Lisa's Blog: The Treasure Hunt
I have a confession to make: I’m sneaky.
Sneaky’s not always a bad thing, I would argue. Prince snuck into the studio to record keyboards for Stevie Nicks’s hit “Stand Back.” Shakespeare and his buddies snuck into a theatre in the dead of night and stole it. (Yes—they stole the whole theatre. Read more about that here.)
I’m a big fan of sneaky authors in particular, especially those who sneak pop culture, literary, and personal references into their books and stories. I love a book that turns out to be a kind of treasure hunt. It’s like playing a video game with Easter eggs that unlock secret scenes or powers.
It probably won’t surprise you to find out I cram tons of pop culture “Easter eggs” into my books. Some are relatively obvious, like the well-known Star Wars and Wizard of Oz quotes in Heart of Vengeance. Others are more hidden, like the (slightly paraphrased) Fleetwood Mac lyrics Charles says to Alice near the end of Chapter 19 in Heart of Ice. (Here’s a hint: the song he references is “Go Your Own Way.” Go ahead and see if you can find them. I’ll wait…)
I love a wide variety of music, movies, television series, books, and other media. I’m an associate professor of English, so my brain is full of fancy books, poems, stories, essays, and other writings I’ve been reading and teaching for two decades in an academic context. I also love to travel and soak in new places and experiences. All of these activities manifest themselves chiefly in three ways: I am a never-ending fountain of useless facts, I quote music/TV shows/movies/books almost incessantly, and I use them in my writing.
Books, like all things, are never created in a vacuum. Everything we do, think, and create is incubated, shaped, and influenced by the world around us. I like to think of my stories as mixed-media art: original creations by me that incorporate collage elements of my world, as that world reaches me through media. (Media, in this rhetorical context, being defined as any form of communication. Sorry—English prof moment.)
To me, the pop culture, literary, and personal references in my stories come as naturally as any other part of writing. I never have to force an allusion into my writing, and rarely do they enter my prose as part of the revision process. It happens as I write.
To use the example I mentioned earlier of the Fleetwood Mac lyrics in Heart of Ice, during that conversation between Charles and Alice, I heard that song playing in my head. And at that moment in their chat, those particular lines fell right into place (with a bit of paraphrasing). I remember smiling to myself, not just because that’s one of my favorite Fleetwood Mac songs, but because even if no one but me ever caught the reference, I knew it would make me happy every time I read it. And it does.
I don’t have a master list of all my sneaky references. Sometimes I wish I did. I should have been keeping a list all along, or started one a few books in. At the moment it seems like too daunting a task to go back through nine novels and several novellas and stories looking for references, and I don’t have that kind of free time. (If only! But I need to be writing!) I remember quite a few off the top of my head—at least a couple per book—so I’ll jot those down in a Word doc before I forget.
I will say that Heart of Vengeance has the most “Easter eggs” of any of my books so far. There was just something about that story and its characters and settings that made for a robust and far-reaching collage of movie and music quotes and pop culture references. My PA Joie suggested that I should go through and catalog them and do a contest to see who can find the most. (It’s on the to-do list, Joie—I promise!)
In the meantime, be on the lookout for sneaky allusions in my books. There are a lot of them, more in each book as the series goes along. I chalk that up to the fact I got more confident in my narrative voice and style as I finished each book.
I look forward to bringing you more magical adventures and sly references to the best and worst music, movies, TV series, books, and pop culture moments of our era. It is, after all, what I do.
What music, movie, and other references have you spotted in my books? I've love to hear about them!