The Man Made of Smoke
A playlist
Like many authors, I find it hard to listen to anything other than instrumental music while I’m writing: lyrics have a habit of distracting me from coming up with my own words, which is a struggle enough to begin with. But there are often songs I have in the back of my mind, and which I end up associating with the characters, themes and ideas within a book.
The Man Made of Smoke, is about Dan Garvie, a man haunted by his encounter with a serial killer as a child. When Dan’s father goes missing in the present day, he has to return to his childhood home and face up to the horror of what happened all those years ago.
It’s a thriller about learning to live with guilt and damage, and making sense of the terrible things that happen. There were songs I listened to that resonated with that. Here is a playlist of ten of those that, taken together, create a kind of soundtrack for the book.
1. NF (featuring Fleurie) – Mansion
The metaphor of the mind as a house is a familiar but effective one, and there’s real depth and power to this track. NF takes us on a tour of the traumas he lives with, which he keeps locked away in different rooms inside his head, leading up to a final verse of rare vulnerability and psychological insight. My protagonist, Dan Garvie, would relate very strongly.
2. Nine Inch Nails – Right Where It Belongs
For me, this is a song about the illusions we surround ourselves with to protect ourselves from darker and less comfortable truths. Everything might appear to be in place, and the world might seem safe, but what would happen if we looked a little more closely? What’s really going on behind the reflection we see in the mirror?
3. Indigo Girls – Dead Man’s Hill
In The Man Made of Smoke, Dan has an encounter as a child that stays with him for the rest of his life. This song is from Swamp Ophelia, one of my favourite albums, and has haunted me for years. It’s a coming of age story, with Amy Ray revisting bittersweet childhood memories, culminating in an account of her first encounter with evil and the end of innocence.
4. Prince – Raspberry Beret
The Man Made of Smoke involves Dan returning to the island he grew up on. He finds himself visiting a karaoke bar where this song is being performed. The bar was partly inspired by a real one I visited while at a crime festival, where a writer (who will remain nameless) performed this. Everyone was drunk. I was planning the book at the time, and it seemed fitting to include it.
5. Live – The Dam at Otter Creek
“Be here now,” Ed Kowalczyk repeats throughout. But it’s not clear whether he’s referring to the safety of the present or the past tragedy he’s reflecting on. The song begins slowly and ominously before building to a ferocious crescendo, the track suggesting a man punishing himself with memories he’s tried to leave behind but never can.
6. Korn – Shoots and Ladders
So many of the fairytales and nursery rhymes we learn as children have dark origins, serving as warnings that the world is dangerous and full of threat. Even if we don’t understand what they mean, they feel sinister, and hearing them as an adult can be creepier still. There’s something deeply unnerving about this song’s mixture of childhood innocence and dread.
7. Death in Vegas – Aisha
In The Man Made of Smoke, Dan has become a forensic psychologist, and one of his mantras is that there’s no such thing as monsters. He really needs to believe that. But the events of the story will test it, and there are few better tracks that recreate the frightening chaos of a mind you can never hope to make sense of.
8. Sufjan Stevens – John Wayne Gacy Jr
But there is no such thing as monsters, of course; there are only people who do horrible things. It should be impossible to empathise with a serial killer, but Stevens does his best to paint an almost tender portrait of a heinous individual. There are reasons for everything we do. And while the scale might be different, we all keep secrets and are capable of doing wrong.
9. John Grant – Marz
Revisiting his childhood home is difficult for Dan, because there are terrible memories waiting for him on the island. But there are good ones too. This song, essentially a list of sweets and milkshakes sold at the titular shop, perfectly conjures up that melancholy, impossible desire we all feel to revisit a long gone past.
10. Devin Townsend – Spirits Will Collide
The world can be painful and sad. It’s in the nature of darker fiction to explore that, but I never want to leave the reader in a bad place. This song deals with heavy subject matter – mental health; despair; thoughts of self-harm – but a sense of hope runs through it. “So we rise / Receive the pain / But this isn’t where this ends.” That’s important to remember. And a perfect sentiment to end with.