Teague was driving. He came up to me as we were loading up, holding up his iPod, which was loaded just like mine.

“Bleed it Out?” he asked hopefully, and I grinned. I don’t know what I looked like, but his grin back was ferocious and bloodthirsty, and nobody had better fuck with us because we were bad fucking business.

“Bleed it out!” I answered back. We bashed closed fists together and got ready to roll.

I don’t know when we had started the tradition of listening to head-banging music on the way to our ass-kicking runs—I think I just started co-opting the stereo and playing stuff that got me pumped. It didn’t matter, because when Teague joined us in November, the tradition became locked in stone. Now we even had a couple of playlists culled from iPods full of every metal, rock, or alternative CD produced in the last twenty years.

Without a doubt, the vampires’ favorite was Adrian’s favorite—Linkin Park—and their hands-down, love-it-forever, rhythm-pumped-in-their-veins favorite kickass song was “Bleed It Out.” We’d built a four-hour playlist around that song, and on nights like this, it felt good to thunder that shit through our veins.

 —from Rampant, Part II, out in November​


About ten years ago I was standing outside of my classroom, welcoming my fifth period in, and wishing I was dead.Or in hell.

Or anywhere but in front of that classroom.

Because my administrator hated me—this is not an exaggeration. He designed this class to make my life miserable so I’d quit.  It was a class of thirty-two juniors at the beginning of the year. Fourteen of the thirty-two students were bound for continuation school.  Twelve of those continuation school students were male.
When I say, “bound for continuation school” this doesn’t mean I was meanly assessing their future. It means they were in their third year of high school and had passed fewer than three classes in two and a half years. They were going to continuation school—they’d been looking forward to it, and at the end of the first semester, they could get the hell out of regular school and go to a place where they could work on packets undisturbed. If they didn’t just drop out completely.

These kids had nothing to lose, they hated authority, hated school, hated female teachers, and I got them after lunch.

As they stomped up the walkway, swearing loudly, I waved them inside, humming Get Set Go’s “I Hate Everyone”. 

I didn’t actually hate everyone. In fact, twenty of the students in the room were really wonderful. I just had to send everybody else to the office before I taught the kids who weren’t there specifically to cause trouble. (The school secretary loved me this year. She was like, “Really? You have all those kids in the same class? I mean, I’m used to seeing them in here all day, but you have to refer them all, every day!”) And as the students filed up, one of the quieter girls, a sweet, big-eyed C-student who worked her ass off for every point, heard me singing and started laughing.

“I know that song,” she said, and we both giggled.

It got me in the door.

As I was leading eighteen out of thirty-two kids through warm up, I started humming it again. My co-conspirator whispered to the girl next to her, and they both burst into giggles.  I hummed it as I wrote referrals, hummed it as I waited for the chaos to die down, and the kids who were tired of the bullshit—and who, in fact, had seen these twelve boys bring down a lot of the classes they’d been in—joined me in my small musical rebellion.

For that class, thanks to Get Set, Go, we were a united front.Fast forward three years later.

I haven’t been in my classroom for a year and a half, and now it’s time to retrieve what I left when I was pulled unceremoniously out of it for giving a student a book.

It’s been vacant for six months, a dumping ground for unused desks. With the exception of over a thousand dollars of resource books that were taken by other teachers, all my stuff is shoved into boxes, with trash and pencil shavings, the remainder of fifteen years of dedicated service to this school.

I am angry and grieving.

A friend has (against my wishes, actually) insisted on accompanying me. I don’t want to talk, and I plug my iPod into the stereo I brought—I’ve loaded the iPod for this occasion.

“Bleed it Out”, “Numb”, “Seven Nation Army”, “Let it Rock”, “No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn”, “I Hate Everyone”, “Thunderstruck”, “Seeds”, “Little Suzy”, “Turn Up the Radio”—the list was over seventy-five songs long, and every song had a part I could scream at the top of my lungs.

My friend tried to get me to bring home student projects, misguidedly thinking I was there to retrieve stuff of practical value. I couldn’t argue with her—I turned up the volume of the stereo and screamed “Bleed it Out” until my throat was raw.

It was the only narrative I had.

I used to tell my students—and I still tell my children and young writers—that music is the closest thing mortals get to time travel.

The melody evokes our emotion, the instrumentation stimulates our reason, the words give us language and narrative, and the rhythm embeds it in physical response.  It’s the perfect memory stimulator, and one auditory prompt can take us back to an exact moment of our past with heartrending clarity.

In short, you can be forty years old and working in Michigan in the winter, but one half-heard bar of the song that came out in the top forty of your senior year, and you are suddenly seventeen and walking barefoot on the hot asphalt of your hometown, wondering what the future will bring after high school.

For me, it was “Boys of Summer” by Don Henley, but I’m sure you have your own summer songs.

So music is a powerful storytelling element, and one I find myself going to—sometimes consciously and sometimes instinctively—again and again.

I have two entire books--Mourning Heavenand Racing for the Sun--that were inspired by Bruce Springsteen songs. I get frequent pings on social media telling me, “I heard ‘Gypsy Biker’ today—oh God—Michael!”  or “’Racing in the Streets’ kills me every time!” I wrote an entire book (it almost counts as two, given the length!) about a rock star named Mackey Sanders, and that playlist can crack a heart wide open. In particular, “In One Ear” by Cage the Elephant, Johnny Cash’s version of “Hurt” (where the title, Beneath the Stain, comes from) and “Wish You Were Here” from Pink Floyd hit people right in the solar plexus.  “The Ocean” by The Bravery has a few hearts breaking too.

Music has the power to brand a character, a mood, a moment, indelibly on the minds of the reader. It has the power to unite a group of readers around a book to say, “Yes! That moment right there! That moment is part of the human experience and we claim it as our own!”

It’s an intoxicating sensation—and one ripe for the taking—but it does need to be used with care.

I spent an awful lot of time as a teacher begging students to listen to the songs they were dancing to.
“What’s it saying?” I would demand. “Do the lyrics say something the music doesn’t?”

I used music a lot when I was studying American Romanticism, and one of my favorite exercises was to play Bruce Springsteen’s My Hometown and Bowling for Soup’s My Hometown and make the kids fill out a chart that looked something like this for each song:

Topic:
Mood:
Tone:
Summarize one of the stories told in the song:
What was the moral of the story:
Underlying message of whole song:

When we got to the end of the exercise, the kids were compelled to admit it—the same title did not the same song make. Then I would ask them to bring in one song that they would use to teach with one of the poems or stories we’d covered—and the results were, often, inspiring.

But they had to do the headwork first.  They couldn’t just grab Tupac or Green Day of the shelves and come in singing, “We did our homework!”  They had to think.

And as writers, if we’re going to reference a song, one we think will brand this story in so very many ways, we need to think.

In 1985, Ronald Reagan called Bruce Springsteen a patriot because he wrote a song called “Born in the U.S.A.”.  The song was an anti-war, pro-veteran benefit song that pretty much opposed most of Reagan’s cherished political hot buttons. The press didn’t let him forget it.

Not getting a musical choice right in a book right might not be that dire—or that memorable—but it does pull the reader out of the work. Instead of having someone say, “Yes! That song and these human beings! They are together twined in my heart!” you might have them say, “Well, dude. Worst D.J. EVER.”

So, within the bounds of acceptable use (which, for those of us in the indie presses means we can reference a song but not quote it, chapter titles being the only exception) a memorable soundtrack can give a work incredible depth and resonance.

But while you’re playing D.J. to your characters, never settle for the easy song, or the song everybody’s listening to at the moment. Be as careful with your song choices as you are with your character choices—if it’s a song you might be embarrassed to love ten years down the road, maybe go for something more classic. If it’s a song you find yourself screaming while dreaming of your enemy’s blood, maybe not for a sex scene, unless it’s hatesex, and that’s a whole different thing.

Music is the ultimate in communication. It’s time travel in a sound file, an instant mood-in-a-box with a single line. (Bruce Springsteen once established mood and ironyin a song by mentioning another song in the lyrics. Damn.)

It’s a powerful tool in a writer’s imagination—as long as it’s wielded with grace and love.
​
And a little bit of homework when studying the lyrics, so the song says exactly what you want it to, in the moment when it counts the most.

I’ll be honest.  My first warning usually comes when a friend or a colleague says to me, “Oh, you’re so brave!”

Sounds like a compliment, doesn’t it?  Uh-huh. Brave—we all want to be brave, right?

It might be, but “You’re so brave!” for me is usually followed by an Amy Lane sized crap-bomb that could spatter a city block. When my nearest and dearest are saying, “You’re so brave!” they are not infrequently edging away from me, reaching into boxes for rain ponchos and checking to make sure their kaiju shelters are stocked for the shitstorm to come.

For example, when my bestie and beta reader got to the end of Immortal, she said, “Oh, Amy—you’re so brave to kill off both main characters and have their happy ever after happen as they wandered the forest around their homes after death.” This translated into, “People will hate this ending. They will loathe it. They will .gif bomb the crap out of you on Goodreads, and you won’t understand and cry on me until my cornflakes get soggy from 3000 miles away.”

And because I was me, I put my little tin hat on, grabbed my broomstick, mounted my dying pony and galloped right into that windmill and got knocked right on my ass.

Because “You’re so brave!” actually means “You wrote out of the box again, dumbass!” and there are consequences for writing out of the box.

The fact is, people often read genre fiction for comfort. It’s one of the (unfair!) reasons romance readers get smacked around in the press: for a romance reader, the happy ever after is a requirement of the game. This doesn’t mean we don’t have solid or uplifting prose, or beautiful themes or social relevance—but it does mean that by the end of the book, people had better, by God, be comforted about their world, about the importance of love and the importance of the individual heart versus the heartless society, or people are going to be solidly pissed off.

Which is unfortunate, because many of us weren’t that fond of boxes to begin with—that’s why we became writers.

Now, a writer doesn’t have to go all homicidal with his or her main characters to be considered “out of the box”—sometimes, it’s as simple as changing subgenre or using a different style for a different series.
The change may feel organic and natural to the author—but again, people read genre fiction for comfort. For someone who adores the rhythm of paranormal romance—the same world but a different couple with each book—having the series expand into urban fantasy might put some people off.  If an author dances the prose arabesque in Regency historical novels, switching to a clipped, dialogue-esque style for a WWII drama might be a challenge for established readers as well. Moving from contemporary romance to romantic suspense might be the one thing that turns off an otherwise staunch fan for life.

It’s a risk.

And it’s a tough one for an author to make.

Reading the first reviews after a change like this is enough to make an author—any author—go fetal with writer’s remorse.

My Mate and I have had this conversation more than once.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“I thought you’d gotten up?”

“I’m going back to bed.”

“For how long?”

“Forever.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m crying so hard I can’t breathe!”

“But why?”

“Because they hate it! They hate it! Hate it! Hate it!”  (Imagine the machine-gun rhythm of deep chest sobs here.)

“Oh, come on, they can’t hate it that badly.”

“They said it was a shitty knock-off of a Nicholas Sparks novel.”

“But you don’t even read Nicholas Sparks!”

“I KNOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW…”

So, no—not so easy to deal with. So why do it?

Well, there are a lot of reasons an author might make a genre or subgenre switch.

Sometimes it’s evolution—I know there is more than one author who has started out with a paranormal romance and had it sprawl into urban fantasy. Some authors start out writing strictly heterosexual romance only to find other couplings or triplings occur with side characters they originally hadn’t planned to speak much more than a walk-on line.  It is very possible for an author who started in fantasy to find that the mystery or the quest in a contemporary setting is just as exciting, and then we have an action/adventure romance.

For some authors it’s philosophy. The author who gloried in horror and the ironic ending in her youth may want the sweetness of romance as time progresses. The author who once swore loudly that vampires were never going to be her thing might see a movie or a TV show and realize the poignant possibilities of dating a societally shunned member of the undead.  A contemporary author can become interested in genealogy, and boom! You have a fledgling historical romance writer in your midst.

Sometimes it’s just wandering attention. (Guess—I dare you. Guess where Amy belongs?)  I’ve read and loved paranormal romance, historical romance, urban fantasy, fantasy, science fiction, contemporary and suspense.  For the last couple of years, suspense has been my candy—starting with Karen Kijewsky and Sue Grafton, then moving to J.D. Robb, Lee Childs, Kathy Reichs, and Karen Rose.

Fish Out of Water is a murder mystery—and I know that’s going to put folks off. (Okay, yes—that conversation with Mate? I had that this morning. But it wasn’t the first time. He knows the drill by now.) For me, a murder mystery is still a romance—but it’s got the added excitement of shit-go-boom before you see pecs! (And peen. Yes, I do like writing my peen.)  But it all comes down to that original idea about writing outside the box.

What’s the worst that could happen if you step outside the box?

Well, some folks might scream “Get back in there! The box is now deformed and it scares me!” As a species in a constantly evolving world, we are remarkably intolerant of change.

But some folks might squeal, “Oh my God! I love the shape of that box! It’s my favorite shape! I’ve been waiting for you to assume that shape the entire time!”

And some folks might laugh. “I knew it was your box. Because it’s your box. An Amy-box might be square or oval or dodecahedronal—but it is still an Amy box, and I love those boxes!”


You just never know.

In fact, the one thing I do know is myself. I have a wandering brain, and it gets bored in the box. If I am going to keep fresh, if I am going to continue writing because it is the thing I love most, I need to get out of the box once in a while and maybe change its shape.

So I guess my advice for a writer wondering about stepping outside the established genre box is to imagine that whole “crawling back in bed” scenario I presented at the beginning.

What if it’s you, and you’ve read your first reviews and you’re doing the fetal curl in your bed with your boo-boo bear and your dogs and your Mate and a giant box of Oreos as you sob.

What next?

Do you call your agent or your editor and say, “No. No more. I refuse. I will never step outside the box again because my nose just got cut off and it frickin’ hurts!”

Or do you finish your Oreos, wipe your nose on your Mate, pat the dogs on the head and crawl back out to try again?

When I was a kid, I had to take the driver’s test four times. Four. The first two times, I blame the car. It was a push button shift with bad power brakes and it yawed like the Titanic.  The third time, it was just killed confidence. That was time my dad got into the car and I was sprawled on the bench seat of the giant Chevy truck, sobbing.

My father is not as compassionate as my Mate.

“What’s wrong with you? Get up!”

“I FAAAAAIIILLLLLLLLEEEEEDDDDDDDD….”

“So the hell what—no, I’m not driving. You’re driving home!”

“I’m never driving AGGGGGAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIINNNNN…”

“Bullshit. Now stop making that noise and get behind the wheel.”

I still cried all the way home—but dammit, I drove!  Because we live in Northern California, and there was no public transportation near my parents’ house, and the only way I was going to grow up, get a job, and get the hell out of Loomis was to get my damned driver’s license.

Even then, I was desperate to get out of the box, right?

And I passed the next test. Because we do what we gotta.

So it’s scary—very scary—sticking your neck out. And sometimes, you’re gonna whack your head on a pole or the sidewalk or a car or something.

But eventually, if you keep trying, being outside of the box is going to feel natural.  It’s going to feel comforting. It’s going to be a new, improved box, and you can live there as long as you want.
​
Until you look outside again—and remember you’re tough enough to do it this time. And it’s worth it, because you like the view outside the box.