So, I was at the End of the Road festival in Dorset last weekend and it was amazing. (The picture above of the Garden Stage is nabbed from a Guardian blogpost about this festival in 2008 so it's not from last weekend but it looked exactly like this).
We saw lots of artists - some great favourites and some new to me - but the definite highlights for me were (in ascending order): the Unthanks on Saturday teatime (lovely gig. I cried during The Testimony of Patience Kershaw); John Grant on Sunday night (just, wow. What a voice. I've been playing his Queen of Denmark album all week and now I'm going to listen to his Czars stuff) and top of my bill, Midlake. They were unbelievably fantastic. I think it might be the best gig I've ever seen! I love their music anyway but everything they played was more than it is on the albums. They were more more than anyone else I've ever seen. And it was just... transcendant. It's funny actually. I've always sniggered at prog rock but they did these huge prog-rockesque jams and they were just crazily good! Best new-to-me artist was probably Canadian, Kathryn Calder.
I also ate some excellent carnitas nachos and drank some pretty good beer.
What else?
Oh, yes. I'm moving law firms. This is kind of a huge deal for me as I joined my present firm straight from university 16 years ago. *gulp* It's exciting though. And good. Timing-wise, I move job in the same week that my novel comes out. So November's going to be a big deal of a month for me.
Writing-wise, prior to getting the news from Carina that they wanted to publish The Lady's Secret (as it became) I was writing a UF. Yes, really. I put that aside to edit TLS and then, having gotten immersed in the historical vibe again, I picked up my old pre-TLS Regency WIP (submitted to handful of agents then shelved). I've been totally gutting and re-drafting that WIP for the last couple of months. The benefit of a bit of distance - it's so much easier to ditch whole chapters after a year! I do intend to go back to that UF though. It probably doesn't make much commercial sense but I want to write that story and I think it'll do me good to try a different style.
Reading-wise, I read the following ebooks in Dorset: Mary Balogh's The Secret Mistress (pleasant), a fab little Josh Lanyon short, In Sunshine and In Shadow (nice working of the Irish theme), K A Mitchell's Chasing Smoke (mostly liked but it sort of petered out at the end). Now I'm home I'm looking forward to reading Miranda Neville's The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton and Tessa Dare's A Night to Surrender, both of which Janet W sent me (thank you, Janet!) I also purchased, having liked the excerpt, a book from M&B's Riva line: The End of Faking It by Natalie Anderson.
Pondering-wise, I've been musing on the consequences of my recent m/m glom. Yes, consequences. Positive ones! These musings have been prompted to some extent by twitter exchanges with Sunita. I'm planning to blog about this very soon.
Here's one of the best tracks from that Midlake set: Acts of Man from the Courage of Others album. Is that Douglas Fairbanks in the vid? Jnr? Snr?
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2 comments:
OH, no! I hit post a comment, and the lovely music went off! I should learn to always hit play when you have music up. Hey, welcome back! From your wild rock festival. I'll be interested also to hear about the MM effect. Okay, back to Midlake!
I'm so glad your first music festival was a success. They can be very fun but sometimes a little stressful with all the people, the rushing from stage to stage, and the vagaries of the weather (not to mention the port-a-potties!) I haven't been to a non-classical festival in a while-probably time to schedule one again!
Lovely Midlake tune. If you haven't already checked them out, you may like The Dutchess and the Duke and Vetiver. Maybe Espers (although they're a little "heavier" and more psychedelic). Two of the female members of Espers, Meg Baird and Helena Espvall, have made fabulous, folky solo albums that are really well worth checking out too.
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