'My Immortal' & Dreamland



Zen is the hero of Dreamland, but the real engine of the series has been the relationship between him and his wife Bree.

It's a love story, really - about his struggle to stay connected with her while overcoming his physical limitations and surviving the long deployments and other nasty stuff that happens in the book.

There have been times working on the books that I started to lose that thread - the epic sense between them. And of all things a music video by Evanescence helped get me back on track. The song somehow hit the emotional sweep at the heart of the characters.

I don't usually write with music playing - it injects its own agenda into the words, obviously a problem - but I ended up playing the song over and over as I worked on one of the books. I go back to it every so often to remind myself of the character arcs; I can't hear the music or see the video without thinking of them.