I have exciting news to share with you world. We have an official release date for The Clockwork Caterpillar! Felicity and crew’s daring adventure will be hitting a digital shelf near you on April 5th. But wait, there’s more! For those most excited, you can preorder The Clockwork Caterpillar digital version from your favourite digital storefront. Since I’m a bit of a Luddite, I’m only really familiar with two: here is the Amazon link (Canadian version but it should be on the American store as well) and here is the Kobo link.  We are also on Apple and Barnes and Noble too. As for physical copies, those will be available for order on April 5th so if you like getting something a little more leafy in your hands, the time is almost nigh!

To celebrate, I’m going to give a little more insight into my creative process.

Here’s the lovely cover for The Clockwork Caterpillar. So cool!

Writing a novel is a lengthy endeavour, and with so many parts and pieces to keep in mind, it’s both easy to lose motivation and lose sight of what makes the story special. I find having a specialized playlist keeps me focused. Usually this is music I listened to while creating the idea behind my novel. Sometimes an idea starts from one song and from there I’ll try to find music that accompanies or mirrors it. More often than not, I’ll look for music that really captures the feeling of a certain place, character or theme. As these get cobbled together, a cohesive identity begins to form between the songs.

This identity is much easier to remember, especially when I have the music to help me. Each song carries the reason for its inclusion: whether that be a particular lyric or chord to which I’ve tied a creative association. This playlist I’ll listen to while I write my story so later when I return for revisions and editing, I can load it up and get right back into the proper frame of mind. And even when I write up to a wall, I can sit back and chill to the songs that brought me there. This often gives me new ideas so no writing block lasts for very long even if it’s been months since I’ve last looked at my story.

So, in this post, I’m sharing some of the songs that inspired me for The Clockwork Caterpillar. This isn’t my entire song collection, of course. I’m just sharing a couple and the reasons for their inclusion. Feel free to check them out. I suspect, since music is such a personal taste thing in the first place, it might be hard to envision the same things I do when I hear them. But maybe you can get a glimpse of those golden fields, snow-kissed mountains and lonely engines.

Johnny Cash – Hurt

I knew that The Clockwork Caterpillar was going to draw on the mythos and mystique of cowboy culture. So finding some country music seemed eminently important. There’s a snag, however, which is I don’t generally like country music. It’s a little out of my regular listening sphere and its qualities aren’t ones that appeal to me. There are, of course, exceptions in every genre. And I recalled hearing Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire while doing warehouse work and enjoying it for what it was. Oddly enough, it is Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nail’s Hurt that really did something for me. There’s a fantastic melancholic twist to a song otherwise focused on crippling drug addiction. Cash’s trembling, aged voice turns something pretty narrow into a rather wide reaching song about the collapse of one’s own world at the end of their life. This pervasive sense of ruination pervades The Clockwork Caterpillar. Hurt is great for setting an important atmosphere to the story.

The Silent Comedy – The Well

The Silent Comedy have some great “southern” sounding songs but it’s The Well that really got that deep south vibe that I really wanted. But it’s not just a setting note that The Well strikes. Its focus on spirituality and one’s personal relationship with the institutions of faith play important sub-themes in The Clockwork Caterpillar. The colonials certainly lean heavily on faith in order to survive against the uncountable hardships of the frontier. But more to the point, The Well speaks of the moral bankruptcy within these institutions. Membership alone does not equate to purity. Banks, mayors and politicians can all be immoral and still pray at the church for all the good prayer alone will do for you. Righteousness sans action is valueless and this sort of conversation is certainly a meaningful one for people who are often themselves reduced to criminality. The rejection of authority and still making it on one’s own kind of sums up the entirety of Felicity’s crew.

Spring and Autumn – Legend

This is one of the first songs to hit The Clockwork Caterpillar playlist. And for good reason since Legend is basically the beating heart of the story to me. It’s combination of banjo, metal and Chinese kind of encapsulates the world. It’s a bizarre medley of disparate elements all pulled together to accomplish what they couldn’t individually. While the other songs might be a bit pessimistic in their tone or outlook, Legend is that note of hope which the characters strive to achieve. Mostly, however, it’s the banjo and Chinese.

Benny Goodman – Sing, Sing, Sing

There’s no hiding the fact that, despite writing about loss, corruption, abandonment, exile and hopelessness, The Clockwork Caterpillar is still meant to be a high adventure. Thrills, chills and death defying action provide the reader a grand spectacle as they travel with Felicity through her many trials and tribulations. I mean, this is a story about train pirates; it’s ultimately meant to be a whole lot of good fun. Sing, Sing, Sing is the quintessential swing song from the 1930s. Benny Goodman is practically a king of the genre. The enthusiasm and energy of that era is the exact energy I wanted as Felicity battles angry natives, duplicitous Jaders, villainous pirates, immoral tycoons and oppressive governments.