Every book I've ever loved has a sound. Not a playlist someone made — a sound. A texture. Cedar Hollow Promises has always, since the first draft, sounded like steel guitar played very slowly over a gospel choir that's decided to let the grief in.
Every book I've ever loved has a sound. Not a playlist someone made — a sound. A texture. Cedar Hollow Promises has always, since the first draft, sounded like steel guitar played very slowly over a gospel choir that's decided to let the grief in.
The title of the soundtrack album — Between Heaven & Prison Bars — came to me while I was writing the phone call scene, when Malik is calling from inside and Lena is standing in her kitchen, back against the counter, trying not to let him hear her crying. That's the space the music lives in: between what you want and what you're allowed to have. Between the sacred and the punished. Between hope and its address.
I wrote every chapter of this book with a piece of music in my head. Some of those songs made it directly into the text — characters hear them, sing them, use them as shorthand for things they can't say aloud. Others just lived in the margins, shaping tone without appearing on the page.
When I decided to build the website editions with a full immersive soundtrack experience, I knew the music had to be original. Not covers. Not a Spotify playlist. Music that existed only in this world, that had never been heard anywhere else, that belonged to Malik and Lena the way a shared song belongs to two people who were there when it first played.
For Multimedia Edition and Signed Collector Edition readers, the soundtrack is fully integrated — each section of the book has its own piece, and you can move between reading and listening without losing the thread. The music doesn't explain the story. It breathes alongside it.
I hope it sounds, to you, the way Alabama sounds at night when the sky goes purple and the crickets start and something in your chest unclenches just a little.