Originally posted March 30, 2013:
And now, the rest of the story...
First of all, I must give credit where credit is due, primarily for the pictures and videos I've posted. The (original) profile picture (from the Rock Opus page) is of Cherif Fortin, a former romance novel cover model and "knight" at Medieval Times in Chicago. I came across his photos one night when I googled "hot guys with long hair." Actually, that didn't really prompt any decent results, so I entered "romance novel cover models," and there he was-Jon Warren in the virtual flesh. Wow. Now, even though the original inspiration for the character was Paul Hackman, Cherif fit the bill nicely, too. The picture of him in the CHARACTERS photo album, sitting beside a window, was painful to look at, because it "IS" Jon. So thank you, Cherif, for "allowing" me to use your pictures. The profile pic is taken from a novel called "Passion's Blood," written by Cherif and illustrated by Lynn Sanders.
The other photos of "the bands" are just pics I've taken from various websites of the real people who inspired the way the characters look. At the time I knew nothing about any of their real personalities, so any real resemblance is strictly coincidental. It's pretty weird, though, how much Terry really is like Tommy Lee...
And although when Season was created, I'd never heard of Marion Raven, but when I caught a glimpse of her MySpace profile, after the release of her duet with Meat Loaf, I felt she was a great representation. And of course, there's still Ann Wilson's influence, mainly because Ann is the greatest singer in the entire universe. I want to BE Ann Wilson!! So, put the two together and you have our lusty, yet rather neurotic, heroine. I guess I can also add Lee Aaron to that mix, whom I had no exposure to in the 80s because she was a bigger deal in Canada & Europe than in the U.S. But I bought "Metal Queen" via Amazon in 2006 and Wow!!! She's ultra-cool. Thank you, ladies.
And thanks go out to David Lee Roth, Richie Sambora, Rudolf Schenker, Tommy Lee, AJ Pero, Brent Doerner, and Warren DeMartini. And I pay homage to those who have since passed on, to Robbin Crosby and Paul Hackman. They are greatly missed, by me and other fans alike. My friend Christine, my first reader and partner in hair metal crime, was the one who broke the news to me about Paul. I was devastated. This book is dedicated to his memory, because he was the Number 1 guy on my "Top Ten Metal Men" list, and was such an inspiration for my favorite fictional bass player.
The picture of Saints and Sinners, an obscure band that I discovered via the 80's Hairband World profile, is Tarax as a whole. When I saw the video on the site, I nearly fell out of my chair. Another vision come to life. Just change the hair color of the other blonde guy...I think he's the drummer. The video was taken off YouTube so I haven't been able to watch it again.
The other thing I'll confess is that I may be mistaken about a great many things that a road band does, although I was coached on these details by the best source in the world: My husband Don, who toured with Jimmy Buffett's Coral Reefer Band for about 5 years. He helped out a lot with gear info, tour scheduling, and those moments when a band member's boom box can get thrown out of the bus. He was a tremendous help, and when he said the first chapter was actually pretty good, I was thrilled to death. He's a voracious reader, who reads everything and knows a good book when he sees it, so his opinion was highly valuable. But I had to decide which point of view I was sticking with: A 16-year-old girl or a 23-year-old male. The 23-year-old won, of course, and it was just as hard to do that since I was way past my early 20s. I think I've fixed that, now that the first few chapters have been re-worked to make a little bit more sense.
The main disclaimer is this: This is ADULT content. Not necessarily pornographic, but this is pretty much for 18-year-olds and up. Or maybe very mature high-school age and up. There's drug use, relatively graphic sex, mild violence, tons of profanity...(Have you ever heard musicians talk amongst themselves? It doesn't matter what genre either-we're a tough bunch!) I wouldn't go far as to say it's X-rated-more like NC-17. (Do they still use that rating?)
I don't know what literary genre to put it in either. It's not what they call "literary fiction," because it's way too lightweight for that. It's not quite erotica, (a couple of scenes come way close), but that's not the focus of the story. It's not sci-fi, fantasy, horror, or suspense. (Don: "You mean they don't fight aliens or anything?" LOL) It's definitely not a Western. In some ways, when I got to the end of it, I more or less had a romance novel on my hands. Not a conventional one, but well...you know...
It's not Pulitzer Prize-winning material by any means. It's not deep, thought-provoking prose that's designed to change the world. Tolstoy it ain't. It's more like Circus Magazine meets Linda Howard. It's schmaltzy commercial fiction that you read strictly for entertainment, and that is all. You may discover some useless rock trivia, (my head is full of it), and I think I'm accurate in that to some degree. I've mentioned some other "real" people, who were around at the time, and it wasn't meant to offend or put anyone on the spot. I used familiar names strictly for realism purposes.
I did break one rule-by using some songs that were released after 1985, both in the text and in my "soundtrack." Certain tunes just really seemed to fit the story, like Richie Sambora's "Rosie" and Nickelback's "Figured You Out." I want to extend more thanks to the artists featured on the profile songlist and the videos I've posted. Their music has been a huge part of my life, and without it I would not be where I am now: A college music instructor getting ready to work on her PhD and the lead singer/bassist of her own very popular regional band.
(UPDATE: PhD is in hand, and I'm a college administrator now! And Ms Mac & Th Groovetones officially retired in 2014.)
About the songlist (which I will need to add somewhere because you can't do that on MySpace anymore I don't think): Play it while you read, like it's background music. Unfortunately because both Tarax and Rampage are fictitious bands, all of their songs are ones you could say I wrote myself, and if I ever had the chance to record those, I might do it. But though I write decent fiction, I'm a crummy songwriter.
Again, my sincere thanks to those who inspired the story, and I hope that if any of them read it, I want them to know my intention is to honor their work. It is a work of fiction only, and meant only to entertain. I'll also mention that is a complete original work. Every word is mine, right out of my weird little brain.
I also want to thank the following folks I know personally: Of course, Don, who endured a lot while I was finishing this crazy thing; Christine Cooper, Heather Butler, Noel Greer, Bethany Brantley, Bethany Baracosa, Kirt Connor, my first few avid readers; Karen Taylor (we miss you!!), Relinda Ruth, UACossatot, all former and current members of Ms Mac and the Groovetones, everyone who has come out and supported the Groovetones over the last NINE(????) years; Sunni Thibodeau, Kay Mannon, Randy Lindsey, Ann Furr-all those who taught me how to write; my sister Liz and her family; the Kids (Dan, Tiffany, Storm, Katrina, and Cassondra) and all the grandchildren, Ron and Wanda Riddle; and Mom and Dad, for just being the greatest people in the world who didn't seem to mind when the Star Wars posters came down and the Motley Crue posters went up, and gave me my first bass for Christmas; and I guess I should thank Microsoft for Word and Excel.
I guess I COULD thank Northcentral University for allowing me to take a break from writing really fun stuff for four entire years. But they gave me a PhD and nominated me for Dissertation of the Year, so I guess I should just, y'know, deal with it. ;)
Okay, I'm done for now.
Long live rock & roll! And popular fiction!!
Sunday, July 1, 2018
The Story Behind the Story, Part 1
Originally posted March 30, 2013:
It's about twelve-thirty a.m., June something 1985. I've been watching and recording bootlegged videos off MTV all day. I have a lot of videos recorded, but there's three in a row that really got my creative juices flowing: Scorpions' "Big City Nights," Y & T's "Summertime Girls," and Bon Jovi's "In and Out of Love."
"Big City Nights" shows some of the Scorpions' time on the road, so there's a lot of concert footage, getting on airplanes, riding around in limo's, running around backstage, etc., etc. "Summertime Girls," as well as "In and Out of Love," shows the members of each band running around on the beach. The Bon Jovi video starts off with a crusty old manager dropping off Jon and the boys at the boardwalk, warning them they've got twenty-four hours to goof off before they have to get back to work.
Hmm…wouldn't it be cool to live the life of a heavy metal rock band? Isn't that just the coolest thing in the world for a sixteen-year-old who just discovered that she really digs this kind of music? So…her imagination being what it is, and when she likes to fantasize about how much more exciting her life could be, she makes up a little story about it…a rock band on tour…and all the crazy things that happen to it…
Three videos later, after Motley Crue's "Smokin' In the Boys' Room" and Lita Ford's "Gotta Let Go," there's a second recording of Helix's "Deep Cuts the Knife." I taped it again because I missed the beginning of it the first time. I have fallen in love with Helix guitarist Paul Hackman, thinking he's one of the coolest-looking guys I've ever seen.
And Jon Warren was born. The ultimate heavy metal fantasy man. Tall, dark, handsome, smart, sexy, talented, funny…
Along with his counterparts: A phenom guitarist who closely resembles the young Richie Sambora. A drummer who looks, and surprisingly, acts, exactly like Motley Crue's Tommy Lee. Rudolf Schenker's doppelganger has also been created. And, well, there wasn't any one person who inspired the creation of the blonde, blue-eyed sex god lead singer, but you can pretty much fill in the blank with anyone from Vince Neil to David Lee Roth to Bret Michaels.
I think Letterman was on that night. Back when he came on after Johnny Carson on NBC. I was drinking ginger ale and eating Butterfinger candy bars. I grabbed a green three-subject notebook and started writing, thinking I might have another cool short story to write for Ebony Rose, my high school's literary magazine. But the pen just kept flowing, scribbling out the cries of teenage groupies and the woes of drinking too much beer, my brain trying to find creative ways of disguising profanity. The hours went by, and pages kept turning, and the thing just kept getting longer…and longer…and longer…
Was it about three in the morning when I finally decided to stop? My guys had successfully made it to Chicago and had robbed a convenience store. Why I had them sneaking out of their hotel to raid a Tiger Mart? I can't say that I'd know. It just sounded like a funny prank. Maybe someone had mentioned it in the one Circus magazine I owned at the time, that I read cover to cover, every single word, including the classified ads at the back. "Rock On Tour," the cover read. Go figure. Yet another inspiration right there.
I wrote on my opus for over two years. My friend Christine Cooper was my one reader. She loved it, and helped me with ideas. I had three notebooks and a three-ring binder filled with handwritten copy. I had no idea where I was going with it, how it would end or anything. I was just writing.
I was about to start my senior year when I realized I'd made a big mistake. This band had been on tour with no opening act? What the hell. Nobody toured alone! But I'd become a huge Heart fan by then, and thought, hey, y'know, we need a real woman in this story. Let's assign them an opening band and have a chick as the lead singer, someone for my perfect male creation to fall head over heels in love with, since he's so determined to do away with the one-night-stand thing…ba-da-bing!
Her name was Haley at first, because Pat Benatar's daughter was Haley. And she was Haley for quite a while, until my niece was born… with the same name. Oops. Something didn't work then. I felt kinda weird about that. But the character basically looked like me if I were Ann Wilson. Her guitar player cousin was a big boy named Clint, who looked amazingly like Ratt's Robbin Crosby. Her other guitar player was a watered-down Warren DeMartini, who looked like the guy I knew in high school who drew me into this genre of music anyway. So I named the character Eric. Since I used one guitarist from Helix, turning him into a bass player, I made the other Helix guitarist, Brent Doerner, the bass player for the new band. Drums? Needed an opposite to the tall, skinny Terry. Trace went through a metamorphasis-he started as Leonard Haze(Y & T), then A.J. Pero(Twisted Sister), but I think he's more like a young Jason Bonham now.
Okay. Now I have the opening band, and the start of a dysfunctional heavy metal love story. I got them through the South-Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and right after they finished playing Live Aid, that's where I stopped.
For thirteen years. By 1987, I was in my first semester of college, and started having a real life of my own. My "hair" metal guys took a backseat. A way, way, way back seat.
Sanford, Colorado. Late April, 2001. I've just returned from taking four students to Adams State College to participate in a foreign language festival. It's Friday afternoon, it's warm, and my husband is on the road doing sound gigs, and is going to be gone for a while, probably about a month or so. I finally have the TV to myself, and the first thing I turn on is Vh-1, catching the last few "Top 40 Hair Bands of All-Time."
Holy cow. Is that what they call it now?
"Hair Bands" is followed by two Behind the Music episodes: Motley Crue and Bon Jovi. It seems to be Hair Metal night on Vh-1. I'm inspired. There wasn't any company coming to visit, so I wouldn't be stressing about that. I'm all alone with nothing to do but teach some summer school. Whad'ya know. I think I'm gonna start writing again.
I bring my personal computer home from the band hall. I drive to Alamosa and dig around in the storage unit for the box with all my notebooks in it. I have one floppy disk that I started writing the first chapter on with my dad's old laptop that had Windows 3.1 on it. I set up shop in the living room, and I'm ready to go.
I start typing what's been handwritten. Oops. See some problems here. Is it just me, or is it blindingly obvious that this was written by someone who: has never been drunk before, has never had sex before, has never stayed for any length of time in a hotel before…or has never even played music professionally before? I didn't even have the gear names right. And my love story kicked off way too easily. Needed more tension, more…drama.
Gotta fix this.
And my heroine? She still didn't even have a decent name. I tried two others before, during those sporadic moments I'd come up with a scene out of sheer boredom during the previous thirteen years. Then Hardcore, with George C. Scott and the former Mrs. Kurt Russell, Season Hubley, came on Encore. Hey, that's a cool name. Sounds like a "hippie" name. Hey, her parents could be former hippies. And she could be from the South instead of New Jersey, like I'd originally planned. What the hell do I know about New Jersey? New Orleans would be cooler. I know something about that. Besides, I can't have her be a former high school girlfriend of Jon Bon Jovi's because he did actually marry his former high school girlfriend. That's rock-n-roll folklore I can't screw with. Especially since they're still married twenty years later!
She kept her freaky last name, that I made up off the top of my head because I wanted something that sounded as hip as "Benatar." Then it became her stage name, because no one from Slidell, Louisiana would be named "Trovisar."
Anyway…I had to dirty up my story some. And maybe I made it too dirty, so I cleaned it up some. But the more I see how erotica is popular, I think I'll keep it dirty. It's also being told from a man's point-of-view, so he wouldn't exactly tell it like a googly-eyed teenage girl. And virgins can't write about sex, no matter how hard they try. Even if they read dirty books or take a peek at a Penthouse Letters…no. You gotta be in the middle of that action to understand that stuff.
Nor do heavy rockers from the eighties talk like Sunday School teachers. I knew that back in 1985, but since it started as a school publication, I couldn't exactly write "motherfucker" in the dialogue then. It's in there now. Along with various other choice words…
I wrote all summer. Couldn't wait to get home from summer school and Upward Bound teaching to write. I'd stay up all hours, drinking Black Velvet and Coke, eating Bagel Bites and chocolate-covered peanuts, smoking Turkish Blend Menthol Camels, and I'd take the trip back, surrounded by distorted guitars and gorgeous men with long hair who looked really good with eyeliner on. I dragged out my CD's of Dokken and Whitesnake and banged my head while tapping away at my keyboard.
I had a blast!!!
Then I went to grad school. And did nothing but write about music education for nine months. *Snore.* Then I moved back to Arkansas, and met someone that I thought would like to read what I had so far, which was still only half the story, even though it was seven hundred pages long. Heather stayed up til two a.m. reading because she couldn't put it down. Then the band left Houston and my printer ran out of ink.
Now what?
Though I shouldn't admit it, I had a lot of time on my hands during my community college teaching hours. Hey! I'll have time to write!! And I found this cool Internet radio station called GotRadio, and one of their "rooms" was the Rockin' 80's. Damn! I haven't heard "The Lumberjack Song" by Jackyl in forever! Why I'd even want to hear it again…but guess what? There's also a cool website called MotherMetal.com! And though Paul Hackman's been dead since 1992, Brian Vollmer has kept Helix going! We hair rockers are still out there! And I won't even get into MySpace at this point. (Or Facebook. But Facebook wasn't even around then, I don't think. Twitter was non-existent.)
I must finish the book!!!
I wrote on it some more the summer of '05. Then the show "Rock Star: INXS" came on. And that's how I became friends with Noël. She watched it religiously, and I thought, y'know, she's a rock fan. Another reader! Another victim! Oh, no! She was also the one who saved the newest chapters, after I stupidly left my floppy disk in a computer at the Ashdown campus lab. She rescued it, and although some files were corrupted, she willed me her old thumb drive and the story was safe yet again.
After her first semester of online teaching was done, I gave her the binder. And the next thing I knew, she was hooked also. Then I knew I was in trouble. I really had to finish this crazy thing now. I started sending new chapters to Heather and the next thing I knew they were both at the same point in the story dying to know what was going to happen next. Needless to say, I had my work cut out for me.
I was good up until Christmas of that year. I got to a point where Jon and Season have a big argument and I didn't feel like writing an argument so I could keep the holidays as stress free as possible. So I was stuck. I wanted to be done by the New Year, but I didn't make it. I wrote during registration for the next semester, and that kicked me off again.
Then…I had to finish. Heather and Noël were about to go insane wondering what would happen at the end of "Summer of Glam." (Crummy title, but I couldn't think of anything else.) I stayed up till three in the morning (again), with an Asia Carrera film on in the background, writing the final love scene. I was down to the last chapter, and decided to go to my parents' house for the weekend. I got to the final few paragraphs, and wept. In some ways, I didn't want to finish it. It meant I'd never be able to go back and hang out with my guys again.
It was sad really…
But on Saturday, March 4, 2006, I finished the epilogue. I even took the laptop back into my old bedroom and sat on the floor, writing the last words in almost the exact same location I wrote the first words. It took me over twenty years to finish a story that only takes place over four months.
Wow.
Heather called while on the road to Houston: "I love it!" Both women had the same reaction to other parts of the story: "I was crying, then I was laughing, then I was mad…" Coolness. I'm a literary diva. At least in DeQueen.
I sent some other queries. All turned down. Except for one. This agent was a musician herself so I figured, cool. Her response: "Your prose isn't "edgy" enough," and "I don't like the idea of a has-been looking back." But this was my favorite: "It's too much like watching Vh-1." Okay, I know a lot of people who watch Vh-1. They like Vh-1. That mean they might like the book, too. And how many viewers does Vh-1 have? How many Vh-1 channels are there? Hmmm…she says that like it's a bad thing.
Bitch.
I got that message immediately after I'd just had two Coronas and a shot of tequila. It shouldn't have bothered me then, but it did. I was pissed. I guess I should learn to take rejection better. I especially loved those letters that came back that read: "Dear Writer, Your stuff basically sucks. We don't publish books about drugs, alcohol, music, art, sex, or personal conflicts between individuals. We don't publish books that discuss struggles or life or whatever. We basically publish books about nothing."
Like a Seinfeld episode.
All that aside, I still have the firm belief that I wrote a great book. My other two avid readers, both of them two very different people and two very different readers, loved it. They both sat behind their computers at work and raced to the epilogue without getting fired. I singlehandedly improved their sex lives in the process. *wink, wink, nudge, nudge*
With the emergence of MySpace, (the explosion of other social media), and all the bands that were THERE in the old days with their own profiles (And some still playing, that's so awesome!), I thought well, why not give it its own site! They all say the Internet is a good place to promote your stuff...
I started the MySpace page sometime in 2007, I think? I don't remember. It was after Don & I had moved to Texarkana to the loft. I had originally planned to post the whole thing online, then I read that "why post it all online? Then people could read it for free and not want to eventually BUY it!!" Oh, well, that makes sense. So I just posted the note you're reading now (without this paragraph), a Disclaimer (trust me, it eventually really needed one), and the Prologue.
The uncensored, unabridged version ended up with 355,437 words, and 886 pages. (Yeah, it's long...so??) That's why it's an "opus" and not just a "novel." I'm the Tolkien of heavy metal literature....but this didn't stop those who've taken the journey, because they ended up having a cool time-and hopefully you will too, fellow "Hair Metal" junkies. I know you're still out there!!
I plan on submitting it to a POD publisher, sometime soon. Trying to get it published, as well as continuing to work on the sequel all had to take a back seat to 4 years of graduate school. Now that THAT'S over (THANK GOD!!), I can get on with my life, or...whatever.
Feel free to friend "Rockin' Heaven Down", or the Book Formerly Known As "Rock Opus"!!
It's about twelve-thirty a.m., June something 1985. I've been watching and recording bootlegged videos off MTV all day. I have a lot of videos recorded, but there's three in a row that really got my creative juices flowing: Scorpions' "Big City Nights," Y & T's "Summertime Girls," and Bon Jovi's "In and Out of Love."
"Big City Nights" shows some of the Scorpions' time on the road, so there's a lot of concert footage, getting on airplanes, riding around in limo's, running around backstage, etc., etc. "Summertime Girls," as well as "In and Out of Love," shows the members of each band running around on the beach. The Bon Jovi video starts off with a crusty old manager dropping off Jon and the boys at the boardwalk, warning them they've got twenty-four hours to goof off before they have to get back to work.
Hmm…wouldn't it be cool to live the life of a heavy metal rock band? Isn't that just the coolest thing in the world for a sixteen-year-old who just discovered that she really digs this kind of music? So…her imagination being what it is, and when she likes to fantasize about how much more exciting her life could be, she makes up a little story about it…a rock band on tour…and all the crazy things that happen to it…
Three videos later, after Motley Crue's "Smokin' In the Boys' Room" and Lita Ford's "Gotta Let Go," there's a second recording of Helix's "Deep Cuts the Knife." I taped it again because I missed the beginning of it the first time. I have fallen in love with Helix guitarist Paul Hackman, thinking he's one of the coolest-looking guys I've ever seen.
And Jon Warren was born. The ultimate heavy metal fantasy man. Tall, dark, handsome, smart, sexy, talented, funny…
Along with his counterparts: A phenom guitarist who closely resembles the young Richie Sambora. A drummer who looks, and surprisingly, acts, exactly like Motley Crue's Tommy Lee. Rudolf Schenker's doppelganger has also been created. And, well, there wasn't any one person who inspired the creation of the blonde, blue-eyed sex god lead singer, but you can pretty much fill in the blank with anyone from Vince Neil to David Lee Roth to Bret Michaels.
I think Letterman was on that night. Back when he came on after Johnny Carson on NBC. I was drinking ginger ale and eating Butterfinger candy bars. I grabbed a green three-subject notebook and started writing, thinking I might have another cool short story to write for Ebony Rose, my high school's literary magazine. But the pen just kept flowing, scribbling out the cries of teenage groupies and the woes of drinking too much beer, my brain trying to find creative ways of disguising profanity. The hours went by, and pages kept turning, and the thing just kept getting longer…and longer…and longer…
Was it about three in the morning when I finally decided to stop? My guys had successfully made it to Chicago and had robbed a convenience store. Why I had them sneaking out of their hotel to raid a Tiger Mart? I can't say that I'd know. It just sounded like a funny prank. Maybe someone had mentioned it in the one Circus magazine I owned at the time, that I read cover to cover, every single word, including the classified ads at the back. "Rock On Tour," the cover read. Go figure. Yet another inspiration right there.
I wrote on my opus for over two years. My friend Christine Cooper was my one reader. She loved it, and helped me with ideas. I had three notebooks and a three-ring binder filled with handwritten copy. I had no idea where I was going with it, how it would end or anything. I was just writing.
I was about to start my senior year when I realized I'd made a big mistake. This band had been on tour with no opening act? What the hell. Nobody toured alone! But I'd become a huge Heart fan by then, and thought, hey, y'know, we need a real woman in this story. Let's assign them an opening band and have a chick as the lead singer, someone for my perfect male creation to fall head over heels in love with, since he's so determined to do away with the one-night-stand thing…ba-da-bing!
Her name was Haley at first, because Pat Benatar's daughter was Haley. And she was Haley for quite a while, until my niece was born… with the same name. Oops. Something didn't work then. I felt kinda weird about that. But the character basically looked like me if I were Ann Wilson. Her guitar player cousin was a big boy named Clint, who looked amazingly like Ratt's Robbin Crosby. Her other guitar player was a watered-down Warren DeMartini, who looked like the guy I knew in high school who drew me into this genre of music anyway. So I named the character Eric. Since I used one guitarist from Helix, turning him into a bass player, I made the other Helix guitarist, Brent Doerner, the bass player for the new band. Drums? Needed an opposite to the tall, skinny Terry. Trace went through a metamorphasis-he started as Leonard Haze(Y & T), then A.J. Pero(Twisted Sister), but I think he's more like a young Jason Bonham now.
Okay. Now I have the opening band, and the start of a dysfunctional heavy metal love story. I got them through the South-Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and right after they finished playing Live Aid, that's where I stopped.
For thirteen years. By 1987, I was in my first semester of college, and started having a real life of my own. My "hair" metal guys took a backseat. A way, way, way back seat.
Sanford, Colorado. Late April, 2001. I've just returned from taking four students to Adams State College to participate in a foreign language festival. It's Friday afternoon, it's warm, and my husband is on the road doing sound gigs, and is going to be gone for a while, probably about a month or so. I finally have the TV to myself, and the first thing I turn on is Vh-1, catching the last few "Top 40 Hair Bands of All-Time."
Holy cow. Is that what they call it now?
"Hair Bands" is followed by two Behind the Music episodes: Motley Crue and Bon Jovi. It seems to be Hair Metal night on Vh-1. I'm inspired. There wasn't any company coming to visit, so I wouldn't be stressing about that. I'm all alone with nothing to do but teach some summer school. Whad'ya know. I think I'm gonna start writing again.
I bring my personal computer home from the band hall. I drive to Alamosa and dig around in the storage unit for the box with all my notebooks in it. I have one floppy disk that I started writing the first chapter on with my dad's old laptop that had Windows 3.1 on it. I set up shop in the living room, and I'm ready to go.
I start typing what's been handwritten. Oops. See some problems here. Is it just me, or is it blindingly obvious that this was written by someone who: has never been drunk before, has never had sex before, has never stayed for any length of time in a hotel before…or has never even played music professionally before? I didn't even have the gear names right. And my love story kicked off way too easily. Needed more tension, more…drama.
Gotta fix this.
And my heroine? She still didn't even have a decent name. I tried two others before, during those sporadic moments I'd come up with a scene out of sheer boredom during the previous thirteen years. Then Hardcore, with George C. Scott and the former Mrs. Kurt Russell, Season Hubley, came on Encore. Hey, that's a cool name. Sounds like a "hippie" name. Hey, her parents could be former hippies. And she could be from the South instead of New Jersey, like I'd originally planned. What the hell do I know about New Jersey? New Orleans would be cooler. I know something about that. Besides, I can't have her be a former high school girlfriend of Jon Bon Jovi's because he did actually marry his former high school girlfriend. That's rock-n-roll folklore I can't screw with. Especially since they're still married twenty years later!
She kept her freaky last name, that I made up off the top of my head because I wanted something that sounded as hip as "Benatar." Then it became her stage name, because no one from Slidell, Louisiana would be named "Trovisar."
Anyway…I had to dirty up my story some. And maybe I made it too dirty, so I cleaned it up some. But the more I see how erotica is popular, I think I'll keep it dirty. It's also being told from a man's point-of-view, so he wouldn't exactly tell it like a googly-eyed teenage girl. And virgins can't write about sex, no matter how hard they try. Even if they read dirty books or take a peek at a Penthouse Letters…no. You gotta be in the middle of that action to understand that stuff.
Nor do heavy rockers from the eighties talk like Sunday School teachers. I knew that back in 1985, but since it started as a school publication, I couldn't exactly write "motherfucker" in the dialogue then. It's in there now. Along with various other choice words…
I wrote all summer. Couldn't wait to get home from summer school and Upward Bound teaching to write. I'd stay up all hours, drinking Black Velvet and Coke, eating Bagel Bites and chocolate-covered peanuts, smoking Turkish Blend Menthol Camels, and I'd take the trip back, surrounded by distorted guitars and gorgeous men with long hair who looked really good with eyeliner on. I dragged out my CD's of Dokken and Whitesnake and banged my head while tapping away at my keyboard.
I had a blast!!!
Then I went to grad school. And did nothing but write about music education for nine months. *Snore.* Then I moved back to Arkansas, and met someone that I thought would like to read what I had so far, which was still only half the story, even though it was seven hundred pages long. Heather stayed up til two a.m. reading because she couldn't put it down. Then the band left Houston and my printer ran out of ink.
Now what?
Though I shouldn't admit it, I had a lot of time on my hands during my community college teaching hours. Hey! I'll have time to write!! And I found this cool Internet radio station called GotRadio, and one of their "rooms" was the Rockin' 80's. Damn! I haven't heard "The Lumberjack Song" by Jackyl in forever! Why I'd even want to hear it again…but guess what? There's also a cool website called MotherMetal.com! And though Paul Hackman's been dead since 1992, Brian Vollmer has kept Helix going! We hair rockers are still out there! And I won't even get into MySpace at this point. (Or Facebook. But Facebook wasn't even around then, I don't think. Twitter was non-existent.)
I must finish the book!!!
I wrote on it some more the summer of '05. Then the show "Rock Star: INXS" came on. And that's how I became friends with Noël. She watched it religiously, and I thought, y'know, she's a rock fan. Another reader! Another victim! Oh, no! She was also the one who saved the newest chapters, after I stupidly left my floppy disk in a computer at the Ashdown campus lab. She rescued it, and although some files were corrupted, she willed me her old thumb drive and the story was safe yet again.
After her first semester of online teaching was done, I gave her the binder. And the next thing I knew, she was hooked also. Then I knew I was in trouble. I really had to finish this crazy thing now. I started sending new chapters to Heather and the next thing I knew they were both at the same point in the story dying to know what was going to happen next. Needless to say, I had my work cut out for me.
I was good up until Christmas of that year. I got to a point where Jon and Season have a big argument and I didn't feel like writing an argument so I could keep the holidays as stress free as possible. So I was stuck. I wanted to be done by the New Year, but I didn't make it. I wrote during registration for the next semester, and that kicked me off again.
Then…I had to finish. Heather and Noël were about to go insane wondering what would happen at the end of "Summer of Glam." (Crummy title, but I couldn't think of anything else.) I stayed up till three in the morning (again), with an Asia Carrera film on in the background, writing the final love scene. I was down to the last chapter, and decided to go to my parents' house for the weekend. I got to the final few paragraphs, and wept. In some ways, I didn't want to finish it. It meant I'd never be able to go back and hang out with my guys again.
It was sad really…
But on Saturday, March 4, 2006, I finished the epilogue. I even took the laptop back into my old bedroom and sat on the floor, writing the last words in almost the exact same location I wrote the first words. It took me over twenty years to finish a story that only takes place over four months.
Wow.
Heather called while on the road to Houston: "I love it!" Both women had the same reaction to other parts of the story: "I was crying, then I was laughing, then I was mad…" Coolness. I'm a literary diva. At least in DeQueen.
I sent some other queries. All turned down. Except for one. This agent was a musician herself so I figured, cool. Her response: "Your prose isn't "edgy" enough," and "I don't like the idea of a has-been looking back." But this was my favorite: "It's too much like watching Vh-1." Okay, I know a lot of people who watch Vh-1. They like Vh-1. That mean they might like the book, too. And how many viewers does Vh-1 have? How many Vh-1 channels are there? Hmmm…she says that like it's a bad thing.
Bitch.
I got that message immediately after I'd just had two Coronas and a shot of tequila. It shouldn't have bothered me then, but it did. I was pissed. I guess I should learn to take rejection better. I especially loved those letters that came back that read: "Dear Writer, Your stuff basically sucks. We don't publish books about drugs, alcohol, music, art, sex, or personal conflicts between individuals. We don't publish books that discuss struggles or life or whatever. We basically publish books about nothing."
Like a Seinfeld episode.
All that aside, I still have the firm belief that I wrote a great book. My other two avid readers, both of them two very different people and two very different readers, loved it. They both sat behind their computers at work and raced to the epilogue without getting fired. I singlehandedly improved their sex lives in the process. *wink, wink, nudge, nudge*
With the emergence of MySpace, (the explosion of other social media), and all the bands that were THERE in the old days with their own profiles (And some still playing, that's so awesome!), I thought well, why not give it its own site! They all say the Internet is a good place to promote your stuff...
I started the MySpace page sometime in 2007, I think? I don't remember. It was after Don & I had moved to Texarkana to the loft. I had originally planned to post the whole thing online, then I read that "why post it all online? Then people could read it for free and not want to eventually BUY it!!" Oh, well, that makes sense. So I just posted the note you're reading now (without this paragraph), a Disclaimer (trust me, it eventually really needed one), and the Prologue.
The uncensored, unabridged version ended up with 355,437 words, and 886 pages. (Yeah, it's long...so??) That's why it's an "opus" and not just a "novel." I'm the Tolkien of heavy metal literature....but this didn't stop those who've taken the journey, because they ended up having a cool time-and hopefully you will too, fellow "Hair Metal" junkies. I know you're still out there!!
I plan on submitting it to a POD publisher, sometime soon. Trying to get it published, as well as continuing to work on the sequel all had to take a back seat to 4 years of graduate school. Now that THAT'S over (THANK GOD!!), I can get on with my life, or...whatever.
Feel free to friend "Rockin' Heaven Down", or the Book Formerly Known As "Rock Opus"!!
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