Feist

I think it's no secret to anyone that I listen to a lot of music. I believe I've even shared that Stars' album "In Our Bedroom After The War" was a significant influence on the story of Jack and Isabel, my two main characters for A Special Education and its planned sequels. In fact, most of the ideas that came to me while listening to that particular album are actually for the last book and it took me a whole year to figure out how to begin the first one.

But begin I did and I thought over the holidays I would share some of the music that helped me along the way. Generally speaking, particular songs help to unlock specific scenes; the music creates mental sequences that I try to capture on paper. Letting my imagination drift away was one of the things I used to love about seeing live music.

However, the writing is usually after the fact. I hear the song and then write the scene. Usually with the song on repeat again and again. Today though, I wanted to share something that was a happy coincidence.  One of the themes of this particular set of novels is the relationship between my two main teen characters, Jack and Isabel. in A Special Education it looks, for all intents and purposes, like a love story. As things play out over the next two novels, we find that's not necessarily the case, and it surprised me to hear this new Feist song, as it appears to predict where I wanted to go with them.