Music is a very important part of my current work-in-progress, My Hallowe’en Heartbreak. In this book, lawyer Sophia Ando leads a very regimented existence but when her childhood best friend, Henry MacDonald waltzes back into her life everything changes. Henry is the lead singer of an indie rock band, and she had a big crush on him in high school.
We first met Henry in My Viral Valentine when Abby and Sophia went to see Henry’s band Shawville. Abby describes their music this way:
A man’s voice rang out unaccompanied and fragile. Then the soft chords of the guitar began. As his voice rose, more instruments joined in. The music rose, crescendoed, and swept me along.
This description describes the early music of Hey Rosetta! a Newfoundland band. I’m a huge fan of their music, and for My Viral Valentine, I’ve got a Hey Rosetta! playlist on repeat as I write. They were a big success in Canadian indie music, but I suspect that they are less well-known outside this country.
Unfortunately, this band has broken up now, but their lead singer, Tim Baker, continues to tour. Here’s a video from his first solo album. In an intriguing coincidence, this video is shot at the Museum of Nature—the place where Abby and Mason went for their first date. And further bonus, you can see the famous buffalo menaced by wolves diorama that traumatized young Mason.
For this book, I’ve had to do a lot of research into the process of writing music. Not surprisingly, there are as many ways to create a song as there are songs. Some are crafted in notebooks while sitting in nature, while others are created by a team in a studio. It’s an enlightening look into the creative process, something authors battle constantly. And one of the hardest tasks in this book is writing the lyrics to the songs that Henry performs. It’s like writing poetry, something I haven’t done since grade nine. I’m also putting together my first ever playlist to accompany the book. I’ll link to this closer to the book launch.