It should be said that I love music. I am almost never without it playing, including when I write. In fact, I’ve written all my novels to the same Pandora station that I created way back in 2008, when I wrote the first one. Perhaps it’s superstition, perhaps it’s Pavlovian, but I write better when those same songs are filling my mind and fueling my words. Today I am sharing five songs that in some way tie into my latest novel, EVERY MOMENT SINCE.
The Power of Love by Huey Lewis and the News
In the book an 11-year-old boy named Davy goes missing in the fall of 1985 and is never seen again. At the time of his disappearance, he is wearing a jacket his mother made for him, meant to match the one Marty McFly wore in Davy’s favorite movie Back to the Future. It is that same jacket that is discovered at the beginning of the book, igniting the cold case investigation and affecting four people who have lasting ties to the night Davy disappeared. While writing, any time I heard this song I felt that little nudge to keep at it, to keep believing in this story I felt I had to tell.
Shame on the Moon by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
When I initially began this story, I envisioned a full moon shining down on the empty cornfield where Davy was last seen. Then one day I decided to check the moon phases for the night I had designated. My heart sank when I saw there was not a full moon that night, but barely a sliver. Immediately I began casting around for another night to set the story. Then it occurred to me that maybe the sliver of a moon was better than a bright, full one. Maybe with very little light, Davy’s disappearance would be even more plausible. So, I went with that. Around that time, I heard Shame on the Moon on the radio and smiled to myself. “Shame on the moon, indeed,” I thought to myself. And that line actually made it into the book.
Into My Arms by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
There were several times during the writing of this book that I came close to calling it quits. One morning as I was feeling very low and hopeless about the whole thing, I was driving my daughter to school and happened upon a feature on U2 Radio (Sirius XM) in which Bono talks about songs that saved his life. That morning, he talked about Into My Arms, and talked about how it came out of Nick Cave’s loss of his son. I gripped the steering wheel tighter. I was writing about a family who had lost a son. Then Bono said, “All I discovered is… there is no end to grief, that’s how we know there is no end to love.” I went home and searched the U2 website until I found the quote—just to verify I’d heard it right—then went into the manuscript and changed my epigraph to that. And then I went back to writing.
The Boys of Summer by Don Henley
Every Moment Since revolves around a night when a bunch of kids decided to play games in an abandoned cornfield. I was also a kid in 1985, and remember the music from that time very well. This song, to this day, remains my all-time favorite song. So to hear it while I was writing the book was to go back to being a kid in 1985, and helped me connect with my characters all the more.
Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien by Edith Piaf
When Davy’s mother, Tabitha, became a character, I saw her in my mind, but from a distance and not at all clearly. Her back was to me, slightly bent as she hunched over a kitchen counter, scribbling something. I couldn’t figure out what she was writing, but I knew it was important—central to her character. It took me a bit to figure out that she was writing a regret list, and that she wrote one faithfully every week. I also discovered that, at the end of every list she scrawled “Je ne regrette rien” (I regret nothing!). But of course, she did regret a lot of things, and her story came out of that.
A small Southern town. An ordinary Saturday night. A little boy disappears without a trace.
Everyone in Wynotte, North Carolina, knows the name Davy Malcor. Knows the video clip of him juggling four balls, "All at the very same time!" Knows the Marty McFly jacket his mother made for his birthday that he wore proudly, and often. But no one knows what happened to him the night he went missing more than twenty years ago.
When the jacket is unexpectedly uncovered, the cold case reopens, and Davy's family is thrust into yet another media storm. But at the heart of the story are four people forever changed by one single night: Thaddeus Malcor, Davy's older brother, created the life of his dreams by writing a bestselling memoir about his family's experience and is enjoying success and notoriety as a result, even if the memoir doesn't quite reveal the whole story. Tabitha Malcor, his mother, is divorced and living alone, advocating for victims' rights and faithfully cataloging her regrets each week, never including her biggest regret of all. Anissa Weaver was just a kid herself when Davy went missing, and her connection to him is one she cannot reveal as she serves as the Malcor family's Public Information Officer. And, long suspected in Davy's disappearance, Gordon Swift has kept his head down and scraped together a decent life. But the new attention to the case makes it impossible to hide from the public, and the past.
With hauntingly vivid prose, Marybeth Mayhew Whalen peels back the curtain on the inner turmoil of those who were left behind in the small Southern community as they pick up the pieces that remain and press forward into the light to find hope and healing.
Suspense [Harper Muse, On Sale: October 1, 2024, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781400345021 / ]
Marybeth Whalen and her husband Curt celebrated 20 years of marriage in 2011. They are the parents of 6 children, ranging in age from college to kindergarten. Marybeth spends most of her time in the grocery store but occasionally finds time to scribble some words so she can share the stories in her head with others.
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