A year has passed.

A year has passed since I moved to Santa Cruz, with my eyes wide open. I knew then that it'd be a hard slog, and I haven't seen anything yet that contradicts that assumption. I've had comical musical experiences (see this post) and meaningful ones too, like the Cabrillo Reunion back in October, where most of the 1975 jazz ensemble's members got together with Lile Crews at the helm once again.

Making a living hasn't been easy. I took a part-time job at a struggling music store. I've never been this close to the ground in retail. Always I had the advantage of being detached from the customer by a distributor, importer or wholesaler when I ventured into the music trades.

Sue's been marvelously supportive. In the last year, I landed a couple gigs–one for my big band even–through her kind offices. But it's time to get serious on a number of levels, including hastening the divorce and getting rent checks in on time, as she's struggling too.

So I've decided that I'm going to redouble my efforts to get my various bands hired. I already built a website called fennomusic.com that's still got a few glaring deficiencies, although the structure and look are just about right.

It's been a long haul from the time I decided to set up my big band once again, through my ship contracts, to the heart attack in 2008, through my marriage ending, leaving Austin, and here in Santa Cruz, where I had to step on the first rung of a ladder that I'd pretty much climbed 35+ years ago, where people play for free nowadays and restaurants expect not to pay musicians for making music.

I'm also going to try a little writing again. I wrote this book for Peachpit Press in 1998. Unfortunately the product was pulled off the market the very week the book was released, the reason being that Steve Jobs had returned to Apple and decided to reallocate the software development, canceling titles that were under the Claris banner. (Not that I'm pissed at his memory, because at the time I was mopping up Apple shares with my 401(K) rollover account. If he hadn't closed that unprofitable appendage of Filemaker along with about a million other details, I'd have a lot less in that account than I do now.)

What has me intrigued is Apple's new textbook initiative and the tool they released for authoring textbooks. For free. Unlike when I wrote and produced my last book, which I did the prepress production on as well, there will be no copy editing through MS Word (ugh!) files passed back and forth among several editors, page proofs generated in Quark ExPress, and then off to some RR Donelley plant in northwest Ohio. Just my iMac and maybe an iPad to test pages.

There are several things I feel I know enough about to be able to produce a text aimed at a very tight market segment. More on this later.

Then there's the issue of the royalties. If I remember correctly I made less than 2 bucks on each book sold. Cover price was $16.95 if I remember right. They sold a lot of them eventually, but the take per book was less than stellar. I was green behind the ears, though, it being my first book.

That's what I don't understand about pundits bloviating about Apple's cut of a finished textbook in the iTunes store. Seventy percent of a book going to the author sounds pretty good to me!

Whether that's good enough to get me going and sustain me through the process, well, that's another matter.

I'm also thinking Sue, who just earned a French Wine Expert shingle from the French Wine Institute, and who just returned from an almost mythical tour of Burgundy with a group of admitted partisans, has a book in her waiting to gently be extracted. The Women Vintners of Burgundy, perhaps? Or something a bit more general?

Again, more as it develops.

Meanwhile, I'm playing almost every night of the week somewhere in Santa Cruz, usually for free or a cut of the tip jar. I'm writing some charts for Dan Young's Pleasure Point Horns which we're about to unleash on an indifferent universe. I'm doing my best to get a saxophone quartet off the ground. And I'm thinking about hiring an organizer. I'm wondering when we can do a reunion of Sofrito.