Archive for the ‘Saturday Soundtracks’ Category

Saturday Soundtrack

with S. Reesa Herberth

Devil By My Side – David Usher
Believe in hope,
Believe in faith,
Believe in things I can’t fight

Riv is a quietly spiritual man.  He’s a pacifist, and after breaking his personal code of non-violence to save the life of a friend, he’s having an impossibly hard time reconciling his beliefs with his actions.  I’ve always loved this song, and I think it strikes a nice balance between optimism and the struggle between who you want to be, and who you find yourself becoming.

Living In Jungles – Bedouin Soundclash
Walk away leave him lost in the night
Walk away, walk towards your holy light
And then you walk like a champion, talk like a champion

Lots of people go looking for themselves, stepping out of their ordinary routines to get some perspective on their lives.  When Riv volunteers with ReliefCorp, it’s kind of a toss-up as to whether he’s searching for a way back to the life he used to have, or just looking to get lost.  When he meets and rescues Ducks, suddenly he’s more concerned with getting them both out of the jungle safely, a theme that carries on later in the book, when the sweltering humidity of Maltana’s rainforest is only a memory, but they’re both still trying to find their way.  I love the drums in this song.

Dragoste din tei (The NumaNuma Song) – OZONE
Chipul tau si dragostea din tei,
(Your face and the love from the linden trees,)
Mi-amintesc de ochii tai.
(And I remember your eyes.)

There’s no deeper meaning to this song, nothing particularly relevant about it other than it being one I was mildly obsessed with at the time.  For whatever reason, I will always associate this song with the scene where Riv first walks into Hyduk’s, the bar where he meets Ducks.  (And yes, we absolutely used a word from the song, however misspelled, as the name of the bar.)

Silence – Delirium, feat. Sarah McLachlan
In this white wave I am sinking in this silence
In this white wave…in this silence…I believe

When he first appears, Ducks is not only mute, he is recently injured and pretty severely traumatized.  Dealing with more than simple interactions is too much for him, and he falls into a kind of fugue state.  The swelling, meandering tone of this song worked for me, and kind of helped me imagine what it felt like for him when he checked out for awhile.

Made To Heal – Our Lady Peace
We’re made to heal..

This song makes me think of Ducks working through his issues and trying to find his voice at the hospital on Karibee.  It also struck me as a song that related to Del, Riv’s friend and shipmate.  She tries her best for them, but some healing doesn’t come that easily, as Del herself would tell you.

I’ll Keep Your Memory Vague – Finger Eleven
This won’t break your heart
But I just think it could
Cause I haven’t tried as hard as I should
To separate you from everything I do
But I would never want to come between us two

If this isn’t all about loving someone you think will never be able to care for you in the same way, I don’t know what is.  Totally a Riv song, despite having initially picked it because of the title, and thinking it might work for Ducks and his amnesia.

Divided – Tara MacLean
but a heart cannot repent
when it doesn’t know it’s spent a lifetime
beating itself to death

I could almost have chosen “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” for this mix, but instead I went with this, a warped little track about getting on with your life, even if you’re not sure why.

To Be Alone With You – Sufjan Stevens
You gave your body to the lonely
They took your clothes
You gave up a wife and a family
You gave your ghost

Both Riv and Ducks have to decide what they’re willing to give up to be together, and what they can give each other once they are.  I like that this song is a little sweet, a little melancholy, and it could be about a beginning or and end- or both at once.

The Balance of Silence

by S. Reesa Herberth and Michelle Moore

Welcome to the jungle—where the found are lost and the lost are redeemed.

Riv is a man adrift, hoping that running supplies for ReliefCorp will restore his faith in mankind—and in himself. Deep in the war-torn Maltana rainforest, he stumbles upon a local bar that suits his mood: good food, bad attitude. The entertainment, though, is unexpected. A skilled piano player who avoids eye contact, flinches when anyone approaches…and warns Riv of an ambush by tapping out the planetary anthem for Riv’s homeworld of Karibee.

The least Riv can do for the mute piano man, “Ducks”, is take him to the nearest spaceport for help. On their harrowing journey to escape Maltana, Riv makes a horrifying discovery. Ducks endured torture that scarred his mind as well as his body. Still, before he leaves the man safely in a treatment facility, Riv manages to earn what little trust Ducks has to give.

Months later they reconnect, and while it’s clear their instant attraction was no fluke, there’s still a piece missing. Ducks’ voice. To help him find it again, Riv will have to expose the painful past that tore a hole in his own life. And hope that together, their ragged edges will fit together to form a whole.

Warning: This book contains fluffy blond hair, sugary soda that will rot your teeth out, one unfortunate first name, and one mute amnesiac with a sarcasm fetish, all wrapped up in two selfless but mildly unstable guys who accidentally find their happily ever after. In SPACE!

Read An Excerpt Online

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I guess you could say I’m a Noo Yawk kinda gal. So why, you might ask, have I been living down here in Southwest Florida, or as we like to call it, Hurricane Central, since September of 2000? Granted it doesn’t have the Yankees or the Mets, the Rangers or the Islanders. And granted you won’t find Broadway or Carnegie Hall, Central Park or Greenwich Village down here either. What it does have, however, are three big plusses. One, it’s warm (big surprise there). Two, there’s no snow. (again, big surprise.) And Three, I have time to write.
 
I guess you could also say that I’m a hopeful romantic; if you see my name on a story, it will have a happy ending.
 
I’ve been writing since 3nd grade, (fortunately, none of that survived) and was on the staff of my high school magazine. In college, my English 101 professor would read my essays aloud, which tickled me no end.
 
On and off throughout the years, I continued to write, and most of those snippets, ficlets, and what-have-you did survive. One of them became the premise for a short sci-fi story, which I consider one of my most inventive.
 
It was with the arrival of our second computer in ’96 (the first was a total disaster; it just sat, intimidating the entire family.) and the discovery of copy and paste, which is truly a wonderful thing, that my writing once again took off.
 
My signature line, a quote by Ernest Hemingway, says it all: Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure, only death can stop it.

I usually listen to music while I’m writing, but I rarely do the soundtrack thing. In the story I’m currently writing part of the setting is The Happy Hippie, a college bar. The owner was an original flower child, (hence the name) and on her jukebox she’s got music of the 60s. I’ve included a few songs from the 70s as well as the 90s, which is when the story takes place. When writing Friends and Lovers I had several songs I listened to and here are just a few:


Create a playlist at MixPod.com

SYNOPSIS For Friends and Lovers:

Tom Hansom had always been gay. Oh, he liked women well enough. As the saying went, they were some of his best friends. But guys? Oh yeah, they really rang his chimes. Jack Sweet, on the other hand, had never doubted he was straight. He loved women in all their many varieties, even going so far as to marry, not once but twice. In spite of their diverse sexual orientations, in spite of time and distance, the two men were best friends. Now, that friendship will be tested, as Tom makes a request, and Jack seriously considers it.

Found out more about Tinnean at http://tinnean.livejournal.com/ You can purchase your copy of Friends and Lovers at Amazon.com