Promotional Post: Imperfect Harmony by Jay Northcote #Review #Giveaway

Book: Imperfect Harmony
Author: Jay Northcote
Publisher: Jaybird Press
Publication date: April 15. 2016
Length: 189 pages



Synopsis

Imperfect harmony can still be beautiful…

John Fletcher, a former musician, is stuck in limbo after losing his long-term partner two years ago. He’s shut himself off from everything that reminds him of what he’s lost. When his neighbour persuades him to join the local community choir, John rediscovers his love of music and finds a reason to start living again.

Rhys Callington, the talented and charismatic choir leader, captures John’s attention from the first moment they meet. He appears to be the polar opposite of John: young, vibrant, and full of life. But Rhys has darkness in his own past that is holding him back from following his dreams.

Despite the nineteen-year age gap, the two men grow close and a fragile relationship blossoms. Ghosts of the past and insecurities about the future threaten their newfound happiness. If they’re going to harmonise in life and love as they do in their music, they’ll need to start following the same score.

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Review

This is quite the emotional book. Two men, both walking around in a fog of bereavement. Rhys has found healing and strength through music. John was pretty much strolling along aimlessly, only half living until he is thrust into Rhys’s life by his neighbor.

And so the healing begins. With melody, harmony, and love these two men find solace in each other. They fill the gaps of their barely there lives.

Now, the happy ending isn’t without obstacles, issues, self-barricades. Between age gaps and past losses they have an uphill battle.

This book really shows the power of love and all it can do. I cried sad and happy tears throughout this story. It really touched my heart and it shows that just because we lose people in our lives that, at one point, were our reason for living. There are others out there that have been waiting for you to breathe them back to life, and in return; save you.

Gorgeous book!

Giveaway

Enter the giveaway to win a back list ebook from Jay Northcote!

Contest ends April 25th.

Winner will be contacted via email so please check your spam.

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Why Music Matters

Music helps us more than it hurts us. For many, it's our therapist. Sometimes it's  a temporary lover. It's anger management, it's an emotional amplifier.

I've seen paintings that have brought tears to my eyes. One time I went to a show and I told the artist how moved I was by his work. He told me, "Without music none of these could have ever been possible."

"How so?" I asked.

"Music drives the emotion from my body. Without it, it would be stagnant."

My daughter cries when she hears certain songs. Once I asked her why and she told me it was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard.

When I write I need music to help me get into the feel of the moment. I NEED IT.

In an apocalypse music would easily be something I would fight to revive. It started somewhere once didn't it? Music only dies if you let it.

When I grieve, music offers me solace.

When I celebrate, music gives me the soundtrack to help me express just how happy I am.

Music matters because it's a guide... A role model. 

It's so powerful that lyrics of hate, violence and prejudice have caused riots. You set the tone. Music makes us do wonderful things... crazy things.

The diversity in music is what I love most. I can just as easily dance down the aisle at my local food store to The Temptations as I can to Katy Perry.

Music matters because we want it to... We need it to.

Authors Writing Lyrics

Now before authors all over the place start thinking this is a "Please stop writing song lyrics," just wait...

I conducted an experiment today on one of my most terrific friends. He also happens to be a published author. I chose him for several reasons. One, he is a friend, two he is a writer, and three he has written lyrics into his books and mastered what I, the reader, feels how it should be done.

I asked him to read a set of lyrics I wrote (not good or perfect but this was an experiment, remember). I asked him "I want you to read short lyrics. 1st tell me how you hear it (ie) indie, hip hop, country, rap, whatever."

I want to cry...I do
 I want to cry... yes I do
cause if I cry then I'll be free,
 If I cry then I can fly
The pains all hold up inside
Just need to cry

His response was, "I hear mournful piano and strings, like haunting alternative. Evanescence like."

I then sang it to him. He then responded, "Yours is a little bluesy with more emphasis on the fly/free than the cry part... I can hear it now."

Sometimes writers created tales about rockstars (musicians). I've read a ton! No, I'm not singling anyone out. In the time I've read I have noticed more often then not, I have no idea what I'm supposed to feel while reading lyrics in books.

After my friend heard it and said he could hear it my way, he then said "Consider the source, I'm moody." That was him. Now take someone who isn't, they would hear those lyrics totally different.

I am aware, sometimes, an author wants their reader to read the lyrics and hear it in their head how it is they want. Other times the author wants you to hear it their way. 

One time I read a book and the author wrote lyrics and I heard that as a happy love song to an unrequited love. Four chapters later I find out the character is suicidal and it's a good bye song and he's horribly heartbroken. I sat there for a good two minutes wondering where I went wrong. I went back to the page of the song, then back further to see if I missed the emotion. Alas, I had not. It left me confused. 

Why not write... "With a melancholy expression he began to play a tune so sad tears welled in my eyes before the first words were sung..." I don't understand. If it's so vital to the story why wouldn't an author emphasize how we, the reader, are supposed to interpret it?

My experiment shows that lyrics are just words, the melody, the tune, the music is what gives it the emotion.  Lyrics are poems awaiting melody.

Take Edgar Allan Poe's A Dream Within A Dream...

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Now we know what type of person he was. But if these were lyrics to a song the emotion would be heard as it was sung. 

As writers it is VITAL to be the melody, set the scene and tell us how you want us to feel if it is expected of us to understand!