Keith Snyder Newsletter December, 2001 More writings  Email me to receive my next newsletter   THE KEITH SNYDER NEWSLETTER 30 times bigger than a limerick, 2,800 times smaller than the Internal Revenue Code As always, if you'd like to be removed from this list, please let me know. A STRANGE FEW MONTHS OF LISTS While the New York job market for freelancers hit bottom in November, caught its breath for a minute, and then hiked its sleeves and started drilling, THE NIGHT MEN got fantastic reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus, and then appeared at #9 on the International Mystery Booksellers Association Top-10 list. I've never made it onto this list before. Maybe I can actually do something with this writing thing. Then it appeared at #7 on the Booksense crime fiction list. I also did a "piece," as we journalists call it, for Booksense about where stories come from. It's here. Then Walker (my publisher) announced that they're no longer going to maintain a mystery list. That means I no longer have a publisher. But then, and this is the strangest of all... Wait; to tell you that story, I have to tell you this one. If you've been getting news from me for a while, you've seen me mention The Cosmic Debris, the group I was in when I lived in Los Angeles. Once a week, we'd show up at a bookstore or art gallery, set up maybe fifty thousand dollars worth of music electronics, and play for the two or three people who'd happen to wander in and think we sounded cool. I was the keyboard player; we also had "hyperacoustic" flute, rhythm loops, found sounds, and bass; then we had a guy who did nothing but take in all the sounds the rest of us were making, do weird things to them electronically, and send them back out through the speakers; and in front of it all were a poet and an actor/writer, at various times. Yeah, I know. Yet another hyperacoustic signal processing found sounds writer/actor group. It was all improv, too -- we never knew what we were going to do until we did it, which made for some interesting moments. Those of you who've done improv know what I mean by "interesting." It's a euphemism. But other times, it was the other kind of interesting -- the kind you don't get any other time but during improv. The planets would suddenly thunk into alignment, and we'd have one of those moments. Usually, those moments are lost as soon as the planets swing back out of alignment. But anal-retentive types that we were, we recorded every gig. We had the thought that we'd eventually sit down in a studio and make a few CDs out of the hundreds of hours of recordings. Things being the way things generally be, we haven't gotten very far with the group project -- but Chris (the rhythm loops and found sounds guy), with the permission of the rest of us, took his favorite tracks into his home studio, polished them, overdubbed instruments on some, and last year, acting as his own small label, released the result on a CD called LUCID DREAMS, under the name ALIAS ZONE. LUCID DREAMS got good reviews in the small niche press, so Chris decided to sign up with Valley Entertainment, a promotion company that "re-released" it in January. The New Age Voice Airwaves list is the Top-100 list for ambient, new age, and space music. In January, LUCID DREAMS debuted at #1. That means that during January, it got more airplay on their surveyed stations than Enya, George Winston, or Vangelis. In February, it stayed on the list at #6. We're all a little weirded out. It's available at record stores, music websites, and Amazon. I get a few cents if you buy it using this link. So those are my strange stories of strange lists. IN OTHER NEWS... La Diva is off in Germany/Norway/England again, doing more opera auditions. CLASSICAL SINGER magazine has been running her "Diva Dispatches" (the chatty emails she sent to her mailing list during her first European audition trip) as a series of articles. The third, "Lust and Skullduggery in Milan," is in their current issue. She also recently passed 50,000 listens at her MP3.com page, and at the moment, she's #9 on the Opera Top-40 list there, even with Pavarotti and Bartoli now in the competition. (MP3.com got bought by a media giant, and is no longer strictly for independents.) Take a listen: http://www.mp3.com/haaversen My friend and critiquing partner, SJ Rozan, is up for two (count 'em, two) Edgar awards, one for REFLECTING THE SKY, and one for her short story DOUBLE-CROSSING DELANCEY. Check out her amazingly competently designed website: www.sjrozan.com. Really, it's the swellest. Great designer. And while you're out there roaming the ether, check out Laura Lippman's new essay about being a swim coach at the Harand Theatre Camp: www.lauralippman.com If you've got small children, you might know the Leap Pad, from Leapfrog. I'm one of several musicians creating the music for their reading and math activities, and it's been a total blast to do. Not only is the music fun to make, but I'm happy to be lending my talents to something that's actually a net gain to our species. Check out their website at www.leapfrog.com. (And if your kid has one: I think they're starting to use my stuff in Issue #3.) I've started a "Music in Your Mailbox" list. I send MP3 files to it any time I've made music I think is good enough to share. Email me if you'd like to be on it -- I maintain it independently from my newsletter list. And last.... Yet again, I am 400 emails behind. If yours is one of them, please accept my sincere apology, as well as a less sincere but enthusiastically vague promise that I will eventually write to you. Now back to audio editing. (I'm trying to get SELL IN HELL out the door in time for the Cannes Film Festival deadline. Are there any native-French-speaking writers out there who might be interested in translating the English screenplay into French subtitles? Pay is a thank-you in the credits, but it's only six pages long.) Be well, Keith   ©2002, Keith Snyder, all rights reserved.