Many Genres, One Craft: Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction

Many Genres, One Craft: Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction Review

Award Winning Finalist USA News Best Book Awards Writing & Publishing -
Named #5 in 10 of This Year's Terrific Writing Books byThe Writer Magazine (2011)

Award-winning author Michael A. Arnzen and Heidi Ruby Miller gather the voices of today's top genre writers and writing instructors alongside their published students. Many Genres, One Craft fosters the writing process in a way that focuses almost exclusively on writing the novel. Using a compilation of instructional articles penned by well-known authors affiliated with Seton Hill University's acclaimed MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction, the book emphasizes how to write genre novels and commercially appealing fiction. The articles are modeled after actual learning modules that have successfully taught students in the program how to reach a wider audience for over a decade.

Award-winning and best-selling contributors from a spectrum of genres and literary careers offer their sage advice, including David Morrell, Tess Gerritsen, Victoria Thompson, Nancy Kress, Shelley Bates, Nicole Peeler, Maria V. Snyder, Thomas Monteleone, Susan Mallery, and over fifty other published authors, teachers, and alumni, as well as special guest agents and editors who have visited the program. Divided into three parts Craft, Genre, and The Writer's Life the book provides advice on everything from point-of-view to writing media tie-in novels to marketing romance, all from writers who have actually done it.

Popular Music in France from Chanson to Techno: Culture, Identity and Society (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series)

Popular Music in France from Chanson to Techno: Culture, Identity and Society (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series) Review

In France during the 1960s and 1970s, popular music became a key component of socio-cultural modernization as the music/record industry became increasingly important in both economic and cultural terms in response to demographic changes and the rise of the modern media. As France began questioning traditional ways of understanding politics and culture before and after May 1968, music as popular culture became an integral part of burgeoning media activity. Press, radio and television developed free from de Gaulle's state domination of information, and political activism shifted its concerns to the use of regional languages and regional cultures, including the safeguard of traditional popular music against the centralizing tendencies of the Republican state. The cultural and political significance of French music was again revealed in the 1990s, as French-language music became a highly visible example of France's quest to maintain her cultural "exceptionalism" in the face of the perceived globalizing hegemony of English and US business and cultural imperialism. Laws were passed instituting minimum quotas of French-language music. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed developing issues raised by new technologies, as compact discs, the minitel telematics system, the Internet and other innovations in radio and television broadcasting posed new challenges to musicians and the music industry. These trends and developments are the subject of this volume of essays by leading scholars across a range of disciplines including French studies, musicology, cultural and media studies and film studies. It constitutes an attempt to provide a complete and up-to-date overview of the place of popular music in modern France and the reception of French popular music abroad.

Popular Songs of the Twentieth Century: Vol. 1: Chart Detail & Encyclopedia, 1900-1949

Popular Songs of the Twentieth Century: Vol. 1: Chart Detail & Encyclopedia, 1900-1949 Review

This valuable reference work's principle feature is 600 monthly popularity charts that document January 1900 through December 1949. Gardner then displays these charts in a spreadsheet format so the reader can see how each song rose and fell during its period of popularity and how it compared with the other competing songs of its day. The remaining section contains a massive and comprehensive encyclopedia of all charted songs, including chart highlights, writers, shows, movies, records, and principal artists. An easy-to-read alphabetical index of song titles eliminates confusion from duplicated song titles or when a song re-charted as a revival or remake. Gardner's research reveals that music periodicals of the day tell a very different story from what has been, until now, recorded history. For example, contrary to popular belief, some enduring standards such as "St Louis Blues" and "Star Dust" never became big chart "hits," and some songs, enormously popular in their time, receive only scant mention in previously issued music history books and encyclopedias. Section 1: Alphabetical Index of Charted SongsSection 2: Monthly Top-20 Song ChartsSection 3: Semi-Monthly Top-20 Songs SpreadsheetsSection 4: Encyclopedia of Charted Songs>

Cave Droppings: Nick Cave and Religion (STUDIES IN POPULAR MUSIC)

Cave Droppings: Nick Cave and Religion (STUDIES IN POPULAR MUSIC) Review

Cave Droppings analyses the work of Nick Cave, a singular, idiosyncratic and brilliant musician, specifically through his engagements with theology and the Bible. It does so not merely in terms of his written work, the novels and plays and poetry and lyrics that he continues to produce, but also the music itself. Covering more than three decades of extraordinarily diverse creativity, the book has seven chapters focusing on: the modes in which Cave engages with the Bible; the total depravity of the worlds invoked in his novels and other written work; the consistent invocation of apocalyptic themes; his restoration of death as a valid dimension of life; the twists of the love song; the role of a sensual and heretical Christ; and then a detailed, dialectical analysis of his musical forms. The book draws upon a select number of theorists who provide the methodological possibilities of digging deep into the theological nature of Cave's work, namely Ernst Bloch, who is the methodological foundation stone, as well as Theodor Adorno, Theodore Gracyk and Jacques Attali.

Spreadin' Rhythm Around: Black Popular Songwriters, 1880-1930

Spreadin' Rhythm Around: Black Popular Songwriters, 1880-1930 Review

Spreadin' Rhythm Around: Black Popular Songwriters,1880-1930 is a classic work on a little-studied subject in American music history: the contribution of African-American songwriters to the world of popular song. Hailed by Publishers Weekly as "thoroughly researched and entertainingly written," this work documents the careers of songwriters like James A. Bland ("Carry Me Back to Ole Virginny"), Bert Williams ("Nobody"), W. C. Handy ("St. Louis Blues"), Noble Sissle, Eubie Blake ("I'm Just Wild About Harry"), and many more. Richly illustrated with rare photographs from sheet music, newspapers, and other unique sources, the book documents an entire era of performance when black singers, dancers, and actors were active on the New York stage.

In sheer depth of research, new information, and full coverage, Spreadin' Rhythm Around offers a comprehensive picture of the contributions of black musicians to American popular song. For anyone interested in the history of jazz, pop song, or Broadway, this book will be a revelation.

Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Focus of Place (Haymarket Series)

Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Focus of Place (Haymarket Series) Review

In a wild tour across the globe, touching down in Havana, Port-au-Prince, Kingston, Budapest, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo, George Lipsitz explores the fusion of immigrant and mainstream cultures displayed in world music, including rap, jazz, reggae, zouk, bhangra, juju, swamp pop, and Puerto Rican bugalu and Chicago punk.

Interpreting Popular Music

Interpreting Popular Music Review

There is a well-developed vocabulary for discussing classical music, but when it comes to popular music, how do we analyze its effects and its meaning? David Brackett draws from the disciplines of cultural studies and music theory to demonstrate how listeners form opinions about popular songs, and how they come to attribute a rich variety of meanings to them. Exploring several genres of popular music through recordings made by Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby, Hank Williams, James Brown, and Elvis Costello, Brackett develops a set of tools for looking at both the formal and cultural dimensions of popular music of all kinds.