Have you ever dreamt of writing a book, writing poems, seeing your name on the cover of a
book?
Well, my next guest, author Claudio D'Andrea, did it at 60.
Welcome Claudio.
Thank you, Tracy.
And in case this is your first time tuning into us, my name is Tracy Martens and this
is YQG in Bloom podcast, everything local in Windsor, Essex County area.
So tell me, what made you decide to write a book at 60?
Not that it's old.
No, no.
I just, I've always wanted to write a book.
It's the dream of any writer, I think, is to publish a book.
But it didn't really set out to do that.
I think around 10 years ago, I started writing, creative writing, creative short fiction,
poetry, a few other pieces like that.
And decided at some point over that span of time that, you know, maybe I can compile these
and put them together in a book and a theme emerged and it just seemed to work out that
way.
So here I am.
And then as you say, I near the my 60th birthday, my 60th birthday year, I decided I think now
is the time to do it.
So I did.
That's wonderful.
I love that.
I say, you know, you followed your dream, it may have taken a kudos to you for starting
this venture at 60.
Well, you started it before, but to follow through, because I mean, I'm 54 and it's something
that I've always wanted to do and it's very daunting task.
It is.
And writing and publishing isn't new.
I've been doing that all my life in journalism and magazines, newspapers, online, digital
publications.
So this is this is not my first rodeo when it comes to publishing.
But to put out a published print book was something different.
So what type of journalism did you do?
All kinds, really.
I started in community newspapers in the area started.
I worked in Tilbury and Bell River.
And then I moved out west for a couple of years, Greater Vancouver area in the early
90s.
Worked at some of the community newspapers there, came back to Ontario and then started
at the Windsor Star in 95.
And been there ever since.
So and I'm still there.
You're still there.
Yeah.
You've been a journalist for many years.
Is there a big difference between journalistic writing and writing, say, poem, short stories,
books?
Yeah, there is quite a difference.
When you're writing journalism, you have to hear the facts, right?
You have to make sure you're balancing different opinions.
If that's the case, you're doing your research, it has to be true in that sense.
When you're writing, when you're doing creative writing, it's a lot more free flowing.
But I also tell people that there's truth in fiction, too.
And some people might not understand that or might not believe it.
But sometimes I think fiction is more true than nonfiction.
I always say that there always is an element of truth in fiction because you have to start
somewhere.
You have to have an idea.
And it's usually something that you already know or has happened to you or somebody you
know.
Yeah.
So tell us about your book.
And it is called Stories in the Key of Song.
Yes it is.
Yeah.
I like that name.
Thank you.
It's inspired by Stevie Wonder, whose seminal album, Songs in the Key of Life, is a classic
LP and there's so many great songs in it.
So I'm kind of riffing off the title of that album.
Yeah.
And just as Stevie Wonder's album was really about life and how music inspires so many
things and informs him in so many ways as far as his life, I thought, well, here are
stories where in some way, shape or form, each story has a musical element in it.
In some ways it can be a major element where the characters are musicians and there's a
lot of music in them.
And other ways it could be just the opening quote could be from a musician and that's
it.
And then everything in between.
So I thought, well, the theme for my book is music, really, and how music informs each
story.
So that's what I went with.
And you obviously love music.
I do.
Yeah.
I mean, all my life I've loved listening to it.
I played the drums.
So I played in a band back in the 80s.
A few years ago, my loving family bought me a little electronic drum kit, surprised me
with it at Christmas.
So now I can, you know, bang away on them to my heart's content and the neighbors don't
complain.
It's quiet except in my headphones.
In the headphones.
Oh, they're smart.
Yes.
Yeah.
But that was nice.
Yeah.
So music's just, it's always been very important to me.
I've always loved it.
And I think it's something that a lot of people can connect with in all kinds of ways.
Oh, for sure.
And I mean, songs are just short stories as well, which are, I love songs.
I love listening to the words of the songs.
Now your book is short stories.
When did that, is it released already?
It is.
Yeah.
It was released already a few weeks ago in September and now it's out there in public.
It's in a couple of bookstores.
It's on blackmosspress.com and there's Bookfest.
And then I'm doing some promotional talks and things like that around the book.
So one of them is going to be Bookfest Windsor, which is coming up.
So there'll be more of that as well.
And you said that's going to be online?
Yeah.
It's going to be online.
Yeah.
I'm definitely going to have to look that up, look up by their Instagram, their website
so that we can get an idea of it because I had no idea we had a Bookfest.
I would have been the first one there because I love reading.
How many short stories are in your book?
There are 10.
But the opening piece, there's an introduction, but the opening piece is a nonfiction piece.
And it's about my name.
And it's something that I wrote years ago.
It's something where I discovered what my name means, literally.
Claudius is my namesake, the famous emperor, and is a librarian that told me what it means.
And I started researching it.
And then I discovered that it means lame, crippled, because that's what he was.
And I thought, well, that's kind of a bummer.
I've always had a real love-hate relationship with my name.
I'm OK with it now.
But growing up, it was just not my thing.
Why couldn't it be Bob?
Yeah.
Well, yeah, I took on a pen name years ago in some of my freelance work.
And it was Paul Rigi.
Rigi is my mom's maiden name.
And Paul is my confirmed name.
So I've always liked Paul.
But I'm OK with Claudio now.
I mean, you make it your own.
Yeah.
So out of the 10 short stories in your book, do you have a favorite?
I was asked that before.
And I think I did answer it.
But then I thought, that's like asking a mom.
Oh, do you have a favorite kid?
You have 10 children.
And who's your favorite?
I just, you know.
OK, then I'll put it this way.
Which one resonates closest to you?
Because I know, like you said, there are fiction, but is there one that is a lot like you?
I don't know about a lot like me, but there's a couple.
But one in particular kind of really is close to the heart.
It's Carol's Last Christmas.
And I got a lot of strong reaction to that story.
People felt that the characters, the theme, it really hit them.
It seemed to have a lot of emotional impact.
So.
Well, the name itself.
Yeah.
I mean, that would be a tearjerker, I'm assuming.
Yeah, it's a bit sad.
Yeah, it is.
Now are any of these nonfiction or are they all fiction?
Well, the piece about my name is nonfiction.
Yeah.
So that one's called I, Lame, which I'm playing off of I, Claudius, of course.
So that piece is nonfiction, but the rest are all fiction.
Yeah.
OK.
Now, do you have something that you can read for us today?
I do.
There's one story in this one I'm pretty proud of.
It's called Julie Andrews versus Alice Cooper.
Oh.
And I'll just read you one short piece from it.
So the characters are in the main characters are, in fact, Julie Andrews and Alice Cooper.
So I decided to try to get into their heads and try to pretend what they would be like
and how they would talk and how they would interact with other people.
So in this scene, Alice Cooper and the setup here is there's a song of Alice Cooper's called
Halo of Flies.
And one day when I was listening to it, I started hearing Julie Andrews, My Favorite
Things.
And it fit like the lyrics in that song matched it perfectly.
And so I thought, that's kind of strange.
So the premise of this story is where Julie Andrews' publicist sue Alice Cooper for plagiarism,
stealing My Favorite Things lines.
And then he seeks some revenge from his lawsuit.
So in this scene, Alice Cooper is talking to Bob Ezrin, who was his real life producer.
He's Canadian producer, produced a lot of his albums.
He's produced Pink Floyd, phenomenal musical producer.
So here's Alice Cooper at Bob Ezrin's home.
My Favorite Sick Things, An Evening with Alice Cooper.
Bob Ezrin read the words out loud that Alice scrawled in black ink in a white napkin.
There should be a you in favorite.
Alice ignored the Canadian record producer's comment.
He was excited about his latest musical concept and eager to work on another project with
Ezrin, his favorite musical collaborator.
What do you think?
I think it's, well, very Alice, he said.
The devil, as you know, will be in the musical details.
Alice smiled.
Outside the chill winds of late October and Halloween, which was another one of his favorites,
his favorite time of year swirled leaves into a whirlwind against Ezrin's Tony Toronto home.
His arms moving through the air like an orchestra conductor, Alice tried to paint a picture
of the stage show that was in his mind.
At this point, he only had scraps of musical ideas that he hoped Ezrin would help turn
into a polished finished product, like he did with so many albums, including his twin
Nightmare Enterprise.
First he wanted Ezrin to see what it would look like on stage.
It was Alice's latest theater of the macabre.
Always a champion of the villain in rock and roll, Alice saw this show as the ultimate
good versus evil production.
Julie Andrews versus Alice Cooper.
Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes versus guys in black leather with silvery
cod pieces.
Snowflakes versus spider's webs.
Mary Poppins versus no more Mr. Nice Guy.
I like that.
Thank you.
Oh, I want to hear more.
Alice Cooper, I could see where, you know, he could very well have used some of Julie
Andrews songs because he has a lot of really deep, meaningful love songs.
He does.
He's not as hard as whatever way he may look at.
He's misunderstood.
I think he's brilliant.
And he's funny, funny as anything, which was, which maybe a lot of people don't realize,
but there's some of his song lyrics.
I saw him performing at Caesar's Windsor years ago.
And the only thing he did, right at the very end, he played a shortened version of Sick
Things, one of his songs.
And the only thing he said at the end, at the end of the show was he goes, ah, you're
all sick things.
And then he walked off his thing.
In fact, I have met Bob Asrin.
I met him once in Windsor.
He was here visiting somebody else.
I happened to go into the store that the person owned and he was there.
And I'm like, ooh, because I love Alice Cooper's slow songs.
And in fact, Alice Cooper goes to hell.
I mean, that's just a classic.
And then I found out later that I could have gone to a concert in Detroit, but the person's
like, oh, she wouldn't like him.
Like, seriously, I actually really like him there.
Nobody knew I liked Alice Cooper, but he was a very nice guy.
He was very nice.
That was, we're talking about 15, 15 years ago.
So yes.
Yeah.
But you said all of the songs have a musical notation of some form.
Yeah.
Um, in some way, shape or form.
I mean, one of the songs, one of the stories is called Switch Sides and, uh, it just opens
with two lyrics from Leonard Cohen and the other was David Gilmore, former Pink Floyd
guitarist.
So, and that's it.
That's the only real musical connection to that story.
But as I write in the introduction, music, I try, I strive to find some music in the
wording too, in the writing as well.
So there's, there's like a musicality in the writing and hopefully readers pick up on that
as well.
Okay.
So what bookstores in our area, our audience find it at?
Yeah.
Well, it's at Bibli Oasis.
Okay.
That's one of them.
River Books in Amersberg.
I believe Juniper Books as well.
Oh, good.
Yeah.
I understand that.
A local bookstore.
Yeah, exactly.
And then the independent bookstores.
I'm, you know, I just love them.
So, big promoter of those.
So they seem to be doing well.
So a lot of people seem to support them.
I think the only time I go into the larger chain bookstores is if I'm a trying to kill
time or B, I'll check out their clearance section.
I usually get cookbooks for like $5 or something.
So why not?
Sure.
Now, do you have any other books on the horizon or something else you're writing?
I do.
I actually have one that's pretty much done.
And it's like a companion piece to this book, because it's also musically themed and it's
a book of poetry.
So same sort of concept, but instead of short fiction, they're poems.
And there's musical elements in all the poems.
So it's pretty much done.
I just have to go through it and have to, I have to weed out a few poems that don't
quite fit and still working on cover elements.
I do a lot of my own design work for the books.
Like this cover was largely my design.
Let me see this, because this is the first time I'm getting to see this.
That is really nice.
And you designed that?
Well, yeah, the photo is something that I found, but then I designed it with the little
typewriter swirl in it.
And that's essentially that was it.
And then the CD?
And then that's sort of my signature.
But the rest of it was one of the Chris Andrew Chuck.
He's the designer.
He came up with the type setting and all that good stuff, as well as inside the book.
It's really nice.
Thank you.
Well, I really appreciate you being here today, Claudio.
This is wonderful.
I'm so excited for you and I hope it becomes a bestseller.
Thank you.
And again, this is Claudio D'Andrea and it's stories in the key of song.
And you can find it at Black Moss Press.
We're the publishers.
We can find it in local bookstores, River Bookstore, Bibliasis, Juniper.
And I'm sure if you look online, we'll be able to find it on there as well.
Yeah.
Do you have a website?
I do.
I was just going to mention that.
You can look me up.
It's ClaudioD'Andrea.ca.
Okay.
And we have links to that as well.
And the website will be in the description as well.
And again, my name is Tracy Martins and I want to thank you so much for joining me for
another episode of YQ Jam Bloom.
Make sure to like and subscribe to the podcast so we can keep the podcast going and keep
it free.
You guys have a great night.