How a musical no-talent (character) made it into a Nashville music anthology

By: Vera Chan

Confession: I am terrible with music. Yes, I had piano lessons. I once even took my lessons in the women’s bathroom, where there was a spare piano at Michael Driscoll Elementary Public School in Brookline, Mass. (No, I never did ask why there was a spare piano and no, the acoustics didn’t improve my playing).

My mother cut the lessons short when it became clear I had little talent — although to be fair, if your only piano access is to the women’s bathroom, you’re not going to practice much

And so that shaped the character and the beginning for “Tone Deaf:”

Quiescent Fung was a reverse prodigy. She was color-blind, had two left feet and couldn’t string two notes together without tripping over the chord.

That had to amount to something, she told herself.

Selected for inclusion in Bouchercon Nashville 2024’s anthology, my short story “Tone Deaf” is part of Down & Out Books’ TALES OF MUSIC, MURDER AND MAYHEM. Edited by bestselling author Heather Graham, the limited-edition hardcover anthology benefits the Nashville Public Library and is available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble — every print copy comes with a digital e-book.

The judging committee selected the stories through blind selection, so it’s splendid to make the cut. The back cover and the blurbs make much of Nashville and Music City, so a about a tone-deaf (and colorblind) girl attending a Chinese American music school in San Francisco might seem a little misplaced. However, the contest (and book) theme revolved entirely around music.

Like MURDERERS’ FEAST in Midnight Hour, this one is also a twist on noir — what I call Chinese American music school noir. And it’s pretty good.

Here is the story list and authors, with links to their sites.