Making Of
WOOOOOOOOOOO! This was a tough one to get though. I love writing action, but it produces just about the ugliest first drafts I'm capable of. And despite how long it took to produce, it actually clocks in about a thousand words shorter than the typical chapter. Hopefully the content will make it worth the wait.
The first attack on Brian and Sevellis is a scene that's been bouncing around in my head for as long as the story has existed, but I could never settle on just what I wanted it to be.
At any given time, the attack was supposed to take place on: an Amtrack, a busy freeway, the New York subway, or even a ferry.
The reason I settled on a Greyhound bus is threefold:
1) I used to ride Greyhounds all the time with my Mom, back and forth from New York to Massachusetts as a kid and liked the idea of revisiting those memories to inform the setting.
2) It's one of the cheapest methods of long distance transportation and has the least strict standards for who gets to ride. ANYONE can ride a Greyhound, which is exactly what two low budget fugitives like Brian and Sevellis need.
3) This is obviously a prejudiced blanket statement based on very few actual scenarios that I can remember... but it sure seems like, especially in the last ten years, BAD SHIT HAPPENS ON GREYHOUNDS.
Remember a few years ago, some dude on a Greyhound freaked out, beheaded the passenger next to him, paraded the head up and down the aisle and then started EATING IT?
Yeah.
I love Greyhound for the memories... but they scare me now! So, it seemed like the most logical place to stage my ambush.
Sorry, Greyhound.
(something tells me I'll have to change the company name when the story goes to print...)
Soundtrack
Finally, a song with lyrics!
I recently discovered the band Civil Twilight through their song, "Letters From The Sky", which has been used just about everywhere (and, yes, has a place in Gatewalker... but not for a while yet).
So, I grabbed their most recent album, Holy Weather
,
and kinda, sorta fell instantly head over heels in love with it. Why? Well, aside from that I don't get a lot new music these days, and that their sound is very similar to early U2, which I love... some of the lyrics to their songs feel like aspects of Brian. There's a poetry and introspection in their writing that fits both who Brian is now and who he will become.This is a band I'll be calling back to several times throughout the course of the story, but for their debut, I decided to go with something more thematic than literal. I can't say that "Move/Stay" is 100% lyrically accurate to the story in this case, but it does capture that mood of urgency, of action. It's a GTFOD song. Which is appropriate, considering...
Hope you like it.
(remember, any soundtrack songs you like can be sampled and purchased as MP3s in the Amazon widget to the right! Build your own Gatewalker soundtrack!)
That's actually all that I've got for the blog this week. A shorter entry for a shorter chapter! What do you think, should this be the norm? Or do you prefer the longer, everything and the kitchen sink blog posts? Let me know in the comments below!
And be sure to swing back for the Chapter 5 bonus features, wherein I reveal my next Casting Call pick!
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