Playlists come to me super intuitively as I ideate and write. I love music and my taste is wide, though not purposefully eclectic… I’m not a snob; I’m just as likely to listen to Chopin as Charli XCX. And as a synesthete, I have a bit of crossed wiring that causes me to “see” most songs, so part of the attraction is conveying the right aural and visual feel, alongside the affective or thematic one!
OF FLINT AND FORTUNE is like a Merchant Ivory romance mixed with a Sherlock Holmes story (the more unhinged ones Arthur Conan Doyle wrote before 1895) mixed with a ghost story (think M. R. James or Guillermo del Toro). Impeccable vibes that led to a satisfying playlist situation.
Here are five songs that jumped out at me:
Immortal—Eli Brown
A broody, wonderful house song that I first heard because Benny Benassi did a set in Venice on a boat during the first round of pandemic lockdowns, and I watched it on YouTube. (Venice and Benny Benassi are two of my favorite Italian things.)
The lyrics ask, “I keep dreaming; why can’t we live forever?” and if you’ve been reading my series Threads of Wyrd since the start, that may cause you pain because OF FLINT AND FORTUNE is devoted to expanding Paul Apollyon’s backstory. So if you started with LIKE SILK BREATHING… well, he’s very different there as compared to how he was in his 20s. You’ll also know that there is some (fade-to-black) dream sex with Ghost Alastair down the road. In a way, one of them does live forever! Past death, at least.
Everybody else: it’s less painful to start with The Kraken and The Canary and OF FLINT AND FORTUNE. And don’t worry, Paul and Alastair get their happy ending. I’m perverse, but not a monster.
Anyway, this one is a smooth groove and quite easy to listen to 87 times in a row if that’s your pleasure.
Maraiche—Niteworks feat. Kathleen MacInnes
Unfortunately, Alastair’s dad didn’t permit him to learn or speak Gaelic… which I think about every time I listen to any song in the language. (I think about it a lot because I listen to Niteworks almost daily.) This one is about someone who loses her lover to the sea, and Kathleen MacInnes’ voice is superb.
Thematically, Maraiche taps into the dreamy, intensely loyal nature of Alastair and Paul’s relationship. It definitely hints at the elements of loss and reuniting later in the series, but for the purposes of this book, it’s more emblematic of the yearning they both experience for each other.
I get a lot of indigo with this one.
Gasoline—Halsey
Here’s one for our new antagonist, Bertie, who is Alastair’s rabid ex-situationship! He’s… unwell. This song didn’t inspire Bertie, but it fits him.
Halsey manages to capture something paradoxical and vulnerable in their music, and this is no exception—if you listen, it’s brash, but self-aware and unapologetic, but it sounds like the narrator (Gasoline comes from Halsey’s actual life experience) kinda wants somebody to notice their “heart is gold” amidst all their self-directed chaos.
Is that what Bertie wants? Maybe.
Jungle (Rico Nasty remix)—Fred again..
My reasoning behind this one started simply: it helped me enter the flow state and write faster because it’s something you’d jog to. Then I put it together that the lyrics, especially in Rico Nasty’s verses (which aren’t in the original version), encapsulate the old version of Alastair. They capture the feral attitude he had to use as an effect, and what he had to tell himself about love to get through life pre-Paul.
Throughout this book, he’s really warring with his outdated self—it’s not the version of himself he wants Paul to know, but it’s still causing consequences years later. A lot of us have been there with a partner, particularly if we care about them and don’t want to disappoint them, or maybe that’s just me and my attachment wounds.
Beehive—Mark Lanegan
I can’t decide if I prefer the original or the remixes, so I’m using the original here. The lyrics are feverish, the riff is great (welcome back, Mark from the Screaming Trees era).
The whole vibe suits OF FLINT AND FORTUNE because nothing is quite as it seems, everyone is unsettled, and overall, we do see Alastair and Paul’s love deepen. They’re really almost like a Victorian-era Gomez and Morticia Addams.
Threads of Wyrd #2
Thirteen months of idyll have transpired since reformed petty criminal Alastair Gow moved in with pub landlord (and gifted seer) Paul Apollyon. When de facto marital bliss gives way to preternatural weirdness, unflappable Paul is unwilling to let Alastair face his past alone.
First, a regular customer delivers words of caution from a ghost. Second, Paul has a spate of ominous visions. Third, the new maid finds a dead crow hanging from the pub’s front door.
As though that’s not enough to be dealing with, a former colleague of Alastair’s arrives without warning, maintaining Alastair owes him. The new chaos seems connected to a past good deed—Alastair can admit to the deed itself. He just doesn’t want to own what it enabled him to do. As he and Paul find themselves forced into an absurd search for lost smugglers’ loot, proper vulnerability proves more daunting than prospective peril. But Alastair doesn’t expire from telling the truth, and Paul is as steadfast as ever.
Then, another poor corvid serves as a sinister message... and the man who leaves it will stop at nothing to have Alastair for himself.
Romance Fantasy | Romance LGBTQ [Oliver-Heber Books, On Sale: August 26, 2025, e-Book, / ]
Camille is a thalassophile who sadly spent too long residing in Chicago, where there’s just a very large lake and no sea. Their stories are often called things like dreamy, evocative, or liminal; things are rather dark and generally take place by an ocean. Inspired by folklore, theatre, and romantic and literary fiction, Camille is always playing with expectations. Once you explore the depths with them, you may not want to emerge.
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