Archive for September, 2025

Life

Back to Choir

Last night was my first choir rehearsal in about four years. I’ve been singing in “summer choir,” where you just show up on Sunday morning and learn a simple piece, but this was the start of “real” choir, with rehearsals and with everyone there. This choir sings for the Episcopal church services, but it also functions as a kind of community chorale, with several concerts of big classical pieces every year, so there are people who come to rehearsals and who sing in the concerts who don’t sing for church services. There are several who go to other churches. The cantor of the town’s synagogue sings with this choir.

One thing that’s really different for me is that they need me to sing alto, since they’re top-heavy with sopranos. I think half the alto section is made up of sopranos. I have a good low register, so I can do it, but it’s definitely a mental shift that I’ll have to get used to. I’m not sure I’d want to sing soprano in this choir, anyway, because they do a lot of Anglican church music that’s written for boy sopranos, and that’s not the kind of soprano voice I have. What little voice training I’ve had has been with opera singers, and that’s a different technique. I’d be blasting them out with a strong vibrato instead of having that pure, sweet sound. In the alto section, I can be rich and lush, though I’ve warned them that I’ve mostly sung jazz in my lower register, so I get pretty torchy. When I sing low, I sound like I should be wearing a slinky dress and leaning against a piano. My low voice has been called “sexy” by people I’ve been in choirs with before.

I had a huge “it’s a small world” moment at the rehearsal when I learned that the woman sitting next to me went to the high school I would have gone to if we’d stayed in that place after I finished eighth grade, went to the same university I went to, and then worked for a while in the part of Texas where I went to high school and where my parents live, so she even knew that small town. This town seems to be full of former Texans. I guess we’re reversing the flow from when Stephen F. Austin came from Virginia (not too far from here) to Texas with a group of settlers. Now they’re all coming back.

I put new batteries in my electronic keyboard so I can do some practicing and get the alto part in my head. Next weekend is a church retreat that includes a choir rehearsal, so I’ll be doing some serious singing (in between hiking jaunts, since we’re going to a retreat center in the mountains). I’m not sure my voice is up for that much, since I’ve barely used it in a long time. I’ll have to do some exercises every day this week to see if I can build up to it.

Books

A Fresh Start

The last book I read hit so many of my buttons that it might as well have been written just for me, with a favorite trope executed in just the way I like. I checked it out of the library, but I bought the e-book before I was even done reading it so I could have a copy to keep. I suspect this will become a comfort read, something to turn to when I need to feel good.

The book is Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis. A man wakes in what’s clearly a dark wizard’s workroom in the aftermath of a spell gone wrong, with no memory of who he is, how he got there, or what happened. At first, he’s afraid of what the dark wizard will do to him, but then he comes to realize that he’s the dark wizard. The more he learns, the more disturbed he is by the kind of person he apparently is. He’s got a princess in his dungeon, his staff is terrified of him, and he’s part of some ritual being planned by another dark wizard. He’s not sure how he’s going to get out of it without his memories, but he also isn’t sure he even wants to be himself anymore, and he can’t rely on what he thinks he knows because nothing is as it seems.

I’m a total sucker for the plot trope I call “who would you be if you didn’t know who you were?” It’s a subset of the amnesia plot. The standard amnesia plot usually focuses on the character trying to find out who they are, but in this one the character learns fairly quickly who they are, and they don’t want to be that person. Minus the memories and baggage, they try to make a fresh start, but they still have to deal with the consequences of past actions that they don’t remember. That’s exactly what this story is about, with the character horrified of who he apparently used to be, trying to set things right, but still having to deal with the fallout from what he’s done. It reminds me a lot of the Moist von Lipwig books in the Discworld series, with a reforming rogue who’s developed a conscience.

There’s also an element of found family here, as he bonds with the castle’s staff, who are oddly loyal, considering how he seems to have treated them in the past, and then there are the villagers, who seem proud of their local dark wizard, even though he must have menaced them. Dealing with the other dark wizards requires putting together a wacky coalition of people he hurt in the past, and all the while he’s trying to figure out what kind of man he really is and what kind of man he wants to be.

The book is funny at times, but also gets serious and emotional. I ended up loving all the characters, and the ending was so satisfying. This seems to be a standalone novel (her next one is entirely unrelated), but it looks like there’s room to follow some of the characters as they have further adventures. They just wouldn’t be adventures related to this core conflict, so maybe it’s best to leave them alone to go on with their lives. I do want to know what happens to them, though.

I think my readers would enjoy this story because it’s fairly humorous fantasy with fun characters you enjoy spending time with. I guess you could even say there’s an adorkable wizard.