A journey through words and music by Emily Chance

The Multi Epoch Challenge    Background    In 2020 I began considering writing a book which centred on the dramatic irony of a deep space mission, set far in the future, to a destination that had been intimately aware of humanity and its history for thousands of years.      The result is a character-led multi-epoch work of speculative fiction that will be published this autumn. The Process    Writing the novel, with a working title of Hermes, in the spring of 2022 came surprisingly easy, what was much more difficult was to transfer the manuscript between differing formats for submission, and most difficult of all, was the task of drawing it to the attention of prospective Literary Agents.   Now in the summer of 2024, with a highly experienced long-standing publisher preparing the work for publication, I realise not only, how very difficult it is to succeed in having a first book published but how lucky I am to haver a publisher pushing the ceiling on it. Part of the difficulty in ass

  A Full House  Note  This will be my first review under my Nom De Plume as a writer. I would like to thank all those who have read my blog over the years. It has now passed fifty thousand views despite recent modest activity. My intention is to broaden its subject matter as well as talk about my up and coming novel, "Hermes" the history it delves into, the speculations it offers and the conclusions one draws from a study of the past and the developing future.  Proximity and Chance   The emergence of this new project from John made me both excited but nervous, much like the previous one. The reason is simple after being so thrilled by his previous work and his evolution as a musician I was concerned whether he could maintain the momentum and offer something new and interesting, which genuinely added to his canon. I need not have worried.    Rather than a track by track and musician call out I am going to offer a more organic less Germanic review, more about the themes tha

  There's a fire burning When you are fifty years in to your exploration of music, the same rules apply as they do to all the elements of your life, almost. It's not quite expand or die, more expand, circle or die.  From my first single (Martha Reeves & The Vandellas, Dancing in The Street) to yesterday’s Radio 3 jewels, gems and mysteries and everywhere in between I have been trying to hear music better. I hear harmonics, progressions and melodic connections that I could not have begun to appreciate in 1968. The nuances are more apparent, the structure clearer and yet ultimately, like all art, more than anything in 2023, I want to be moved and touched. What of the other side of the equation, the musician whose age I share? Trevor’s stated intent for his first solo vocal project since 1989, was to grow his musical vocabulary and try literally anything and see what happens. At an intellectual level, my one burning question was, would he be able to deploy all the experience h