Soundtrack Monday: Bardcore Bad Guy

It’s another Soundtrack Monday, and I’m still doing a lot of Steelflower work. Today’s writing will include Gavrin–always a joy, and I do not mean that sarcastically–so I’ve been playing the Bardcore version of Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy to prepare.

I love this version for two things: the vision of Gavrin strumming this in a Skaialan tavern, with a bunch of drunken giants having no idea what he’s playing, and the fact that the song does kind of express Kaia. The girl knows how to survive, and isn’t overly squeamish about a lot of things. We’re probably going to see her outright assassinate someone in this book, and I for one cannot wait.

Kaia lives in the intersection between, “I don’t kill anyone who doesn’t deserve it” and “Call an ambulance…BUT NOT FOR ME!” It’s one of the things I really appreciate about her as a character. There hasn’t been a chance for her to outright creep around and cut someone’s throat just yet, though she’s been perfectly willing a few times in the story so far; if she’d gotten the chance to slip into the Ferulaine’s quarters and feed him a knife or two, who knows who the story might have gone? (And that’s leaving aside her deciding to let Ammerdahl Rikyat live another day.)

Anyway, today she’s in information-gathering mode, and who else is she going to ask but the minstrel who’s been out busily strumming in taverns and listening to the gossip? It’s eminently practical, and maybe she’ll have a chance to talk to him about that whole “teach the Steelflower a lesson with a song” thing.

Heh. You can just imagine my evil laugh. Time to get to work…

Soundtrack Monday: Night Fight

It’s another Soundtrack Monday! And because I just announced the launch of The Highlands War, I thought I’d share a piece of music that was on the very first Steelflower soundtrack–Tan Dun’s most excellent Night Fight, which to me will always be Michelle Yeo and Zhang Ziyi but also the first time Kaia and Darik ever cross swords, on a dark night outside of Hain.

The full Steelflower series soundtrack is here; it’s still “active”, in the sense that I’m still adding and subtracting tracks as I write. Some have been with the series from the beginning, like Night Fight and Nov Den, as well as David Byrne’s contribution to The Last Emperor. But there are some new songs as well, like Overjoy’s Same–the lyrics there rather neatly express D’ri’s feelings on his stubborn adai, and the Bardcore version of Bad Guy is to some degree my own little joke, because Kaia is after all an assassin, and Highlands War will show other sides of her as well.

Music is an integral part of my writing process. Most of the Steelflower tracks are instrumental, and plenty of them have a good driving drumbeat. I often listen to a book’s soundtrack while walking Boxnoggin in the mornings, or during a run if I’ve got a particular plot problem that needs working out. With a wounded ankle I haven’t been running much if at all, but I can’t wait to get back to it.

Enjoy!

Soundtrack Monday: New Blood

It’s time for another Soundtrack Monday!

Readers seem to be fascinated with Dmitri Konets, the Dead God himself. I don’t blame them–he’s very compelling, partly because he’s so unapologetic about what and who he is. And I very rarely had to play any music to get in his head; he was always prowling about, looking at valuables. The only thing deeper than his desire to be seen is his disdain for any onlooker.

Regardless, there are quite a few songs just for him on the duology’s soundtrack. One of the very first was Zayde Wolf’s New Blood, which has the sort of swaggering beat that expresses Dima very well indeed. He’s used to pain, and likes it well enough; the lyrics are very evocative indeed.

Most of the questions I’m getting on the duology right now are about him, which I pretty much expected. Book Two will be out in August, and most–not all–of those questions will be answered…somewhat, at least. He wants to be known, does the god of thieves, almost as much as he deliberately obfuscates and hides. One could call him one of Chernevog’s faces, but both he and Vogg (whose skyscraper is right across the street from de Winter’s, my own little joke) would take very large issue with that.

The story belongs to the character who changes the most, so the books are Nat’s through and through. Dima fights any change even though he’s an agent of it (sometimes in violent fashion, sometimes silently), but he does shift a little bit over the course of the books.

Just a little. Just enough, perhaps.

Enjoy!

Soundtrack Monday: Victorian Vigilante

It’s another Soundtrack Monday!

I just finished the massive revise on both seasons of Hell’s Acre, getting the books polished from zero level–finished, steaming, just having slid free–to submittable draft. The first book’s with the agent now, and we’ll see what she says. If a publisher doesn’t want to get in on the action, it’ll go out through the self-pub pipeline. Either way there’s several more edits, copyediting, and proofing to get through. But the raw creation and first polish is done.

In celebration, here’s Abney Park’s Victorian Vigilante, which a particular fan (thanks, Tal!) suggested very early in the serial’s first few chapters. It’s rather evocative, and is definitely playing when Avery waltzes into the Marauders’ pub to kill McNeiss. I even gave the Rook a malacca cane during the fight, which was all sorts of fun.

I enjoyed writing Avery a great deal. He doesn’t hesitate, he doesn’t sweat the small stuff, and he doesn’t dither about what he wants. The instant he sees Gemma he makes up his mind, and though he’s a product of his environment he doesn’t ever belittle her, or think of her as lesser. Every time some new dimension of her talents shows, he’s just as pleased as if he’d discovered them in himself. Out of all my heroes he’s probably one of the least problematic, even with his, erm, habit of murdering evildoers.

He also has a great sense of style. The cane–snatched from a Dickens reference–appealed to him a great deal, and the instant he saw the wrist crossbow in Rook’s Rose he was like, “I’ll just be taking that, mate, thanks.”

He’s also profoundly lonely when the serial starts. One rather gets the idea he was just waiting to find a lifelong cause rather more solid than mere vengeance, and Gemma happened along at just the right time. Both of them shift names and identities, though Avery is far more practiced. I think he has a more solid core of who he is, which makes it easier for him, but little Beth was raised Respectable and has a wee bit more trouble.

The rest of the serial’s soundtrack can be found here. I think it’s in its final fighting form now, just like the books themselves. Well, that’s not quite precise since the books will have edits and so on, but…oh, you know what I mean. I’m recovering from this round of revision, and my brain is porridge.

Enjoy!

Beltane and a Book

It’s Beltane again–not my favorite holiday, we all know what that one is, but a good one nonetheless. And tomorrow will be taken up with the release of Spring’s Arcana.

I’m nervous. Well, I’m always bundle of ragged nerves before a launch, so that’s no change. I did make the playlist for the duology live, so you can listen to the music that informed both books here. (It is Soundtrack Monday, after all.) And of course there’s the Goodreads giveaway if you want a chance to win a copy, and I’ll be attending the virtual launch tomorrow if you’d like to sign up for that.

Most of what I’ll be doing today is prep for the release. There’s a blog post to write, a newsletter alert to put together, a little unboxing and reading to do on Twitch. However, I’ll be spending most of the day sunk in proof pages for an entirely different series, because publishing is like that. By the time a book reaches the shelves, the writer is several lengths down the road.

It’s not bad. It is, however, an exercise in delayed gratification, and human beings are generally not the best at that. I could call it good practice, except it’s so damn frustrating.

Of course, no matter what else is going on Boxnoggin needs his walkies. He got some celebratory Cheetos in his breakfast bowl this morning, which he proceeded to pick out of the kibble and eat with every evidence of enjoyment, leaving the rest of his meal strictly alone. I mean, I don’t blame him–dogs are big furry toddlers, and what child wouldn’t pick the good stuff out and leave the rest? It’s a far cry from when he arrived a few years ago. Back then any scrap of food was manna from heaven. It’s nice that he’s gotten picky; it shows that he knows there will always be more.

With that cheerful thought I should finish my coffee, grab my own breakfast–probably gruel, since the stress nausea is very bad this morning–and get to it. A bit of physically grueling exercise will make everything easier to handle, purging stress chemicals and the like, but first I’ve got to get the rest of the morning out of the way.

It’s pretty hilarious that Nat Drozdova’s story is going live just after May Day. I suspect the new incarnation of Spring arranged as much specifically, with (of course) a nudge from old Grandmother Winter. I’ll be laughing over that today, when I’m not heaving into the office wastebasket with sheer nervousness.

What can I say? I know how to celebrate a holiday.

See you tomorrow…

Soundtrack Monday: Disease

It’s another Soundtrack Monday! This week we’re going old-school, all the way back to the Society series.

Delgado (for all his sins and mine) really liked Matchbox Twenty. I could reliably get into his head playing a couple of their tracks–not to mention a few bits of the soundtrack for the La Femme Nikita TV series, but that’s a whole ‘nother blog post. One of the most reliable songs was Disease, which still makes him start talking inside my head.

Of course, Del considered himself not just irretrievably broken but also contagious, a feeling helped along by the awe and fear everyone except Henderson (and Yoshi, and later Rowan) held him in. He absolutely considered himself beyond redemption, especially in the first half of Hunter, Healer. I borrowed a lot of Roy Dupuis’s stonefaced suffering from the Nikita series (and Rowan’s hair does come from Peta Wilson’s amazing platinum mane in a lot of that show), but to this day I don’t know where his particular psychic talent came from. In face, I didn’t even know what he actually did until the second draft of the first book.

Naturally I knew he had some psionic ability, but the details were fuzzy. Once he finally opened up and told me about it, things started to make much more sense and his fear of connection was placed in proper proportion.

A lot of that series also came from X-Men fanfic I wrote in my high school days. None of it survives (thank goodness), being safely hidden in landfills, but its ghost is still on the compost pile inside my head. Nothing is ever truly lost, especially in a writer’s head. Stories germinate in a mound of fertile, rotting material left over from other half-told (or fully told, or even just imagined) tales.

I know there must be people whose heads aren’t full of this stuff, but I’ll be damned if I can imagine how that must be.

Anyway, the Society series could go on–there’s Cath’s story, naturally, and later events. Plus the whole shebang is set in the same universe as the Watchers and Danny Valentine; speaking of which, if you look really closely, there are a few Watchers still around in Danny’s time, though Circle Lightfall’s goals have changed out of all recognition by then. But if I went on with Cath’s story a few dreadful things would have to happen to other characters I like quite a bit and I don’t want to write that. So it’s best to just…let things rest, even though I know what happens next.

There’s no shortage of other stories to tell, after all.

Soundtrack Monday: Chevaliers de Sangreal

It’s another Soundtrack Monday! And I have a lovely piece for you today, my friends.

I just finished the zero draft of Rook’s Rose, and this piece was quite integral to the writing of the entire serial. Hans Zimmer is pretty reliable writing music for me, and the Chevaliers de Sangreal track from the Da Vinci Code movie reliably got me into Gemma and Avery’s world each time. It’s a stirring piece, and given that I’m working with some of the same conspiracy theories and historical stuff (albeit very loosely, as usual) it hits a nice sweet spot.

I often see a smoke-and fogbound New Rome while listening to it, perhaps with the Rook and Miss Dove doing their running-across rooftops thing. It’s very cinematic, but there’s also a love theme in it as well. Avery Black knows what he wants very early on in the entire situation, while Gemma takes a while to come around. Mostly because she has her own problems to solve, as heroines do; if there’s music playing during the crossing-the-Channel scene near the end–or the end credits, which I do see in my head for some books–this is it.

Anyway, the whole soundtrack to the serial can be found here. I think it’s achieved its final fighting form since I’m done with the brute creation work of Book 2. And my brain still resembles pudding at the moment, so I’ll stop here.

Enjoy!