“I never bin lost..”

So, while I’m talking about my Minneapolis friends, let’s shine the spotlight on Adam Stemple. (Those of you not reading this in an RSS aggregator will notice I’ve added a link to Adam’s new web site to the link list on the right–head over there and give him some love.)

In addition to his myriad musical talents, Adam has started a writing career. In fact, Adam’s first novel, Singer of Souls, is coming out in August, and can be pre-ordered now. Lovely Charles Vess cover, and a hard cover on his first book!

I had a chance to read an early draft of this novel, back when it was titled “Aine’s Song”, and I can whole-heartedly recommend it. My capsule review is this: “I was in the middle of a Jonathan Carroll novel when I got the draft of the first several chapters of Adam’s book to read. When I got to the end of the chapters, I picked up the Jonathan Carroll novel again, and had a moment of serious disappointment when I realized that I wasn’t reading the rest of Adam’s story… and I love Jonathan Carroll.”

There are some images in the novel that are so perfect that you can’t get them out of your head–like the nightmare with the guitar strings fairly early on in the book, for example. I am very much looking forward to seeing if the ending of the book was changed at all in the editing process. The ending in the draft I read was… well, let’s just say that I really liked it, and if Hollywood ever adapts the book, the ending of the movie will be very different than what’s in the book.

(In the interest of fairness, I should point out that there is a major supporting character in the book that is kind of named after me, but when you see who this character is, and the final fate of the character, you may suspect that Adam is clowning me. I assure you that this fact has not biased my opinion of the book.)

The novel isn’t the only full-length work Adam has in the pipeline; he also has a YA novel, Pay The Piper, coming out in July, that he’s co-written with Jane Yolen (a.k.a. his Mom). I don’t know much about that one beyond what you can see at the Amazon page, but it’s on my wishlist.

Adam-the-writer also works in short stories. If you pop over to the writing page on Adam’s new site, you can see a list of four different current publications Adam has stories in. And, if you pop over to Electrolite you can see in a recent post that one of those short pieces (along with works from everyone’s favourite short story writer Kelly Link, and at least one other Small Beer author) has been selected for the new Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens collection.

You can also follow a link from there to Adam’s “writing blog” (RSS feed here). He plans to also run a blog about music, and a third about poker. You can see details of those plans at his site.

I don’t know what kind of stuff Adam plans to put in his music blog, but I sure hope he occasionally includes a ‘stories from the road’ section. Everyone in the world needs to hear the one about the bouncer adjusting the rowdy patron’s attitude with a particularly graphic threat (which, incidentally, sort of ends up in Singer of Souls, I think), or the story about the guy who avoided a fight by taking his teeth out, etc. Of course I’d also like to see lots of serious stuff, particularly including content about his songwriting process.

I’m not going to go into detail about Adam’s music career–you’ll be able to find that info soon on his site, but I do want to point out Adam’s excellent solo album which shows off his songwriting, his guitar and keyboard work, and his production skills. I should also provide a link to the Tim Malloys and point out that the Adam Stemple original songs that the Tim Malloys do are among their most popular numbers. Those songs illustrate Adam’s range as a songwriter: from the beautifully melancholy to the clever and funny.

And as for poker… well, let’s put it this way: if I sit down at a table with Adam, I don’t expect to take any of his money–I can do the math like a wizard, and I can lie like a bastard, which is enough to take money off most people in a poker game, but Adam is a much better liar than me. I kind of think of him as one of my two poker teachers. I am quite interested in seeing what he has to write on this subject too.