Write!

When we’re not cleaning we’re playing music and doing other crazy things like starting companies and writing books J Now we’ve found a way to do both at the same time! Kathryn and I have hopped on board an amazing e-writing project called The Novel Factory that’s opening up January 4^th. Here’s a little info:

“Based on the Serial Novel style that launched such greats as Dickens and Tolstoy into international fame, The Novel Factory is an online-based serial publication that is taking a whole new look at the way we read and write books. Readers interact directly with the novel as they choose what happens next in the story. Every Monday our writers publish a new installment and our readers join in the adventure and vote on the direction the story should take...”

We’d love to have your votes on the site! You can get more detailed information at http://thenovelfactory.com. The first installment of the first book goes up tomorrow, Monday, January 4. We’ll look for you there. Happy New Year everyone!

Cleaning-in the New Year

We spent New Year's Eve playing in Delray Beach, FL for Atlantic Avenue's own First Night Celebration. Now with a whole new year ahead of us we started off the new decade with a family project ... you guessed it, cleaning. It's time to lose those extra couple of pounds of stuff weighing down our tour bus as we travel the country. Every year we get a little better at the whole 'letting go' process. This year we somehow managed to find bags and bags of hidden treasures in our 40-foot RV that we hadn't seen for a long time and would never really use. All of these things tucked safely in secret corners of the RV finally saw the light of day today and they're moving out for good. As usual our family approached the project with considerable zeal but even the most stalwart cleaner will find that, after a while, the things that they were supposed to be getting rid of, things that they'd forgotten they'd even owned, start to take on a new magical quality and inseparable sentimental value. Even something small can become a huge internal debate. I suffer from acute butitsbeenhereallthistimeitspracticallypartofthefamily syndrome and my internal cleaning conversations begin to look something like this:

"Jessica, it's a rock. You don't need it."

"But it's been traveling around the country with us for a long time! This is more than an average rock! You know, I think this rock is from Ireland! Look at the markings."

"Ohhhhh. Wow. But what's the point in keeping a rock?"

"It's a priceless piece of family history!"

"But it's a rock!"

"Can I keep it! Please! It's just one little rock! You got rid of that magazine already and everything."

"Oh, all right."

Needless to say I wasn't much help in this process, but it was a really cool rock.

Although everyone's brains are not quite as vocal, you've probably had a similar conversation with yourself around cleaning time. It happens to the best of us. What kind of things did you find hard to part with? What oddities did you find in the cleaning process?

Happy New Year!