Hello again!
I cannot believe it's been nearly a decade since I've posted here. I know it's old and cliché, but the years really do start going faster as you get older. It feels like it's only been a couple of years since I started this blog, not the more than 11 years it's really been. In one of my older posts, I lamented about 11 years being so long to enjoy a particular book, and now double that time has passed.
In truth, adulthood and life have been thrown at me, both good and bad. I found someone incredibly special and married him back in 2019. In fact, he's the drummer of the band I was in that was mentioned in my previous post. We're enjoying life together with our two cats playing games, watching sports, and enjoying each other's company. Our day-to-day lives are probably boring to most, but we consider it ideal.
The other aspects of my life have been more of a roller coaster, and since this blog is primarily for my own posterity, I'm going to wax poetic on it for a while.
To start, Nina Vox is dead. She died after realizing that despite my love and connection to music, I do not have the talent, nor the charisma to make it work in the city I currently live in, and my job makes it so I cannot leave to try somewhere else. And at this point, I'm past the point of wanting to try again anyway. This is not said with pity or a "woe is me" attitude, it is simply a fact of my life, and I have made peace with it. That said, I'll be happy to tell you what happened in the meantime.
We last left off with the old band broken up and me looking for a new band. Historically, singers are usually snatched up pretty quick after a band breaks up. I had seen it numerous times with my friends and cohorts in the local scene, so it wasn't a far stretch to expect a similar offering now that I'd been out and about for a while. But I didn't hear from anyone until January the next year, and it was the guitarist and bassist of my old band wanting to start up a new project. The old drummer, my now-husband, was snatched up by two incredibly talented projects immediately after our band broke up, so he couldn't join us. Since I didn't have any alternatives and they were good enough guys, I agreed.
We played a few shows with a new drummer as a four-piece band, but we never drew any crowds apart from our significant others and a few friends who were looking to go out for the night anyway. After a handful of shows with no improvement in crowds, a drummer who didn't seemed to want to be there (he constantly asked to borrow everyone else's kits when we went on stage, and his heads were never tuned, etc.), plus increasingly uncomfortable conversations stemming from the guitarist, I decided to quit the project after only 7 months. Sadly, I did enjoy the music, but it just wasn't worth it anymore.
After that, there was...nothing. I put out and responded to ads, Facebook posts, you name it. Tumbleweeds had more action than I did at that moment. I didn't hear anything from August until December, when I saw a band advertising for open auditions for a new singer. They were a bit softer than I would have preferred, but well within my wheelhouse. Problem was, as always, I would be replacing a male singer. Often times, that meant that either I would have to change the vocal lines of the songs to where I could sing some parts, or they would have to change the key they played in so I could sing it as-written, and it often meant I was automatically out of the running before I even started. It had actually happened at least once before where I'd been told they were going with the guy singer simply because, well, he was...a guy.
Still, I wasn't going to let that deter me. I desperately craved being on stage again, and I knew that they had at least a few songs that I could sing without changing anything. I practiced and memorized them, and showed up to my audition ready as ever. I was one of the first people to audition, it turned out, and they were abuzz with excitement at having someone new in their studio. I reciprocated the excitement, and felt like we got along well. I got through the songs well enough, and they let me know that it would be a couple more weeks until the next round, and they'd let me know how it went.
I actually left there feeling pretty good. Everything pointed in the direction of a good audition, and I was hopeful for a callback. I got nervous, however, as I checked my Facebook and discovered that someone I had accumulated as a friend on my Vox profile was also auditioning for the same role, and he was also confident about his chances. He had yet to try out, but was extremely hyped about it. I found a sample of his music and listened to it to see if I should have been worried. Personally, I felt like I was a better fit for the style they were going for than he was, but I had definitely been wrong before.
I felt uneasy for probably the next week, getting little random rushes of adrenaline every time I remembered that it was growing ever closer to the deadline I had been told for callbacks. Then, one day I checked my Facebook again and saw the same guy had posted, this time being extremely hyped about getting a callback audition already. My heart sunk. If he'd already gotten a callback and I hadn't, then it was more than likely I was once again not up to snuff. I waited about a day after I saw the other guy's post, and when no message came for me, something broke inside me. The pain of constantly being rejected was too much, and I just couldn't do it anymore. I sent a message to the band telling them I was dropping out of contention, then posted my retirement message on Facebook.
What immediately followed after my retirement was one of the darkest mental periods of my life, the aftershocks of which still resonate through me from time to time. True to my word, I haven't done anything with music, apart from going to shows where my husband or one of our friends performs or the extremely rare dabble with composition software, but even that is rare now.
In the end, I am grateful that I stepped away, because if I hadn't, I never would have written my book (but that's a blog post for some other year).
However, if I can be meta for a moment and use this post as part diary / part time capsule, I'm currently in the final self-editing process of my first full novel after five years of writing. I wonder what life is going to look at the next time I remember that this blog exists. Is my writing any good? Will anyone give a damn? Will it be another instance of me trying my absolute hardest, only to find that no one is listening? Or, could it maybe, just maybe, be the unicorn that I'm desperately searching for?
I think the story is pretty good at least. But then again, I've always thought my stuff was pretty good, and I've definitely been wrong about that before, too.
But this book is the one thing I've put more effort into than anything else in my life. It is a piece of my soul, a plug for the wound that not being a musician caused. If a thousand people...hell, if even one person read it and liked it, that would be enough. My dream goal would be to be popular enough to be asked to speak at a nerd convention, and have someone geek out at me like I did at Timothy Zahn that one time I met him.
Don't worry, this isn't an ad, and I'm not begging anyone who happens to stumble upon these musings to read my book, if anyone ever does. I just wanted to catch you all up on where I'm at, and some of the twists and turns that brought me here.
That's but a small taste of what I've been up to. I have a feeling I might post a bit more often while procrastinating editing (holy crap is it a LOT of work to make sure everything lines up correctly, but it's so worth it.), so I'll try to remember to update you more on the book, Minecraft, and the rise of Sithbelle in future posts.
If you're here, thanks for reading, and see you next time!
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