How Do You Play It?

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HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: If you ask me: “Hank, does your car have a CD player?” I would, honestly, have to think about it.  It …might.  Or—not.

If I listened to audio books in the car, I would know. But in our older car, which had a CD player, we’d try to listen to audio books, and it was dangerous, because my husband and I would both be lulled close to sleep. 

Listening to audio books is hard for me if I’m driving. I can’t focus on driving, because I’m too into the book. Or I can’t focus on the book, because I’m too concerned with driving. Now in our newer car? I'm..not sure.

(Still, I adore audio books, and I just got to help audition the actors who were being considered to read THE MURDER LIST. Our choice is awesome, I must say.  Totally brought tears to my eyes, because I thought—Rachel! But that’s another blog.)

Anyway. Quick. Don’t look. Do you have a CD player in your car?

I just rolled my eyes at myself for that question. Of course you know.

And with that car question, of course we welcome our wonderful David Burnsworth, who for a recent book, taught us the importance of choosing exactly the right car for your characters, remember that?  And now he’s got a brand new book, his sixth!, called CAUGHT UP IN IT.

Today, David is pondering the vagaries of music-and-book providing systems in cars. And he has run into (car thing ha ha) a dilemma. Maybe you’ll have some suggestions?

And a copy of CAUGHT UP IN IT to one lucky commenter!

MY CAR 

DOES NOT HAVE A CD PLAYER

      By David Burnsworth

David's actual Civic

My first car, as I’ve mentioned here on Jungle Red in the past, was an 82 Civic. It had an aftermarket (not very good) cassette player in it that sort of worked. It was a nice but used car when my Mom bought it and I finished it off, being the adolescent male that I was. My next car was eight years newer, another Civic, and it also had a tape deck.

The first car I bought with my own money (my parents made sure I had reliable transportation through college, no matter how dedicated I was to blow it up) also had a cassette player, but it had a multi-disc CD player in the trunk. Now I was in high cotton. 

It was followed by a Jeep that had migrated back to just a cassette player. After that came two Mazdas. One had a CD changer in the dash which was great because I had a 42 mile commute one way to work and listened to quite a few audio books. The other Mazda had a single CD player, but I was still able to listen to books during the long commute.

A tractor trailer took out my latest Mazda last year and I replaced it with a new Honda Accord. It’s a great car, but it doesn’t have a CD player and I’m in the process of figuring out how to get my audio books back, even though my commute to work now is less than ten miles.

I still buy used CD’s when I visit my parents in Knoxville at McKay’s Books (great used bookstore as well, with free bins out front and a bargain section inside as well as every genre you can think of). That probably makes me old school in my approach, which is fine with me. I’m a proud Generation Xer and love most types of music.  

  (Hank here, ed. note. Wait, Gen X is old-school?)

David's actual CD collection

Buying a car that can play music of my choosing without having to load a cassette or CD into it is kind of weird for me, but the more I use the latest technology, the more I like it. 

Not totally off topic, but I bought my mom a new record player for her birthday last year. She enjoyed being able to listen to her vinyl collection again. 

One of the best things about life today is we have both the old school things like records and cassettes and CD’s and we can also download songs to our mobile devices right now if we want to. Not a bad place to be, if you ask me.

HANK: Ouch! Hope you are okay after the trailer vs. Mazda incident. That sounds scary! So, Reds and readers, any advice for David? Have you heard any good audiobooks recently? Do you listen to them in the car? 

I think—we use our phones, now, and plug the USB in and play podcasts through the Bluetooth. (Don’t I sound as if I know what I’m talking about?)  

And remember, a copy of  CAUGHT UP IN IT to one lucky commenter.

CAUGHT UP IN IT

The award-winning diva, C, has got a big problem: someone wants her dead. A team of mercenaries attempts to gun her down in Kuala Lumpur. Lucky for her, Lowcountry Private Investigator, Blu Carraway, is already on the job there for a different client. Double-lucky for C, they make their move when she’s chit-chatting with him in a bar. Unlucky for the mercenaries, four of them end up dead. 

The hunt is on now for the mega-pop star. Where does she go to hide out? The sleepy islands around Charleston, South Carolina—Blu’s backyard. He’s already proven himself once, so C hires the Blu Carraway Investigation Agency to protect her for real.

 The job takes Blu halfway around the world and several cities in between. The search for the truth reveals what could drive a person to want someone else dead. And Blu Carraway ends up right in the way.

David Burnsworth became fascinated with the Deep South at a young age. After a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tennessee and fifteen years in the corporate world, he made the decision to write a novel. Caught Up In It (April 2019, Henery Press) will be his sixth. Having lived on Charleston’s Sullivan’s Island for five years, the setting was a foregone conclusion. He and his wife call South Carolina home.

Take the Jungle Red Seatmate Quiz!

Hank over Chicago without Steven Spielberg

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yeah well, traveling.  It can be wonderful, it really can. A fun window seat over a cool recognizable city like Chicago. Sitting by, say, Steven Spielberg. I mean, it could happen. It didn't, though. Yet. 
Oh, now, this isn’t what I was going to write, but hmm. Who would I love to sit by, more than anyone?  Not counting any of you, of course,  because that might really happen. But what if you got on the plane, sat in the widow seat, got organized and say (because this is a fun thing), you looked really great. And as you settle in,  you hear a little rustle. And you look up. And about to take the empty seat beside you is—WHO?

While you contemplate, say hi to our Jungle Red stalwart pal, the fab David Burnsworth! He travels. A lot.  And he can take the seatmate quiz, too. Right after he gets his luggage back.

DAVID BURNWORTH:  I travel for both my day job and my writing. And, as I’m sure with most of you who travel, I have some stories. Some of them good. Some of them not so good. I happen to be on a trip to South America as I write this, so the challenge of travel is fresh on my mind.

My first trip outside of North America, I was to meet a friend in Customs in the Brussels Airport. My departure was from Knoxville and he was flying standby from Atlanta. A problem for him, and soon for me, was this was the same time that the World Cup was being played. In France. And he was flying standby. See the problem here? So, my first time out of the country I had no idea what I was doing. As the first hour and then the second ticked by while sitting in the airport in another country waiting and he didn’t show up, I started to wonder that there might be something wrong. And there was. He was still in Atlanta. I had to figure out the phone system and make a few calls back to the states. Long story short, it was my first trial in travel and I had to figure it out on my own.

David's actual finicky toiletries

Fast forward twenty years to my current travel challenge. I thought I had everything covered: a four-hour layover in ATL before the long flight, a spare set of underwear in my carry on. Only, and this isn’t the first time I’ve experienced this, Atlanta shuts down all ground activity because of lighting and heavy rain. Apparently they value the ground crews’ lives. (Kudos to you, ATL!) So, my fifty-minute flight from GSP (Greenville Spartanburg) took four hours thanks to a few loops over Atlanta and a two-hour stopover in Chattanooga for more fuel. Lucky for me, I walked off that flight, stopped for a quick restroom break, and walked right on my flight to Chile.

The challenge this time was while I made it, my bag didn’t. Turns out I can buy most of my finicky toiletry choices (ed. note: see above) in Santiago which is great. But transferring clothing sizes from US English measurements to metric isn’t so easy. My waist didn’t really just add fourteen units of measurement? Was it that extra pastry on the flight?

I love to travel. But I find that it requires patience and a willingness to be flexible.

My best experience? There’s two: Five years ago, my wife and I got a free upgrade to a suite in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The downside? She likes suites now.

The second great experience? Stuttgart to Atlanta, I got a first class upgrade.

The latest book in my Brack Pelton series, Big City Heat, Brack travels from Charleston to Atlanta to help a friend find a missing woman. He also faces some challenges, some of them a little bit more involved than missing luggage.

Do you like to travel? If so, what are some of your stories?

HANK: Or hey, Reds and readers—tell me your answer to the seatmate quiz! Only one choice.  I’d pick—Stephen King!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

David Burnsworth became fascinated with the Deep South at a young age. After a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tennessee and fifteen years in the corporate world, he made the decision to write a novel. Big City Heat (April 2017, Henery Press) is the third title in his Brack Pelton series. In It For The Money (September 2017, Henery Press) continues the story of Private Eye Blu Carraway from the cross-over novella, Blu Heat (March 2017, Henery Press). Having lived in Charleston on Sullivan’s Island for five years, the setting was a foregone conclusion. He and his wife call South Carolina home.

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