The new book is nearly here!

The soundtrack is a strange one because while my playlists normally run heavily in favour of songs with lyrics, this one didn’t. If it was a movie, there would be a lot of long slow pans of isolated snowy landscapes and forests, and the music followed a similar pattern for me. That said, there are still a few with lyrics; the non-vocal ones, know that they were just on repeat most of the time.

SJ Tucker – “Girl Into Devil“
Talked about this one a lot here.
“Shouldering a rifle, more to prove with every breath,//stolen fairytale girls make the difference between life and death.//It all comes down to choices, but you’ve only the hard ones left,//and so, all you can say is//’I belong to me. Even now, even here.'”

Sarah McLachlan – “Answer“
Although her husband Nick has been missing and doesn’t appear on page, this was their song.
“I will be the answer at the end of the line//I will be there for you while you take the time//In the burning of uncertainty, I will be your solid ground//I will hold the balance if you can’t look down”

Gregory Alan Isakov – “If I Go, I’m Goin’“
Likely due in part to it being used at the end of The Haunting of Hill House, but it reminds me of being haunted at home; TSP isn’t paranormal, but there’s a weight to Nick’s disappearance and a sense of his presence in his absence that is like a haunting.

Lotte Kestner – “True Faith” (cover)
I had this one on repeat a lot while writing.
“I used to think that the day would never come//That my life would depend on the morning sun//That the day would never come”

Sarah McLachlan – “Dirty Little Secret“
“But nothing seems to help me since you went away//I’m so tired of this town”

Callum McGraw – “Wayfaring Stranger” (cover)

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis – “Wind River“
So my primary music for the book was the Wind River soundtrack. I’ll link here on Spotify but share the tracks I listened to the most. Particularly during the final chapters surrounding the storm, but overall these were my “isolated cold Yukon music” tracks.

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis – “Three Seasons in Wyoming“

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis – “Second Body“

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis – “Bad News“

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis – “Breakdown“

The Silent Places releases on Tuesday! Preorder now or patrons can download a four-chapter sample at Patreon.

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Haven’t done one of these in a while!

Last week I finished the zero of my new domestic thriller (now up for preorder) so today we’ll do a song from that playlist.

Imogen Sharp, as you can tell from the jacket copy, is not all she seems. This is a book about how we’re shaped by trauma, what we become to survive, and rescuing yourself in ways that defy the expectations placed on women.

So one of her songs is SJ Tucker’s “Girl Into Devil (I Belong To Me)”, which seems fitting because in another life Imogen could’ve been a fairytale girl. But prince charming is not always that, and real fairytales–not the Disney version–tend to come with blood.

Shouldering a rifle, more to prove with every breath,
stolen fairytale girls make the difference between life and death.
It all comes down to choices, but you've only the hard ones left,
and so, all you can say is
"I belong to me. Even now, even here."

As Tucker’s guitar begins, I can clearly see the silent snowy woods of Imogen’s home in Red Fox Lake, Yukon, the trees seeming to march forever, and I can feel the temperature as it drops and a storm approaches.

"Who do you belong to, little girl? 
Why do you wander in the deep, dark wood?" 
It's not an easy answer, I'm afraid. 
I may fit the story, but I'm up to no good.

Meet Imogen this winter and uncover some of her secrets–The Silent Places is up for preorder now! Kindle | Kobo | iBooks | Nook 

Since the last post, I’ve swung back around to “Yeah, I probably fractured something”. If I had to guess, I’d say metatarsal. This has led to two weeks in bed where I cannot get comfortable and have struggled to work on a laptop that is literally falling apart.

So that’s what’s new here.

Blood Ties releases in just over a week, so next Sunday I’ll do the full soundtrack for that book. For today, we’ll visit the one thing I both started and finished during the pandemic…that no one gets to read.

I did a little thread on Twitter at the time but, to explain: although there are no official dates on the events of Livi’s books to keep things a little more fluid depending on when you pick them up, I did keep the dates in Tiger’s Memory so you can deduce that Solomon’s Seal takes place September 2016. Odin’s Spear is October 2016, Emperor’s Tomb February 2017, Shiva’s Bow August 2017. This means that, eventually in the timeline, I will have to contend with how COVID-19 would change the story of a globe-trotting adventurer who flies here and there without worrying about anything beyond the cost of the plane ticket.

I do know where the series is going, and there is a time jump coming up a few books from now around 2018 in the ‘verse, then pick up again in 2021. This means they can carry on as-is until that point, and when I pick up there’ll be a change in how the frequent travel is approached.

So I wrote something that takes place during that gap. For the longest time it was called WEST DURING THE PANDEMIC, though I settled on My Heart With You, which is the song I had on repeat during a few scenes including the last one.

Waited a hundred years to see your face,
And I would wait a hundred more

There is no book cover I can post, due to the dearth of stock photos of hot twentysomething Korean men in suits, so I’ll just sprinkle the post with Daniel Henney gifs (who I see as West).

YOU’RE WELCOME.

Because it’s set so far down the road, I can’t share the story with anyone, which is probably why it was so easy to write. It’s 12K words, beginning with West flying back to New Bristol from Montreal during the start of the pandemic, and ending fifteen months later when he gets a very unexpected phone call. He’s in a very different place from where he has been in the rest of the series, even though so much stays the same, so it’s been very interesting to spend that time with him.

What makes him my favourite character is how, although all of us are who we are to survive, he is that concept to the logical extreme. He survived things as a child very few people live through by becoming the only person who COULD survive that, and now he has to navigate the world as an adult where those survival skills don’t always serve him–and often even inhibit him. Which I get. And that Livi is very much a survivor in her own right–an emotionally distant father, sexual assault as a teen and an abusive boyfriend as an adult, abandoned by her mother–is something that originally attracted him to her, even if he didn’t fully grasp it at the time.

Admittedly, these are the lines that popped this one onto the series originally playlist, as it can be applied to many characters and many circumstances, even though this particular story is West’s:

I sailed a thousand ships in search of you.
Traveled to distant land.
I dove for sunken gold.
I took what I could hold,
But you're still the greatest treasure I've held in my hands.

At one point in the story, he says, “How Olivia felt about me never changed how I felt about her.” Which I think, sort of sadly, sums up so much of them.

The end of the story, over a year after the pandemic’s start, brings him to an old safehouse in a rural area of Yanbian prefecture, where the last thing he ever expected to find is waiting for him. It’s very hard to surprise someone like West, but that is the moment that undoes him completely–as the chorus music swells and a door opens.

My love, the reason I survive,
Trust we'll be together soon.
Should our fire turn to dark,
Take my heart with you.

So anyway, that’s a little something about a thing you don’t get to read (yet!), and my way of checking in to say hi, I’m still here, just a little broken yet, slowly getting better, here’s an earworm.

So, obviously, I have a lot of playlists.

Series have playlists. Individual books within them have playlists. Characters have playlists. Couples have playlists. Scenes have playlists (usually 1-5 songs on repeat). Chapters have playlists (you’ll notice most of the Livi books have Epilogue titles that are also song titles; same with Demons of Oblivion. Those were the songs playing on repeat when I wrote the ends of those books). Playlists will also have “moods” that I repeat throughout the book.

Several weeks ago I was working on Blood Ties–finally, finally, I figured out how to fix the middle, and did so without throwing it at my long-suffering beta and running away screaming–and one of the songs on it twigged something, which is what led to me figuring out what the book needed.

The song in question was this cover of “Wonderwall”:

(This book has a whole host of epic covers.)

The book wanted kissing.

IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE A KISSING BOOK. Plus I don’t like writing first book kissing–I like slow-burn! (Exhibit A through E: Livi and West.) But Elis is not that sort of character. She is not the sort of character who doesn’t act on sexual tension, and she doesn’t care about me wanting her to get back together with her ex-girlfriend–she wants kissing in the middle of the book.

Our conversation went like this:

Me: Okay you have to leave the bar now and kill this dude.

Elis: But FIRST…kissing.

Me: No, murder.

Elis: Right but also kissing.

Me: …

Elis: K-I-S-S-I-N-G

Me:

Elis:

Me: Seriously–

Elis: Kiss. KISS.

I did manage to avoid the kissing, but she was VERY loud about it. She settled for some dancing. If Elis and Melinoe end up striking up a relationship later, the epic version of “Wonderwall” would probably be their theme song, however it obviously would not be playing on the bar’s jukebox in the story. I found two others that work instead.

It’s new love, and longing, and desire, and an edge of hope. It’s slow-dancing in a roomful of strangers but not seeing anyone else in the room but your partner.

I don't believe that anybody
Feels the way I do, about you now 
And all the roads that lead you there are winding
And all the lights that light the way are blinding
There are many things that I
Would like to say to you but I don't know how
Because maybe, you're gonna be the one that saves me 

Blood Ties is currently serializing at Patreon for all patrons and will be available everywhere June 2. There is minimum kissing, though, because I am the author and I’m driving this car. For now.