I’ve had this song going in my head for a while.

Appalachian Polaroids is composed by Steven Snowden and preformed by The Aeolus Quartet.

The vocal piece at the beginning, sung by Sheila Kay Adams, is a folk song with about as many versions as there are people who sang it.  The tune bends into ditties I’ve sung to my cat, or frustrations I’ve voiced at other cars from the safety of my own.  I’ve wanted to write it into a story for years, but the words on the page are silent.

I’ve read awesome music in other books.  I fell in love with One-Esk when she sang across a city in Ancillary Justice.  And the depiction of music in The Name of the Wind had such a fine rhythm that I could feel Kvothe’s picking.  I want that for myself.

I think I have a story for it.  It’s going on an island.  This one:

The Tillamook lighthouse is far from Appalachia, but so am I.  And the tune has lived in me for long enough that the verses have gone sea-drenched and fishy.

But I still can’t get the words to sing.

 

! I have a story coming out this month in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show!  I am very excited about it!  It’s called Good Fairies!!!