butt-kicking quote

So after Bob and I returned from SoCal, I spent much of Friday in a snotty fog.  I had hoped to start some revisions, whether for imminent publication or just one of my novels from the vaults.  Lately it's been Alvin's Farm all over the place, more Alvin, Jenny and Sam than my brain can tackle!  The break from work was so necessary, not so much the head cold that dogged my heels.  But all things happen for one reason or another; as I sat at my usual spot last Friday, struggling to keep my thoughts straight, I perused beloved blogs.  As I clicked, I found the most beautiful words, which led to my spending much of last weekend reworking the playlist for The Hounds Of War And Love.  That idea had been all I could ponder for much of last autumn, then was lost in the shuffle of the Smiths, Cassels and Alvin Harris.  I'm about to release the third novel in that series, which will then go on hiatus until late summer, when the last three books will be published.  I need a break from Alvin, Jenny and  Sam, bless their hearts.  And one small quote from a four-year-old was just what I required.

Real peace is just a lot of hopes put together.

Miss Elliot Rose receives the grandest of props for that insightful and blessed notion; from the mouths of babes of course.  When I read that quote, I was stunned, then made giddy for the simplicity and foresight.  Then a brick landed upside my head, and I scrambled to put on The Hounds Of War And Love playlist.  Teeming with '70s tunes, I added more, deleted some, then spent much time listening to Neil Young, Linda Ronstadt, Cheap Trick, The Electric Light Orchestra, Aerosmith and Olivia Newton-John.  Songs were shuffled in my ear buds or piped through my small PC speakers.  Fortunately Bob can stomach most of those artists, although he did question all the ONJ; only four songs, but he's not big on somewhat sappy seventies singers.  I am, in moderation, especially when balanced by plenty of Cheap Trick and Aerosmith.  By Sunday evening I had a fairly firm list of thirty-five tunes, grouped four to six at a time, corresponding to the wide-ranging tale this novel will tell.  Set from the mid-1960s to around 2015, Hounds entwines the Scotlands, Nesmiths and Leahys amidst the Vietnam and second Iraq conflicts.  I'm looking at either a late summer or November writing schedule, still much to research on those wars, plenty of plotting to accomplish.  But the story had languished, overwhelmed by the residents of Arkendale, Oregon and various other clans until I read Elliot's quote.

Suddenly I had the voice for Jillian Scotland, daughter of '70s soft rock singer Rebecca Scotland.  Funny how one small-ish piece slips into place and the rest chugs right along.  By the end of the weekend Bob was up to the gills with Linda Ronstadt and Olivia N-J, probably had heard his fill of Neil Young, Cheap Trick, ELO and Aerosmith too.  Before it's all over, those artists will be floating through the house, racking up plays on Last.fm; Cheap Trick moved into my top twenty with all that investigation.  But what else could I do?  Here was Jillian handed to me in Elliot's beautiful, innocent words, aspirations we all carry, but as adults our views are tainted.  World peace; isn't that the impossible dream?  Two reporters were killed in Homs, Syria; journalist Marie Colvin and photographer Remi Ochlik.  While last year's Arab Spring has brought freedom to many, repression continues.  It's a circle, maybe never to close.  But humans still seek the better angels of our natures, what Abraham Lincoln said during the American Civil War.  The better angels somehow survive, regardless of how hopeless it seems.

If we can put enough of those hopes together, peace will endure.  Just ask Elliot.  She's only four, but knows exactly what she's on about.