Linking some stuff!

Time to link a few items that have been languishing while I've been otherwise occupied!

:: Friend and fellow writer SK Waller has been paying tribute to the rock bands of California's Gold Coast:

But the Tri-counties didn't adhere to the British Sound. Instead, they took what they liked and cast off the rest. While southern California topped the charts with Folk-Rock (the Byrds, the Mamas & the Papas...) and Progressive Rock (the Mothers of Invention, the Doors...) and northern California grabbed national attention with Acid Rock (the Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin and Big Brother & the Holding Company...) the Gold Coast, overlooked and passed over, was busy mixing up their own brew that included all of that, but whose base was Surf. Welcome to 1960s proto punk, California style.

She's created a whole site about this part of rock history, California Gold Coast Dreamin'. Check it out!

:: Farran Nehme, one of the best film-bloggers around (under the title Self-Styled Siren), has a novel on the way. It sounds amazing, steeped as it is in her astonishing knowledge of film history:

New York in the late 1980s. Ceinwen Reilly has just moved from Yazoo City, Mississippi, and she’s never going back, minimum wage job (vintage store salesgirl) and shabby apartment (Avenue C walkup) be damned. Who cares about earthly matters when Ceinwen can spend her days and her nights at fading movie houses—and most of the time that’s left trying to look like Jean Harlow?

One day, Ceinwen discovers that her downstairs neighbor may have—just possibly—starred in a forgotten silent film that hasn’t been seen for ages. So naturally, it’s time for a quest. She will track down the missing reels, she will impress her neighbor, and she will become a part of movie history: the archivist as ingénue.

As she embarks on her grand mission, Ceinwen meets a somewhat bumbling, very charming, 100 percent English math professor named Matthew, who is as rational as she is dreamy. Together, they will or will not discover the reels, will or will not fall in love, and will or will not encounter the obsessives that make up the New York silent film nut underworld.

As it turns out, I know nothing at all about silent film...but I might have learned some, had I gone to college a couple years later. The music director of my school's orchestra was a part-time player in a Des Moines ensemble that played the scores to accompany silent films, and just after I left with diploma in hand, she made this passion of hers a part of the college's orchestra scene! I've always been bummed that I missed out on that.

:: It's Monday; your to-do list at work is probably short and manageable. So go waste some time learning stuff! Atlas Obscura is one of those sites you can lose yourself in, quickly.

:: I'm a sucker for reading other writers discuss their procedures, what tools they use, their workspace, et cetera. I obviously don't subscribe to the "Maybe if I use the same pen Stephen King uses!" kind of thinking, but I still like hearing about process. I find it a bit inspirational, both in general terms (these folks still have to sit down and work), and in practical terms (lots of successful folks have good thoughts on how to organize and create a workspace). George RR Martin is very particular about the word processor he uses.

:: Chalkboard art, created in secret.

Have a great Monday, folks!