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Heart-Shaped Wreckage
If you asked me if there’s a book I would find hard to write or read again, I would bet most of my readers would think the answer would be Master No. It’s not.
I’ve talked a lot about how hard it was to write Damon Knight and Julian Lodge. Still not their books.
It’s one hundred percent One Her Master’s Secret Service.
I’ll let you in on a secret that might make me look like a douchebag. I listen to my own audiobooks. A lot. Most authors will tell you they could never listen to their own work and don’t go back and read books they’ve written, but I’ve discovered it’s an excellent way to stay grounded in my literary world. I use it as a way to remember how the characters began and find events I can touch back on. Some people ask how I can pull together threads from five books back—this is the way.
So right now I’m listening to Alex and Eve’s book, and it reminded me why the song I’m going to talk about was so important to their book.
Alex and Eve’s book falls into a category of story I like to call dealing with relationship trauma. I wrote most of them early on in my publishing career. Steal the Light and Siren in the City are among these books I wrote about men who can’t handle the trauma either they or their women have been through, so they pull back into themselves and have to find a way through. (If you’re wondering why this is such an important theme, see the author’s note for Steal the Light.)
I would bet I didn’t realize that was what I was doing with OHMSS until I was done and my husband read it and said…uh, sorry. Again.
The others were clearly about death and the effect of nearly dying. Alex and Eve go through something different. What happens to Eve is deeply traumatic, and Alex can’t handle it. It causes him to pull away and Eve to find some not so great ways to try to get him to see her.
So to the song. I’m a huge theater nerd, which probably surprises no one. So when NBC was running the TV show Smash back in 2012 and 2013, I watched them all and adored the music. But one song hit home. In the second season, there’s a song called “Heart Shaped Wreckage” and it’s sung by Katharine McPhee and the legendary Jeremy Jordan. When I heard it I knew I found the song that would fuel Alex and Eve. That song is the reason I wrote what I feel is one of the most heartbreaking scenes I’ve ever written.
The balcony scene.
Look at this heart shaped wreckage
What have we done?
We have got scars from battles
Nobody won
There is so much desperation in that scene. It’s the ultimate unravelling of a marriage that has been done for a very long time. I still cry when I read it because I remember how it felt to write it. It’s my greatest fear for my own marriage. That we will diverge. That we will find ourselves on that balcony facing the fact that we might be better off alone.
We can start over better
Both of us know
If we just let the broken pieces go
So those lyrics speak of finality. A love that is lost. In many ways Alex and Eve are the broken pieces that they need to let go of, and on the balcony that’s what they do. They let each other go. The dreams they had. The life they could have led. They’ve held on for so long but realize it’s time to move on.
But I write romance novels, and there’s always the morning. The song lends itself to optimism in the end. The broken pieces don’t have to mean the end. What Eve needs is an Alex who is willing to move forward, and that’s what he does.
This brilliant and haunting song inspired what I consider to be one of the best passages I’ve ever written about long-time love. I know it’s one I’m proud of. Alex talks about what he’s willing to let go of.
“I can let go of the twenty-three-year-old idiot who didn’t realize just how much he could love you. I can. He’s gone. I can let go of the man who was so tied up in his own guilt that he didn’t really see you for years. But I will never let go of the eighty-year-old man who will hold your hand until the day he dies. I will fight for that old man. I will never let go of him.”
Give this amazing song a try. You might find some inspiration in it, too.
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