My one regret about Darling Husband is that he insists he can't sing. I dream about a man who sings me love songs...

Hello from autumnal British Columbia!

With the weather cooling off I am both sad—since I'm always cold—but happy, too, since I can finally wear my new, super-warm, ridiculously fuzzy-on-the-inside Onesie!

I've already worn it out in public once, to walk the dog!

I sure do love life in a tiny town where I couldn't hide my couldn't-care-less-if-you-think-I'm-ridiculous attitude even if I wanted to.

So, theme songs... I thought of this yesterday while I was writing, working on the first book in my new series about four brothers who run a family business together.

I usually write in silence, but my darling husband sent me a link to a song he'd been trying to remember—which he wouldn't even hum to me which made it impossible to help him figure it out.

That link led me to look for more songs by the artist which led to a playlist with other singers and bands which had me listening to a song I used to love back in the early 90s.

It wasn't a theme song for me, but it is the perfect song for my heroine in my work-in-progress, The Billionaire's Shrubbery. She's a botanist and this song is called Feed The Tree by a band called Belly.

When this song came out in 1993, my husband and I bought the CD and listened to it often. Like... every day for months! It was a go-to for me when I wanted happy music to sing-along with while doing housework or making food.

And in 1996, when our Mini-me was born, I think that song had influenced us more deeply than just being a background soundtrack to our life because...

I took my sweet son's placenta home from the hospital and we buried it under a sapling in a relative's yard (since we were renting). My body literally fed that deodar cedar in the picture above. Look at those beautiful, feathery leaves.

My theme song changes with the seasons

Even though I don't have one song that I think of as my capital letter T, Theme song, there are many that become time-specific themes of my life. I listen to them ad nauseam and then... something shifts and I move on.

What's interesting is that each of the four books in my first series had one song that seemed to stick to it as the theme for that story. They were all found accidentally, part-way through writing the book, I'd hear the song and think,

That's the theme song for this book.

The weirder thing is that once a song has attached to a book I'm writing, it becomes highly charged. Like, makes me cry when I hear it kind of charge. It makes no sense at all since these are all songs that previously were just normal songs for me... not emotional triggers.

At times like this I wish I'd done a Masters degree in psychology!

As for the specific theme songs for each book? I'm not sure if they'd make sense to anyone other than me, but that's kind of the beauty of art and creativity, isn't it? How we connect and create meaning between unrelated things in our own unique ways.

And songs, for me, carry so much meaning, often with accompanying images of the times in my life when they were playing on repeat.

Do you have connections to certain songs that conjure images from your past?

Certain songs will always and forever make mu sister and me think of our dad. The Lawrence Welk Chicken Dance song, played on an accordion, being one of them. Before Dad died, he gifted his accordion to my then 19-year-old son who learned to play the Chicken Dance for his grandpoobah with only days to spare.

Hearing certain AC/DC songs always make me think of the first boy I loved in high school—the one I was sure I'd marry. Even though we're both happily married, I do wonder—if we're both widowed in our 70s, might we have a second chance romance?

A song that Darling Husband hates but is my theme song for our relationship, is Captain and Tennille's Love Will Keep Us Together. Whenever I'm irritated with him, I dance and sing along to that song—loudly!—and it brings me so much joy it seems to dissolve my frustration.

I could go on... I have so many connections between songs and the important people in my life.

I guess the characters in my books become important people in my life, too. It makes an amount of sense since I live with them in my head for months, wake up thinking about them, imagine how they'd act if they were in shows or movies I watch, put them into situations that make them suffer so they have to earn their happily ever after...

And now it's Virginia Beach who's on my mind.

Would Virginia wear a Onesie out in public? Yeah, she would—but hers would be custom-made by her talented seamstress sister, Georgia. And it wouldn't be a muted purple like mine. It would be in a fabric of bright greens that would let her camouflage in a greenhouse... feeding the tree.

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Well, those are the ramblings of an under-slept, over-caffeinated, emotionally-charged author this Saturday morning!

If you have a minute, let me know what song popped into your head while you read this email. Or what song you play to take you back to another time when you're feeling nostalgic. Or if you too, have a song you sing that helps you get past frustrations with people you care about.

One of those songs might just find their way into my creative process and my book... you never know!

love&singerlystuff,

Danika

xo

PS — If you missed the video of the former ballerina with dementia who hears the music from Swan Lake and remembers all her moves... grab a tissue and feel the power of music in this 1-minute clip.

PPS — The links in my last email - and the corrected ones! - were possessed. If you want a chance to win a paperback copy of First In, add Rhodes to Love to your Goodreads TBR list (www.goodreads.com/book/show/58779888-rhodes-to-love) and let me know in my Facebook group (www.facebook.com/groups/danikabloom).