Explorers’ Guild Books In Order
- The Explorers’ Guild (2015)
Novels
- Songs from Nowhere Near the Heart (2001)
Non fiction
- Day Job (2000)
Explorers’ Guild Book Covers
Novels Book Covers
Non fiction Book Covers
Jon Baird Books Overview
Songs from Nowhere Near the Heart
In the dark overlap between music and industry, there dwells a group of people whose lives and dealings are every bit as commonplace and fantastic, as high flung and ridiculous, as noble and sordid as the stories they inspire. Don, Ross, and Chavez comprise Seventeen; Neil, Mika, Darcy, and Darren make up Limna. One is a hard working club band committed to a music first agenda and convinced by wily manager Deedee Vanian that this is indeed the road they’re on. The other is an unapologetically commercial construct, pieced together and driven into the market by professional hitmakers and by manager Annika Guttkuhn, herself a ‘discovery’ and protegee of Deedee’s. Competing for the same recording contract, the two acts are combined on a single bill and booked for a string of appearances from New England to Florida. But who has orchestrated the ill fated trip, and why? How far can Annika push her act, armed with nothing but an imaginary following and her trumped up press releases? And why should Don fro Seventeen be her chief coconspirator? Songs from Nowhere Near the Heart presents an unforgettable and richly textured cast of characters, each trying to outwit and outflank the others, for reasons and with results that won’t become entirely clear before a final, hilarious sequence of events in rural Florida.
Day Job
It’s 9:34 a.m. Do you know where your career is headed? Do you have one? More likely, you’d never call what you do from 9 to 5 a career. You’d call it your Day Job. And what if you were given a single day to record it all, to ask the important questions about life and career, to air out your strongest and most private opinions and thoughts what would you say? That’s the question that has been put to customer service rep Mark Thornton. And his answer is Day Job, a darkly comic, high velocity run through the modern workplace.