An evening of song and beauty

Every year, Moravian College (and the associated seminary) have Vespers services for two weekends in December. The nondenominational* service begins with music (chorus, brass ensemble, woodwind trio, guitar ensemble, and flute troupe this year), moves to liturgy (including songs, readings, and prayer), and concludes with more music, partially in candlelight (choir, congregation, brass ensemble, and organ). We haven’t gone often (children squirm), but this year we did. Continue reading

Coolest music video I’ve seen this week

I never really thought about how a guitar could sound like a harpsichord.

How I found it: Laughing Squid had a post about the animated score for Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. My daughter and I watched it, loving the different colors for the different instruments, the length of the bars for the length of the notes, how the vertical position corresponded to pitch — so then I clicked through to Stephen Malinowski’s website to watch more.

If you click through to listen and watch more, let me know what your favorite is!

Shifting the tempo

Seems Wednesday is becoming my video day. Recently, my husband introduced me to the music of Scott Bradlee and Postmodern Jukebox. They take songs and make new arrangements of them — Dixieland, Roaring 20s, you name it. They also have some fun versions of Saturday morning cartoon theme songs.

So here is “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”

And a pink bear!

The boy really likes Minecraft, as I’ve mentioned before, and he’s rather fond of Minecraft parodies of popular songs. He recently wrote one, and his dad saw it lying on the table. I told him that it was based on Imagine Dragons’ “Radioactive.”

Well, neither of us had actually listened to the original, although I’d read the lyrics, so my husband pulled it up on YouTube. Then we watched the video in astonishment before sharing it with the kids. Here, to boggle your minds:

The boy was rather creeped out by the Muppet pit-fighting. The girl, on the other hand, was first horrified and then overjoyed by the pink bear. Now she wants to find one to make friends with.

Pleasant dreams, all.

I forgot the title

When I saw this month’s topic, I considered skipping the month. I mean, the obvious fears about publication — that no one will ever buy one of my stories, that I’ll be a one-hit wonder and never sell again, that I’ll never sell to a pro market — I’ve already gotten past by proving them wrong.

So what am I going to talk about? Nothing. Well, I will say that fears are always with us. Every writer I’ve ever heard talk about it is always worried that they can’t do it again, that their next work won’t be as good as their previous one, or won’t be as well received. Yet we go on.

I’ve had my share of angst lately — wanting to sell more frequently to pro markets, wanting to feel like I have a distinctive voice so others will look at something and say, “Oh, hell yeah, of course Erin Hartshorn wrote that” — but the truth is, even while feeling like this, I’m finishing up new stories, editing a novella, planning novels. Because even if I don’t see myself getting to where I want to go, the journey itself is worthwhile.


And now, in a lighter note, for my mom:


Today’s post was inspired by the topic “Publication” — September’s topic in the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour — an ongoing tour where you, the reader, travel around the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. We have all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s something for everyone to enjoy. Be sure to check out the next posts in the series, by Sandra Barret and D. M. Bonanno.

If you want to get to know nearly twenty other writers and find out their thoughts on first stories, check out the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour. You can find links to all of the posts on the tour by checking out the group site. Read and enjoy!


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Music for your weekend

Didn’t get my flash finished today (although I did write one yesterday for a Coursera class I’m taking on exoplanets). To amuse you, I give you the video that is currently my daughter’s favorite. (She really loves the tiger.)

Oh! And drabble up at SpeckLit! Teleporter Blues