The Music in The Deep Space Between

Easter Eggs Part One

As already mentioned in The Music Threads piece, I created a soundtrack for my debut urban fantasy novel, The Deep Space Between. It follows the themes of the book from start to finish and was a blast to put together.

As I began the editing process of reading the book 75,000 times (or at least that’s what it felt like), I noticed something I forgot when I wrote it. Throughout the book are song references: imagery in the words, my character is listening to a specific song, or title chapters who tweaked music titles in them.

I didn’t do this on purpose. It happened organically while I was writing. I hadn’t realized, until then, how much music has woven its way into my brain and creative expression until that moment. In honor of that, here are just a few places where the music snuck in when I wasn’t looking.

• The lyrics from Hide & Seek by Imogen Heap were definitely running through my mind when I wrote a scene where my MC, Seraphina, notices missing paintings from the wall (Chapter 12). The lyrics in that song haunted me a little and I just couldn’t help but remember them. The imagery they represented seeped into the story.
• I don’t name the song in the book, but I do name the artist – Katy Perry – when my MC is happy, driving down the road in her mom’s old VW convertible, feeling good about her life (Chapter 15). I was specifically channeling the song Roar in this moment, because that song is about your voice. My MC had come a long way by then (and still had loads to go) as far as who she was and how she felt. She’d found her voice (plus the one in her head she hadn’t counted on finding) and figured out a few things about herself as well.
• I love the chapter titles in my book and they came as I wrote each chapter. I did struggle on a few of them, but only because I wanted to capture the right flavor of what happened. For Chapter 19, Johnny Lee Hooker’s song, Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places, just stuck in my head and I had to use it (The Hunt is On: Looking for Blooms in All the Wrong Places). While not a country fan, it was a song that played a lot on the radio when I was younger and living in New England.
• Tori Amos’ Little Earthquakes has resonated with me since I first heard it in the ‘90s, especially when fighting with good friends and roommates. It came to mind as I wrote the big fight scene with my MC’s best friend in Chapter 24. And if you look closely, you’ll see a vague reference to it in the words spoken by Seraphina: “It started as little things. Cracks in the foundation. Little earthquakes and aftershocks we never addressed.” Aren’t most good relationships cracked by the little things that build up to bigger things?
• ⁠Yet another chapter title, Chapter 31 (Storming the Castle: For Whom the Bell Tolls), features a song title by Metallica. It is very appropriate because not only do the lyrics match with what happens in the book, but bells also feature prominently in my book. Fun fact: I almost called the series “Bells & Books,” but it felt too light for the content I planned to write.
• The last music reference I wanted to share comes in the last chapter as my MC is packing. On her laptop, The Final Fight Score from the TV show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, plays. It is one of my favorite musical scores – hands down, I crank the volume up when it plays. It has an amazing build and rich, deep bass at just the right moment. And it comes from one of my favorite shows, which has echoes in my book in small ways.

There are more, I know there are, but since I haven’t read my book in a while, I can’t quite remember them all. You never know how much your life and experiences leak into a book until you write it and then read it. Some of them are intentional and some subliminal.

Next week, I’m sharing the intentional choice of the flowers in the book in part 2 of the Easter Egg series.
Stay tuned!