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What a way to start a tremendous weekend. Patrick Nielsen Hayden is a World Fantasy and Hugo Award-winning fiction editor at TOR Books. He's brought to our shelves amazing books by Emma Bull, John Scalzi, Charles de Lint, Ben Bova, George Alec Effinger, Cory Doctorow, Jo Walton, Susanna Clarke, Christopher Priest, Adam Stemple, Glen Cook, David Weber, David Langford, John Barnes, Robert Holdstock, George R. R. Martin, and Arthur C. Clarke. He's also an essayist and reviewer who teaches workshops in places like Viable Paradise and both Clarions.
He is also a musical marvel who picks up stray instruments and is noodling on them in minutes. At one rehearsal for his band Whisperado’s gig, Patrick accidentally started one of the songs in the wrong key, and only noticed after he got to the end of the first rather complicated passage. One of the bandmates remarked, "I love that he can play in the Phrygian mode in the wrong key and still get all the notes right!"
A little birdie named Elise shared a musical ritual the Haydens call "the car thing." Perhaps, if we're lucky, before the weekend is out Patrick and Teresa will teach us this song they sing every time they set out on an automobile journey. (Taxi rides don’t count; it only gets sung when Teresa is piloting the vehicle and Patrick is navigating.):
Please don't hit us, random persons;
Do not squash us flat like bugs
We hope you'll contrive to dodge us
Even though you're taking drugs.
Please repress your inner children;
Please face frontward when you drive;
We need your co-operation
Just to get back home alive.
Patrick plays two guitars: a Taylor acoustic ("I'm much more of a lifelong acoustic guitar player than electric.") and a year-2000 Fender-made reproduction of a classic 1952 Telecaster. And he comes to us with his own built in backup band, the vocal stylings of The Deaftones (Teresa Nielsen Hayden and Elise Matthesen). All that are missing are the roadies. We are SOOOOO looking forward to this concert.
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Concom's Choice Concert!