little guilty making the whole crew go through all that because of my suggestion, but no one seemed to mind exactly. No one grumbled where I could hear it, anyway.
If they had grumbled I would have said, hey, if you don’t like it, don’t put me in charge of things I didn’t have any input into in the first place.
While the changeover of the lights was going on, Remo introduced me to the actual head of the road crew, George Denver. I was expecting someone older, I think, but George looked like he couldn’t be older than thirty. He was fit and muscular in a way that made him look more like a Navy Seal in his black T-shirt and jeans than a roadie. We shook hands.
We were standing in the empty space where the audience would’ve been, where he could keep an eye on what was going on without actually being in the way. “You bringing a tech with you?” he asked.
I looked at Remo. “I kinda expected Flip was handling us both.”
Remo shrugged. “If you wanted to bring someone along, you could.”
“I don’t need a…” Sherpa, I was about to say, and the idea that I could bring Colin along flitted through my mind, except that Colin was balls to the wall with tax prep work until April 15th, and I did not need a sherpa. I really didn’t. “…dedicated tech,” I finished. “Flip handled us both before while on crutches with one hand tied behind his back.”
“Well, he was only on the crutches for about a week,” Remo added.
“The tour was only two weeks long,” I pointed out. “Wasn’t it?” I couldn’t remember.
George looked back and forth between us, deadpan. “I won’t increase the headcount, then. You guys need me, just holler.”
Remo and I chuckled a little as he walked away. “You know it was nuts to bring Flip to Japan on crutches,” I said.
“He made himself useful, didn’t he?” He chuckled again. “Eventually.”
“Yeah. So what’s George’s story? Where’d you get him?”
“He’s been out with us a couple of times.”
“Does he always come off like an army ranger or is it just me?”
“It’s not just you. You can ask him yourself, but he came out of the military, started driving a truck, did a job trucking for a rock band at some point, got bit by the tour bug, you know how it goes.”
Ran away and joined the circus, in other words. Yeah, everyone had some kind of a story like that.
“How big is this crew, anyway?” I asked as I caught sight of the door to the parking lot opening. Light poured in as it opened. Lunch had arrived in the form of two caterers carrying crates of sandwiches.
“Mm, I think we’re at about sixty-five? Waldo can tell you.” Remo took a deep breath. “Lotta people. Full head count including band must be closer to seventy-five.”
“I’ll say.” It was a much bigger crew than I’d ever traveled with before.
There were a handful of banged up tables, partly covered in paint, in one corner, and we helped the caterers drag them out and unfolded some chairs. Once I sat down with some roast beef between bread, Remo sat down next to me and carried on. “It’s enough that I was going to try to hire your gal there to take Waldo’s job, and put him in charge of the road crew exclusively, but George became available and she isn’t.”
“Carynne, you mean?”
“Yeah. But she’s showcasing one of her other bands and has a lot going on.” He gave me an inquisitive look.
“I don’t know anything about it.”
“But should you?”
“Should I? Why shouldn’t she work for her other bands while I’m on the road?”
“Well, I’m asking you, Daron. Do you still need her? And does she still need you?”
“If you’re asking do I need management and representation, hell yes. You think I’m going to negotiate my own contracts and calculate my taxes?”
“So you hire a lawyer and an accountant as needed.”
“No. If it gets to the point where I can’t afford to pay her anymore, that’s one thing, but no. You may like self-managing but there’s a reason you’re in the minority.”
He sighed. “I know. And I had to hire someone to handle all the licensing and stuff anyway. Speaking of management or lack thereof, you heard from your old man lately?”
“Since Ziggy fired him, not a peep.”
Remo gave me a confused look then. “Ziggy fired him?”
“Yeah. He’s with Barrett Thomas now. Plotting the takeover of the entire entertainment industry.” I meant it as a joke but it came out sounding a lot more serious.
Remo just nodded, took our empty sandwich papers, balled them up and went to throw them away.
I may as well mention this now instead of later: seventy-five people is a small army. That’s a lot of mouths to feed day after day. I was always glad I was not the one who had to figure out all the logistics of housing and transporting everyone and everything, but I was especially glad now.
When we got back on the stage Remo said, “Let’s work on that thing we’re adding to the set.”
“‘Taking My Time’?” I asked. “Why don’t you and me work it out at home tonight so everyone else doesn’t have to stand around while I figure it out.”
“You don’t remember it?”
“Do you realize how many years it’s been since I played it?” For a second, actually, I wasn’t even sure how many years it had been. We didn’t do it in Japan, so the time before that…? “I wasn’t even old enough to drink the last time we played it.”
That got a laugh out of the guys and we moved on.
But later when we were having another break, I sat down by myself and fucked around with it, trying to remember how I used to do it. I mean, because it was an instrumental intro I rarely did it exactly the same way twice, and one of the kind of fun things about it was that the whole band had to listen to me and pay attention to figure out when to come in. The first time we’d done it had been when I was about thirteen, and it was one of the first real blues-type solos I worked on. See, the trick of it is that on the album it’s just the song with no intro. And if you’re not listening carefully, you won’t even realize that what I’m playing is about to turn into this thing you recognize. But then when the actual opening riff hits you suddenly realize that you really did know it all along.
So, you know, I couldn’t just play a bunch of random shit leading up to it. It had to work. musically, melodically. I wanted time to think about it, and I wanted to play through the song a couple of times.
I sat there with my eyes focused on nothing, feeling my way around it, but I couldn’t quite remember enough of the song. And the lack of sleep from the night before started to catch up with me. The coffee I’d had in the morning was long gone, and unlike at the regular office rehearsal space there wasn’t a coffee maker plugged in here.
Remo poked me on the shoulder, then poked fun at me. “You sound like a music box winding down.”
“I feel like one, too,” I said, stifling a yawn.
“Maybe if you didn’t come home in the middle of the night you wouldn’t.”
Let me say right now I don’t think he meant that in a particularly harsh way. I’m not really sure he was even thinking about what he said. I mean, it wasn’t like he snapped at me, you know?
But I took it kind of harshly. He hadn’t snapped, but I kind of did: “You going to put a curfew on me?”
Instant backpedal… out of the frying pan into the fire. “Aw, I don’t mean it like that. But you know. You did wake the baby.”
“I’ll have you know the fucking baby was already awake and how the fuck would you know anyway, Sleeping Beauty? It’s a good thing I came in when I did because Mel couldn’t take a piss without handing him to me first!”
And then there was one of those moments where we stared at each other… and then we were both more upset about getting angry with each other than anything else.
“I’m sorry,” we both said at the same time.
“Look. I know the baby is a big deal, all right? You don’t have to remind me,” I said. “Can we work on this song when we get home, though? Seriously, Reem.”
He looked like there was something more he wanted to say. He chewed on it for a while. Then I guess he decided it wasn’t worth saying after all. If it was going to be another comment that made him sound like a suburban parent, then he made the right choice. “Yeah. Yeah, good idea.”
In my estimation, we couldn’t hit the road soon enough.
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(Speaking of being on the road, ctan here, and I’m looking down the barrel of not only a summer busy with travel, but I managed to somehow schedule two novels to be due to two different publishers, one in August, one in September. I would like to say I can do it all and keep up 2-3 Daron posts a week through it, but if I can’t, here’s a poll question I’d like you all to answer. Would you prefer that I cut back to once a week for 4 months, or that I go on total hiatus for two months?) EDIT: POLL NOW CLOSED! THANKS!
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34 Comments
If you go on hiatus (or even if not, perhaps?) could you or D tweet about Wattpad a bit more? With their notifications broken indefinitely and no new chapters during the hiatus, I’m likely to forget to read any DGC for the duration. And that would be sad, in an absentminded sort of way!
If only there were a way to automate tweets from Wattpad. I’ll see what I can do, though…
Breaks are good, and I would never advise against one, but a total hiatus would make me very sad. Maybe we could all scheme up some fannish things to do in between, or to fill the gap of the second weekly post? I don’t think I’m the only one addicted both to the story and the DGC community, so something to keep us active and connected in between would be fantastic, and maybe give Cecilia some fun stuff from us to come back to.
I confess I lean strongly away from a total hiatus just bc Daron will drive me insane if we’re at a grind point in the story, which we probably will be, who am i kidding? 😉
I also considered whether something like Ziggy’s Diary might be fun to do… (i.e. lots of really short but frequent bits of something…) except when will I have time to write *that*? Same problem ultimately: word count.
Oh and…
Maybe we could all scheme up some fannish things to do in between, or to fill the gap of the second weekly post?
I would LOVE that. Guest blogs/guest liner notes, fanworks, drabble contests, etc?
\o/ I just really like the idea of having fun things for you to come back to or enjoy when you can take a breather from your deadlines. Plus I was blown away by some of the other fanworks in the February contest, and I’d love to see what we could come up with in another round.
Ziggy’s Diary was… everything. Just everything. Something else like that might be better suited in timing for NaNo or as an Advent sort of thing, though.
I’m thinking it might be time to really start that DGC on Dreamwidth community.
If you set up a Dreamwidth comm I’ll link to it in the next liner note, which I’ve been trying to get finished by tomorrow but more likely it’ll be Friday… (I’m in Tampa with my retired parents and spending most of my time watching baseball, doing water aerobics, and playing bocce…)
I’d prefer anything a week over nothing, but what would work better for you???
I think functionally they would work out about the same as far as me meeting my deadlines goes. So it really is 50/50. Maybe taking 2 months off from DGC would give me more brain space to really crank on these other two books, but then again maybe for the health of all three projects considered as a whole, just cutting down might be better. Hard to say for sure.
What Michael said. Couldn’t get the poll to work from the mobile site.
Yeah, I couldn’t get it to work from my phone either. Didn’t polls used to work from mobile? Or was that always broken? (I always forget I have a polls plugin…)
phone’s being dumb about the poll. I’d prefer once a week posts.
Cool.
Oh please, please, once a week since this means not only cutting down but no whatever the event is where you post three times a week in August!
Oh gosh I completely forgot about Web Serial Writing Month. yeah this is not a good year to do WeSeWriMo…
I’d say whatever you need, do. Congrats on the two book deals though it sounds like a lot of work in a short time frame. I haven’t been able to catch up with everything yet but did finally get through the books. I read the entries when I can. I like the fans filling idea. Could maybe send something.
I really like the fans filling idea, too. Whether that’s with fanfic vignettes, or liner notes type posts, or what, I really love that idea.
By the way, the poll after the first day looks pretty conclusively in favor of cutting down to once a week for the entire summer instead of doing a two-month hiatus. I kind of figured that might be the case? Then again, the numbers are probably skewed in favor of the people who read more often given that it’s only one day’s results, and of course the people who tend to read RIGHT AWAY are going to be the ones who prefer regular posts. The binge readers who catch up every 1-2 months anyway won’t see this post yet… >.>
So I’m going to leave it open for a while yet, but right now with almost 40 votes, it’s 81% in favor of the weekly post. Also, the poll plugin informs me that over half the votes were cast by people who have commented on the site previously. I don’t know how it knows that, but that gives me high confidence it’s the regular readers of the site and participating fans who are voting.
I would love to hear your ideas and/or outright volunteering from folks who might be interested in posting fill-in content on the off day? Record reviews? Haiku contest? Fanfic? I’m totally brainstorming here. Ideas welcome.
Voting for weekly posts! Mobile is being a butt.
Yeah, I can’t get the poll to work at all from mobile. I’m not sure if it’s the poll or the mobile CSS or what…
Interesting that so many folks read on mobile though. 🙂
I’m for once a week for 4 months, but really, do whatever you need to do. We will be here when you get back.
Congrats on the book deals. I already can’t wait for Taking the Lead to come out, so yay for more new books.
Taking the Lead is with my publisher now, so that means soon I will have cover art to share, too. 🙂
I’ll volunteer something from Daron’s mom’s POV deadline would help
That would be really fun! First fan post if I do Tuesdays and fans do Thursdays would be May 7th. Could you turn it in by May 1st, or is that too soon?
May 1 is good. Figure can keep short if needed and post here then. Or tell me if should file some other way. Sorry for delay. Kept trying to reply on phone wouldn’t work. Had to use different device.
Email it to me at ctan.writer @ gmail.com and I’ll get it formatted up. <3
Ok will do
I know exactly how you feel. I’ve been buried under virtually simultaneous deadlines and losing ground every day. So I had to cut something – and the first thing I did was to cut back on writing reviews, replying to email and blog posts. After all, one has to pay the piper, and that comes first.
However, if you don’t update Daron through two months of the summer, that’s also a risk – people might forget about Daron or lose interest. Ergo, it seems that one chapter per week, IF YOU CAN DO IT, seems to be the best solution.
Let us know of anything we can do to make the time easier and more productive for you.
It looks pretty certain at this point that what I’m going to do is post on Tuesdays from May through August, and have a fan posting of some kind on Thursdays, whether that’s fanfic or meta commentary, or record reviews, or what.
My request for a drawing comes from something I haven’t been able to forget-when Ziggy wore a mourning suit/dress and no one but Daron understood. I know, maudlin.
I don’t think it’s maudlin. I think it was a powerful moment for both of them.
Congrats on the book deals! Having fewer posts will give me a chance to reread everything at a slower pace since I seriously have burned through this entire story in about 2-3 weeks. I’m sure I missed some of the finer points, just wanting to get a handle on what was happening (and get to the part where Ziggy came back!). Take all the time you need. You know we’ll all be here when you are ready to continue the story.
Thank you! It’s pretty amazing to have this much demand for my fiction all of a sudden.
Congrats to you for catching up so fast! You really plowed through amazingly. OMG.
Yeah well it helps that I was sick for a week…
I have no trouble believing you are in high demand. I’ve rarely read a story that hooked me and taken me on such a wild emotional ride as this one.
PS I wouldn’t tell Daron and Ziggy they are fiction. I don’t think they could handle it! Although my teenage daughter has already learned the lesson that fictional boys are better, so Ziggy might be alright with that. Lol