Guest Post by by Susan Sloate and excerpt from SCENES FROM A SONG

Did you have a minor character who insisted on playing a larger role in the story?

Yes!

My novel, SCENES FROM A SONG, is about a 1960’s band that becomes a phenomenal success. As part of that, they acquire a manager who helps push them into the spotlight and is a significant factor in making them superstars.

The manager was never intended to be more than just the guy who put together some connections for them, minor at best. But then I gave him a name: Dary Dover.

I didn’t just make up that name. I found it when I was reading about Tiny Tim (remember him?)—a guy who spent his entire life in show business and finally had a breakout success playing the ukelele and singing “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” on ROWAN & MARTIN’S LAUGH-IN in the late 1960’s. He was NEVER supposed to become a superstar, because his act was a joke. But somehow he did—to the point that when he got married a couple of years later, he got married on THE TONIGHT SHOW, and millions of people watched it happen.

So, I was reading about Tiny Tim, and the story mentioned that he went by different stage names before he became Tiny Tim—and one of them was  Dary Dover.

I loved that name immediately, and as soon as I read it, I knew that would be the manager of the band. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that ‘Dary Dover’ could be quite a slimy character, if I so desired. Because it sounded like someone who could be slimy and underhanded.

So as the story of the band evolved, so did the role Dary played with them. And while he did sincerely love their music (as Brian Epstein honestly loved the Beatles music, so he became their manager), Dary also had a dark side we find out about later. And that dark side makes a huge difference in the band’s story.

It wasn’t much to go on; it was just a name. But that name made all the difference in one of the most pivotal characters in the novel, one I never intended to have more than a few paragraphs, at most!

 

SCENES FROM THE SONG

by Susan Sloate

GENRE: Drama

BLURB:

On Halloween Eve, 1961, in his dingy Bronx walkup apartment, seventeen-year-old Jimmy Welton hears the opening notes of a song in his head. Jimmy’s still mourning his firefighter father, who taught him to play the guitar but recently died in a house fire, leaving his family destitute. Jimmy takes this song, about all he misses from his life now, to the New York amusement park where he works after school. There, he meets Mark Morgan, a rebellious teen with his own band, who eventually invites Jimmy to join them. And the rest is rock’n roll history…

Their band, The GooseBumps, become a worldwide phenomenon, and the songs they write and sing together become the backbone of rock musical history. And the song Jimmy first heard on Halloween, “Wrapped in Gauze”, becomes the song that not only comforts him in that terrible time but also comforts others: Victoria, recently divorced and dealing with an out-of-nowhere family tragedy; Carolyn, whose final flippant words to someone in pain can’t be taken back; and Jack, battling back from unimaginable loss with the help of his cheeky therapist and a song he thinks he hates.

SCENES FROM A SONG is the story of a song that makes us smile, that breaks our hearts, that stays with us forever, and the very special band that started it all.

Excerpt:

Jimmy hesitated for a moment, then took a good slug and felt it burn down into his stomach. Only then would he trust himself to strum the first chords of “Bawk Bawk”. He’d written it in a sardonic mood one day, when he heard Debby playing “The Twist” on her record player and wanted to make fun of it. It had never occurred to him he’d end up playing it for a bunch of guys in a seedy bar after midnight.

Jimmy took a deep breath and launched into the song, speaking as well as singing it. After he’d written it, he’d realized he could even dance it a little, too, and he made gestures as well:

Imitating a chicken, clicking his heels together, clapping his hands. His father had told him he was a natural showman, so he gave it his all.

When he began to ham it up in the dance part, the boys be-gan to laugh, and they laughed right through to the end. Jimmy finished with the high whistle he’d learned the previous summer, and a final click of his heels before bowing to them.

Mark, Kellen and Hammy applauded enthusiastically, and Mick, who’d come back to see if they wanted another round, said to him, “Terrific, fella. Funniest thing I’ve seen since ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’. You a comic?”

“Are you kidding? He’s a musician!” Mark roared. “A great musician! And ‘Bawk Bawk’s a number-one hit if ever I heard one!”

He jumped onto the floor and imitated Jimmy, clicking his heels together, arms flailing like a chicken, and making the ‘bawk bawk’ sound. In a minute, Hammy and Kellen were following him.

“Play it again, Jimmy!” Mark shouted. “So we can dance it this time!”

The book will be $0.99 during the tour: https://amzn.to/3JGG198

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

SUSAN SLOATE is the author or co-author of more than 25 published books. This includes 3 editions of Forward to Camelot, a time-travel thriller about the JFK assassination that became a #6 Amazon bestseller, was honored in 3 literary competitions and was optioned by a Hollywood company for film production. She also wrote the autobiographical Broadway novel Stealing Fire, which became a #2 Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release, and Realizing You (with Ron Doades), for which she invented a new genre: the self-help novel.

 

Susan has also written young-adult fiction and non-fiction, including the children’s biography Ray Charles: Find Another Way, which won the silver medal in the 2007 Children’s Moonbeam Awards. Mysteries Unwrapped: The Secrets of Alcatraz led to her 2009 appearance on the TV series MysteryQuest for The History Channel. She has also been a sportswriter and a screenwriter, edited the popular Kyle & Corey young-adult book series, managed two political campaigns and founded an author’s festival to promote student literacy in her hometown outside Charleston, SC. She has appeared in multiple volumes of WHO’S WHO IN AMERICA, WHO’S WHO IN ENTERTAINMENT and WHO’S WHO AMONG AMERICAN WOMEN.

Visit her online at https://susansloate.com .

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