Mix-Tape Mondays: Dirty Hippies Edition

This week, by special request, Mix-Tape Mondays is featuring a book with no cover that only three people have read!

Grove by K.L. Eden.

That’s right folks, I wrote this book. It was a seat-of-the-pants NaNoWriMo 2011 project that turned out better than I ever could have hoped. Grove is the story of nineteen-year-old Autumn, back in her small hometown after a failed attempt at college. A job at the local big-box hardware store leads her to a charismatic co-worker and a strange group of new nature-worshiping friends, but when her younger sister gets sucked into their world Autumn begins to realize there’s more than her future at stake. Right now I am editing it for the second time, with an eye on submitting it for publication at some point in the future.

I have pared down my writing playlist to the essentials:

1. “Only Happy When It Rains” – Garbage

Autumn is feeling many things as she returns back to her agrarian hometown from college in the city. Sunshiny is not one of them.

2. “Patterns” – Simon and Garfunkel

The current underlying the entire novel is the question of how and why one chooses a certain path as one becomes an adult. Autumn and her sister Emily both struggle with this independently, and come to different conclusions.

3. “Wildflower” – The JaneDear Girls

Northern California, where the fictitious town of Ashby is set, is a lot more country than people realize. Most of the nation’s food is grown here, and while Autumn is a homegrown girl her new pals are even earthier than she.

4. “Young Blood” – The Naked and Famous

The spirit of the summer in the novel. Everyone and everything is young and bursting with energy and life, and though the future holds more serious matters they haven’t arrived yet.

5. “Under the Bridges” – Niki and the Dove

Party song. Grove is all about the parties, it’s chock-full of’em!

6. “All I Want” – Toad the Wet Sprocket

Autumn is avoiding the questions of her life pretty hard, and her blossoming romance with Silas proves a sweet distraction.

7. “Alive With the Glory of Love” – Say Anything

Silas and Autumn aren’t the only ones courting, it’s a real Summer of Love in Ashby. New couples in every corner!

8. “Drumming Song” – Florence + The Machine

This tune suits the driving beat of the music at the Solstice party, and Autumn’s positively primal attraction to Silas.

9. “Everlong” – Foo Fighters

Intoxication with youth and lust, does any song capture it better?

10. “As the Rush Comes” – Motorcycle

This is a sex song, mmmkay? Without ruining anything I can tell you that many, many people in this novel get busy (off-screen, I don’t write porn).

11. “We Will All Be Changed” – Seryn

Not a single person in Ashby makes it to the end of the year unchanged. Plus this song kinda sounds like September to me. A little crisp, a little cool, a little more depth than the summer.

12. “The Autumn Carnival” – The Dandy Warhols

The Lammas party.

13. “Girl Like Me” – Ladyhawke

A song for Autumn at the beginning of the end.

14. “Sister Golden Hair” – America

A song for Silas’ part.

15. “No Light, No Light” – Florence + The Machine

The final conversation between Silas and Autumn, the final appearance of all her new friends in the novel, in which much is lost and much left unsaid.