THE DEVIL'S STEREO 8
Devil Trap Disco had a soundtrack playing in my head before the first chapter was finished. The '70s were a golden age of experimental everything: films no one explained, paperbacks no one reviewed, records cut at four in the morning in rooms that smelled wrong.
Boston. Punk, Rock, Disco, New Age, and Everything Weird.
This is what was on loop while I wrote.
AARON KINCAID
Local boys, nasty sound. Boston garage-punk with teeth. The music bleeding through the wall of a room someone will regret walking into.
Headlights, cold vinyl seats, a city lit up for someone else's party. The sound of being driven somewhere you didn't exactly agree to go.
Stevie at her most witchy, which is also her most wounded. A song that sounds like it knows something about you and isn't going to say what.
The sound of something rising slowly. Knowing you can't get out of its way. Plays in the scenes where a character realizes the water has been rising longer than they noticed.
The hometown boys, playing the room three blocks from where half this book takes place. The cheerful sound of making a mistake you won't be able to undo.
Would have been the opening credits, if this book had any. Moody, weird, experimental. Dread and peace braided into the same breath.
The disco the title is named for. Beautiful, mechanical, and just a little inhuman. The sound of the machine realizing it doesn't need you anymore.
Dylan offering sanctuary to someone who may not be able to take it. The kind of grace a priest in this book occasionally tries to extend. It doesn't always work.