The music of Tom Waits takes me places: a circus, a café, a truck stop. His songs tell stories, and often those stories are about the less glamorous corners of American society. I've never been a trucker, though I did drive a big diesel, manual transmission truck with a 30-foot box from the west coast of Canada to Toronto once. I took out the centre island of a gas station on the first day of that trip as a result of not understanding how to steer such a massive rig. From then on, I chose trucker-stations when I could find them. They are designed with more room for turning. I've also never been a waitress in a truck stop café (though I did waiter in a fine-dining restaurant in northern California for six months) but immersed in a Tom Waits song, I feel like I've been both. And a drifter. And a muscle car owner. A criminal. A ghost.
It is that spirit of common intimacy I wish to bring to historical fiction. I will avoid referencing phylacteries or tunics as much as the story will allow. I want you to feel the scene and not have to google it. There will be times when I will mention something alien to modern readers, but that will often be with the intention of deliberately provoking an outsider feeling. After all, a foreigner's dress or habits will be as unfamiliar to my main characters as they are to the reader. But above these small, author's tricks, what I really want to do is to tell you a great story, and make you feel what was previously unknown to your experience.
Tom Waits does this. The mood is perfect. I can taste both "the coffee and [the] roll" when he sings about it.
This is how Tom Waits became the introduction to a historical novel set over two thousand years ago on another continent. His music is, for me, a literary polestar. To successfully channel a bit of Tom Waits' intimate simplicity when writing about an utterly foreign time is my goal.
The specific quote chosen is also bang-on target: I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things. That nicely captures the thirty-four years that Keziah's Song covers. Tom Wait's talent brings you into the intimacy of late-night, truck stop coffee shops. I intend to take you places much longer ago and make them just as real. I hope you become as close to Keziah, her community and her story as I have –both the beautiful and the terrible parts. And learn to love them both.
The best slice of pie I ever had was at a late-night truck stop —ala mode, of course — with Tom Waits on the radio.