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I've had the stories and characters from The Song Poet inside me for years. Here's a song I wrote a decade ago, in the person of the novel's protagonist, Pete Zane, writing in 1937. Here it is in context from Chapter 59, "Plumb Hungry (Monday, May 3, 1937)," during a song-sharing meeting in Manhattan's Central Park between Peter and Teddi Cochrane--the Appalachian South Carolina poet that's becoming his icon --in the Orthodox sense of the word.. She hands the guitar back.

Hey Friends, Many of you know I’ve spent the past several months researching, writing, and rewriting THE SONG POET, a Depression-era historical romance set between the streets of Hell’s Kitchen and the Appalachian mountains of South Carolina. THE PREMISE In Depression-weary 1937, a once-promising, now hack NYC songwriter and a tragedy-haunted, mystical Appalachian poetess cross paths through a phony Song Poet contest—meant to bilk the gullible and unsophisticated by offering