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So... a whole bunch of years ago I was working on the first Jack Baddalach novel. Early drafts were done under the title: Mojave Riptide. A young writer of my acquaintance (who's now my wife), Tia Travis, had herself a band up in Calgary called Curse of Horseflesh. I told Tia about my book. She told the guitar player in her band. Pretty soon they had cooked themselves up a wild cactus-spiked surf tune called (you guessed it) “Mojave Riptide.” Only problem was, by then I'd moved my characters a couple hundred miles east and changed the title of my book to Saguaro Riptide. I told Tia that her band should change the title of their song. She told the Curse’s guitar player. But he liked “Mojave Riptide.” Didn't see any need to change it. “Screw that!” he said. “Let Partridge change the title of his book! He had it right the first time!” I tried talking to him myself. Jesus. I couldn’t reason with the guy. Pretty soon I started thinking Elvis Presley’s daddy had it right when he said: “I never met a guitar player who was worth a damn.” I even thought of moving my book west again, cursing stubborn Canucks all the while. This caused me much consternation. I'm not kidding. Fact is, Tia still teases me about it. But through it all, the world continued to turn. Curse of Horseflesh put out a hell of a CD: Burning Up the Jade. The first track was called “Mojave Riptide.” I published a novel entitled Saguaro Riptide. What came of all this in the larger scheme of things I can't quite say... except the Curse learned that there weren't many people in Canada who could pronounce Mojave, and I learned that there weren't many people in the good ol’ US of A who could pronounce saguaro. Even so, we all endured. And if nothing else, we got one hell of a good song out of it... now brought to you right here at normanpartridge.com courtesy of Tia, Al, Tim, and the Darrylizer. I hope you enjoy it!
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