Chapter 18 | "Winter Time” by Steve Miller Band

In the winter time

When all the leaves are brown

And the wind blows (so chill)

And the birds have all flown for the summer

I'm callin'

Hear me callin'

Hear me callin'

Anyone who was alive in the 1970s and 80s, living in the United States, and had access to a radio knows a minimum of five Steve Miller Band songs. They were as inescapable as Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” or Pink Floyd’s “Money.” Their ubiquity means my memories on first exposure to any of them are non-existent; they’ve just always been there.

When I was looking for the perfect song for Chapter 18, I needed something that spoke to an indistinct, but palpable, precarious teetering on the edge of potential for things yet to come.

Easy, right?

Though I do love auditioning songs to go with chapters, sometimes it can be a challenge, especially when I have a very clear vibe I’m looking for. It’s a crapshoot whether I’ll come up with something right away or if that Chapter will have a “TBD” placeholder until it comes to me. With this one, it was TBD until I was nearly finished writing the book, but then “Winter Time” popped up in my shuffle and there it was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUv7pXgZ9NA

Autumn’s Playlist: Hear Them Calling

The further along I’m getting in this playlist series, the more difficult it becomes to speak to the songs without revealing too much about what’s happening in the chapters. For this one, all I’ll say is Chapter 18 covers several situations where Autumn has choices to make.

In some cases, the stakes are fairly low and whichever path she chooses may not seem to be particularly consequential—not right now, anyway—while others are clearly fairly significant the fork-in-the-road type of choices.

This theme of choices and their ripple effects will show up again later, and again, and again, and it will carry through to the books to come.

Irish playwright Oscar Wilde famously said “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life,” and while that may be true, in this case, it’s absolutely the latter—Art imitates Life.