Sweet Harmonies
Authors: Melanie Shawn
Tags: #heartwarming, #love story, #hometown romance, #tender romance, #contemporary romance, #womens fiction
Harmonies
By
Melanie Shawn
Cover Design by Hot Damn Designs
Published by Red Hot Reads Publishing at
Smashwords
Copyright 2013 Melanie Shawn
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the
original purchaser of this book. No part of this may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing
from Melanie Shawn. Exceptions are limited to reviewers who may use
brief quotations in connection with reviews. No part of this book
can be transmitted, scanned, reproduced, or distributed in any
written or electronic form without written permission from Melanie
Shawn.
This book is a work of fiction. Places, names,
characters and events are either products of the author’s
imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events,
locations, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and
not intended by the author
First Chapter of Sweet Victories
Karina
Blackstone freed her long dark hair from where it had been trapped
in a ponytail atop her head and ran her hands through it in
frustration. It cascaded down over her olive-skinned shoulders in
glossy black waves, and brought out the drama in her deep
onyx-colored eyes.
She turned to gaze out the large picture
window of Sue Ann's Cafe in her small hometown of Hope Falls, and
took a deep breath. She tried to let the lovely scene she witnessed
on the other side of the glass in the small storefront cafe calm
her nerves.
Directly outside the window was Downtown Main
Street, a quaint section of town characterized by a wooden sidewalk
and small, family run shops and restaurants. Beyond that immediate
view rose the mountains surrounding Hope Falls, a small town
located about 30 miles away from Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada
mountains. Pine trees of deep forest green filled Karina's vision,
dotted with fiery yellow and red aspens, adding spice to the woodsy
landscape.
It was Karina's favorite view in the entire
world, and she ought to know – she had traveled through most spots
on the globe. Her career as a highly successful pop star had taken
her to every corner of the earth, and given her the means to make
any one of them her home. However, when it came down to it, she had
realized that this humble spot, this small burg of only 5,000
souls, was the place that had nurtured her as a growing child, and
was the place that nurtured her soul still.
So Karina Blackstone was moving home.
This seemed like a fairly straightforward
proposition to her. She wanted to return to the roots of who she
was as an artist, dig down deep and bring forth music that truly
expressed her soul.
To do that, she needed to return to the place
where she could get in touch with herself, with the person she had
been before all the madness of fame had started. She needed to come
back to the Sierra Nevadas and reconnect with the simple life that
inspired her, to clear away all the bright lights of the city and
revel in the soft glow of the stars in the mountains. She needed to
spend time with people who knew her as Karina Blackstone, her
rightful name, not Karina Black, the milquetoast whitewashed stage
name she had been assigned for her career as a radio-friendly pop
princess, conveniently airbrushing out her identity as a Native
American. She needed to be with people that knew and loved her as
their smart-ass and ultra-loyal friend, not worshiped her from afar
as a superstar without actually knowing her. She needed to come
home to Hope Falls.
Simple enough to understand, she thought.
The person who absolutely, unequivocally
didn't
understand, however? That was her manager, Bernie
Kaplan, who was sitting across from her at the table in Sue Ann's.
The 70-year-old Bernie was short and excruciatingly thin, with
tufts of white hair sprouting wildly in a ring around his bald
crown. His round and buggy eyes were magnified behind the oversize
lenses of his thick-framed glasses, and he had the odd affectation
of having a cigar forever in his mouth, albeit unlit. Bernie had
been her manager for 8 years, and she didn't think she'd ever seen
him smoke the damn thing.
Bernie, for all his harmless quirkiness, was
the cause of her current frustration, which was rapidly devolving
into despair. She seemed to be getting nowhere in her conversation
with him, and it was beginning to tie her shoulders and stomach up
in knots.
“
I don't know what to tell you, Bernie,
I think I've expressed this as many ways as I know how. I just feel
like I need to do this in order to return to the kind of music
that's me. Something more stripped down. Just instruments and my
voice, and songs that I write...”
“
You write your songs!” Bernie
protested, interrupting her.
“
Bernie!” she let out a frustrated
laugh, “I don't know whether to take issue with the accuracy of the
word 'write' or 'songs' in that sentence! I mean, I make up cutesy
little rhyming phrases and set them to catchy, hooky melodies, but
it's not what I would consider actual songwriting!”
Her face took on a sarcastically cheerful
expression as she snapped her fingers and bopped her head,
singing,
“
I was thinking
maybe
You'd be my baby
Feeling's right
Come out tonight
With a kiss, you could save me...”
Bernie looked confused, “I don't recognize
that one, is that one of yours?”
Karina cried, exasperated, “Bernie! I just
made up that nonsense off the top of my head, are you kidding
me?”
Bernie smiled widely and spread his hands in
front of him, palms up, “What did I tell you, sweetheart? You have
a gift! You should jot that one down, I smell top ten
single...”
“
The fact that you couldn't tell the
difference between that off-the-cuff idiocy and one of my actual
'songs' actually explains my predicament better than I can.” Karina
shot back.
Bernie sighed and looked out the window
himself. Karina could tell he was getting exasperated. He had
always made a point, when dealing with Karina, of cajoling her into
doing things she didn't want to do in a cheerful and
non-confrontational manner. Karina had, by and large, been
compliant – often she would protest initially, but ultimately give
in to what Bernie thought was best. After all, he was an extremely
savvy manager. He had taken her from being a virtual unknown to
being a mega superstar in the course of only one year, the first
year after he had taken her on as a client. And, in a feat that was
actually much
more
impressive in the fickle world of pop
music, he had kept her on top – throughout all the changing trends
of not only the music scene but the music industry, when many
artists were crash landing or throwing in the towel, Bernie had
kept Karina's career consistently growing and thriving. And she was
grateful – good
God
, was she grateful – but she had to be
true to herself now.
Bernie sighed deeply and shifted his gaze to
the table top, “What you are talking about is the complete
destruction of the brand that we've spent years building,
polishing, perfecting, protecting...after all we've been
through...”
Karina put her hand on top of his. With tears
in her eyes, she said, “Bernie, look. This isn't personal. It was
your acumen that got me to where I am today. Both your intellect
and your instincts are brilliant, almost frighteningly so. This is
not about me not trusting you. This is about me reaching a point
where I have no choice but to follow my heart. The persona you
built for me, it's not bad. It would fit a lot of people. But it's
so far from who I actually am.
“
I feel like that old Ben Folds line,
'I juggle one-handed, do some magic tricks, and the best imitation
of myself.' That's what my life has been distilled to. If I'm with
another person, any other person, I'm performing. I am constantly
'in character' as Karina Black.
“
If I continue down this road of
pretending, of being fake literally
ALL
of the time – I feel
in danger of losing who I actually am, and I am so scared I would
never be able to get it back, not fully. Can you understand
that?”
Bernie shook his head. “Not really, to be
honest. My game is business. My tools are numbers. I'm not about
the emotions of a thing. But I respect you, sweetheart, and I
respect your decision.”
Karina sighed a little in relief, “Thanks,
Bernie. I just really need to be here right now. I need to be with
my grandmother, I need to be with the tribe, I need to be with my
friends. I need to find me again. The real me.”
Bernie shook his head, “If that's what you
need to do, that's what you need to do. But don't make the mistake
of thinking that the label is going to take so kindly to your
transformation. You're talking about a complete, total, top-down
rebranding effort...”
Karina interrupted, with what she hoped was a
charmingly bright smile, “See? You say REbranding, but I like to
think of it as UNbranding...just stripping away all the adornments,
and what you're left with is me...”
Bernie barked out a cynical laugh, “You call
it what you want, sweetheart. But the label has put millions of
marketing dollars into creating and maintaining the Karina Black
brand, and they're not going to take so kindly to you wanting to
just toss it out like yesterday's garbage.”
Karina's lips set in a grim line, “Bottom
line it for me, Bernie. What are we looking at? They won't support
the albums?”
Bernie shrugged, “You'll be lucky if they
don't sue you.”
Karina's jaw dropped, and she sat back
against her chair, “Is that a serious possibility?”
Bernie chewed worriedly on the end of his
unlit cigar, “Nah. I don't think it is. It would frame them as the
big evil enemy in the minds of your fans, which would hurt sales of
your back catalog.”
Karina sighed, “OK, good...”
Bernie stopped her, “Not so fast, buttercup.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that they're going to make it
easy for you, either.”
“
So, you think they'll stop supporting
my albums? No more tours, no more press?”
“
I think they'll shelve your albums and
refuse to release them until you give them something they like. I
think that when the production costs aren't recouped by the album
sales, because they never put the record out, they'll bill you,
which they are within their rights to do.”
“
They wouldn't!” Karina protested
disbelievingly.
“
Heh. If you piss them off enough, they
will. And I think that if you go ahead and pursue that course of
action for the next 5 CDs you're under contract to them for, that
it's a real good way to burn through your fortune. That's what I
think.”
Karina slumped in her chair, defeated.
Bernie continued delicately, “I also think
that if you aren't getting paid, then I'm not getting paid. And
what's the point of that? If I wanted to spend all my time with
someone who won't listen to my advice and is costing me money, I'd
retire and move back in with my wife.”
Karina looked up, tears of regret stinging
her eyes again, “You gonna leave me, Bernie? The first time in
eight years I stand up for myself, and you're gonna leave me over
it?”
Bernie twisted his unlit cigar around in his
mouth and stood, gathering his papers into his old, battered,
leather briefcase. “Yeah, yeah, don't get your panties in a bunch,”
he said gruffly, “Let me talk to the label and get their take. Who
knows? Maybe they've just been waiting with bated breath for the
next Joni Mitchell to waltz through their doors, and you're the
answer to their prayers. I'll call you next week.”