Are you Spotify listeners? I listen to Spotify quite often (all the time). I used to write in silence, but when silence got harder to come by, I started writing with music in my ears. And I’m always listening to music when I do the dishes and most often when I cook unless I have little helpers.

Every so often, I listen the lists Spotify puts together for me from what they think I’ll like. Most often, in my case at least, they get it completely wrong, but sometimes they get it right. It might not surprise you that I’m a lyric person. My husband, who plays the guitar, hears music and cords and melodies when he listens to music, I hear stories.

All it takes is one sentence for my brain to start painting pictures, to create scenes, to wish I could’ve come up with that specific line. When that happens, I save the song to a list I’ve named Play it Again, Sam. It’s a mix of just about everything you can imagine, but every song on there triggers something in me.

One day when I was doing dishes, Spotify played TVA by Jason Isbell. As soon as I was done, I opened Scrivener on my computer and began writing Elevator Pitch.

Now, Elevator Pitch is a short story about a bear shifter and a bat shifter stuck in an elevator. It has nothing to do with a guy who grew up two hours north of Birmingham who used to fish next to Wilson Dam, absolutely nothing. And yet it has.

In the story, we have two shifter guys trapped in a dark room, and in the song, we have a young man who used to bring his girlfriend to watch the racoons. It has nothing to with each other – except they all wanted someone to want them, and the song made me write the story.

It’s ‘only’ 11k long, but it’s dear to me.

Bjorn Ritter only wants one thing—to live his life away from nosey, demanding bears. That’s easier said than done when you’re the son of the female running the Bayside Bear Community.

Cecil Baxter might be a bat, but he grew up away from shifter communities and he’s doing his best to continue to keep his distance. Shifters aren’t an accepting bunch and Cecil has never fit the norm.

Already facing a dreaded meeting with his mother, the last thing Bjorn needs is a stranger using his elevator to escape a pack of werewolves. And Cecil, who’s day just seems to be getting worse and worse, could really do without the added stress of finding himself trapped in an elevator with a huge bear shifter.

Still, what could go wrong in three minutes?

Coming June 6th