I had a very lengthy, thoughtful, "meaty" post planned for tonight, which would have been a very nice change of pace for some of my readers, I know, but...hm. I dunno exactly what happened to it. I think I just decided now was not the right time. Maybe later will be the right time. But for some reason, it wasn't tonight.
Instead, I'm going to go work on my next story. That means this post has to be short, but I want to hereby promote The Afters' CD Never Going Back to Okay as the unofficial album of the second book in what I think I will call the Red Dragon Cycle. (Book I: The Dragon's Herald, Book II: The Dragon Hunter, Book III:...actually, I'ma keep that title under wraps for now) I love, love, love this album. I like every song individually (even, on a good day, MySpace Girl), but the disc as a whole is far better than the sum of its parts. Quite unintentionally, every song has made some connection to a character or scene I've got planned for the next book. It's helped me hammer out what will be the main themes and how they'll dictate the surviving characters' lives through the final two chapters of this story arc. The last couple of songs practically wrote parts of the book for me. I'm really excited to see where this one goes.
So, in case your interest is peaked, I've put together a playlist of the whole thing on YouTube, you can have a listen if you like.
This has been an unofficial WBW endorsement/recommendation.
