$10 #Giveaway PLAYLIST IN LIGHT OF RECENT EVENTS by Amy Klinger #InLightofRecentEvents #AmyKlinger @TheStoryPlant @RockstarBkTours Ends 4.11

IN LIGHT OF RECENT EVENTS Blog Tour 

I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the IN LIGHT OF RECENT EVENTS by Amy Klinger Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!

 
About The Book:
Title: IN LIGHT OF RECENT EVENTS
Author: Amy Klinger
Pub. Date: March 22, 2022
Publisher: The Story Plant
Formats: Paperback, eBook
Pages: 336

Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, B&N, iBooks, TBD, Bookshop.org

In the 1990s American workplace, survival of the fittest is sometimes less about clawing your way to the top than developing good camouflage. And Audrey Rohmer is doing her very best to blend in as an undistinguished middle manager. Uninspired by her job and uneasy about her father’s new marriage, Audrey coasts through the work week leaning on her “partner in apathy” – an admin assistant named Pooter – to keep her relationship with the married head of her department from becoming water cooler gossip.

But when an old family friend-turned-Hollywood-superstar crashes on her doorstep in the midst of a publicity crisis, Audrey’s under-the-radar status quo gets upended, and the writing may literally be on the bathroom wall that secrets will find a way out.

Equally acerbic and heartfelt, In Light of Recent Events is both an endlessly engaging piece of storytelling and a fascinating commentary on workplaces, families, and fame.

Reviews:

“I really enjoyed IN LIGHT OF RECENT EVENTS. It’s a fast, fun, emotionally engaging novel about friendship, family, and the day-to-day horrors of middle management. Amy Klinger gives us a delightful cast of characters to relate to, laugh with, and, ultimately, root for.” — Matthew Norman, author of DOMESTIC VIOLETS

“With a wit as precise as an edge of a carefully cut diamond, In Light of Recent Events navigates universal workplace intrigues in this thoughtful story about love, friendship, and growing up.” — Jane Ward, author of In the Aftermath

 

PLAYLIST

The In Light of Recent Events Playlist

Amy Klinger

I was a musician long before I was a writer, having learned from my mother how to play folk guitar when I was eight. I worked my slow, little fingers around chords to songs like “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” and “Cockles and Muscles.” A few years later, I moved to classical guitar having fallen in love with the works of a Paraguayan composer named Agustín Barrios. And don’t tell anyone, but I might just be a dynamite singer when I’m alone in my car.

Music isn’t just a personal passion, it’s a living and ever-mutating part of me. So it’s not surprising that music stitched itself into passages of In Light of Recent Events. The songs that appear in the book felt like natural parts of the story—I can’t even say I consciously chose them so much as they just felt like they needed to be there. But there were also songs that lent their influence behind the scenes without making it onto the page. I’ve collected them all here in a literary playlist with author notes. Give a listen on Spotify or Apple Music [link to follow]. Or both at the same time if you enjoy your stereo in stereo.

1. Road to Nowhere – Talking Heads

In the opening chapter, Pooter hijacks a conversation between him and Audrey when he recognizes that the rhythm of the copy machine, set to continuous print, matches the galloping beat of David Byrne’s classic, Road to Nowhere, a painful irony for these two characters who, it soon becomes clear, are squandering their young lives in an unsatisfying, uninspiring corporate setting.

I confess, this idea came straight out of my personal experience having discovered that exact rhythm in our old washing machine. It was shortly after my daughter was born, and I was a sleep-deprived mess rocking a crying baby in my arms, dancing and singing along like a crazy person while my husband watched on in bemused horror.

 

2. Sail Away Ladies (Live Version) – Odetta

The night Dan accompanies Audrey to Starbucks for their second fateful encounter, a song by folk-blues legend and civil rights activist, Odetta, is playing through the coffeeshop’s speakers. It sparks a conversation that leads Dan and Audrey to realize that they had attended the same music festival a few years prior.

Though this recording of “Sail Away Ladies” is not from a bootleg of that concert, it is a live performance from 1985 and probably reflects what Audrey would have heard if her memory of that day hadn’t been “warped from too much weed and beer and sun.”

 

3. Love Will Keep Us Together – Captain and Tenille

Like many of us with long-ago CD collections, Audrey keeps hers alphabetized. So when she goes to retrieve the Clearwater Festival bootleg from the shelf, it’s housed between Captain and Tenille and Color Me Badd. Choosing between “Love Will Keep Us Together” and “I Wanna Sex You Up” for this playlist came down to a coin toss. Sorry, Badd boys.

 

4. Tracy Hardman’s Cheek – Scott Reynolds

“Tracy Hardman’s Cheek” wasn’t released until 2008 by Scott Reynolds, singer-songwriter and former vocalist for the punk band All, so it is not referenced in the book. But I do refer to a line from the song—“Rain that smells like dirt and driveways”—in a flashback scene that was loosely inspired by it.

The scene is when 12-year-old Audrey is forced by her siblings to sleep at the neighbor’s house because they’re hosting a party while their parents are away. As she leaves the house, Audrey describes the scene after a summer rain, “With the storm clouds gone, the setting sun still had enough heat to cause steam to rise off the asphalt like breathing, and there was a sharp, salty smell in the air, like dirt and driveways.” It’s a sight and smell I recall vividly, having grown up on a dead-end street that was home to a lot of paved driveways.

But more nostalgic than that was how this song brought back a flood of memories of my pre-teen friends and me in the early 80s, spending our allowance money on Bonne Bell lip balms and Kissing Potions in flavors like Bubble Gum, Cotton Candy, Strawberry and Cherry. When Reynolds sings that Tracy Hardman, his first crush, “smelled so much like candy”, I know exactly what he means.

 

5. Born to Run – Bruce Springsteen

There was simply no way to write a 1980s high school party scene in New Jersey without including The Boss’ classic ballad. And if you can only quote two lines of the song to avoid getting sued by Mr. Springsteen for copyright infringement, it’s kind of a no-brainer which lines to choose:

      Just wrap your legs ’round these velvet rims
And strap your hands across my engines…

 

6. Damn This Traffic Jam – James Taylor

In the New Year’s Eve scene, Pooter plays DJ and disses Audrey’s abundance of James Taylor CDs to which Julie Lee responds, “I used to get stoned all the time listening to James Taylor in my dorm.” The particular choice of Taylor’s jazzy, a capella “Traffic Jam” on the playlist is a nod to Audrey and Julie’s first encounter, when they nearly collided cars during the commute on their first day of work together.

 

7. Doreen – Old 97’s

Also in the New Year’s Eve scene, Pooter refers to a song by the Old 97’s whose “mix of bluegrass and fast punk managed to pull off a country song set in Queens.” Beyond that great juxtaposition, I love the story of this song, its central character Doreen, and the nearly cringy stretch-of-a-rhyme in this line:

      We galloped through the boroughs

      like a pair of horny thoroughbreds

 

8. 24 Caprices, Op. 1: No. 24 in A Minor – Niccolò Paganini

During the night Pooter and Daisy spend together, Pooter muses that “if kissing were a musical form, it would be theme and variation, and that he’d never again hear the Paganini Caprice in the same way.” The Caprice he is imagining consists of a theme, eleven variations and a finale. To appreciate the piece’s nuance, complexity, and yes, romance, it seemed best to let this virtuoso recording by Itzhak Perlman demonstrate what Pooter means.

 

9. Buzzcocks – Ever Fall in Love with Someone You Shouldn’t’ve Fallen in Love With

As far as I know, there is no such band as The Cock Asians but if there were, they would have sounded a lot like the Buzzcocks. Simple, tight, pop punk. And of course, this particular song’s sentiment could resonate with any of the lead characters in the book.

 

10. The Llama – Rose Polenzani

If In Light of Recent Events ever becomes a movie (hello, Netflix…), “The Llama” will be playing behind the rolling credits. It was a song that won my heart many years ago from the very first verse:

To ride on a
Black winged Llama over desert
In the chill of night
Wasn’t my idea.

Clearly, Polenzani had other things in mind, but I imagined the lyrics making perfect sense for Audrey and the metaphorical way she is carried away by the strange and magical creature that is Jamie. Add to that, the simplicity of the instrumentation and the child-like, wistful vocals that capture those strange moments when you feel like a fully-grown adult and a child in the same breath.

The Llama is a song that, in my mind, takes Audrey’s story, tucks it in, and puts it to bed.

I’ve made the In Light of Recent Events playlists public, so if you’re a fan of the book and have your own song associations with the period or the story, I invite your additions. No Spotify or Apple Music account? No problem. Contact me with your suggestions and I’ll add them—even better if you’re willing to share your thoughts or memories associated with the song. It would be super fun to see this playlist take on a collaborative musical life of its own.

 

About Amy Klinger:

Amy Klinger is a fiction writer and essayist, a freelance copywriter and message strategist. She is also an amateur baker, a mediocre mountain biker, and whatever the opposite of “handyman” is. Amy has an MFA from University of Utah and lives with her family in Vermont where she is currently working on her next novel. Visit AmyKlinger.com for blog posts and other updates.

Website |  Facebook | Instagram | Goodreads | Amazon

 

Giveaway Details:

1 winner will receive a $10 Amazon Gift Card courtesy of Rockstar Book Tours, International.

 

Rafflecopter Code:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Rafflecopter Link:

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/e2389ba21421/?

 

Tour Schedule:

Week One:

3/14/2022	BookHounds	Guest Post/IG Post
3/15/2022	#BRVL Book Review Virginia Lee Blog	Guest Post
3/16/2022	Lady Hawkeye	Excerpt/IG Post
3/17/2022	Two Chicks on Books	Guest Post
3/18/2022	@jaimerockstarbooktours	IG Post

 

Week Two:

3/21/2022	Rajiv’s Reviews	Review/IG Post
3/22/2022	The Girl Who Reads	Review
3/23/2022	boozybook blog	Review/IG Post
3/24/2022	Fire and Ice	Review
3/25/2022	The Reading Wordsmith	Review/IG Post

 

Week Three:

3/28/2022	Ravenz Reviewz	Review/IG Post
3/29/2022	Lifestyle of Me	Review
3/30/2022	Excuse Me, I’m Reading	Review
3/31/2022	@jypsylynn	Review
4/1/2022	Two Points of Interest	Review

 

Week Four:

4/4/2022	onemoreexclamation	Review/IG Post
4/5/2022	@coffeesipsandreads	Review
4/6/2022	pickagoodbook	Review/IG Post
4/7/2022	The Momma Spot	Review
4/8/2022	Momfluenster	Review

 

 

 

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