Here’s a Little Song I Wrote

I’ve always enjoyed romance stories that feature a character with an artistic/creative bent.

Whether it’s a painter, sculptor, singer, cake decorator, writer or photographer. Matisse, in Brushstrokes of Love, is a painter. Zac in Country Haven is a singer, as is his cousin Dean in A Song and a Dance.  Some of my other ‘Work in Progress’ characters include a photographer (actually, more than one story features a photographer – but as a keen amateur in that regard, I guess it’s a case of write what you know), a ballerina, a muralist, and a candy maker. (well, I think the traditional hard rock candy making process is very creative - coming up with flavours and designs).

I’ve read many musician/singer stories where the author of the book has included lyrics ‘written by the character’ either when the character is singing onstage or included at the start of every chapter. When I started writing Country Haven, I thought it would be a point of difference to go one step further and have an actual song recorded as if the character in the book, in this case Zachariah Mayne, were a real country singer.

The lyrics were mostly written, I just had to figure out how to turn them into a country song.

But it was something I had no idea how to go about it. I tried a few different avenues including asking a friend to see if her very talented son would be willing to help. Country music wasn’t his thing, but he did suggest I try Fiverr. So began a quest to turn my almost complete lyrics into an actual song.

It was a big learning curve, and it took a more than one attempt with different songwriters to get the sound I wanted. But I was glad I persevered because I had almost convinced myself to just go with what I had, even though it wasn’t quite right... I rolled the dice one last time and was well pleased with the final result.

Originally, I thought it would be cool to have a whole album by the character and somehow convince a top singing star to sing incognito, so the mystery of the singer’s identity would help drive book sales. But maybe that’s something to revisit at a later date.

Country Haven, A Song and a Dance and the third book in the Mackellar Country Romance series feature singers, so there is more potential for songs to be written and recorded.

Now I can add country music songwriter to my CV.

You listen to the song here:  Darlin’