4 pieces of media influencing my next book
Reader, I have been neglecting my blog here these past few months.
There are two reasons for that, one is exciting! The other, less exciting.
The less-exciting reason is that, back in September, the job I was at decided to dissolve the office I worked at and reduce me to part-time (bummer) which meant that I had to then find a new job which I found (not a bummer!) and started this past November.
While that was happening, I was in the process of revising my next book which I all but guarantee will come out this year. (Ideally, I will make a post next month that will be more this upcoming book more.) I will note here that it is not the second Light Keeper Chronicle title (which I plan to be the release following this one).
This new book is adult fantasy novel that I had the idea for around 2013, but began writing in 2018.
I’m excited about the book and want to talk about it! But I also don’t want to talk about it more until some details get nailed down. So, to split the difference, I thought I’d share some of the stories that influenced me while working on this upcoming project.
With no further waffling, here’s a look at what I was looking at leading up to the creation of my next novel!
Young Man In America, Anaïs Mitchell
My favorite non-soundtrack album from probably my favorite living musical artist. Young Man In America —like a lot of this list — is a album I encountered late in my high school career and is probably the most significant single influence on the new book, certainly in terms of themes.
The album grapples with coming of age, particularly in relation to becoming conscious of the wider context of the natural world and the societal framework we’re born into. (See songs like Young Man In America and Wilderland.) Relating to that, it also dives into vignettes of often tragic complexities of the familial dynamics. (See Shepherd, Dyin Day, He Did, and Tailor.)
Most of the remaining songs on the album (Venus, Annmarie, and Ships) speak to the experiences of romantic relationships. I love them, but they didn’t have as strong an impact on what I was writing for this book even as this album remains potentially my largest influence.
Truthfully, this album represents a piece of art I love so much that I don’t have a lot to say about it as the work itself says more than I could hope to articulate.
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
Now, regarding narrative, this is probably the listed item that was the least influential. Other texts like Moby Dick had a more measurable narrative impact on what I was trying to do with this book. But Something Wicked This Way Comes had other lessons to impart.
The story shifts perspectives between a set of boys — alive with unbridled youth — and one of their fathers, who knows that his youth is uncomfortably behind him, as an otherworldly circus comes to town with promises to both the young and the old.
My Grandma gave me this copy of the book in 2016 or 2017 and I would have finally read it in 2018. At that point I’d been sitting on the idea for my next book for awhile, but I didn’t feel I was in a place where I skilled enough to write what I wanted.
Holy crap! Something Wicked proved to be the kick in the pants I needed by sheer virtue of its mastery of language. Sentences like “A mushroom-witch stirred moldering herb pots.” and “Out on the highway the last faint water colors of the sun were gone beyond the hills and whatever they were chasing was so far ahead as to be only a swift fleck now shown in lamplight now set free, running in the dark.” left me audibly gasping as I read.
I wouldn’t claim that my language and imagery is anywhere near as good as what Bradbury does, but his book provided me with an entirely new perspective on how to approach prose.
The Last of Us, Naughty Dog, 2013
Okay, so this one will take some explaining because — for a very long time — The Last of Us was my favorite video game. Not only that, it was one of my favorite stories period (shout out to my cousin for letting me borrow it and play it on PS3 right before I went to college).
On top of that, my book certainly has some clear parallels to The Last of Us (and The Road) in my book is also a somewhat grim road trip story focusing on a set of people trying to get from point A to point B with increasingly deadly obstacles waylaying them.
I’m certain the game itself did ultimately factor in.
That said, the thing that really set my mind spinning back in the day the video game’s gameplay reveal in 2012:
“The Last of Us E3 2012 Gameplay” from the PlayStation YouTube Channel - June 4, 2012
What’s here gets violent, and violence is definitely thematically significant in my book, but it’s really the first half of what’s show here that struck me at the time: A world that is grimy, but unmistakably, reclaimed by nature.
Looking back at the video now it’s not as lush as I remember it, but I still have the memory of being struck by the imagery of a set of people wandering through a beautiful, living environment that’s utterly indifferent to their presence.
Beowulf, orally performed
So, in my first couple of years of college, English Majors had to take an introductory class (creatively named “Intro to the English Major”). It was too early in the morning, it was too much like AP Literature, but there were a few things I got out of it that I really do appreciate.
One of those being, a live oral performance of Beowulf in Old English we were required to attend. (It might have been extra credit, but I remember at the time I felt like I had to go.)
I remember I wasn’t really looking forward to this performance for two reasons:
It was at, like 7:30 p.m. on a school night and my days usually started around 6 a.m. and I biked everywhere.
I don’t understand Old English!
To be clear, Old English is different than Early Modern English (which is what Shakespeare writes in). Most people can generally understand Early Modern English. By contrast, Old English is effectively a different language. Here’s the first few lines of Beowulf in Old English according to the Poetry Foundation:
Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Which apparently means:
LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
Ultimately, I was glad that I did attend. Not because I got a sudden, divine understanding of Old English from it, but because hearing the words performed does help emphasize the musicality and remind you that this is, in fact, a poem.
I can’t pretend that I achieve anything close to one of these performances, but my hope is that I somehow manage to replicate a small fraction of the musicality on show here in what I’ve written.