I am not just writing a book about Amy Beach: across space and time Amy has become a mother and a sister to me, our lives intertwined in a magical and spiritual way that will endure for the rest of my days on this planet. I have no idea where we are going, but I know she is mentoring me as we travel together. My relationship with Amy Beach marks a new journey for me and, I hop, a new perspective on her.

Why a New Media Book About Amy Beach

In the second semester of my Masters writing program at Antioch University, I wrote an essay calling for the "death of the desolate word" and promoting a multimedia literary future in which all writing will make use of the vast array of communication tools that writers now have available to us because of computers, the WEB and digital technology – words, photographic images, animation, sound, video, music, 3D, graphics, and user interactivity. To me multimedia literature was not a radical idea but the logical extension of my twenty-year career as an interactive multimedia developer for science museums, advertising agencies, law firms, corporate training divisions, marketing departments and education providers. Since the inception of interactive multimedia, with its array of communication instruments, I had used it to help my clients communicate their messages more effectively than with words alone. It made perfect sense then that, as I embarked on a literary career, I would call on and promote this same multimedia or “new media” genre as my preferred form of writing.

My roots in interactive multimedia expression date back to my childhood. My earliest memories are of art and technology: specifically of dancing to music and dismembering my older sister’s watch. As a child, I began to develop passionate interests in music, dance, guitar playing, singing, songwriting, painting, acting, photography, writing, filmmaking and arts technology. Some marveled at the breadth of my artistic pursuits, many called me unfocused. In that era of specialization, there were terms for someone like me who wanted to do it all: “lacking in clear objectives,” “spread too thin,” “without direction,” “un-centered,” “without a defined purpose.” continued page 8