Dazzling Distractions
An Election Eve Newsletter: Finding Balance, Duran Duran, and More!
Welcome to my Election Eve newsletter, in which I attempt to distract myself — and you — from the news cycle, or from the vacillation between hope and dread. Wherever we stand on candidates and issues, it’s clear there’s a lot on the line and anxious energy in the air. Sometimes it feels like we’re all holding our breath. How are you coping? Where are you finding balance these days?
One way I’m attempting to distract myself is listening to more music, especially with my son. He’s a music enthusiast with great taste, and an electric guitar player; we’ve been going on musical journeys together. Even though he now drives his own car, I seize opportunities to ride along, or to drive him, so that we can keep our road music tradition. Our unspoken rule is that if we introduce a new song to each other, we have to listen to it from beginning to end and give it our full attention.
One day earlier this fall, as we drove off on some errand, my son cued up a song called “Invisible.” He added: “It’s by this group called Duran Duran. Do you know them?”
Record scratch.
Excuse me? Have I HEARD of them?
As a teen, I was a superfan. I owned all Duran Duran’s albums, on records and cassettes. I papered my walls with their posters. I bought every magazine with their faces. I dressed like them. I wore the t-shirts and those little pins. I dyed my hair to match John Taylor’s. I drew DD logos on my jeans, my shoes, my Trapper Keepers. My friends and I formed a knock-off band in their honor (air guitars, percussive pots and pans). We wrote them fan letters and fan fiction, collectively writing hundreds of pages about meeting the band in various outlandish scenarios. We analyzed their song lyrics, pouncing on them like PhD students learning to be literary scholars: every song was a mystery to unlock. Shake up the picture with the lizard mixture / With your dance on the eventide / You got me coming up with answers / All of which I deny. We would write out the lyrics, copying them from the liner notes to see if the act of transcribing them would reveal hidden meaning. We would stay up late to catch their music videos on MTV or Friday Night Videos (for those of us without cable). And when the band was interviewed on radio stations, we would drop everything to tune in and even capture their voices, as if to bottle them up like rare perfumes. In my house, this process involved plugging in a tape recorder (the kind with the big red button to punch down — you literally “hit record”), and a microphone — also with a cord — and extending that microphone by arm, as far as possible, toward the speakers on the stereo system, and hoping that their voices made it through the air and into the little microphone and down through the wire and into the softly whirring cassette.
“Yes,” I told my son, who has no concept of this strange past world of clunky recording devices and what it was like to tune in to an event at a very specific time or you would miss it forever. “I have heard of this band of which you speak.”
After listening to his song selection, “Invisible” (from 2012, D2’s Future Past album), I introduced him to the Astronaut album (2004 - their eleventh studio album and one of their best!). He was hooked! We were off and running. Over the next few weeks, we reviewed new albums and classics, then went into deep cuts, covers, and their spinoff bands (Arcadia and The Power Station).
“They’re touring, you know,” he informed me one day after rocking out to “Rio.” That I did NOT know. But sure enough, when I looked them up, I saw they’d added a handful of dates on an east coast off-the-beaten-path tour coinciding with their big Madison Square Garden Halloween show. And they were coming to Manchester, New Hampshire — only an hour from my home!
Without hesitation, I booked two tickets for the November 2nd show. I had never seen the band perform live, though I did catch John Taylor and Andy Taylor’s Power Station spinoff tour in high school (where I would swear to you bassist John Taylor made sustained eye contact with me, despite my being in a nosebleed seat). Duran Duran’s tours as the “Fab Five” had never quite aligned with my location or budget or other life events, but it was a bucket list item of mine to see them perform someday.
This weekend, my son and I drove up to Manchester and attended the concert. And, well . . . WOW. Explosive, spectacular, amazing — all empty adjectives, I know, but I’m still processing. These guys, now all in their 60s, still sound fantastic. They played a high-energy mix of classic crowd-pleasers and music from their most recent album Danse Macabre. The show wasn’t perfect. On some level, I knew that. The audio quality was a bit muddled at times. During “Wild Boys,” Simon Le Bon tripped over a bandmate’s foot, tumbled over a speaker, stopped singing for a heart-stopping few seconds . . . then jumped to his feet and carried on with the song, as cheers rose up from the crowd. The set list was shorter than the norm, and the advertised opening act, Nile Rodgers, seems to have not appeared. Maybe they were a little tired from the big Halloween show? Even so, they amazed me. I was officially dazzled.
Between dancing, singing, and gazing at the band through field glasses (and being quite certain John Taylor AGAIN locked eyes with me though I was miles away in Section 107), I thought about their decades-long careers. How they keep reinventing themselves, coming up with new songs and new sounds, pursuing creative collaborations. How they still fill arenas, still perform with joy. How they simply refuse to quit, fiercely moving forward.
Their new album revisits some of their past material, experimenting with darker tones in a way that at first seemed too “Halloweeny” for my taste but now has grown on me. How BRAVE of them, how CONFIDENT, to take songs they wrote and performed in their twenties, and then, forty years later, shake them upside down, turn them inside out, find new ways into them, and hook a whole new audience, like my son and other teens and kids who were bopping along with their GenX parents. If I dug through boxes to find stuff I wrote in my early 20s, the same age the band was when they started out, I would likely NOT let it see the light of day. I might think some of it showed promise, plaintive poems and false starts and novels that went nowhere, but I’d be mortified to share. But Duran Duran puts stuff out there, no apologies. There’s something to be learned from that: the process of creative reinventing and growing, to stay in the game, while connecting back to a creative core. Reinvention and Continuity.
The concert was amazing, but it wasn’t just the concert itself that’s staying with me. It was the ride home after the show, traveling down winding roads in the darkness, playing Duran Duran songs at top volume, my son and I singing along to lyrics that make no real sense. It was the whole journey into their music, reconnecting with my teen self and connecting with my son. It was just the distraction I needed.
Or maybe distraction isn’t the right word. Sometime it’s not just distraction I need, in our distracting times, but immersion. What have you been immersed in lately? What immersive experience are you craving these days? What would you enjoy reconnecting with as part of your own creative history?
The Owl Prowl Mystery — Updates from the Road!
On a different note, here are some bookish updates! Earlier this fall, I did some fun events close to home to promote The Owl Prowl Mystery, kicking off with a fun launch party at Silver Unicorn Bookstore in Acton, MA — where The Owl Prowl Mystery has soared to the top of their middle grade bestseller list! Woohoo! (Woohoot?)
I also had fun at a local authors’ fair at Hummingbird Books in Newton, MA, an appearance at Belmont Books with Night Owl Night author (and fellow saw-whet owl enthusiast) Susan Edwards Richmond, and an appearance at lala books in Lowell, MA, where I was joined by then founder of Lowell Loves Wildlife, a local advocacy group, to educate folks about the dangers of rodenticide for raptors and other wildlife. All of these bookstores have some signed copies leftover, so if you’re in the vicinity — or would like one shipped — this is a good time to grab them!
I provided a raffle donation of books and swag for an event sponsored by Save Arlington Wildlife / Save Massachusetts Wildlife Education Fund, and I’m looking forward to future collaborations with wildlife advocacy groups working on behalf of raptors and other creatures. If you are involved with such a group and interested in collaborating for an event, a fundraiser, a workshop, or something else, and particularly if you are advocating for the banning of SGAR’s (Second Generation Anticoagulant Rodenticides), please shoot an email - I would love to talk with you. Rodenticide is an issue that is touched on somewhat lightly in The Owl Prowl Mystery, and less lightly in an upcoming book I’m working on. If you’d like to learn more about the issue and learn how to help, please check out RATS, Raptors Are The Solution, for comprehensive information and resources - for adults AND kids.
Finally, if you have read The Owl Prowl Mystery, I’d be so grateful if you could help it along its flight path by leaving a review on Goodreads, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble. It can be a simple “I enjoyed this book!” Or some stars! Reader reviews / stars are critical for visibility and algorithms on online platforms, and really do help to get books in the hands of potential readers. Another small but significant way to help out is to request that your local library carry the book, if they don’t already. Thank you, thank you,! If you do any of the above, email or DM me to let me know, and I’ll be send you some Backyard Rangers stickers / badges!
Book Coaching! Limited Spaces Available!
Did you know I also work as a book coach? Book coaching offers editorial, project planning, and emotional support for writers. I specialize in the mystery genre. I help people with their books at any stage of the process, from puzzling through an outline, to troubleshooting a draft, to writing through the murky middle, to polishing and pitching. My superpower is helping people figure out impossible plot problems.
I really love taking writers across the finish line of their novels. For many writers I work with, it’s a life dream to type “the end” after making it all the way through a novel. Because I have had some clients finish first drafts or major revisions this year, I do have a few spaces open in my schedule beginning in December / January. I offer a 6-deadline planning package to help people plan a first draft or a major revision, a 12-deadline coaching package, manuscript assessments, and an introductory 50-page audit to give a sense of my coaching and editing style. If you’re a writer currently doing NaNoWriMo (or the Sisters in Crime November Marathon, or a comparable November challenge), and need help along the way or after, perhaps I can help. Coaching also makes a great holiday gift for the writer in your life! Visit the coaching section of my website for more information on packages and rates, coaching testimonials, and my intake form! https://dianarennbooks.com/coaching-editing/about-me/
What else? Oh yes. Election Day. VOTE!
If you have not yet voted or made a plan to vote, please do so. To put some spring in your step as you head to the polls or the ballot box, here’s a dazzling distraction I dug up! It’s the song “Election Day” recorded by ARCADIA, the spinoff Duran Duran group comprised of Simon LeBon, Nick Rhodes, and Roger Taylor. Sultry dance moves, mysterious lyrics, fab outfits, big hair, and random Italian names floating by, as this performance aired on an Italian TV show. It’s an oddly mesmerizing video and a weird earworm of a song. You’re welcome!
Ah yes, Duran Duran! I wasn't actually a fan back in the day (which had more to do with teenage tribalism than music) but nowadays I really enjoy their music.
I'm in the UK so won't be voting but hope all goes well over there.