Book of Dreams • Poetry • Spoken Word Poetry (mp3s) • Short Stories • Children's Plays • Theatre • Sci-Fi

Tobin's Writings...

Playing music is effortless. Writing lyrics is hard work. But my mind has always enjoyed the sprawling projects that are able to embrace complex ideas, synthesize mutliple angles, projects that enabled me to tell epic stories.

I enjoy writing poetry and single songs, but my greatest writing pleasures have been books and musicals. My most successful large projects have been musical dramas. I love how surreal musical theatre can be, how inherently internal, how songs become moments of private soliloquy, separated from the movement of time, while the music itself is embued by a connection to plot and momentum that cannot be denied. Musical theatre is a marvelous medium.

I haven't typed out a novel in years, but I've written several in my head recently. See MAJOR WORKS for more information.

Lately, I'm exploring short stories and have written my memoirs in a unique way: through dreams. (I'll be sharing my Book Of Dreams as I re-edit each chapter, as drafts. Please visit and follow the changes as they happen.)

I've provided links to some of my stories and poems below. My novels are all out of print. One day I may scan them and post them, as well. So many days spent alone, writing madly at the typewriter (my first 3 books where written before I purchased a computer, an Osborne, the first true portable computer)... it's strange to think how I may be one of a handful of people who even remember what they were about.

Member: ASCAP, Dramatists Guild of America (NYC).
Book of Dreams - a memoir

The Book Of Dreams began as a simple journal of dreams. Intrigued by how these stories related to my waking life, I went to the library and began to study dreams, dream theory, and what others had discovered about the meaning and usefulness of dreams.

The pages contain more than a recounting of dreams. For them to make sense, I explain where certain images and plot lines come from in my life. This is why I have called the book a "memoir."

What I confirmed (reconnected with) while writing this book is the fertile space inside my imagination, my "mindspace." It is not only a stage on which I can test ideas for plays and stories, but a space in which I can discover ways of being, avenues of courage.

What I found was that most of the major moments of my life were all chronicled, sometimes before they occurred, in my dreams. Not the "where" and "when" and "how," but the "why" and "what if not"...

Please see my Book Of Dreams page.
• PART 1: Chapters 1-3 (2.1 MB)
• PART 2: Chapters 4-7 (9.2 MB)
• PART 3: Chapters 8-12 (3.4 MB)
• PART 4: Chapters 13-17 (5.5 MB)
• PART 5: Chapters 18-20 (3.0 MB)

Download PDF files for viewing on iPad, computer, etc., or click to view now
The Short Stories of Paige Chomet

Surreal and disquieting short stories written through an alias (that begins to act more like a possessing spirit as the stories progress), The Short Stories of Paige Chomet is a cycle of psychological stories that, at first, seem unrelated, yet, as the stories build on one another, become something more...

The Stories are currently housed on ArtsForge. I plan to update them to PDF files soon and complete the cycle next year.

Please vist the pages below and let me know what you think:

•  The Short Stories of Paige Chomet index page
  •  Vanishing
  •  Connective Tissue
  •  The Airport
  •  Medusa
  •  Fuck Him
Poetry Collections

I love writing poetry yet don't usually afford myself the kind of time and quiet I need to do it well. The two collections listed below are exceptions: moments in time when I found all other forms of creativity difficult, when poetry was the only and best outlet.

The poems are currently housed on ArtsForge. I plan to update them to PDF files soon. I have updated a few and recorded them with Del (see below).

Please vist the pages below:

•  Ash index page (selected links below)
  •  The Fall
  •  Shaking The Tree
  •  Old
  •  Job Corrected
  •  The Singer (David)
  •  I Write To
  •  Annunciation

•  Falling Past Love (selected links below)
  •  The First Kiss
  •  Puzzle People
  •  The Androgyne
  •  no hand holds on the wall of heaven
  •  The Cigarette
  •  To Die Awake
  •  Traveling - Sketches on a Train
  •  To Anne (Sexton)
  •  Neglect (cricket)
  •  The Tree

 Please see my collaborations with Del below, as well:
Spoken Poetry... by Del

Del lives across the street. He has one of coolest speaking voices I've ever heard. (His singing voice ain't too shabby either.) I invitied him to help develop some of my favorite poems into audio expreriences. This has been the result so far.

Each poem is slightly different than the original. reading them aloud with Del's unique delivery required a few changes. Actually, I think the poems are all improved. The music and edited were done by me.

The mp3s are currently housed on ArtsForge. I plan to record several more poems with Del and hopefully, some day, compile them into a single CD recording.

Please vist the page below:

•  Del's Spoken Poetry index page
  •  Old
  •  The Fall
  •  Wall of Heaven
  •  The Cigarette and The Actress
  •  Simple As Soap
CenterStage Productions

Almost by accident, I began writing educational musicals for youths in the middle '80s. Along with Kim Vanderhyden, I founded CenterStage Productions in order to market the musicals I was writing. What began as simple curriculum-based musicals (teaching things like astronomy, economics and anatomy) turned into an international touring theatre troupe.

Our shows have been performed in dozens of countries. Our troupe traveled to several, including some wonderful events sponsored by the United Nations. The CenterStage Youth Theatre Troupe was inducted into the UN's Global 500 Honor Roll in 1994.

See my Bio page for awards and information regarding CenterStage. Please visit the CenterStage Productions website. Although I no longer write childrens shows, we still sell the original CSP musicals to schools.


  •  To Save the Planet
  •  Music of the Planets
  •  Danger, Dinosaurs!
  •  The Sound of Money
  •  I Want to Know!
  •  Say "Yes!" to Life
  •  Mickey Spleen Saves the Day
  •  Robin Hood and the Free People of the Forest
  •  Frankenspell Superstar
Theatre

I began writing stage plays when I was 14 years old. I recall performing my one-man show, Sebastian, which I wrote when I was 15 (it was my second play, lost to antiquity), at a college-level theatre workshop held at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. One of the college-aged attendees (I was the only high school kid) came up to me afterwards and said how brave I must be to present a work in progress to the public. It took me many decades before I understood what he meant.

I had the good fortune of having teachers and friends that encouraged me. Following my sister's death, I wrote a play that my high school performed - my take on Hamlet's afterlife. In my version, the prince kills himself in order to follow his sister into death and there encounters varied spirits, mostly surreal and overburdened. When the strobe light kicked in, drug users in the front row went berzerk; the audience reacted with shock and awe. A spectacular memory.

Many years later, I joined the Dramatist Guild of America (1997) when my show Creature performed at the John Houseman Theatre in New York City. Creature had several iterations - I rewrote the show 4 times - ranging from a Disneyesque family matinee version to a sexually-explosive progressive rock retelling of the Frankenstein story. A fifth version is half done on my shelf. I love each and every version.

I've always had a love-hate relationship with writing theatre. When the production team is inspired, the experience is marvelous. As the years have gone by and funding became more difficult, I've enjoyed more the artistic expressions that don't require the same amount of collaborative breadth and monetary synergy.

Here are the highlights:

  • 2004: Runners In A Dream, musical drama set in the Holocaust,
     (music by Tobin Mueller; book & lyrics by Tobin Mueller & Randyl Appel).

  • 1998: Creature, an alternative Frankenstein, musical drama.

  • 1996: Frankenstein, the Man-Made Messiah, musical drama.

  • 1995: Robin Hood, musical drama.

  • 1994: Freedom’s First Light, musical drama (music & lyrics by TJM, book by Ed Medina).

  • 1974: From the Creation, avant-garde drama performed by Odyssey Playhouse.

  • 1973: Find the Cost, surreal drama performed by the Samuel Pickard Theater.
Selected Novels, Books & Articles

2001: Journal from the Streets, first-hand account of 9/11 and aftermath, plus photos.

 1988: The Politics of Selfestness, essay, published in New Humanity, London, England.

1987: The New Age Politics, political philosophy text, Amherst Press.

1985: The Diary of a Househusband, autobiographical domestic humor.

1984: Man or God - the source of meaning in the modern age, philosophy.

1983: Born The Dolphin, contemporary fiction.

1980: From Where the Sun Now Stands, historical fiction, History of the Nez Perce.

1978: Lustre, first collection of poems.
Online Collaborative eBooks

One of the main reasons I started ArtsForge was to have a place to pursue collaborative projects. Aside from the space opera Xianu Override and various music projects (some still ongoing), my favorite projects remain sadly truncated. The idea was to forge online ilustrated novels with music that could be marketed as eBooks. Only the first chapters were completed of each. When the main illustrators landed great contracts (using some of the models developed for our stories) elsewhere and my business partner decided not to purchase an ebook company, the team fell apart. I hope to complete each story some day:

Dreamless began as a futuristic rock musical. When it proved too expensive to mount, I redesigned the story as an ebook and folded many of the musical ideas into Audiocracy tracks. Storyline: A young woman escapes from a fetal tissue farm, carrying a child she doesn't want to abort. The child has a special connection to the companies computers (and the world wide web), whatever he thinks sparks a search and answer program that privides him with what he needs. He cannot dream, a side effect of the bio-engineering. He becomes a messiah to much of the world's dispossessed who jump on hijacked tankers and set sail for America. You can read the first few chapters here.

The Power of 10 is humorous science fiction paradoy. Lots of naked women and interdimensional action. The main character is a 15 year old nerd modeled after my middle son, Will. (We actually photographed him from every angle and scanned his image onto 3D models.) The lucky teen gets caught up in a royal interdimensional power struggle, falls in love with a higher being, awakens a bunch of ancient dragons, and discovers that only people on our planet wear clothes (except in battle). You can read the first few chapters here.