Savage a-Muse-ment

Sharing the inspiration and inside jokes for "The Others"

At the beginning of the year, I didn’t plan on writing a story for The Muse Within Us anthology for Raconteur Press. I intended to focus on long-form stuff — finishing the first arc of my Gold and Fire series and getting a couple of my adult novels out there — and I only had two anthologies circled on my calendar. Then, one night, I was driving home from the lake with my son.

We were traveling down a dark, country highway when Cody Jinks’ “The Others” came through the truck speakers. Something about the location and the song hit me, and I started forming an idea about a guy traveling the backroads of the country, using musical powers to help people who were hurting. It was one of those ideas that just kept tugging at me for a couple of weeks.

Finally, I gave in and started writing the story, only knowing that my protagonist Cody Cross (we’ll get to that a little later) wanted to use his powers to help people in an attempt to atone for a dark past. At that point, I had no idea what that past would be or even how I was going to turn the idea into any sort of story at all. As I so often do, I just started writing, and it began to take shape. Maybe my own version of the titular “others” helped guide me.

I have always been passionate about music, and I’ve shared before that I often find inspiration in it — maybe from a snippet of a lyric, sometimes just from the mood of the song. The final story, of course, never has anything to do with the lyric or song that inspired it, and that’s the same with “The Others.”

When I hit the send button on the story, I had no idea whether Wally, the editor, would like it or not. In fact, I thought it might be a bit too dark for the tone of the anthology. But it didn’t matter, I had a hell of a lot of fun writing it, as any of my brothers and sisters of metal will understand when they read it.

I’ve always liked to slide some musical (usually metal) references into my stories for those who know what they’re looking for, but I took it to another level on this one. This story is littered with Easter eggs. The title character’s name is only the tip of the iceberg, and one of the more obvious nods in the story. I thought it was only right that since Jinks’ song inspired the thought, I should tip the hat. There are some more subtle ones, too. In fact, I briefly considered offering a prize for the first person who spots the Slayer reference. If you find it, drop a note in the comments.

Obviously, you don’t have to know anything about any of the references to enjoy the story. That’s part of the goal. But if you do, I hope you have fun picking them out.