Some of My Favorite Music-Casting Crowns

This is contrary to my last post but it also has been on my mind for a while I decided I had time to do both today.

  A change of subject from my very serious venting last time.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a post on music but I was listening to this album a month ago and decided I wanted to say something about it, I finally am.  

Casting Crowns is what I call my favorite still together group. My all time favorite is Petra but they broke up years ago. CC is obviously still together. I discovered them years ago when they came out with “Lifesong” even though when it played on the radio I never heard it was them. I thought it was by the group Lifesong. The first song I really caught on was from them is “East To West”. Lifesong came out in ’05 and East To West in ’07. 

Petra was Rock, no mistake about it but I’m not sure of Casting Crowns. Rock-Pop maybe. They do some that have large Rock flavor to it but they also do a few that have a Country flavor. 

The album Is “Come To The Well” by Casting Crowns. It’s their eighth I think. Maybe tenth if you count a couple of Live albums from previous releases. It came out in ’11 but I haven’t listened to the whole thing very often. I have certain songs from it on my iTunes which I listen to a bunch. 

Mark Hall the lead singer gas dyslexia but it hasn’t stopped him from becoming a Youth Paster and Lead singer for for the award winning Casting Crowns. I heard an interview with him where he talked about it. Yes he does makes mistakes in the songs on stage but he doesn’t seem to let it bother him. The band just keeps playing and most probably the audience doesn’t notice or if they do it’s no big deal. 

Anyway “Come to the Well” is a great album.  “Courageous” was used in a movie by the same name. 

My favorite songs from the album are: “Jesus, Friend Of Sinners”, “Already There”, “My Own Worse Enemy”. “The Well” is good too.  Actually, all the songs are good. Very well done too. All of the voices are excellent. “Just Another Birthday” is a powerful song about a daughter who wants something from her dad who is no longer in her life. The signing is very well done and the whole story is as I said powerful. There is a story behind it but I haven’t had the chance to hear it, even though it is on their web site. On the Video updates page.  I also like “Praise You In The Storm” Very Good. “Voice of Truth” “Until The Whole World Hears” Excellent video on that one. “Who I am” and “Glorious Day” also. There are others but that gives you an idea of how many of their songs I love and there are some I like too. 

Speaking of which here is their web site: Casting Crowns They have a lot of interesting pages. Including videos of the members talking and a online community you can join. And some Bible teaching by Mark. 

Here is their page in the iTunes store Here   and for  "Come To The Well"

World Affairs Venting

Just want to do a little venting here: I apologize for this has nothing to do with writing, music or anything else I usually post about.  But the first part of this has been on my mind for months. 

This was brought by the attack on the Mall in Kenya. But I’ve felt the same way the various Idiots who have attacked schools, Navy bases, movie theaters etc. here. They are a bunch of idiots whose names should be changed to Mr. Zero. I really don’t care why they became idiots even though if we could keep a better eye on some of them in the US we might be able to stop them. Not all because not all of the attacks were done by people with mental problems. But we could better than taking away guns from honest citizens. Some of those guys had bombs and there have been those who used knives. 

Anyway back to the Kenya idiots: they seem to think they are special killing innocent people for a cause but those types of bad guys(Swine? Dogs?) have been around since Adam and Eve’s children. This group is just another in a long line of such types who rationalize killing innocents in the name of religion, politics, or just because. There’s nothing special about this new group--just a bunch of people who wanted an excuse to kill. Nothing more. 

The Overly extreme Islamists--please notice I said “Overly extreme” not all--seem to be worse than usual but they are doing the same thing Communists, Nazis, other religions, IRA and many other groups throughout history. Again I say just a bunch of people who rationalize killing innocents. Nothing More. They allowed themselves to be blinded into becoming Idiots, dogs and swine. Part of me kinda of feels sorry for them because in most cases they have been lied to in one form or another. That goes double for all of the Overly extreme Islamists. But it is still their choice to believe the lie and it’s their choice to go as far over the cliff as they have. 

As long as the choice to do things like this they will be Idiots, Dogs and Swine. Not deserving of respect or rewards. To kill unarmed innocent people does not make them heroes or worthy of honor...they dishonor their religion.  No wonder they need to force people to follow their teachings--remember I am still talking about Overly extreme Islamists not every Muslim. 

So that’s it I finally said a couple of things I’ve wanted to say for months. 

Indie-Writing update Sept 15 PS

I do have a PS already completely forget this. 

There is one type of story I have been wanting to write. An epic fantasy as in Lord of the Rings. I’ve had one idea floating around in my head for a couple of years involving dragons waking up and the MC having to learn how to control them or beat them but I don’t know it doesn’t seem to be right even though I have the opening scene in my head.

However something reminded me of a story I started probably at least ten years ago. I would have to start over since it is on a Floppy disk--an original one. For those who don’t know the original home computers had what was known as a floppy disk. A disk about five to seven inches wide(I forget for sure), very thin and it flopped around if you held an edge. Soon after they shrunk them to about two to three inches wide and placed them in plastic holders. Google them and the punch cards-yes you punched holes in them-and reel to reel tapes they used before that. 

Anyway, No way for me to excess the floppy now. Well, maybe of I looked hard enough someone could get to the data on it but it’s not worth the hassle. I’ve learned so much that I need to rewrite everything anyway and I recall some of the scenes. Back then I didn’t know there were rules or guidelines or how to write models. I just wrote what I wanted. 

I think this story will be a novella or novelette depending on length. It will be way over 10,000 but could very well be significantly over 20,000 especially when I add things like the five human senses and more detail. Not sure when I will but it is an epic fantasy and I will enjoy doing it whenever that time is.

Indie and Writing update Sept 15

First an Indie update.  I now have two stories sets up with Premiere catalogue at Smashwords which means they are available at other sites too. Such as Amazon, and Barnes and Noble. Still no sales yet though. I figured there would not be a lot for these but still expecting a couple or a few maybe.

I am working on a Odd story set, Because most are short--less than 2,00 words--I’m doing eleven stories with that set. Next I will do a Urban fantasy set--that one will be significantly longer since most of my UF stories are over 5,000 words. So a seven story set could be 37,000 to 50,000 words long. 

Still need to find the time to experiment with a video for kickstarter, unless I can find someone to do one for me cheap--as in less than fifty dollars.

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Sent in my Q4 story for WotF. It is........... :)    

Seriously:

It is my second story for Q4. The first one didn’t see to work right. Most readers didn’t get what it was about and there were other problems so I switched stories. It's one of my favorite stories but not sure about the writing. While someone made a comment during the critting I realized I had two info dumps one right after the other. Maybe even 2.5. I moved things around a bit, redid some sentences-it was also pointed out that in four places I had an extra word left over from previous sentences. Yikes, I don't think I've had that many for quite a while. 

Something else was pointed out but I left it in so we shall see if Dave gets very far with it. After all the work and the fact that I like the storyline I hope it gets at least a HM. A Semi-finalist with a critique would be great too. My next one is still up in the air. I wanted to rewrite a story form five years ago but I have done a couple since I decided to do the rewrite that I like. One isn’t quite done but could work.

Quarter 3 hasn’t been judged yet. David Farland still seems to be reading stories so it could be another three to five weeks or as has happened before he could surprise us and it be next week we hear. I still think my Q3 story is some of my best writing--which may not be saying much though. I hope it gets a HM at least.

Been busy writing. Wrote a rather long story at work...on note paper. Something like fifty plus pages. Wrote a much shorter one on the same type of notepaper too. Only about ten pages. I may have mentioned it here but for my fantasy story set I wrote a new story of less than 1,000 words for a bonus story. This one on the notepaper is a sequel to that story. I may save it for the next fantasy story set. I didn’t set out to do a sequel but I thought about using the same type of opening and it just ended up being the same city therefore it had the same minor character. 

I wrote a new story, the fifth-in a UF series. I keeping sending the stories out but by the time I write number seven I may go ahead and E-publish them in a set, unless one sells. I am doing number six in another series which will end up the same. 

I need to start rereading my grammar books again with an emphasis on commas. I’ve read-reread and reread-three books and two online sites about commas and I still don’t get them right. 

I’m on a couple of writing communities on Google+. One has a lady who places a picture every week for anyone to write a flash story from. Last week or the week starting with Sept 8 if you are reading this later, the pic was of a girl about five who was holding the hand of a woman. They were both walking away but the girl is looking over her shoulder. The girl has fairy wings on her back. It’s a photograph not a drawing. There are trees around so it could be a forest or park. I would link to it but I think you would have to be a member of G+ if not also that community to see it. 

Anyway, my muse most have liked the picture. I came up with at least three ideas. I wrote down two. A 257 word tale and a 203 word story. I may pst them on my blog some time. 

I have not worked on any novels in the last few weeks because I have been working on the WotF stories, some short stories that wanted done now plus some odd and ends.

I need to send out more stories. I have five maybe six out, that’s nothing compared to what I usually do. Or have done, I’ve gotten out of the habit of sending out stories the last two years or so--I think I have mentioned that on pervious posts--with the exception of WotF and Fantasy and Science Fiction. I sent out three last week but one came back already. I forgot they only take stories for the first six months. Oops, I usually remember that.

I will probably be doing some more for Penumbra.  They do themed editions, The ones for next year sound very interesting. You can find the list here. Penumbra

That’s it for now. I haven’t done any for a few posts but there could be a PS for this post. There has been for previous posts. 

Oh, one PS already. I kinda of hate to use it because the deaths and destruction but the rain in Colorado made my muse sit up and take notice. The MC in the novel I am trying to Indieize lives in Boulder. I can see her in the rain, hair messed up--she has short hair so it’s not in her face-her clothes are soaked, she has to fight a demon--or some such while trying to keep her feet and not get blown down. Her friends are working on saving people but their power doesn’t stop something natural that big. They can only work on helping a couple people at a time.  Of course by the time I do another book and get that far the flooding will be over a year in the past. But still...