It’s on its way, guys! The Siren will be here tomorrow, which makes today the last day to preorder it at $0.99! (It’s going to be going up to $2.99, which still isn’t heinous, but does give you some incentive to order right now… hint hint.)
And let me tell you, it’s a relief. It’s a huge relief. I started this book around the end of 2011. It was inspired by a comment on a music video on YouTube. The particular video seems to be gone, now, and the comment with it, but you can still look up Opera No. 2 by Vitas and understand why someone might have said something to the effect of “This guy can’t possibly be human. He’s too good.” Because I’m not even a little bit normal, I sat and stewed on that one tiny little comment for the entire duration of a five-hour car trip. I contemplated the nature of music. I contemplated the nature of sound. Sonic technologies. Human emotion. And when I finally pulled into the garage and turned off the engine, there was most of a book idea recorded in the voice memos of my iPod.
It was slow going, about a thousand words a week for a couple of months. And then, in the miserable, stinking dawn of 2012, my grandfather died. I spent a week virtually living in the ICU, alternating between staring into space and numbly, lifelessly pounding out chapters of The Siren, and by the time it was over, I hated this book with every inch of my soul. I let it sink to the bottom of my hard drive, because I couldn’t stand to look at it anymore. I fully intended to let it rot.
I did poke at it every now and then, because it was a good idea. I had posted draft chapters on DeviantART as I finished them, and the people who had been following along were disappointed when the flow dried up, so I sat and stared at a blinking cursor every now and again, wishing it didn’t hurt so much.
I wrote maybe a hundred words over the rest of 2012 and all of 2013.
Then I found that song again, Opera No. 2 by Vitas, and something changed. Given the plot of The Siren, I think it’s rather appropriate that it was the power of music that made the story open back up to me. I realized that, yes, that story for me would always be tied to that horrible week in the ICU, but it didn’t have to be part of a bad memory. The story was what got me through that week, and I owed it to the characters, to John and Sandie and Mike and Connie and Nacho, to finish it.
And I finished it, and here it is.
Maybe it’ll touch someone.
Enjoy.
got it
🙂