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Tag: music

Midsummer!

Published by J. Robert Matthewson on June 22, 2025

Hi again! A happy, and hopefully not-sweltering, midsummer/summer solstice to everyone who reads these little snippets of my thoughts. May the longest day and shortest night of the year bring you good times with good weather and with great people.

A field of yellow dandelions under a cloudless blue sky with the sun shining down on everything

Without going into spoilers, midsummer features very prominently in Tales of a Stranger Sister, so I wanted to talk a little bit about that here. Honestly, those chapters were probably my favorite to write during both the initial draft and subsequent rewrites, and it was one of the few times during the whole process where I never struggled to move from one word to the next. A chance to put into words those feelings of pure, unadulterated joy is one of the memories I’ll most treasure as I look back on creating this book in both the near and distant future.

More than anything else, those chapters were definitely the most fun I had during the whole process, and I certainly made sure to indulge in describing as much wonderful summer food as possible. Much of it was based on, or at least heavily inspired, by the food I would indulge in as a younger man during the long summer months, and while we’re still a few more weeks away from the best sweet corn of the season here, every time I re-read those passages while editing, I could taste it in my imagination.

The other part that was an absolute joy to write was the midsummer night bonfire sequence. Again, without giving any spoilers, that whole sequence has been something I’ve wanted to do in a fantasy story for a long, long time, so I’m eternally grateful that I had the opportunity to do so with my debut novel.

Anyway, to those who’ve read it, I hope you felt the joy that I felt crafting those chapters, and to those who may be thinking of giving my story I try, I hope it brings to mind pleasant memories of long warm days, short warm nights, good food, and better company.

And to help set a mood for those chapters and for summer in general, here’s a piece of music from The Gothard Sisters that will hopefully inspire thoughts of summer festivals full of merriment and wonderful food under clear, blue skies.

Until next time, stay cool, everyone!

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Contest Winners on both sides of the Atlantic

Published by J. Robert Matthewson on May 18, 2025

Okay, so first off, a big congratulations to the winner of my giveaway of a free Kindle copy of Tales of a Stranger Sister. The winner has been notified, and they seem excited to give my story a try. Running a promotional giveaway was an interesting experience. I believe I learned some things from my first attempt at it and am hoping to implement what I learned the next time I try it.

Speaking of contests, Today was the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest Grand Finals. I first learned about the annual European song contest, I think, around 2011-2012. A group of friends had stumbled upon videos from that year’s contest and some of the entries were so bizarre to our American musical sensibilities that we couldn’t help but fall in love with the whole concept.

Seriously, any contest that can produce this:

and this:

Is worth checking out at least once.

Since then, it’s become one of my house’s annual traditions to at least check out some of the entries while noshing on delicious eats and sugary cocktails. As we actually have access to Peacock at this moment in time, we were able to watch the whole finals this year.

I’m not going to get into the WTF-ery of the final votes (Seriously, that is a whole conversation that shouldn’t be within a thousand yards of this site. ) So, instead, I’ll keep things fun and just share my top five for 2025. I think only one of these finished in the actual top five, but these were the songs I enjoyed the most:

5. Ukraine

Ukraine’s vibe can be best described as 90’s anime about musicians trying to stop a space war by doing a homage to a 70s anime about musicians trying to stop a space war.

4. Latvia

Latvia’s entry looks like a group of Druidic familiars who have been summoned to perform the soundtrack for the next Ghost in the Shell reboot/remake/revival. It sounds awesome, but it’s not catchy.

3. Sweden

I love fun, goofy songs and Sweden’s was one of two that were my goofball favorites this year.

2. Luxembourg

I was honestly not expecting this one to hit with my brain like it did, but damn if it wasn’t so friggin poppy and catchy that I was honestly expecting it to win the whole damn thing and was legit surprised that it didn’t do better.

1. Iceland

I like fun dammit and this performance was fun, fun, and fun. Frankly, if Europe is gonna disrespect Iceland like it did this performance, then Ron Swanson was correct on his opinion of the continent as a whole.

So, that’s my very American coverage of Eurovision 2025. Congrats to Austria on winning and I’m sure I’ll be back again soon to talk about anything but the novel I should be writing but instead dedicated 6 hours of my weekend to a European song contest. 🤷‍♂️

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