Happy Friday, everyone! We did it. Friday’s here. The weekend has begun, at least for some people. It’ll start for me as soon as I leave work. I’ve got big plans for this weekend. NBA playoffs. Books to read. Books to write. I’m going to dye my hair…probably purple. We’ll see. Anyway, before I take off for the weekend I thought I’d share a snippet from the upcoming Louder! . The chapters aren’t numbered because I’m writing the book “patchwork quilt style”. I’m working on it out of order and I will “sew” the chapters together when I have more material ready. Please enjoy.

Amy

It was ten o’clock, and it was time for me to make my rounds. I called my friends and family to see how they were holding up, having to shelter in place for so long. Mom was okay. Lana and DR were bored, but surviving. Nick was losing his mind, according to him. He said he’d written twenty-five songs; most of them were shitty. Nyda was helping him catalog them. Still, he was happy he’d written anything at all. Aidan and Dee had managed to binge-watch every show they wanted to catch up on. Carmen was running out of ideas for paintings. Erin was attempting to read her way through her bookshelf. Vanessa and Mike were trying to come up with things to do once everything re-opened. As for me, I’d sneak away and try and work on my vocals. I worried I was losing my voice and I needed to practice, even if I didn’t have an audience.

Erin

I plopped down on my couch, book in hand, ready to read. I felt like Burgess Meredith in that episode of The Twilight Zone, where he’s the last man on Earth and he’s surrounded by books, and he finally has time to read, except I’m not going to fuck the whole thing up by breaking a pair of glasses. Thankfully I don’t wear glasses. Not going out was an absolute gift. I’ve got Amazon, and food deliveries. This is going to be a vacation.

Nick

Nyda was helping me organize all of the song lyrics I had written since the beginning of the Pandemic. She sat next to me on the couch and showed me the screen of her laptop. “Everything’s in a file called Covid Songs,” she said. “And then there are subfolders.” She paused and looked at me. “You’ve written a lot of stuff about loneliness.”

“I think I have separation anxiety,” I said. “I miss my band, and I miss our fans.”

Nyda smirked at me. “So, connect with them.”

“How?”

“YouTube. Start posting. The four of you can can talk online and post live performances for your fans.”

It was a solution so fucking simple I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to me in the first place.

Have a great weekend, everyone.