Joely Sue Burkhart

The winner of Stephanie Tyler’s Risking It All is Crystal B!  Please contact me with your snail mail addy so I can ship your book to you!

On the writing front, I’ve been chipping away slowly at this one scene, a dream sequence.  I’ve gotten rather tired of dream sequences as a reader, but this can’t be helped.  Darius’s power is in dreams, where Shadow can touch the mind of anybody.  Especially his sister. 

For all the facts and plots and themes I know in this story, I couldn’t quite get things to click.  Something was missing.

The theme song.

I feel the most passion for a wip once I have the theme song.  Sometimes it’s one theme song for an entire series–like for the My Beloved series, the theme song is “Faith of the Heart” by Susan Ashton.  But BloodRose in particular had several themes.  The first inspiration for the title came from “Kiss From a Rose” by Seal, which I then changed to “blood from a rose.”  But by the end when Shannari was in the dark moment and the climax, the theme became “Everything I Do I Do It For You” by Bryan Adams.  I hear that song today and my stomach hurts, in a good way.  I feel Rhaekhar’s agony all over again as he rides away and leaves her to her choice.

For Beautiful Death, the theme song was “Wings of a Butterfly” by H.I.M.  Once I had that song, the last part of the book just flew.  Nothing could keep me from finishing that story.

For Survive My Fire, I listened to two songs constantly.  “Love Hurts” by Incubus and “Desert Rose” by Sting.

I tried a mix of all of these for The Fire Within, but nothing worked.  They were all nice songs, but the spark wasn’t there.  I widened my search.  I listened to Bon Jovi thanks to American Idol.  I tried Evanescense, Snow Patrol, Linkin Park…  To no avail.

Last night, I was determined to find the theme song if I had to do nothing but listen to music all night.  “Vampire Heart” by H.I.M. was working pretty well, when by chance I heard part of a song on a commercial or something on TV.  I had to ask That Man what the song was–just the bit of lyric I heard resonated in my heart, even though I didn’t hear enough to know what the song actually was.

It ended up being “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler, especially the phrase “turnaround, bright eyes.” That is it, exactly.  “I really need you tonight, forever’s gonna start tonight.”  Most importantly, Eleni will learn of a different kind of shadow than the tainted darkness of her brother.  “Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time.”   Ahhhhh, a total eclipse of the heart indeed.  Bingo!!  I also added “Holding Out For A Hero” to the mix.

Then I promptly wrote 400 words.  That may not sound like much–but it’s more than I’ve had for the last several days.  I feel like I finally made it over that intimidating wall and the rest will flow.  *cheers* So my goals for this week:  1K a day, come hell or high water.  This novella *will* be finished and polished at least once by the end of the month.

How about you?