Is how many years D and I have been married. (Although we’ve known each other much longer.*)
I think six is very romantic (assuming that numbers can be romantic), but not quite as romantic as this song.
Happy Anniversary, D!
*Picture of us back in the day, courtesy of Rye.
Today is the 15th, which, do you know what that means?
It means that The Space Between comes out in exactly three months. Exactly. I mean, it’s like I have a calendar in my head.
I know for a fact that I wasn’t nearly so hyper-aware when The Replacement was coming out—it was too intimidating, or else, too new. I think I was in a fugue state where I just tuned it out and pretended really hard it wasn’t happening.
And now that I’m not doing that anymore? It’s honestly kind of nice. I keep finding myself wanting to share things! (And this is notable, because I am sometimes quite a bad sharer.)
I’ve said it many times, but I’m not a person who writes to silence. I can’t. I need the movement and the background noise, I need coffee shops and music and chaos. But mostly the music. It occurs to me that a lot of times, the way I choose my songs is by sorting through all the lyrics and finding parallels to the stories or the characters I’m writing about.
Okay, I know, I know—I’m constantly foisting Regina Spektor on you, but I can’t stop, because I just find her ridiculously charming, and her voice—it is so, so sweet!
This is Truman’s* theme. Or at least, one of them. Everyone gets more than one theme-song, but I’m resisting the urge to overcomplicate things, so today this is his. Because there is nothing I like better than when things are tragic and kind of whimsical at the same time.
*In The Space Between, Truman is the male lead. I would say hero, except you know me—you know about my fascination with dysfunction. You know I don’t do heroes.
As anyone who has ever met me can tell you, I like things.
I like horror movies and Sweet Tarts and cigars and eggnog-chai and Christian Bale. I like couture sewing and heirloom tomatoes. I like dogs. I like way more things than I dislike—so many things that if I were to assemble a detailed and comprehensive list, it would take me three months and would be far too long to ever read.
So, in lieu of that detailed list, today I’m going to narrow it down and share one particular well-liked thing.
Confession: I have a deep, abiding love of cover songs. I collect them. I hoard them. I covet them. (Also, I’m a huge fan of retellings, modern versions, graphic-novelizations, and movie remakes, but that’s a post for another day.)
The concept of the cover song appeals to me on a very frivolous level. Like musicals about cannibalism, or wearing combat boots with petticoats, the perfect cover song is a seamless melding of totally disparate things. It demonstrates profound understanding of the source material, but also wild departure. Honestly, there’s probably a term paper or a dissertation somewhere in all this, but that would take a long time and I would have to cite sources. Instead, because I’m currently-drafting and all-the-time lazy, I’m going to keep it simple.
Now, the simple thing.
I am going to share with you my favorite cover song in the history of cover songs:
It is performed by one of my favorite bands of all time, and it exemplifies that glorious combination of the wry, the highly-stylized, and my personal favorite, the “why would you ever cover that?”
By which I mean, this:
What about you: Do you like cover songs—or do you hate them? Which ones? Why?
Okay, yes. I already know I’m getting ahead of myself. But here’s the thing. I just did the release-date math, which is, in and of itself, kind of impressive because I resent math a lot (even though I understand on an intellectual level that it’s valuable because we need bridges and roads and shortbread recipes).
Here is what I discovered: The Space Between comes out in exactly 168 days. That is 24 weeks. That is less than six months. That’s heart-stoppingly close and incredibly far AT THE SAME TIME. This is the kind of mysterious time-conundrum that really makes me wish I understood quantum physics. Although I’m given to understand that no one actually understands quantum physics. True? False? Do we know?
I don’t have ARCs yet. But I cannot wait until I do, because I’m already fantasizing possible teasers and contests and giveaways, because I just have to say, I’m having a really hard time waiting 168 days to share this book. Because I like it, you guys. It seems indecent to say it, because I—you know—wrote it, but I do. I like it a lot.
So, because today I am Impatient Girl and I really, really want to share something, I’m going to settle for sharing some music.
This is the song I listened to 1 billion times while I was in the end-stages of editing. There are a lot of songs that have been the anchor-song for The Space Between at various times and various stages, but this one is the most recent, and in my mind, that makes it the Official anchor song. At least until I decide the anchor song is actually something else. Because I am nothing if not capricious. (You’ll have to excuse the scrolling lyrics—this was the only video I could find.)
Okay, so I just sent my editor the first draft of Book 2. Ordinarily, this would warrant an exclamation point or several, but I am currently all exclamationed-out and all I want to do is eat Chinese food and watch Dexter. Sadly, I am also marginally responsible.
Now, while I await editorial feedback, I will turn my attention to other things. Like laundry. And the lamentable state of my inbox. And laundry.
However, because this is not a very informative post, and because I really love this book, and because it’s Friday, I will leave you with this video, which is basically my Book-2 theme-song of epic proportions.
It should come as no shock that I’m currently writing Book Two.
I mean, the realness of it is shocking—it surprises me pretty much every day—but the actual fact of the matter is, this is what people who write books do. They write books. (Yes, I’m still having a hard time getting over this.)
Book Two is hard to talk about. Book Two does not have a title. I love Book Two more than I have loved anything I’ve ever written. I’m not just saying that because it’s new and shiny and exciting—even though it is.
I can’t get specific, since I’m writing it and things change, but here are the parts that are inviolably true: it’s about demons and mortal peril and moral ambiguity, and like everything I’ve ever written, it is a love story.
In some ways, it’s the resurrected corpse of a different story I started a long time ago and then started again, and kept starting. In other more important ways, it’s brand spanking new. The old story had fun characters and interesting prose, and this one tiny little problem where I just never knew what to DO with it, and kept making a lot of different messes.
Now, I know. I mean, I know in a vague, urgent way that keeps me guessing and trying things and IMing tessagratton and saying things like What if I . . .? and Can I do that? Really?
What I’m saying is, I know in the best way possible.
Also, I have a playlist and the playlist is this:
July 2010, ETA—Lala apparently doesn’t exist anymore. So, no more playlist. For posterity, it was:
Tiny disclaimer: I do not make playlists based on what I like (although I do like a lot of these songs). My playlists are made up of songs that encapsulate characters and plot points and themes. They are like a photo-collage, only without cutting up magazines.
Also, a special note: This book would not exist at all without The Ponzi Scheme but I couldn’t put the whole album on the playlist, because that wouldn’t be a very good playlist. Then it would just be an album.
Brenna Yovanoff 