~~~~~
EXCERPTS
Excerpt 2
Luke crossed his boots and gave the first line of the lyrics a go.
“You’ve got me thinking….” growled out across the room, against the rest of the sound. He looked up at me. “Thinking with what?” He grabbed his crotch.
“Ha ha.” It wasn’t a great comeback. Luke smirked and went back to growling out the rest of the first verse. It wasn’t the way I recorded the lyrics. I listened to what he was doing. It was better. It sounded rougher, more guttural, darker.
“That’s great, Luke,” I said.
“Yeah, should work.” Luke grinned. “This is going to make people listen.”
I looked over at Adam. The music coming from the keyboard sounded right.
Adam stopped playing and looked up. He looked excited. “Is that what you wanted?”
“Yeah.”
Noah leaned the guitar against the couch. “Shall we give it a go?”
I nodded. “I’ll do the harmonies. We’ll see how it sounds.” I looked over at Cole. “Drums.”
He fiddled with the laptop. The first few beats started up and he hit pause.
“Tell me when you’re ready.”
Luke flattened out the lyrics on his knees. Adam was ready at the keyboard. Noah picked up the guitar. We were about as ready as we were going to get.
“Go for it.” Cole hit play.
We went for it.
It sounded all right.
“Again?” asked Cole.
I nodded. We went for it again. Still sounded good. The lyrics came from Luke like deep dark smoke. Adam kept the keyboard down to just glowing coals. Noah on the guitar was all blues. I thought it sounded unbelievable.
“Time to record?” asked Cole. He held up his phone.
“Yep.” And we did it again. I flopped down on the couch beside Cole when we were finished. He hit play. The moment of truth.
I could hear the growl in Luke’s voice, the smoking coals of the keyboard, the laid-back guitar.
But overall it sounded like shit.
Cole hit pause around half way through the first verse and we sat there silently. Luke puffed out a breath, then rubbed his chin with his fist.
“And that’s why we have technology,” he said. He was right if we were going to see how this could sound we needed to record each track separately and layer them.
“You haven’t got anything on that thing with just the instrumental tracks?” Luke nodded at the laptop.
“Yeah, but it’s all me playing. You’ve already heard that,” I said.
There was nothing for it. We were going to have to do this properly. “I’ll go get the leads and the interface. We’ll do one track at a time.”
Excerpt 3
Last night when I sloped through the lounge, Mum was watching American Idol and there’s this guy on TV. All styled hair, heavy makeup, leather pants, and long coat. You need to visualize goth meets Matrix, to get the picture. I studied him. I wasn’t too keen on the bare feet. I thought he should’ve gone with boots, but it was a good look.
I went to my room and Googled the guy. I’d never heard of him. Probably why he was on American Idol. I printed off his publicity shot and took it to the hairdresser. She had her hair dyed red and piled on top of her head. She stared from the photo to me and back, looking doubtful.
“You want to be on American Idol?” she asked. But she went to college too and had heard the rumours. “You one of Collins’ crew this year?”
“Yeah,” I said.
She studied the photo again. Her eyes flicked, me, photo, me, photo.
“I guess you’re not bad looking,” she said after a while. “Nice eyes, grey, unusual, should work.” She studied me again, then the photo, then the top of my head, then the photo. She was acting superior under that fountain of red hair.
“You got a GHD?” she asked.
“A what??”
“Hair straightener.”
“No. How much?”
“Three hundred and fifty dollars,” she said, going to the glass shelf near the counter, picking up this black bag and pulling out what looked like an electric bread knife.
“Three fifty?”
“Yeah.”
I thought about that for a while. “Mum’s got a blow drier.”
“No good, you won’t get the look with a blow drier.”
I shrugged. There was no way I was spending three fifty on a hair straightener. That would take every bit of grandparent Christmas and birthday money I had saved up. “I’ll think about it.”
“Okay.” She got to work on the hair. After an hour and a half, my hair was straight and dyed black with a long fringe over my eyes.
She hovered over little tubes and pots like an artist then waved this wand thing around.
“I’ll use the smoky velvet. Should work with grey eyes.”
She got to work. When she was finished, it wasn’t me there behind the mirror with a long fringe like a curtain and eyes smoky velvet. It was Zac Coleman, singer, songwriter, future rock star.
I bought the GHD.
~~~~~
Title: Song for Jess: Prelude Series – Part Two
Author: Meg Buchanan
Genre: Women’s Fiction / Romance / New Adult
Aspiring musician Isaac can make the violin weep, the guitar sob, and the piano talk of lives unfulfilled.
Jess dreams of becoming an artist and her paintings show real promise.
Once they get together Isaac and Jess are inseparable. They spend the summer holidays at her family’s beach house. They plan a life of travelling the world with Isaac making music and Jess painting. But when they return home, everything changes.
Will Isaac and Jess follow their dreams?
Can true love survive the choices they make?
Song for Jess is a bittersweet tale of love and loss, guaranteed to break your heart.
~ Kindle Unlimited ~
Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon CA | Amazon AU
Paperback – Amazon
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Author Bio
Meg Buchanan lives in Paeroa, which is in the Coromandel in New Zealand. Her husband and a black Labrador live with her.
Meg has been writing for the last five years, most of her books are set in the Coromandel as it has a rich history and is spectacularly beautiful. It also has advantage beautiful beaches, amazing scenery and Paeroa has streets that already have names, couple of rivers and a mountain nearby, and neighbouring towns, so she saves time on world building.
Links
Author Page on Junction Publishing
Author Page on Amazon
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