Suburban Tales and The Mansion

Coming soon! Suburban Tales Last year, I wrote a bunch of short stories that focus on the supernatural, fantasy and horror. I picked three stories and thought it would be fun to independently publish them as a book series. The stories are entitled, "The Rock Star," The Piano," and "The Decorator." All three stories focus on Eden Gardens, a fictional neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley.

I was surprised to see a number of well-known authors like Joe Hill and Paul Tremblay were publishing short reads and short stories under the Kindle Short Reads category. I wonder how this has impacted print journals that publish short stories. As always with digital technology, there are pluses and minuses.

I also wrote the third book in my Hudson Valley trilogy called The Mansion. I hope to have it ready later in the year. The other two books in the trilogy are The Postcard and The Bells - both available through Amazon.

My academic books, Capturing Digital Media (Bloomsbury Academic) and Cinema of Confinement (Northwestern University Press), are also available for purchase.

Follow me on Twitter and Instagram @Ivyscobie

www.tomconnellyfiction.com

 

The Postcard Book Trailer and Thoughts on Quadrophenia

This is a trailer I made for my book The Postcard.   

For the past year and a half, I have been independently selling my book as both e-book and book format.  I have been exploring different ways to promote my book and thought: why not make a trailer?  I recently saw a documentary on The Who's Quadrophenia  (one of my favorite albums) and was inspired by the photos in the CD booklet (taken from the album).  

The photos narrate the experiences of Mod youth Jimmy in 1964. The images reflect the ephemeral and fleeting nature of Jimmy's memories.

The photo below of Jimmy and The Who is one of the most striking images of the story.  To the left, The Who leaves the Hammersmith Odeon during the present time (1973); to the right, Jimmy (1964) watches The Who.  As pointed out in the recent documentary on Quadrophenia, the space between these two planes of action mark a gap of time.  Jimmy, in a sense, is looking into the future and angry about that The Who as big arena rockers, which is depicted in the song The Punk and the Godfather.

Looking to Quadrophenia for inspiration made me think about the significance of album artwork and its combination with music (also see my posting on Archibald Motley and Jazz).  The album's artwork is something to study as one listens - a fusion of image and sound. In addition, albums can evoke memories of the listener - this is something I tried to depict in The Postcard when James buy his first Iron Maiden album.  Also, see my friend's YouTube postings about his experiences on collecting vinyls.

The Quadrophenia photos gave me the inspiration to make the trailer for my book.  I found this to be a great experience in terms of trying to capture the mood and feeling of the narrative.  More so, it made think about the importance of music and album artwork, and how CD and MP3s have changed this relationship.