The Dybbuk Teaser...

The stairwell was dark when she walked through the doorway.  Bree shifted the paper grocery bag uncomfortably on her hip as she shut the door with her foot.  

Groaning, she began her ascent in the dark, making a mental note to call Breyden in the morning to complain.  First the elevators, now the lights.  God forbid one of his tenants should fall down the staircase and hurt themselves.

It had been a long day at Riley & Wendt.  Deposition after deposition; a neverending stream of domestic abuse cases, homicides, manslaughters, child custody, divorce.  The world was going to hell in a handbasket, Bree thought to herself with a smug smile.  

She’d be the first in line.

Peru seemed like a distant memory now.  It had only been a few weeks since she returned but a demanding job with twelve hour days was again beginning to take its toll.  She knew that she had be patient.  That eventually all of her hard work and the long hours would pay off.

A few flights up, she stopped to catch her breath.

A door somewhere in the stairwell latched shut.  It echoed through the dark down to her.  

The building was 15 stories high in the middle of SoHo.  Her apartment wasn’t large and she was struggling to pay rent, but it was rent-controlled and she had no intention of moving.  She hadn’t met many of her neighbors, as work demanded the majority of her time.  The only time she spent at her apartment was on the weekends, staring mindlessly at the television decompressing from the previous week.

Only to get up early on Monday morning and continue the entire charade all over again.

She heard footsteps coming down the stairs and anticipated putting a smile on her tired face and saying hello to one of her fellow stranger/neighbors.  

But the footsteps stopped just as the person should have rounded the bend.  Bree waited a moment, and then called out, “Hello?”

She heard her voice echo throughout the stairwell and fall flat.

No answer.

Shrugging, she continued up the next flight of stairs and turned.

No one was there.

Old buildings were funny places, she told herself.  She often heard things, shifts and creaks, and was growing rather accustomed to them.  But she was pretty certain she had heard footsteps. 

She groaned as she glanced up and realized she still had another four flights to go.  Bree grumbled to herself quietly, cursing Breyden for being so cheap.    

She was reaching the 5^th floor landing when she heard it.

At first it sounded like the mere hissing of wind coming through the stairwell air duct.  But instead of maintaining a consistent tone, it began to crescendo.  

The hairs on Bree’s arm began to rise.

There was something in the stairwell with her.

She knew it immediately, instinctively.  There was a change in the air, a de minimis shift.  It became hard to breathe.  The air felt almost static, electric.

“BBBBRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE……” The sound began to change, forming a word.

Her name.

She glanced over the rail into the dark stairwell below her, her heart thudding loudly in her chest.  At first she saw nothing.  The building was abnormally quiet for an evening hour.  All of her neighbors’ doors were shut tightly and locked.  

Under the eave of the 4^th flight, she saw a movement in the shadows.  A gnarled hand, hidden mostly under the sleeve of a heavy, brown cloak, gripped the railing.  

Bree slowly backed away, but she could not divert her eyes from the figure that was gradually emerging from under the eave to glance upward towards her.

From out of the shadows it came, only to be momentarily awashed by the meager moonlight streaming in through the dinghy skylight high above.  A hooded head came out into the moonlight and began to turn upward towards her.

She first saw his smile.  Wide.  Abnormally wide.  His teeth were ancient, knobby and jutting out in awkward directions.  But they were sharp.  Bree could see that in the dark. 

Very sharp.

Saliva dripped from his mouth, coating his hand and the railing in a slippery dew.  And then his eyes rose to meet hers.  

Bree gasped.  Her eyes widened and she dropped the bag of groceries.  

“BRRRREEEEEEE…..” His horrid mouth opened and her name emitted into the stairwell, echoing up to her quickly.  He began to move.  He moved quickly up the stairs, surprisingly agile for however ancient an abomination he was.

Bree burst into a run, hearing him tripping over the rolling cans of Spaghetti O’s and refried beans that littered the staircase behind her.

How did he catch up to her so quickly?  Bree thought madly as she sprinted up the stairs.  She could hear her own rapid breathing, forced and difficult.  Beyond that, nothing.  The man wasn’t even breaking a sweat.

“BRRRRREEEEEEE….” He called out to her again, and she burst into tears.

His voice was suddenly different.

It wasn’t.

It couldn’t be.

Her heart felt like it was going to stop; her lungs felt like they were going to burst.  It became difficult to see through her tears.  

Any moment she waited to feel his gnarled grip on her shoulder, to pull her back and over the railing, to flail to her death below.  But it didn’t come.

She sensed he was right behind her.  

The call came again.

“BRRRREEEE…..” 

He was directly behind her.  But it was a woman’s voice now. 

If she wasn’t so terrified, her instinct likely would have been to stop and face the creature.  The voice was familiar.

Loving.

“No!  It can’t be!”  She sobbed into the dark stairwell and rounded the bend to the last flight.  Bree could see her apartment door; the letters 6A never seemed so inviting.

She shoved her hands into the pocket of her jeans as she bolted up the last set of stairs, fishing out her key.  Her legs felt like they were going to buckle underneath her.  She screamed loudly into the stairwell, hoping the sound would drive her neighbors out to help. 

…just in case she couldn’t get her door open in time…

She finally reached her door and fumbled with her key, suddenly forgetting which one it was.  Her eyes were foggy with tears and mascara; it was hard to see in the dark.

Fuck Breyden.

But she didn’t dare look back.  

She couldn’t look back.

She waited for the fingers. For the hand to grip her shoulder.

Finally the key slid easily into the hole and she twisted, opened the door, flew inside.

Just as she shut the door, she caught another glimpse.  The figure slowly stalked up the stairs, eyeing her.  That broad, demented, diabolical smile never faltering. 

She shut the door and immediately bolted it.  Chained.  

Grabbed her heavy oak console table and pushed it against the door, knocking her lamp and telephone off its ringer in the meantime.  

Bree flew over to her small living room, dove onto the floor and reached under the sofa.  She felt the cool metal and sighed softly. 

She always kept it loaded.  Bree flicked the safety off and waited.   Watching the door.  

She had little hope that this would help her at all against whatever it was that was waiting outside her door.  

Bree hunkered down behind her coffee table, her arms shaky and wavering yet steadily aiming her 9mm towards the quiet door.  Her mind began to process everything that had occurred in the last few minutes.

She had seen this man once before; once she saw his eyes she was positive of it.  And that voice… it turned into…

Bree shook her head, trying to clear the insane thought.  It couldn’t be.  

“Okay, Bree, get it together.  Get it together,” she said to herself softly, her cheeks still damp with tears, her forehead clammy with sweat.  Try as she might, she couldn’t stop shaking.  Her heart, she feared, might never beat normally again.

She wasn’t sure exactly what she was trying to get together, or even how to reconcile what she had experienced, because it was beyond the scope of normal.  

It was impossible.

What had just happened was impossible…

Suddenly the door to her apartment exploded, pieces of wood flying through the air.  

She screamed, closed her eyes, and squeezed four shots out towards the entrance.  

“Shit!!  Oh God, please help me….” She begged.  It had been a long time since she had prayed.  She wasn’t even moderately religious.  Yet she didn’t know what else to do.  

When she opened her eyes, there was no one there.  

The obliterated apartment door lie scattered around her apartment in pieces.  Beyond the threshold, the dark, black corridor.  

He was gone.

She sat there the rest of the night, her gun aimed towards the open maw of what used to be her apartment door, crying and growing ever more sure of one thing.  

Bree had seen the man before.  She was certain.

When she was in Peru, she had seen his corpse. 

 

And he had followed her home…

~ Angela Darling

© 2015 Amontillado Publishing.  All Rights Reserved.
 

The Sounds of Dreams of Elysium...

I want to preface this again with the acknowledgment that I am not receiving any incentive, monetary or otherwise, from any artist named nor any of their affiliates.  These are simply the people and the music that inspired my books to drop their shrouds and become what they were meant to become.
 
Dreams was the novel that wasn't meant to be written.  Originally, Fallen was going to be a standalone novel, with a very different ending.  As you'll recall, it took me almost a decade to write Fallen and I knew that I left many unanswered questions.  Lots of loose strings that just begged to be tied.  

So when I finally published Fallen, I decided it was only necessary to continue the tale.  It was an odd saga; not many sagas have the story going further back in time.  Where each sequel is in essence a prequel to the story before.  I relished that idea, though.  It gave me a lot of creative flexibility.  It also gave me the grand opportunity to really showcase how these very diverse and complicated characters came into being.  

But I'll admit; starting the process on Dreams was difficult.  I had to ensure that I didn't "write myself into a corner."  

If you've read any of my blog posts on writing, you'll know that I'm not a huge fan of outlines.  I feel they limit creative growth during the process.  So I didn't have much to go on while planning for the novel.  I had a vague idea of what I wanted to happen and just dove headfirst into it.

The tone of this particular novel is very gothic and dark as well as Fallen was.  I feel in some ways more so.  There were a lot of really heavy themes in this book that I had to dive into and it was difficult to do so without the proper music.

I was listening to a lot of Florence + The Machine around this timeframe, specifically the song, "Seven Devils."  As soon as I first heard that song, it became the anthem, if you will, for Dreams.  It is a haunting song and the piano is incredible.  

Another random song that kind of popped into the little soundtrack for Dreams was Pavane Capriol Suite by Peter Warlock.  It's a classical piece for those who may not be familiar.  It's more light than Florence's song but has a haunting quality to it that just spoke to me, especially while writing the tale of Clare and her sons.

While this wasn't my favorite entry in the Thorne family saga, it still stands out as my first foray into writing FOR a specific audience (rather than just myself).  There are certain scenes in this book that still haunt me to this day.  Cora's tale, the baby, the secret in the walls...  And if that's what the music helped me to create, then I owe the music immensely.

~ Angela Darling

© 2015 Amontillado Publishing.  All Rights Reserved.

The Sounds of Fallen

I decided to start a new blog series.  Music is such an integral and fluid piece to my process that it only fits to reflect back on the songs and artists that propelled the inspiration into each of my books.  I want to start this series with the caveat that I am not receiving any incentive, monetary or otherwise, from any artist named nor any of their affiliates.  These are simply the people and the music that inspired my books to drop their shrouds and become what they were meant to become.

With that out of the way, I want to dive right into the songs and music that inspired my first novel, Fallen.

Fallen was written over the course of about eight years.  I took it slow and added to it whenever the feeling arose in me.  Obviously I don't write that way anymore, but at the time I didn't have an audience for my writing.  Fallen was written only for me.  

Over the course of those eight years, however, my music tastes changed.  I always relished the types of music that you could just close your eyes and escape to another place and time.  I remember listening to a lot of Adiemus, a Welsh vocalise-style group.  I don't even remember how I stumbled upon them, but my favorite song of theirs was the titular song, "Adiemus."  

Listening to that music in my room at night, and I could close my eyes and dream of all the things I would do, all the places I would go, all the people I would meet.  I'm deviating from the purpose of this post, but you get my point.  It was good stuff that touched a part of my soul nothing else did at that point in time.  And what else should music be doing other than touching a part of you that you can scarcely begin to put in words?

When I began writing Fallen, I became heavily influenced by Sarah Brightman.  In fact I would venture to say that during most stages of the writing process it was Sarah that was the voice of my book.  

But the one song that really summed up Fallen in a nutshell was "Figlio Perduto" which is roughly translated to "The Lost Son."  The song was based upon a poem by Goethe entitled "Der Elkonig," or Erl King.  About a son and his father who set out on horseback in the night.  The son complains about hearing the Erlking following them, wanting to attack them.  The father dismisses it as imagination.  When they arrive to their destination, the father looks down and realizes his son is dead.

The poem and the song touched me; it was the intense emotion between father and son that really drove the relationship of Gabriel and Loren forward.  If you notice, there is also a chapter titled, "The Lost Son."  

I could just listen to that song, knowing its meaning, and really be enveloped in Loren's pain towards his father's dismissiveness.  (And Gabriel's pain at knowing what he knows, if I'm being honest).  It helped propel the crux of the story forward.  

Music is truly my bread and butter.

Another song that I discovered after the fact that really reminds me of Fallen is Florence + The Machine's "Blinding."  It's beautiful but just listen to the lyrics.  The essence of Fallen.

So take a listen to some of those songs I mentioned while reading Fallen.  Even if you're not big into Operatic style singing or not.  

You might be surprised at what embraces you.  You may even be inspired to create yourself.  :)

~ Angela Darling

© 2015 Amontillado Publishing.  All Rights Reserved.

Scarcity...

I believe in magic.

The right place, the right people, the right moment, all merged together in a perfect nirvana.

Connections are forged, intrinsically deeper because of the circumstances of their creation.  And then once things have scattered to the winds, those involved reel over the power of those moments, reluctantly acknowledging something that happens only once in a lifetime.

There may even be attempts at recreating those moments, but they always pale in comparison.  The magic seems to be even more potent despite every attempt to make it stretch, just a while longer

Its scarcity is what makes it so special.

Magic never lasts.

~ Angela Darling

© 2014 Amontillado Publishing.  All Rights Reserved.