Maggie Blackbird

I read a great article by Danielle Monsch about branding.  What an eye-opener.

I looked through my own blog and tags afterwards.  What did I discover?  Music and YouTube links were quite prominent, same with yapping about rock stars and rock biographies.  Then I glanced through my GoodReads “read” books.  A lot of reading was devoted to rock ‘n’ roll autobiographies and biographies.  What about one of my fave novels as a pre-teen?  I fell in love with Sooner or Later because Michael Skye was an upcoming rocker.  Not a rock star.  An upcoming rocker.  How about all those movie posts I share links to?  I listed a lot of music-related flicks.

Then there’s my non-writing related loves.  Music is somehow tied in.  Yardwork?  I have the headphones on while I enjoy digging in the ground or planting flower or veggies.  Baking?  Music is blasting as I dance around in the kitchen, burning cookies.

I frequent a band fiction site to read stories about rock stars written by some talented writers.  There’s also a message forum at this site where I can fan-girl and squee to my heart’s content with other people who love reading and writing.  When I scanned the message forums I bookmarked, with the exception of Murdoch Mysteries, they’re all music related, from Mama’s Fallen Angels to Metal Sludge.

A light bulb went off.  I glanced through my WIPs.  In my series, The Boys from the Bay, the characters play in a band.  In Fire and Water, Gabriel has hung up his microphone and finally puts his teaching degree to use at the age of thirty-six when he realises he can’t keep chasing the music dream.  He has to settle down into a career that’ll pay the bills.  In Real, Trey is a burnt out rock star searching for something…real.

Although my characters, with the exception of Trey, aren’t rock stars, music is central in their lives.—just like in Sooner or Later by Carol Harte.  Gabriel, while attending a conference in the city, gets up to sing (one for old time’s sake) during Karaoke night at the hotel bar.  He wows the crowd, along with his soon-to-be love interest, Jesse Sweetwater.  Kelly Brown (in another WIP) spies Sissy from the stage when his band is playing the teen night club.  My heroine Lisa, in another WIP, becomes a rock photographer.  The ties to the music industry are endless throughout my WIPs.

So thanks to Danielle’s posts, I realised how much I want to write about music.  Maybe my blog should be Rock ‘N’ Roll, She Wrote, instead of Romance, She Wrote?  Okay, that’s a bit misleading because my WIPS aren’t that focused on rock ‘n’ roll, but I’m sure I’ll figure out a tag line one of these moons (I’m horrible with this sort of stuff).

Now I think I might have to do a make-over of my blog.   Maybe add some guitars or something.  We’ll see.