It's 9AM

Chris Lowry

Aug 29, 2024

My Dad had a dream.

I don’t know when it started.

Somewhere in his teens, like most dreams do, I suppose.

He wanted to be a rock and roll songwriter.

A lyricist, he called it.

Maybe because poet sounded like something way different than rock and roll wordsmith.

Sometime in the 80’s he made friends with a pharmaceutical rep who played piano and they made plans to write songs.

I guess the guy was moving to Nashville.

All I really remember about him is going to his apartment for dinner and listening to them talk.

My Dad had a couple of bona fides that gave him street cred.

Pictures of hippie hair trailing to his butt, stories about getting high with Tommy Shaw pre-Styx fame.

Maybe a few others that my ears didn’t hear.

But his early twenties dreams got derailed by marriage and divorce and kids and responsibilities, like so many dreams do.

The real world intervened.

He may have pursued it on and off, through a stint at Orkin, and roughneck work on oil rigs.

Factory work in Pine Bluff, and I suppose when the factory shut down, he put that dream on a back burner.

Like many people do.

Like most people do.

And we make excuses and say “That’s life.”

Or “That’s how life works.”

He had a few notebooks that I got somehow.

Picked out of boxes and mixed in with my own, as I moved to college and moved to houses and moved on and moved around.

Handwritten songs on three hole punch paper.

Red ink on blue pages and some notebook sheets ripped from wire spirals, edges still tattered.

No music, just words.

Though he was good enough that you could hear how it might sound.

I know I got my love of reading from him.

There were always books in the house, books around, novels gifted and given.

And I know I got my love of music from him, endless nights when he would get in from second shift work, crack open a few cold one’s and play an album just a little over loud.

Listening to rock and country and 70’s and 80’s as I tried to sleep on the other side of the house.

My taste in music is as varied as my literary habits, and I can trace almost all the influences for both.

I probably heard it in a dream.

Listen to my song free. Just click play:

REAL LIFE -

Everyone on this free daily should click PLAY on that 40 second clip

Don’t Miss RINGS OF POWER if you are a Tolkien fan-

The Great Thriller Giveaway group promo

I was doing some housecleaning and realized after taking off my shoes so I could count past ten…

I’ve offered up almost 1000 free novels, novellas, short stories, and long letters in the past few years.

That’s a whole hell of a lot of alphabet.

Glad you’re here for it, hope you stay for it, and even more planned so stick around.

If you feel like helping a brother out with some payback for all the freebies, click the upgrade subscription button or go buy a book from Chris Lowry Books

(If you don’t have extra $$, then click PLAY on an AUDIOBOOK so I can make more of them.)

Books by Chris Lowry

Classic Sci Fi

1. Moon Men

2. Super Secret Space Mission

3. Bovine Bloodbath

4. High Steaks

5. Epoch

6. Eon

7. Era

8. Backwoods Station

9. The Cryptid Chronicles