Monthly Archives: October 2018

Putting Fiction and Art Together

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Flying Fish Club (1)

A year or so ago I had this idea to bring artists and writers together for a collaboration of their work. I wondered what that would be like and how would their work complement each other. My client and friend, Janet Stafford wrote a book called, “Heart Soul & Rock ‘n’ Roll” and there is a Karaoke scene in the book and the setting is a place called, “The Flying Fish.” The story is about Forty-year-old Lindsay Mitchell is an assistant minister at a church where she’s always been happy. But suddenly she misses her old college rock band. “I just want to rock one more time before I die,” she moans to friends Sue and Patti. When Patti invites her to vacation at Point Pleasant Beach, Lins meets Neil Gardner, front man for the Grim Reapers. The two have musical chemistry. But a whirlwind romance with a broke, agnostic musician who lives over a music store? That just might be more than Lins bargained for. Thus, begins our project to put a collaboration together.

I contacted Graphic Designer Lee Davis whom I have known for quite a while now and I love his work and talent. I thought he would be perfect for this project because it would be completely different from anything he has ever done. I wanted to challenge him and have him reach deep down and come up with what he imagines the characters in the Karaoke scene looks like. To put a face to a name. Wow did he do a great job!

Janet had artist Dan Bush put together an image of the Karaoke Bar and in Janet’s blog post about the collaboration, she talks about how the image was inspired.  Head on over to Squeaking Pips Press Blog and check out the graphic pages designed by Lee Davis and the read the scene that inspired this project!

Stephanie M. Hopkins

Links:

Squeaking Pips Press Blog

Lee Davis

Amazon Link to Heart Soul & Rock ‘N’ Roll

L.A.P. it Marketing LLC

 

The Ocean At The End Of The Lane by Neil Gailman

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The Ocean at the End of the Lane II

I was hesitating to download this audio book because I read Neverwhere years ago for a book club read and it was too disturbing and dark for my taste to finish. Having said that, in no way am I saying Gailman is not a good writer. He is s superb story teller and his imagination is really something else.

Have you ever heard Him speak? I can listen to Him talk all day long. Anyhow, I came across The Ocean At The End of The Lane last night and decided to take a chance. Wow, am I glad I did! I was literally drawn in from the first few lines. That really says a lot about the story. At first, I was thinking maybe because it was His voice that is so mesmerizing…. but I think it’s everything about the story, the characters and the way He is weaving the tale. This is one story I am going to be sad when I get to the end of it.

Stephanie M. Hopkins

About the book:

The Ocean At The End Of The Lane by Neil Gailman

Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn’t thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she’d claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly’s wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.