Hello, I'm your friendly author. What follows, in 25 installments (plus a front cover), is the text of Making History, my novel for 2009's National Novel Writing Month. It is just over 50,000 words and appears here in a completely unedited form, so if it's not very good, well, at least I warned you.
With that said: Making History is the oral history of a very unusual, and completely fictional, rock band called Knave of Hearts. Knave of Hearts is four kids from London (Alan, Emma, Lane, and Tom), and from 2007-2008 they rose to fame from out of nowhere and just as quickly and suddenly disappeared, amidst bizarre circumstances. This account will attempt to tell the story as objectively as possible, and leave you to draw your own conclusions. Please enjoy.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
introducing the band
Pete Davies (musician): Every band wants to change the world.
I remember it well; ah, yes, very well. Being in school, learning how to play guitar, practicing your Mick Jagger poses in the mirror and thinking you were very cool, thinking you were going to be able to get all the girls – but no, no, it wasn't about girls, it was about the music, the expression, and you were going to start a band and be just so – so brilliant that you'd be playing the Albert Hall and there would be fans screaming and fainting around you. And you'd be very nonchalant, signing autographs on people's T-shirts and riding around in your limousine drinking scotch with ice, that sort of thing.
queen of diamonds
Madeleine Marx: Edwin and I always knew it would be better to raise a child in England. Wales was so many dead-end streets. In England there was work for us, and our children could be exposed to much more culture. I think, coming from a small town as does Edwin, we always found that Londoners were more open-minded. We felt that the girls and Charlie would grow up much more well-rounded than we did. They teach us things every day.
Edwin Hall (executive, Hall Publishing): Emma was our second child, and our second daughter. She was born in '89, and I wish I could say that's the most trouble she ever gave us.
i am not what i am
Theresa Hawk (student): Alan Léonin is...beautiful.
He's a beautiful human being. I think if angels are real, Alan is what they would be like. He looks like a marble statue. He has the most intense eyes. (laugh) I feel like no one really speaks to what it means to be a teenager in the modern world the way he does. It's not all happiness and fun, you know! I'm really glad he's there for me, even if the band's broken up—I'm glad his words are there for me—and I feel like I really understand the meaning in all of the music.
James Lewis (student): Being gay my whole life, we had this ideal in the community of a man who was really fit, like physically fit, not like he's attractive fit, someone who went to the gym and lifted weights and looked really strong. Because he's trying to hide the vulnerability that people associate with the gay community, right? But Alan Léonin never tried to hide that, well, men are human beings too, and have a lot of the same insecurities that women do.
spaces in between words
Lane Kennedy: Ooh, I'm the Quiet One. (laugh)
Sean Kennedy (architect): I'll admit, I never thought I'd end up giving an interview for a book about a rock band. We're just a very average single-parent family. We're all a bit artistic I guess, but we never expected to make a lot of waves, we just wanted to get by.
Ben Kennedy (student): I always thought Lane's art was what she'd be famous for. I didn't even know she played the bass. I guess she doesn't talk a lot about her accomplishments, she's pretty modest.
we keep the beat
Emma Marx-Hall (reading from the lyrics to "My Little Army" by Knave of Hearts): We are the pulse, we keep the beat. The numbers signaled our defeat. We aren't the army – we just keep the beat.
Tom Thorogood: I just really like music. I always have.
Molly Webster (pianist): Oh, it's absolutely a family tradition. Thomas's father was a musician too, for a short while. He was a tenor actually. I met him because I was his accompanist for a recording. It's almost cliché, that story. Though he manages a factory now. That's a bit less romantic but it pays the bills!
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