This space contains the playlist I created for the novel, as well as a few cut scenes. Enjoy.
PLAYLIST
I created this playlist with the novel in mind. It is meant to be listened to, of course. But, if you’ve read the novel you should be able to follow the arc of the story from the track names alone. The artists listed below were monumental inspiration and influence in writing the story of the nihilistic, angry young woman who eventually finds she has everything to lose. And I would like to thank them all. Please check out the songs, then click the links below to go to the artists’ page.
http://assets.mixpod.com/swf/mp3/mixpod.swf?myid=76596022&path=2011/02/03
Create a playlist at MixPod.com
THE FULL PLAYLIST, SONGS AND ARTISTS, WITH LINKS:
To Hell With you Sister Machine Gun
Pretty When You Cry VAST
Thursday’s Child David Bowie
Caught in a Jar Dropkick Murphys
AntiSocial Lars Frederiksen & The Bastards
Waiting Ministry
Zerospace Kidneythieves
Today We Are All Demons Combichrist
Share This Poison Razed in Black
Desperate The Distillers
Heart-Shaped Tumor De/Vision
Winter in My Heart VAST
Walking With Strangers The Birthday Massacre
Beautiful Tapping the Vein
Vapour Aleah
I am a Revenant The Distillers
Free Your Hate K.M.F.D.M.
Familiar Taste of Poison Halestorm
I Am the Rain Assemblage 23
Welcome to the End Bif Naked
My Way (Sid Vicious)The Sex Pistols
CUT SCENES
As with any work, sometimes changes have to be made. Oftentimes it’s because a better idea came along later. Sometimes, though, a scene may be amusing, but serve no other real purpose. Whatever the reason, a good chunk of one’s body of work ends up in the “archived” folder. Here are a few scenes from Resonance that never made it to publication.
RESONANCE CUT SCENE #1 “The Neighbors aren’t all right”
Resonance braked and cut the wheel sharply to avoid circling the block again, veering the car onto her road, and into the path of two figures.
The two raven-haired little girls occupying the pavement didn’t react as the car ground to a halt a mere foot from them, nor did they acknowledge its continued presence. Holding the skirts of their matching tangerine sundresses like they were about to curtsey, the girls sauntered in a circle around a storm grate embedded in the in the center of the asphalt. Their MaryJanes clicked in cadence as they trained their intent faces on whatever lay below the rusted metal grate.
Muttering a string of curses, Resonance mashed the Accord’s toll button, making the half-lowered window slide all the way into the door.
“Hey,” she called, leaning her head out, “You geniuses might want to move next time a car comes.” They momentarily stopped their circumambulation to turn their sallow faces up at her. Neither girl’s blank gaze registered any emotion. “You slow bussers get me?”
The girls simply watched her with expressionless apathy for a moment longer, and then lowered their heads, resuming their–
Game?
An unexplained chill traveled up Resonance’s spine. She grasped the wheel with suddenly sweaty palms, steering the car around them, driving halfway onto the sidewalk to do so. She peeled into the driveway with aggressive bravado, telling herself there was no reason to be rattled by a couple of potentially lobotomized knee-biters. Chiding herself, she climbed out of the car.
As the door banged shut, her neighbor’s door opened. A matronly woman with large glasses and lank, chin-length brown hair emerged. Resonance opened her mouth to tell the woman her children had nearly become road pizza, but the woman stuck her arm out and began flapping her hand in an exaggerated wave.
“Hiiiii, Neighbor,” the woman trilled in an ear-splitting falsetto. A foolish grin encompassed the lower half of her face, making her look like a pale jack-o-lantern.
Resonance gaped. For once, words wouldn’t come to her mouth. Too taken aback by the woman’s exuberant display to do anything else, she turned abruptly and pretended she’d forgotten something very important in her car. She resurfaced a few moments later to find the two girls had abandoned their diversion and were standing at the edge of their yard, impassively watching her. She looked past them to the mother, whose fleshy arm still flapped like a flag in the wind.
“Hiiiii, Neighbor.”
Resonance headed for the door, moving as fast as her pride would allow. Thankfully, it was unlocked. She pushed her way in, clicking the deadbolt behind her. She didn’t know why she was so rattled. After all, it was just a couple of strange kids and their freakshow mother.
Nothing to be worried about.
Reinforced by her reasoning, she hazarded a peek out the window. The girls stood shoulder-to-shoulder, gazing into the front window.
“Jesus Christ!” The exclamation was a mixture of annoyance and unease. As she yanked down the blinds with a vicious tug, she made sure the last thing the little maggots saw was her middle finger.
There was something majorly wrong with Tyne, no denying it.
RESONANCE CUT SCENE #2 Raising the Dead
Wyatt seized Quinn’s arm, dragging him backward.
They stood at a safe distance, watching tiny forms materialize like mist from a garden hose sprayed into the summer air. With the haze came first the smell of flowers, heady and sweet. As the clouds gave themselves a shadow of form, the odor became the suffocating stench of earth, bone and blood. The infantile hazes lingered there, straining to form in the cloying scent of their graves.
“This isn’t possible,” Quinn said.
“Apparently it is,” Wyatt’s forehead creased into a frown. “These children’s astral corpses have always been different. They’ve been here for a very long time, trapped in their graves by some form of magic.”
“Still, astral corpses don’t just jump up out of their coffins to say hello.”
“I think our power called to them.”
“How? That’s never happened before and we’ve passed this site dozens of times.”
“Maybe it’s that change we’ve been feeling, some outside factor allowing them to contact us.” Wyatt gazed thoughtfully at the shades for a few more moments, and then sighed. “Whatever caused it, we have to try to release them, or at least put them back. We can’t leave them hovering here like this. I should have helped them a long time ago… Before something like this… Stupid to leave them there, tortured…” Wyatt trailed off, his face a mask of misery and self-loathing.
Quinn gave his uncle a modicum of privacy by turning his attention to the materializing spirits. He closed his eyes, quieted his mind, and connected with the spark inside that fed his ability. Instantly, his head filled with a clamor of tiny voices, all howling for his attention. The spirit children’s plaintive calls stirred a mixture of horror and pity within him.
“They want our help,” he said. “They’re angry.”
“They were unfairly treated when they were tethered to their graves, and now that they have our attention, they want something done about it.” Wyatt’s voice held the detached quality Quinn had come to associate with the practitioner aspect of his uncle’s personality. “They want their turn to live.”
Initially, he had found his uncle’s removed professionalism cold and uncaring. Soon enough, though, he learned it was the only way to survive the continual parade of grief that, if not exactly brought on by him, was reinforced by his actions as both an aspiring mortician and necromancer.
The spirits writhed in the shadows, arms beseeching them to draw near enough to bring them to life. He shuddered, chills wracking his body. The sun still beat down mercilessly, but, for all he could tell, it shone on a different planet.
For these children, it did.
“They don’t know their bodies aren’t around anymore?” he whispered, careful not to draw their attention further.
“No.”
Power prickled along his skin, but this time it was the familiar–if not particularly pleasant–magic of Wyatt. He moved to stand beside his uncle. Although he was not certain what his uncle was about to do, he allowed his power to surge to the surface.
His heart constricted as their tiny consciousnesses reacted, channeling the hope of life towards him. Their momentary glee filled his mind. Mommy and Daddy, play, laughter, friends, love. It sliced through his chest–a knife edged so sharp with longing it nearly cleaved his heart. Then, he followed Wyatt’s lead and sealed it off, severing the painful link of humanity between them.
The only thing they had left in common now was death.
It was a lie to say he and Wyatt brought the deceased back to life. They only re-delivered them to the grave.
Wyatt had begun chanting, low and steady. He added his voice to the melody of the Release–the incantation used when freeing a Raised spirit. For a moment, the specters became clearer, solidified by both their struggle to become material and their outrage at their perceived betrayal.
A cry arose among them, a horrific, screeching parody of their living peers. Over the din his uncle raised his voice as his hands spread in the air, casting his supplication to the Beyond.
As suddenly as it began, the noise ceased. The spirits dissipated without further struggle, vanishing like powder in a breeze.
They were left standing by the graves, both of them breathless from the effort, and on his part, wretched guilt.
RESONANCE CUT SCENE #3 A Little Extortion Between Friends
This scene is from the first incarnation of the novel. It made it through one or two editing rounds, and then I cut it out, mostly for brevity’s sake, but also because I didn’t like the tone it set for Res and Wyatt’s relationship. But, it’s an amusing read on its own. It takes place just after the Massawangee Cypress Swamp Stone trial when Resonance is talking to the necromancers about her mother’s growing interest in Doug, and dissipating trust in her daughter.
************
“I’m sorry. If there’s anything I can do,” Wyatt said.
“You can give me a paycheck,” Resonance said.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” Wyatt’s eyes widened.
“You know what I said.” She gave a cool shrug. “I’ve kinda been telling Mom I’ve been coming here for on-the-job-training for the past two weeks. I told her it was without pay, which she flipped over, but then I told her it would be given to me in back pay after the three month probation period.” She paused to gauge Wyatt’s reaction–which took the form of a bulging vein in the middle of his forehead. “Soon, though,” she continued, biting back a smile, “she’s going to start harping on me about bringing home a check, so I thought you could just write me one. Eight hundred ought to cover it.”
“I–don’t, I…” Wyatt stammered.
“Come on, I won’t even cash it. I just need to show her something to get her off my back.”
“I can’t just… Why didn’t you…?” He turned an accusatory stare on Quinn. “Did you know about this?”
Quinn looked nonplussed.
“We haven’t been talking too much lately,” she answered, voice flat, eyes daring Quinn to speak. She shrugged again. “It’s no big deal, really. You don’t have to do it. Of course, Mom might come knocking on your door, demanding to know why I haven’t gotten paid. She would, you know. She thinks I’m a drooling idiot. Even worse, she’ll accuse me of funneling it all up my arm and turn me over to some rehab clinic in upstate New York, which would severely hamper my saving the world and all.”
“Are you always this manipulative?” Wyatt asked, the first hint of a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.
“Pretty much.” She flashed a wolfish grin.
“Why don’t you just get a job?”
“Please. I can barely look at people, let alone work with them. Besides, you’d rather have me here, memorizing all of your family journals and magic books and becoming your personal reference set, right?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Wyatt said, shaking his head. “You are a little extortionist aren’t you?”
“If I was that bad, I’d make you give me cash.”
“Thanks so much,” Wyatt replied dryly. “If your mother has questions”–he sighed audibly–“tell her to call me.”
Hell and Wheels 