The Witch's Kiss - Music To Evoke Tone

I am excited to kick of The Witch's Kiss blog tour! How exciting! Never been the first in a blog tour before, to my knowledge! Anyway, today, I want to welcome the authors (and sisters) Elizabeth and Katharine Corr! 

Now, for those of us who don't know what The Witch's Kiss is about, here is me trying to explain it...

Meredith (Merry) is fed up. Fed up feeling invisible at school. Fed up with her feuding family. Fed up with magic shooting out of her fingers every time she's stressed. So when she meets Jack, she falls for him and falls hard. Only sweet, sensitive Jack is possessed. Well, periodically possessed with a centuries old curse. Will true love's kiss save the day? Or is Meredith not only losing her heart, but about to lose her life as well? 

Does that wet your appetite? Well, if you (like me) are on the hunt for new music, both Elizabeth and Katharine kindly created a playlist of songs that evoke the tone and mood of this story. Now, I would embed the songs into the post, but I won't as Katharine did all the links (so you better click and listen to them, you lovely people) and I wanted to show you the cover of the book (as it looks pretty cool and thorny...)

So, before I go further, I would like to thank Katharine and Elizabeth for taking time out for writing this post and to Vicki for asking if I wanted to be involved in this tour. So, with them out of the way, I  will hand it over to Katharine and Elizabeth - take it away!

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Here’s the thing: neither of us can actually write with any noise going on at all. It’s like we have to channel our (stereotypical) inner librarians: there must be ABSOLUTE SILENCE in the work place. Which is too bad, because we both love music of all types. Our protagonist in The Witch’s Kiss, Merry, also sings (badly) and listens to music – actually, singing turns out to be pretty important in her world…

So, we’ve tried to pull together a brief list of some of the songs that really evoke, for us, the mood of the story and the goings-on within. 

"The Weight of Living, Part II" – Bastille

This song explores both the headlong rush of feeling that you’re suddenly getting to be a grown up, and the fear that somehow you’re not quite doing it right… The lyrics of the first verse sum up what’s going through Merry’s head in the first bit of the novel: Now that you are here, suddenly you fear you’ve lost control…Do you like the person you’ve become?

"Jar of Hearts" – Christina Perri

The background (and the centre, in a way) to our story is the version of Sleeping Beauty we created, called The King of Hearts in the novel. Key lyrics here are those of the chorus, which rather echo the King of Hearts’ activities: …running round leaving scars, collecting your jar of hearts, and tearing love apart…

"Faded" – Alan Walker ft. Iselin Solheim

The vocals here are wonderfully eerie, tying into the fairy-tale atmosphere we’re trying to evoke. Also, we think the lyrics capture how Jack, our Sleeping Beauty, might be feeling: the monsters running wild inside of me, I’m faded…so lost, I’m faded. After all – he has been asleep for a seriously long time…

"Poison" – Rita Ora

Merry knows she shouldn’t get close to Jack, but still. That’s why this song works:  Nothing could kill me like you do. You're going straight to my head…I pick my poison and it's you. And poison is pretty common in fairy tales: poisoned apples, sleeping potions, black thorns exuding deadly venom… 

"Fix You" – Coldplay

The relationship between Merry and her brother Leo is such an important part of The Witch’s Kiss, at least as important as the romantic relationship. Fix You expresses Leo’s desire to help his sister, even when he knows there may not be much he can actually do: Lights will guide you home, and ignite your bones, and I will try to fix you. 

"We Might As Well Be Strangers" – Keane

Another older song, but we love how it describes the pain and isolation of love going wrong, as it so often does: I don’t know your thoughts these days; we’re strangers in an empty space. I don’t understand your heart; it’s easier to be apart.

"Radioactive" – Imagine Dragons

We always wanted to write Merry as a forceful & determined hero: some kind of Buffy/Maleficent genetic mash-up. And this, with its awesome bass line, is the song for that moment where the hero finally gets her stuff together: All systems go, the sun hasn’t died, deep in my bones, straight from inside, I’m waking up, I feel it in my bones, enough to make my system blow…

"I Lived" – One Republic

This would be perfect for the closing credits if The Witch’s Kiss ever gets made into a film: with every broken bone, I swear I lived. We’re keeping our fingers crossed!