Band Update

Confession: the last time Second Player Score got together as a band was when we played a benefit show for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention last September. Yes, SIX MONTHS AGO.

Funny how time works, huh? But anyway, we are now on the cusp - I hope - of starting back up again. As a musician, when you don't play music for a long time, you start to really miss it even if you don't realize it. It's a great way to relieve stress, even if some of that stress paradoxically stems from the act of playing music (as much as I love performing, especially for a good cause like supporting the AFSP or Autism Empowerment, there's all the other stuff that goes into it: loading gear! Finding parking! Staying up past my bedtime! Are people going to show up? Etc., etc.)

I have even, for the first time in literal years, WRITTEN NEW SONGS. Three of them, in fact. Two of them were deliberate attempts to make anime-theme-song-style songs, and the third was a completely different animal loosely inspired by "Gotta Get Away" by The Offspring and "Catch These Fists" by Wet Leg. The anime-style songs still need lyrics (my goal is to write them in Japanese) and are pretty complex, so you probably won't be hearing them anytime soon. The third song, however, is a simple punk-rock jam (called "Edge Back" - yes, it has lyrics) that we may have ready by the time we play our next show.

Oh, did I forget to mention? Yes, we HAVE SHOWS BOOKED. One is in May, the next in June. Which equals the number of shows that we played all of last year. I will announce more details when it gets closer.

Will this represent a new beginning, a phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes revival of Second Player Score, the band*? We shall see! Stay tuned...

* the multimedia production team is something totally different and may have a cool announcement of its own coming up soon

Wavebow Comp?

Last Friday, I dropped by the Asian Arts and Culture Exhibit at the Vancouver, WA Arts Hub. There were, as you might expect, lots of amazing crafts and artwork, as well as some great musical performances. Some exhibits even combined craft, art, and music, like this one:

I found this stringed instrument to be so interesting that I had to take pictures of it. It kind of reminded me of a wavebow, or a possible relative of it (in case you're new here, a wavebow is the magical musical instrument that some of my characters from the Joel Suzuki series play). The back of it was even cooler:

As you can see, it had a carving of what I think is a dragon, which looks incredible. Confession: I had never thought of doing something like that for the wavebows, and now I wish I had! Maybe I can work it into Volume Eight somehow.

Anyway, there was no one manning that booth while I was there (I had to leave a little early), so I didn't get a chance to ask what the instrument was called. If you know, please tell me in the comments! And if you're in the Vancouver, WA area and have not checked out the Arts Hub yet, I highly recommend doing so. You can find out more information about it here.

Volume Eight Status Update

All right, you guys, this is really happening. I am (gasp) officially knee-deep in Volume Eight!

In the last status update from January, I reported that I was at 2,400 words. Which, you know, could have easily been the end of it. After all, I did write 9,000 words for Volume Nine back in the summer of 2023 and then stopped.

But this time around, I've kept going, and at a pace I don't think I've matched since the first draft of Volume One way back when. There have been multiple 2,000-word days (which matches but does not exceed my daily word count record, because my brain shuts down after that) and I've even been writing regularly on weekends. As a result, I am now up to 25,000 words, which is roughly equivalent to 100 pages, or (more gasps) about one-third of the way through the whole thing.

As far as where all this diligence has come from, I have to give a lot of credit to a certain social media platform that shall remain unnamed. Allow me to explain: since late last August, I've been posting daily to said platform, partly as an experiment and partly just for fun. For the first few months, my posts were mostly about the real-life history of the Joel Suzuki series, after which they moved into topics like worldbuilding and character profiles.

Then, once I started working on Volume Eight, I began to post status updates on the book's progress, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. So I kept doing it, and it eventually turned into almost a virtual book coach-type of relationship, where even if it was a Sunday and/or I didn't feel like writing and/or I would hit my daily goal of 500 words and think "that's good enough," I would push myself to crank out more words so that I would have something cool to report the next day.

Will it continue? Who knows! But for now, I'm having a blast writing on a regular basis again, and on top of that, this time I'm actually pantsing it, instead of working from an outline like I normally do. I'm also following my own advice and not stopping to edit much along the way, so I know a lot of what I'm writing is probably garbage, but that's what first drafts are for.

Anyway, stay tuned for the next status update!