This week’s faves include free online courses, some Kickstarter projects, and a kitten in need:
You can take online courses from some major colleges and universities for free at Coursera. I just found that they are offering four courses this spring from Berklee College of Music:
– Starting March 1st: Songwriting and Intro to Music Production
– Starting April 22: Intro to Guitar and Intro to Improvisation
Maybe I’ll ‘see’ you in the Improv course :-)
Happy New Year! Here are a few new fundraisers worthy of your attention – but first, a bit of self-promotion:
As you may recall, following on some compliments about my non-fiction writing (especially from a successful fiction writer) I decided to attempt NaNoWriMo in November. I did “win” by completing 50,000 words of a novel – my first long form writing of any sort.
Enough people have asked to read it that I’ve decided to serialize as I complete editing chapters. I’ve set up a separate blog for my literary endeavors, WhatBettyWrites.com – the first two chapters of Want It Back are posted now. You can subscribe to get notifications of new postings, or follow along via the Twitter acct @WhatBettyWrites and/or Facebook Page WhatBettyWrites. Feel free to leave feedback on that blog – most helpful to me would be things like “This chapter was interesting/boring/confusing because of ….”
And now on to other interesting links:
Since I’m still proceeding at a good clip on my NaNoWriMo novel (16,494 words as of yesterday), here are a couple of new Kickstarter projects I like:
What Time Is It Mr. Fox is a great Boston band with a wide range of sounds, called variously chamber pop, artschool soul, bardcore, acoustic noir, gothic jazz and steampunk cabaret. They have recorded their new album but need $ for mixing, mastering and manufacturing:
The Parlour Trick is a ghostly, atmospheric chamber duo whose members are separated by the Pacific Ocean much of the time. I like their sounds, plus thereminist/violinist/singer Meredith Yayanos has backed more Kickstarter Projects than I have! So pay back her support:
I know I said no more Friday Faves until after NaNoWriMo – but I exceeded my first day’s word quota (you can follow my word count via the widget in the right column on my blog’s front page), so I’m taking a moment to share both a new Kickstarter project for Boston friends AND their warning about flying with data!