Hello friend! Today I am chatting with author Patrick R.F. Blakley about his novel, Drummond: Learning to find himself in the music. Let’s welcome Patrick and learn more about the book. You will also find a book excerpt after the interview. 🙂
Get to know the author: Patrick R.F. Blakley
Welcome back to Armed with A Book, Patrick! Tell me and my readers a bit about yourself!
Well, let’s see, I’m a musician and percussionist from Syracuse, New York, USA. Syracuse is the snowiest city in the country, and it’s right in the middle of the state. I taught marching band for about twenty years, most recently with a group that participated in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade! For this, we won a SAMMY award, a Syracuse Area Music Award, which is the most significant music award in Central New York. Today I’m a marching band adjudicator for the state and a certified percussion judge for WGI. I’m also sponsored by Innovative Percussion drum sticks.
I’ve written a technical instruction book about marching tenor drums called Quadratics and another one for the field percussion section as a whole called The Field Percussion User Manual. More recently, I wrote an illustrated children’s book about marching band called Drummy Drum Joins Marchy Band. My illustrator, Emily Hogan, was a member of the band I taught. She drew exactly what I pictured, a drum joining the marching band! Finally, the children’s book inspired the Drummond novel, which explores why a drum would join the marching band in the first place. As it turns out, the drum was just a projection of his inner-self, and Drummond had to find out who he really was inside! Drummond then uses that information to fit in and connect with his new family.
Drummond was fun to write and is very auto-biographical for a fiction story. Most of the events in the book did actually occur! However, some chapters are complete fabrications, although the feelings they explore are all things I felt in my years within the marching band. These are the feelings all readers will relate to, having been a musician in their past or not. That’s something I’m quite proud of, that this book can go in two directions based on who happens to be reading it. Marching band alumni will be shaking their heads in agreement on every page, while non-musicians can tap into the emotional side of the story more. I also think this novel will resonate with readers of any age beyond the young adult genre!
Make sure you check out my website below for a link to an audio preview of the book!
What inspired you to write this book?
This book was something of a diary for me at first. I had this experience when I joined my high school’s marching band a year early, almost exactly as the final story explores in the book. Every so often, an old memory would pop into my head, and I’d think about how much fun it was in the band and drumline. Finally, I decided that I needed to write some of those memories down because I was scared that each of those thoughts might be the last time I’d remember them! This quickly turned into a novel where the core ideas are actual memories, and the events that didn’t actually happen are subtle winks to myself that remind me of experiences I couldn’t include. I feel relieved since everything in my brain can now be retrieved on paper, without fear of forgetting any fond memories I had in the band that first year!
How long did it take you to write this book, from the first idea to the last edit?
Writing this novel was quick, especially for someone who had never written in such a long-form before! The entire text was put onto paper in about three or four weeks. Editing then took another year. I found it enjoyable to go back and read my story again and again, sometimes even sparking some new memories. Also, keep in mind that I still see many of those same people at band and drumline events. In fact, about six months after finishing the book, my alma mater won the state championship! I went back and added another appendix to button up something I alluded to previously in the book: that it’s been over thirty years since they’d won!
What makes your story unique?
I think two things are unique about this story and its characters. First, it’s a novel about marching band! Not many fiction novels explore life through the marching band lens. Second, I can only think of a couple books that use an atheist main character, neither of which are for young adults. Now, I don’t mention that second fact often when talking about the book, I’d rather it be discovered organically, but it’s also not something that gets preachy either. It’s stated as a matter of fact, and then some of the chapter titles, or many passages, start to reverberate a little more when you actually think about them. Drummond was a parishioner of percussion but not yet a percussionist right up until the book’s final line. Is this a metaphor for finding religion or losing it? You decide!
Who would enjoy reading your book?
I certainly think that anyone with a music background would enjoy this novel, and marching band folks might raise their heart rate when they hear that metronome fire up in several chapters! But I also think that the story stands independently, without needing an experienced musician to understand it. I actually wrote it in the same way that I taught music, with easy-to-understand concepts at the beginning that evolve into actual terminology as the reading progresses. While there are definite nods to musicians throughout, like flamming light switches, it won’t hurt the story if you don’t understand it. A flam can either be a drum rudiment or a new onomatopoeia depending on who holds the book!
What’s something you hope readers would take away from it?
I want people to understand that nobody knows who they really are inside until they truly seek that information out. Don’t let life happen to you by accident, young readers. Forge a path if at all possible. I know, I know, it’s so much more easily said than done. But sometimes you have to look deep, and often it takes until you’re in your forties before you find it. Hell, there could be a few things in there if you look hard enough! Drummond doesn’t know who he is, the name gave him a clue, but it was up to him to seek it out and find out who he was inside. Lucky for him, he found himself in the music at age 13, but please don’t stop until you also find something within yourself!
Do you have a favourite quote or scene in the book that you find yourself going back to?
I have so many little favorites, so if your readers are nice enough to indulge me, I’ll share a few. I think my favorite quote from Drummond relates to my own personal sleep habits. I struggle to wake up each day, as I’m sure many people reading this will agree. Drummond narrates, “I lift my arm and feel around for the snooze button, the only word I know in braille.” This succinctly implies that he uses his snooze button so much that he knows the word by feel. Granted, I don’t think most alarm clocks have braille on them, but the point remains clear! Another one of my favorites revolves around how slow time moves when you’re stuck in a meeting or something similar. When you stare at a clock, time seems to move slower! Drummond does this in the opening chapter and reprises it in the closing chapter to recall the idea. “I’m not totally engaged with the man, rather, the clock on the wall behind him. About six, but ticking slow and tocking even slower.”
Lastly, I leave you with a quote that will divide the Armed With A Book readers in half! If you can picture a sousaphone, it’ll make sense. You know, the big tuba that wraps around and encircles your body. “Lying on the ground, the sousaphone looks like a Venn diagram for toppings that belong on a pizza versus pineapple, two big separate circles. He lifts the whole thing up, minding the ceiling, sticks his head through the pineapple portion, and straightens the pizza portion.”
What made you decide to utilize alliteration as often as we see in the story? It’s perhaps the most prominent literary device throughout the book!
Alliteration became one of my most fun and valuable tools during the creation of this story. Drums are a very rhythmic instrument, obviously, and alliteration seems to give sentences a similar cadence and flow as you sound out certain passages. I thought it would be an excellent parallel for a book about drums, and band, to employ such a perfect literary device throughout the story. I hope it stimulates the reader in a way they might not have expected!
If you could give a shout out to someone(s) who has helped in your writer journey, please feel free to mention them below!
All I will say is that I wouldn’t have written this book if it weren’t for Natalia Mandros, she gave me the final slight push I needed to get started, so Natalia, if you’re reading this, thank you!
Drummond: Learning to find himself in the music
Genre: Fiction
Drummond, a thirteen-year-old C student in middle school, is steered into joining the high school’s marching band. He’s far from ready, and his friends help him make several attempts to learn new instruments to try and fit in better. With a little unexpected guidance from the drummers and their instructor, he realizes how well he already fits in. He discovers who he is inside. Home life deteriorates behind him and pushes him forward into the arms of his new family, the marching band.
Content notes:
Please note that part of the uniqueness of this story is its atheist main character. There is an overall metaphor of becoming less religious throughout this book, but it is not the story’s primary focus and can be interpreted in a few different ways.
Book Excerpt from
Drummond
“I gotta go, though,” Chelsea reads my mind while zipping her tall bag. “Maybe we can meet up this weekend, Drummond, and I can teach you clarinet next!”
“I gotta go too,” I confirm with Chelsea’s assessment of the time. “And yeah, that sounds great!”
“Find me after practice. I’ll tell you where I live. You can come over to my house,” Chelsea says while carefully walking away with her pole bag. “Bye, Ash!” She yells backward from afar.
Ashley looks back at me as I hand her mouthpiece over. I thank her for letting me try it with her as I attempt to locate my drum bag. It’s now mixed in with woodwind bags, bottles, and binders.
“See you later, Drummond!” Ashley says, barely audible over the scourge of woodwinds randomly warming up scattered throughout the area.
“Bye!” I yell over about four nearby flutes doing the opposite of tuning.
I dash to my drum case behind the band room and struggle to attach the harness to the drum. It clicks in after a few thousand attempts, and I hoist it onto my shoulders. I ding up the door by bumping into it with the rim of my drum on the way out. I’d have better luck with my eyes closed. I walk down the hall bent over like an old man to try and see over the top of the bass drum. I go out the exterior doors backward so that the drum doesn’t break the glass, then spin quickly away from the closing door. The boss locks eyes with me from afar as the whole drumline is at attention. I look at my watch. It’s 5:58. I have two minutes to get over there, plenty of time!
“Let’s go!” I hear the boss shout at a distance.
I guess I don’t have two minutes. I step off the sidewalk curb carefully and jog, as quickly as a blind drummer can jog, over to the island. I feel the grass. I’m here. Suddenly I’m falling forward out of control, irrecoverably! My drum hits the ground, and I land on top of it, nearly rolling forward like a cartoon. In shock, I piece together what just happened, a music-stand blew over in the wind, and my feet both found it. My body doesn’t hurt at all, but my morale is taking a beating. In front of everyone, including Dwayne, I slide out of my harness on the ground and helplessly start to cry.
Interested?
Find this book on Goodreads, Indie Story Geek and Amazon.
Thank you for hanging out with us today. Connect with Patrick on his website, Goodreads and Amazon.
If you are an indie author and would like to do a book excerpt, check out my work with me page for details. Check out other book excerpts here.
Cover Photo on Unsplash
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