The Master Bedroom: A Novel

by Tessa Hadley

Overview

A single woman at loose ends becomes the object of two men's affections—a father and his teenage son—in this sly, richly drawn novel, The Master Bedroom

After more than twenty years in London, Kate Flynn has returned to her family home in Wales to care for her aging mother. Having cast off her academic career, she is unmoored, and when she runs into a childhood friend, David Roberts, at a concert, she finds herself falling for him, although she knows she's grasping at anything to fill the sudden emptiness of her life.

For his part, David's marriage isn't as solid as it looks—his wife, Suzie, has begun acting strangely, moving out of their bedroom, neglecting their children, and disappearing for days at a time—and he begins to seek refuge with Kate from the newfound chaos of his life.

David's seventeen-year-old son, Jamie, is also drawn to Kate's eccentricity and her strange, glamorous old house full of books and music and history. As both father and son set about their parallel courtships, Tessa Hadley's intricate, graceful novel explores the tangled web of connections between parents and children, revealing how each generation replays the stories of the one that came before, in new and sometimes startling patterns.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781429934602
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/24/2007
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Tessa Hadley teaches literature and creative writing at Bath Spa University. She is the author of two novels, Everything Will Be All Right and Accidents in the Home, both available from Picador. Accidents in the Home was long-listed for the Guardian First Book Award. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker. She lives in Cardiff, Wales.

Tessa Hadley teaches literature and creative writing at Bath Spa University College. Her first novel, Accidents in the Home, which was excerpted in The New Yorker, was longlisted for The Guardian's First Book Award. She lives in Cardiff, Wales.

Read an Excerpt

The Master Bedroom

A Novel

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By Tessa Hadley

Henry Holt and Company

Copyright © 2007 Tessa Hadley
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-3460-2

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CHAPTER 1

It was not a sign. Kate refused to let it be a sign.

She hated driving anyway. As soon as she got home she was going to sell the car, but of course she had needed it to move all her stuff from London. The backseat was piled with boxes of books and holdalls stuffed with that miscellany of her possessions which it had seemed impossible to leave behind, so high she couldn't even see out of her rearview mirror. She always expected when she was driving to die at any moment, and braked and changed lanes with desperate recklessness as if she were gambling, but actually what happened not long after the Brynglas tunnel coming out of Newport wasn't her fault. No one was going very fast. She had meant to time her journey to miss the rush hour, but the minutes and hours of her morning, taken up with returning keys and dropping off graded exams at the university, had drifted off evasively as usual. Her life would never fit inside the lucid shapes she planned for it. So here she was in the middle lane in a queue coming out of Newport in dreary winter dusk and rain, shrunken among towering lorries whose wheels fumed with wet, gripping the steering wheel with both hands, longing to smoke but not daring to fumble a cigarette out of her pack on the dashboard. The cat in his basket, strapped into the passenger seat beside her, slunk round in circles with his fur flattened, expressing precisely the mingled unease and ennui that she felt.

Then in the dim light something fell from the sky; at first Kate thought it was a bundle of dirty washing wrapped in a sheet. Even as she took in the catastrophe, the thing bounced against the side of a big container lorry in the slow lane and turned out not to be a bundle that might fly harmlessly apart but a mass flung back by its own weight into the path of a red car ahead of Kate. Which must swerve; what else could it do? The gray formlessness bounced onto the red car's bonnet and then clung blinding across its windscreen, carried forward as the car slewed into the path of the faster traffic in the outside lane; it threw out one long wing, dazzling white feathers ranged in rows of perfect symmetry, lit up by headlights. Then the mess was thrown free onto the road and swallowed up in the advancing chaos. The red car was hit side-on in the fast lane and went spinning into the center divider. Cars waltzed to a halt, finding whatever space was available. The actual moments of disaster were surprisingly reflective: Kate drove decorously and without fuss into the rear end of a white van; her little Citroën skidded around in a half circle and stopped at a right angle across the road. Something hit her then and shoved her forward another few yards. She wasn't hurt; she didn't think she was even jolted. How melodramatic, she thought. What a welcome home. Only the cat wailed an indignant protest.

It was an irony and not a sign.

Astonishingly, no one seemed to be hurt. The woman in the red car climbed out of the driver's seat and walked around it, examining the damage. The others moved their vehicles onto the hard shoulder if they could and waited for the police: Kate's Citroën was badly dented in two places but it started without difficulty. It was unbearable, though, to sit waiting inside it; Kate left Sim and joined in the improbable sober camaraderie sharing someone's umbrella. It must have been a swan, everyone thought, brought down by power lines. No one could tell for sure if it was dead already when it hit the first lorry. Or was it only a goose? A swan, confirmed someone who thought they had seen its long neck outstretched. Kate looked where they pointed; the swan was indistinguishable now from the oily dark wet of the road except in its bulk, like a sodden mattress.

The woman from the red car — who had taken on a certain poetic importance, as if the bird had chosen her and she had escaped it — came and stood among them: a blonde in a white mac that was soon dark with rain. People asked if she was all right and she nodded angrily, staring into the distance as if she was holding back tears and wanted to be left alone. Someone lent her a mobile and she made a call. Then Kate recognized her as a woman she vaguely knew. She couldn't remember her name; she was married to David Roberts, Carol's younger brother. Carol was Kate's best — or, at any rate, her oldest — friend. Kate had met this woman once or twice a few years ago at Carol's and had thought her a nobody: conventional, a primary-school teacher. Now — probably it was the aftershock of the accident and the romance of all their survival distorting her judgment — she thought she could see what might be attractive in the rather rawboned face and big vulnerable mouth: fiercely shy, as though she might bite if you tried to be kind. You could find that farouche thing sexually interesting, at least for a time. She wasn't the sort of woman who liked Kate, anyway; she would surely take offense at anything she considered intellectual talk. Kate pretended not to know her, thinking she'd probably prefer it. Certainly Kate would.

KATE'S MOTHER, BILLIE, STILL LIVED IN CARDIFF IN THE same house she had been born in. Kate was born there too; like Billie, in the big master bedroom nobody slept in anymore. Billie's father, Sam Lebowicz, who had owned a chain of haberdashery shops in the Welsh valleys, bought the house when he married in 1910; his wife called it Firenze, because Italy was where they had their honeymoon. It overlooked a boating lake that was the culmination of a long narrow park running up out of the city proper; from the park across the lake you looked into a vista of misty blue and purple hills as if you were at the edge of civilization, although in fact you could walk round the lake in twenty minutes and the city these days stretched several miles beyond it. Firenze was a gloomy red-brick villa built on a rise beside the lake, with a precipitous front garden whose path wound up in zigzags through a gigantic rockery from the road; there was easier access from a side street. It had a round turret and a long enclosed first-floor veranda, in belated imitation of more lovely pre-Raphaelite fantasies in the city center. At the back of Firenze there had once been a broad lawn and shrubberies and beyond those a little wilderness where Kate had had her swing, but Billie had sold off most of this land in the seventies and eighties to developers, and the back windows now overlooked a block of flats and the end house of a small private development.

Kate had let her London flat and given up her job (or at least taken a year's unpaid leave); she was coming home to look after her mother, who was eighty-three and growing forgetful. Anyway, she was bored with teaching in London; she was ready for a change; she didn't want to grow old doing the same thing over and over. She drove in at the graveled side entrance, turned off the engine, and sat in the silence, letting the howl and roar of the crazy motorway drain away, thinking that at least she would never ever have to drive again. The dents in the Citroën didn't matter; she would just give it away.

Expecting Billie to come hurrying down to welcome her, she waited in the car with the door open, smoking the cigarette she had been craving; an intimately known suburban peace sifted down on her through the dark. The falling rain was blotted up overhead by the tall monkey puzzle tree or pattered onto the evergreen bushes. Below, on the lake, an invisible duck blundered splashily. A cold perfume of pines and bitter garden mulch seemed to her like the smell of the past itself. She unfastened the door to Sim's basket and let him come out to claw on her lap and make question marks against her face with his tail. He knew where he was; Kate had always brought him when she came home for weekends. She had only got the car in the first place because it was too complicated to take Sim on the train.

Billie didn't come down. When she had finished her cigarette, Kate tucked the cat under her arm and climbed the steps to the front door, which jutted from the side of the house in a long porch with stained-glass windows where once they had grown houseplants. She didn't need her key; the door was slightly open, although everything was dark inside. She went through into the hall and put on the light. The hall was wood-paneled and baronial, and the one weak lightbulb was screwed into a monstrous bronze fitting like an upside-down cauldron with sockets for four, suspended ever since Kate could remember by chains from the ceiling.

— Billie, Kate called, where are you? I've come home! I'm home to stay!

She kept Sim under her arm as she looked in all the dark rooms, though he meowed and struggled to go down, kicking his strong back legs. He was a pure black cat with a small hard head that seemed to stand for the particular density of his cat will.

— Mummy? Where are you?

Hanging on to Sim, she climbed up the wide paneled staircase that rose at the back of the hall and was always lit in patches of color by a streetlamp shining through the tall stained-glass window on the landing; girls balancing water jugs gracefully on their shoulders gossiped around an ancient shaduf. Billie had taken recently to sleeping in a different bedroom every night, although she never slept now in the big front one, and she swore that she didn't sleep in Kate's. Kate put on the landing light and found her in a little room at the back where they used to store the spare chairs that Billie put out downstairs when she gave one of her concerts. The bed was made up correctly with striped sheets and a pillowcase and blankets, but Billie lay on top under one of the ancient dirty silk eiderdowns they hadn't used for years. She was sleeping absolutely tranquilly, not as if she had paused for an afternoon nap but as if it were bedtime; she was in her nightdress, even though it was only six o'clock in the evening, a glass of water and her pot of face cream on the bedside table. Yet Kate had telephoned at lunchtime before she left to remind Billie she was coming. She had expected tea when she arrived, or at least the gas fire and the television on.

She let Sim go and sat for a while with her mother in the dim light from the landing, feeling the cold rise up numbingly through her feet and legs, even though she was still wrapped in her thick black-and-white check winter coat. Billie slept like an angel. That was just what Kate thought she looked like, lying there: an old angel, with her pink skin so fine that the perfect shape of her skull showed through, her deep melancholy eye cavities, and the nose that leaped in its lean strong arc from her face (Kate had inherited the nose). Her snow-white hair was spread across the pillow, unbound from the neat French pleat she could still make in a few quick motions of her hands; perhaps she would remember how to do that when she had forgotten everything else. She always slept on her back, like nobody else Kate had ever known — like a child, her mouth had sunk open and she dribbled and snored lightly. She didn't have much of a chin; angels might not.

Kate was overwhelmed with doubt, finding herself temporarily alone in her new life. She quite liked the idea of tying on an apron and putting everything to rights, making this a home again, cooking little nourishing dishes for her mother, tending new houseplants in the porch. But she couldn't genuinely imagine it. She didn't have much of a track record for domesticity. Closing Billie's door behind her and treading quietly so as not to wake her, she went back down into the hall, picked up the phone, and dialed. It was the same old fat brown dial phone they had had in the 1970s, before Kate left home to go to university.

— Max? she said.

She really shouldn't be phoning Max. Max had been desperate for four years with love for Kate; when he finally understood that he couldn't possess with certainty even enough of her to preserve his dignity, he had saved himself and found a sweet girl instead to have babies with. All this change was new enough for the babies not to exist yet, except as an idea, and Kate hadn't been good at learning to adapt.

— Katie, this really isn't a good time, Max said.

His soft American voice that had sometimes made her sick — too compliant, too delighted — seemed to Kate at that moment to promise everything desirably metropolitan: good wine in big glasses, deep designer sofas, conversations about articles in the London Review of Books, expensive gadgets from the right shops.

— I've made a terrible mistake.

— I warned you. Where are you?

— I'm here, I'm home. She's forgotten I was coming, she's just gone to bed, she's fast asleep, she's lost all sense of day and night. Max, what will happen to me if I stay here? You know me; I have enough trouble myself, keeping night apart from day. And she'd left the front door wide open. I'm just going to turn round and head straight back. She'll never even know I've been here, will she? She probably won't even know I promised to come. Do you think they'll give me my job back at the university?

— Aren't the tenants moving into your flat tomorrow?

— I'll call for the keys first thing in the morning. I'll compensate them. I'll make a scene. I'll tell them Billie's dead.

— Katie, you can't do that.

She could tell from the way he measured his voice that Sherie was in the room with him or listening from the kitchen, where she would be cooking up some supper out of the River Café recipe book. Max wouldn't ever pretend he wasn't talking to Kate, but he would want to express at the same time to Sherie his regret, his reservation.

Kate banged the phone down, scornful that he had been so easily trammeled. Trammeled was a word, wasn't it? It ought to be.

She hadn't even told him about the swan.

She studied the hall. It was at least clean, as far as she could see in the weak light; that meant someone from Buckets and Mops was coming in three times a week as arranged. Perhaps the Buckets and Mops lady had made up all the beds, too, for Billie to sleep in. As yet the only sign of Kate's arrival in the house, apart from Sim, was her handbag, which she had put down on the oak chest before she went upstairs: very soft dark brown leather, roomy, Italian, with a tortoiseshell clasp. She felt tenderness toward her sophisticated professional self, who had known how to choose such a fine unconventional bag, how to carry it off strikingly. That self surely couldn't come back and live in this crazy place, this nowhere. Wales, for God's sake!

At that moment Sim stalked out from the passage to the kitchen. She scooped him up and snatched the bag and shut the front door behind her and forced Sim back into his traveling basket; he spat his outrage and cursed her in cat language. Then she lit another cigarette, climbed into the driving seat, and smoked it.

But she could never really have driven all the way back to London. She couldn't have faced the nightmare of traffic again. Also, there was nothing to go back to. Anyway, now she'd seen her sleeping, she couldn't quite bear to think of Billie waking up alone, to an empty house.

DAVID KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG AS SOON AS HE SAW Suzie. He had noticed as he parked on the drive that her car was missing, but he'd only thought she must be running Hannah to ballet class or a sleepover or taking Joel swimming; he didn't always remember the busy running order of the children's arrangements. He was late; he had left a message on the phone to say he was staying on in the office to finish a paper for a Health Protection Conference the next day. Through the lit window as he came around the side of the house he could see his family in the kitchen eating pizza, and it did occur to him then that it was late for them to be having supper. They didn't see him, in the dark outside. They lived in a raw new area at the growing tip of the city where it met the motorway that circled the periphery; beyond them there was only a golf course, and then the grounds of an old house, which were open to the public, and then fields. David paused before he opened the back door, enjoying being alone in the humming dark that was always nervous with the noise from the motorway: not a roar but a thin murmur of movement and speed that somehow sucked substance and permanence from everything it reached. David didn't mind this; he even felt it as a kind of lightness.

— Where've you left the car? he asked, while he wiped his feet on the doormat.

Suzie was putting something in the microwave; she didn't turn.

— Smashed up, said Hannah relishingly. She was standing up at the table to eat her pizza and had a piece of tomato on her chin. She liked crisis. Joel, who didn't, sat absorbed in some game with his Beanie Babies.

— You're joking.

— I was involved in an accident, said Suzie calmly, on my way home from the in-service day at the Gwent teachers' center, but I'm all right. The car in front of me hit a lorry pulling out. No one was hurt, amazingly enough. But the car's a write-off.

— Good God, said David, why didn't you call me? Suzie shrugged.

— I was OK. There was no need.

But he knew as she turned around that she wasn't OK. Usually Suzie was sturdy and steady; she had a wholesome closed muzzle of a face that made him think of a fox, with its sandy coloring and the fine fair down that showed in a certain light. She was tall and lean and big-boned, her broad shoulders set defiantly against challenge; only now something was angled loose in her as if she'd touched a live wire, and her hair had dried in a dark mat that clung to her head. It frightened him to see her blue eyes startled open.

— Actually, Suzie said, busy cutting up Joel's pizza, I called Giulia.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Master Bedroom by Tessa Hadley. Copyright © 2007 Tessa Hadley. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

	Introduction	xviii
Step 1	Developing Successful Song Structures	1
Chapter 1	Identifying the Most Successful Song Structures--and Why They Work	2
	Identifying the Components of a Song	4
	The Verse	4
	The Pre-Chorus	5
	The Chorus	7
	The Bridge	11
	Building a Successful Song	13
	Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus	13
	Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Bridge-Chorus	14
	Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus	15
	Verse-Verse-Bridge-Verse	17
	Variations	19
	Exercise: Identifying Song Structures	20
	Introductions, Instrumental Solos, and Turnarounds	20
	Exercise: Using Successful Song Structures	22
Step 1	Conclusion	22
	Song Structure Checklist	23
Step 2	Writing Effective Lyrics	25
Chapter 2	Developing Great Song Ideas and Catchy Titles	26
	Understanding What Constitutes a Great Idea--and How to Find One	26
	Keeping a Hook Book	33
	Exercise: Finding Original Titles	33
	Making the Singer Look Good	34
	Using Songs to Help Define Artist Identity	35
	Exercise: Defining Artist Identity	36
	Point of View: Deciding Which "Voice" to Write From	36
	Using the Three-Step Lyric-Focusing Technique	37
Step 1	Start with a Title	39
Step 2	Outline the Story	39
Step 3	Write the Actual Lines of Lyric	40
	Exercise: Practicing the Three-Step Lyric-Focusing Technique	41
	Writing Abstract Lyrics	41
Chapter 3	Acquiring the Tools for Successful Lyric Writing	42
	Expressing One Idea and One Emotion	42
	Maintaining One Consistent Tense and Tone	43
	Developing Strong Opening Lines	45
	Exercise: Writing Strong Opening Lines	46
	Maintaining Continuity	46
	Incorporating Detail, Action, and Imagery into Lyrics	47
	Exercise: Learning to Tell the Story--Not the Feelings	50
	Exercise: Incorporating Detail, Action, and Imagery into Lyrics	51
	Keeping It Conversational	52
	Keeping Your Imagery Fresh	53
	Exercise: Finding a New Way to Say It	54
	Exercise: Using Fresh Imagery	55
	Creating a Lyric Palette	56
	Exercise: Creating a Lyric Palette	56
	Avoiding Redundancy	56
	Avoiding Preaching (Unless You're in Church)	57
	Writing the Dreaded Second Verse	57
	Exercise: Adding New Information to the Second Verse	58
	Using Rhymes: Where to, When to, How to, and Why to	59
	Types of Rhymes	60
	Rhyme Schemes	62
	Using a Rhyming Dictionary and Thesaurus	62
	Using the List Technique	63
	Exercise: Practicing the List Technique	64
	Looking for Opposites and Twists on Words	65
	Exercise: Looking for Opposites and Twists on Words	65
	Using Assonance and Alliteration	66
	Exercise: Using Assonance and Alliteration	66
	Saving Key Words	67
	Writing the Big Payoff Lines	67
	Writing Lyrics to an Existing Melody	68
	Exercise: Writing a Lyric to an Existing Melody	69
	Visualizing a Hit	70
	Exercise: Visualizing a Hit	70
	Rewriting Your Lyrics	70
	Exercise: Rewriting a Verse Lyric	75
	Making Each Line Its Strongest	76
	Additional Lyric Tips	77
	What If I Only Write Lyrics?	78
Chapter 4	Writing for Specialty Markets	79
	Writing Successful Children's Songs	79
	Writing Christian Music	82
	Crafting Comedy Songs	85
	Parodies	85
	Original Comedy Songs	86
	Writing Folk/Americana Songs	87
	Crafting Successful Christmas Songs	90
	Exercise: Writing Christmas Lyrics	92
	Writing Cabaret Songs	92
	Writing for the Latin Market	94
Step 2	Conclusion	96
	Lyric Checklist	97
Step 3	Composing Memorable Melodies	99
Chapter 5	Learning Effective Melody-Writing Skills	100
	Writing A Cappella	100
	Exercise: Writing A Cappella	102
	Exercise: Trying a New Approach	103
	Keeping It Simple and Singable (K.I.S.S.)	103
	Using Hymns and Children's Songs for Melodic Inspiration	104
	Making It Obvious Where the Title Goes Without the Lyric	105
	Altering the Range, Varying the Rhythms, and Inserting Pauses	105
	Exercise: Making Your Title Jump Out	105
	Marrying the Music to the Lyric: Prosody	106
	Varying the Rhythms	106
	Choosing the Appropriate Melodic Range	107
Chapter 6	Using Repetition Effectively	109
	Keeping Your Phrases Short and Catchy	109
	Writing Symmetrical Phrases	111
	Exercise: Crafting Lyrics that Lend Themselves to Catchy Melodies	112
Chapter 7	Acquiring Additional Melody-Writing Techniques	114
	Using Fresh Rhythms	115
	Breaking the Lines	115
	Trying Different Notes	117
	Exercise: Practicing Breaking the Lines and Assigning Different Notes	118
	Learning to Use Nonsense Syllables	118
	Repeating Words or Phrases	118
	Exercise: Incorporating Repeating Words or Phrases and Nonsense Syllables	119
	Learning the Power of Sequential Intervals, Ascending Notes, and Descending Notes	119
	Exercise: Incorporating Sequential Intervals, Ascending Notes, and Descending Notes	120
	Varying the Tempo and Time Signature	121
	Exercise: Applying Different Tempos and Time Signatures	121
	Finding Those Magic Moments: The Unexpected Note or Chord	121
	Exercise: Incorporating Magic Moments	122
	Using Signature Licks	123
	Exercise: Composing Signature Licks	123
	Incorporating Modulations	123
	Exercise: Incorporating Modulations	125
	Avoiding Plagiarism	125
	The Melody Test: Can You Write Effective Melodies?	125
	Exercise: Analyzing Hit Melodies	126
	What If I Write Only Music?	127
Step 3	Conclusion	127
	Melody Checklist	129
Step 4	Producing Successful Demos	131
Chapter 8	Learning How and When to Record a Demo	132
	How to Know When Your Song Is Ready	132
	Identifying What's Right for Your Song	134
	Avoiding "The Big Lie"	135
	Distinguishing Between Song Demos and Artist Demos	135
	Measuring Up to the Professional Standard	137
	Knowing How Many Tracks Are Necessary	138
	Determining Budgets	138
	Deciding Between Self-Producing and Demo Services	141
	Exercise: Planning to Record Your Demo	143
Chapter 9	Preparing to Record Your Demo	144
	Preparing Lyric Sheets	144
	Recording Work Tapes	146
	Writing Chord Charts	146
	The Nashville Number System	147
	Deciding on an Arrangement	150
	Determining the Proper Key	151
	Hiring the Best Musicians	152
	Selecting the Right Studio	153
	Learning to Speak "Musician"	154
	Choosing the Best Vocalist	154
	Using Technology to Capture the Best Vocal Performance	157
	Deciding Whether to Use a Male or Female Vocalist	158
Chapter 10	Mixing	160
	Recording Formats	161
	Hard Drive	161
	CD	162
	MP3	162
	Cassette	163
	Reel-to-Reel	163
	DAT	164
	ADAT	164
	Analog Versus Digital	164
	Learning About Track Mixes	165
	Mastering	166
Step 4	Conclusion	166
	Demo Checklist	167
Step 5	Taking Care of Business	169
Chapter 11	Learning Where the Money Comes From	170
	Mechanical Royalties	171
	Domestic and Foreign Royalties	173
	Performance Royalties and Performing Rights Organizations	173
	Print Sales	176
	Synchronization Licenses	177
	Writing Jingles and Placing Songs in Commercials	179
	Music Libraries	180
	Church Copyright License Royalties	180
	Works for Hire	181
	Using Samples	182
	Future Sources of Revenue	182
Chapter 12	Understanding What Music Publishing Really Means	183
	How to Get a Publisher--and Why	184
	Working with Your Publisher to Achieve Your Goals	189
	Self-Publishing	190
	Using Songpluggers	192
Chapter 13	Understanding Publishing Agreements	194
	Single-Song Agreements	195
	Reversion Clauses	196
	Staff-Writing Deals	196
	Copublishing Deals	200
Chapter 14	Making Connections and Pitching Your Songs	202
	Networking	202
	Collaborating	204
	How to Find a Collaborator	209
	How and When to Copyright Your Songs	210
	Finding Out Who's Looking for Songs and What They're Looking For	212
	Using Pitch Sheets Effectively	213
	Pitching Your Songs to the Right People	215
	Pitching to A&R Staff	216
	Pitching to Producers/Production Coordinators	217
	Pitching to Artists	218
	Pitching to Artists' Managers	218
	Pitching to New Artists and Independent Labels	219
	Developing Your Pitch Presentation	220
	Pitching to Publishers	221
	Pitching to A&R, Producers, Artists, and Managers	225
	Knowing How Many Songs to Include	226
	Understanding Holds	228
	Entering Contests	230
	Avoiding the Scams	231
Step 5	Conclusion	234
	Business Checklist	235
Step 6	Developing Persistence and Realistic Expectations	237
Chapter 15	Hanging In There Until the Big Break	238
	Understanding What to Expect	239
	Making the Time for Yourself and Your Creativity	241
Chapter 16	Getting Past "No"	243
	Overcoming the Obstacles	244
	Exercise: Overcoming the Obstacles to Success	245
	Coping with Rejection	246
	Finding Validation from Within	248
	Dealing with the Big Critic Inside Your Head	251
	Exercise: Ten Magic Minutes	253
	Finding a Market for Your Talent	253
Step 6	Conclusion	254
	Persistence and Realistic Expectations Checklist	255
	Exercise: Final Assignment	256
	Afterword	257
	Author Information	259
	Appendix	260
	Song Permissions	271
	Index	274

Reading Group Guide

About this Guide

The following author biography and list of questions about The Master Bedroom are intended as resources to aid individual readers and book groups who would like to learn more about the author and this book. We hope that this guide will provide you a starting place for discussion, and suggest a variety of perspectives from which you might approach The Master Bedroom.