Announcement: Why the Blog is not Updating Right Now

Hello, everyone!

Happy new year! I’m sorry that it’s taken me more than midway through January to wish you a happy 2019, but I suspect you’ll forgive me when you learn the reasons for my lack of posts in the past few months. In addition to holidays and travel (which aren’t unique to me, I know) and family responsibilities (also not unique to me, though some of you know the complications I face), and medical issues (I had brain radiation again in October 2018, and I’m in the process of trying a new chemotherapy regimen, which can be unpredictable), I have some exciting news:

I’m working on a proposal for a book based on this blog.

You'll be as fascinated by what you read as
Samuel Johnson in this portrait by Joshua Reynolds!

I’m still in the earliest stages, but so far, I’ve received a lot of positive and enthusiastic responses to this idea, so I’m optimistic that some press will want to publish it. My plan for now is that the book will be similar in tone and aim of the blog—debunking myths, challenging clichés, explaining why certain narratives persist even when they’re false, etc. Much of the book will be essays take directly from the blog, with some revisions and, I hope, improvements. However, it would be foolish to expect people to pay for content that they can already get online for free, so I’m going to come up with additional, new material. As a result, some content I would normally put up on the blog I’m now saving to be exclusive to the book.

So, I’m taking a hiatus from the blog. I don’t know how long this break will last, and I can’t announce an expected publication date for the book—it’s too early for me to know, as it hasn’t been accepted or even proposed yet! I will still be active on Twitter, mostly on my personal account (@lindahyphen), but also on the blog account (@MusHistCliches) when something relevant happens. I’ll also keep posting relevant updates on the blog's Facebook page.

In the meantime, I invite you to go back through the archives, and I’m asking you a favor: If you’re willing, can you please let me know any classical music mysteries that you’ve been wondering about but that I haven’t addressed through the blog yet? I already have some ideas for the new essays (including a question that took musicology by storm thirty years ago!), but I’d love to know what questions have been burning in your mind. You can email me at linda@shavergleason.com. I prefer email to social media for this purpose, as it lets me archive and retrieve correspondence easier.

Thank you so much for sticking around enough to find this announcement, and I hope the potential book will be worth your patience!

Too Long, Didn’t Read: The blog is on hiatus because I’m working on turning it into a book. If you have questions or stories I haven’t addressed yet, please email them to me at linda@shavergleason.com.