November 12, 2012

Featured New Book: Haunted by Maria Savva

I’ve spoken so often of my association with the group at Bestseller Bound that I’m surprised you all haven’t come and joined me over there. We’d love to have great authors who are committed to the idea that the success of one is the success of all.

Today’s featured author is Maria Savva, one of the founding authors of Bestseller Bound. She’s got a new book out, and it’s one I’m curious to see in its finished state. It’s dark, very dark, and it’s well named. This book has haunted me since I closed the file.

Without further ado… Maria, what song makes you think of your book?

How Will I Laugh Tomorrow… by Suicidal Tendencies.

This song features in the book; well, the title is mentioned. It’s one of the songs Nigel Price, the protagonist, is listening to in his car before an event that changes his life forever. It’s like after he hears this song, that’s the turning point. And, it is also a song that plays at the end of the novel, evoking memories of the past. The question for the reader with this book is how much of it is reality and how much of it is imagined? That brings to mind the lyrics: “Sometimes I got to think to myself is this life or death,
Am I living or am I dead?”

In my opinion, although he commits a crime, I feel that Nigel is a victim too and have tried to show this in the book. I think the lyrics:

“And I tried to tell you but not a word I say
Cried out so loudly but you just covered your ears
I gave you all the signs but you ignored my tears”

could apply to Nigel. There were signs that he would end up doing what he did, or something similar. No one in his life seemed to be able to stop that from happening.

The following verse in particular, reflects Nigel’s frame of mind throughout most of the book:

“search for personality, I look for things I cannot see
Love and peace flash through my mind,
pain and hate is all I find
Find no hope in nothing new
and I never had a dream come true
Lies and hate and agony, through my eyes that’s all I see”

It’s a dark book, and Nigel’s emotions are dark. The line, “How will I laugh tomorrow, when I can’t even smile today?” just sums up everything that Nigel is feeling.

Originally, I used the song “Born to be Wild” as the song Nigel was playing before the life changing event happened. But one day I was listening to “How Will I Laugh Tomorrow…” and I posted a link to Twitter. One of my Twitter friends tweeted and said how much he loved this song and that it was probably his favourite ever. It started me thinking how much I had always loved this song, and when I went back to editing Haunted, which I was in the process of doing at the time, it suddenly occurred to me that this song would be perfect because the angry dark tone of the lyrics really suited Nigel’s state of mind.