The sequel to “Wrestling the Knee Jerk” is turning out to be kind of long, as the wise among us probably predicted. It looks like I won’t get it up until tomorrow or Wednesday, since I got behind on NaNo over the weekend and need to catch up.
It’s funny: over at the NaNo site they were all like, “It’s the weekend! Time to really start chugging ahead!” Except that no, the weekend is harder for me. I have this family, see, and I like to spend time with them.
I have a small amount of news. I’ve put up a “Buy” tab (see top of page) because Seraphina is already available for pre-order some places. There’s still no cover, but don’t let that deter you! There’s bound to be a cover someday.
Someday, too, I will have to tell you about the long cover Odyssey we’ve been on (parts of it, anyway). I had NO IDEA approving the cover was going to involve so much drama and heartbreak. I will never look at covers the same way again.
I leave you with a song that’s been going through my head lately, by one of the old prog-rock greats, Genesis. Here, for your listening (and young-Peter-Gabriel-watching) pleasure, I present “The Return of the Giant Hogweed” —
Someday I intend to write a scholarly paper in which I compare this song with Rush’s “The Trees” — two narrative ballads about plants! Either that or put them in a cage together and watch them fight, except I’m pretty sure Hogweed would win. The Hogweed is invincible, after all.
Rachel Hartman 
Wow, there’s one I haven’t heard in a while. I was surprised because, in most cases, mentioning the title of a Genesis song will set it running through my head, but in the case of “Hogweed,” I got nothin’. Had to watch the video to remember how it goes. (And…yikes, very young Gabriel, Collins, Hackett…it’s almost painful to watch.)
Anyway, I think the issue is that while I do own a complete collection of Genesis albums, most of them are on (gasp) cassette, so I haven’t listened to them in years. I picked up some of them on CD, but I haven’t taken the plunge to buying a bunch of MP3s, simply because of the huge numbers of songs involved. So it’s been an awfully long time since I last heard Nursery Cryme or Foxtrot. Wow…I wonder what an MP3 of “Supper’s Ready” costs?
Scott found a way to convert our old Genesis tapes to MP3s. There’s a program called Audacity, free online, that can do it. You will need a tape deck, but you can get a used one shockingly cheaply. OK, maybe not so shocking.
Of course, the sound quality isn’t quite what it would be if you just bought the MP3s, presumably. But we had a LOT of stuff on tape, and it was going to be galling and expensive to have to buy it all twice.