First, you certainly should have noticed it by now, but in case you haven’t, there is music on the Home Page of this site. The controls to turn it up or down or off are just to the right of LATEST UPDATES box, but I think it is quite haunting (a little eerie and a little sad and a little uplifting, too), and I once listened to it for more than thirty-six hours continuously (I fell asleep writing , as I often do, and slept on the keyboard so it was even in my dreams). It’s helping me finish STRANGE FATE. The tenth and last book in the NIGHT WORLD series is about Sarah Strange, who lives up to her name by having some pretty weird dreams. Poor Aradia, the blind seeress of the Night World, predicted the Apocalypse a long, long time ago. The epic STRANGE FATE cuts that long time down to a year, so that you’ll see all the soulmated couples as they are after about a year of living, learning, and loving. Some even get married—and one couple ends up expecting the patter of tiny footsteps. Don’t even ask who, because it’s a deep, dark secret.

So, anyway, the music. I feel a little eerie and haunted and so does Aradia and this music helps me write. It’s really called “Arcadia” but anyone who has read BLACK DAWN knows that this was Aradia’s pseudonym in the book so clearly it is Aradia’s Theme. It comes free from a fabulously talented guy named Kevin MacLeod who has about a thousand little musical pieces, including a number of his own works, like Arcadia, all completely free to anyone for anything. Royalty free. All he asks is credit. Here is his site, Incompetech: http://incompetech.com.  He has also worked on:

• Hugo (2011)
• Zakumi: The      Animated Series (2010)
• Simon and      Emily
• Dr. Who      (original series) DVD extras
• Colonial      Radio Theatre "King Solomon’s Mines" audio drama
• programming      for the BBC, CBC, ABC, A&E, and others.
• Ads for      Coke, GM, Subaru, and... many, many others.

You can search for the kind of music you want by the genre or the “feel” of it. I chose the feelings Mystical, Eerie, Unnerving, and Uplifting and got Aradia—I mean Arcadia. The word Arcadia, according to Wikipedia, “refers to a vision of pastoralism and harmony with nature.” That’s good, too. Kevin MacLeod will also score your YouTube video or your film or project . . . but that does cost money.  Hey, maybe I’ll offer a composition for a prize someday. Would anyone like that?

In any case, it’s been far too long since I said hello. Hello. More things than merely writing have been afoot in my fractured world, and if I can I’ll tell you about some of them in the next blog.