Outside the window, snow was slowly falling from the dark sky filled with clouds. No matter where he looked, everything was covered in white.
It was an atmosphere in which one just didn't want to wrap himself with blankets and stay cooped up in a room. After looking for a few minutes, Aiden closed up the window and sat down on his chair.
Completely opposite from the outside, his room was completely heated up, so much so that Aiden felt like taking a nap.
Unfortunately, he didn't have the time for that.
'I need to complete a few guide tracks before the New Year.'
The work on his office would complete in the first week of January and then, he could shift his whole album work there. With the underground studio that was getting prepared, he would work more efficiently there.
But currently, he needed to make do with the DAW (Digital audio workstation).
"There's so many different types of sound I could make for my album but I need to be careful…"
Aiden muttered, opening up the workstation.
As it was his first full fledged album, there was a lot of uncertainty in his mind. He didn't want to go away from his style of music in an effort to try something new and failing.
Still, he needed to keep the music creative.
'I at least have one song that would work well.'
Aiden thought, glancing at a piece of paper that was on the corner of the table. It was actually a letter that he had gotten from one of his fans.
He had received it just last week and reading it, he had gotten inspiration to write a song. In the letter, a girl was thanking Aiden for making 'Lost in the Sky' as it helped her during the time when she and her boyfriend were having problems with marrying due to both of them belonging to different races.
The song made her feel like that a new chapter of her life would also be good and it would be a good chapter.
Reading the letter, an idea had instantly struck his mind.
"A song about forbidden love."
It was right up his alley and Aiden was sure that he could make a good song on this topic. Moreover, it gave a pretty solid theme to the composition.
Love was something that musicians would universally write about, so much so that it had become a cliche and many of them forget that a song on love could have a wide amount of subtopics in it and Aiden was going to just do that.
'Let's give the song a story.'
In his mind, a story was slowly forming. Two people with different status and colour, trying to be together but even if they wanted to be together, society wasn't so easy to face.
Even though humans had evolved a lot with time, becoming more technology advanced, they still lived in a world where money, status and even religion and colour still mattered in different parts of the world.
Trying to immerse himself in that story, Aiden tried out different instruments and sounds.
Guitar, keyboard, drums and even flute, he tried a lot of different things with different frequencies for each instrument. In the end, after a lot of trying, he was finally able to make a 45 second guide track that he felt suited the lyrics in his mind.
Obviously, a guide track still needed a lot of work on it but he had a lot of ideas for the final version.
One of those ideas was something he felt that fit the song a lot.
'A duet. A proper duet song.'
As the song was about forbidden love, he felt that he needed to include a female voice in it too with it being almost like lovers talking to each other.
Duets weren't that popular in the current music scene as most singers would just feature in each other's song, not really dividing the whole song in two parts or doing something creative.
It was just following a pattern.
Aiden wanted to change that with this song.
'This song would need to have a great voice for the female part.'
He thought, deciding to talk with Wade about it. He was already in talks with record labels for collaborations and till now, only Neu Entertainment had agreed with Grey more than ready to do a song with Aiden.
***
"It's going to be a very important start of the year for us this time. I really hope it sells well."
Marshall White, the owner of Vikings publishing glanced at the calendar on the wall. The date '7th Jan' was circled with a red marker.
It was the day when <Behind the scenes] was going to finally hit the shelves and it would be interesting to see how the reception would be.
Sitting in his office and drinking hot coffee, Marshall couldn't help but muse on it. Being the first novel of the year, he wanted it to do well.
"Sir, can I come in?"
At that moment, his assistant's voice came out from the other side of the door.
"Come in."
A man wearing a sweater and dawning a ponytail walked in and put down a book on his desk.
"The copy of <Behind the scenes> came. You told me to give it to you once it arrives."
Marshall glanced at the book and took it in his hand. The cover displayed a man and a dog looking at a star, twinkling in the open sky. The star was used as a metaphor for the main character's dream of being one.
A lot of meetings were held before the team working on <Behind the scenes> had decided on this cover. There were also other covers made by the illustrators but this was the one everyone felt was the best out of them.
There was a melancholy about the way the man on the cover looked at the star in the sky that suited well with the theme of the book.
"It looks good. Did you already send it to Aiden Silvereye?"
Marshall asked, looking up at his assistant who nodded.
"Yeah, I mailed it. Sent a few copies so he could distribute it to his friends and family."
"Good? How did the talk with 'The Yorker' magazine go? What did they say about the interview? What about MeTubers?"
"They happily agreed to it and said that they could do it anytime possible. I sent them a copy of the book for a review too." The assistant nodded his head. "I did the same thing with MeTubers who we generally send books to review."
The Yorker was a literature focused magazine that was pretty famous. It would always interview authors before their books would come out and it was very good for promotions.
The case was the same with MeTubers whose content was focused around books. As they have a large group of people watching their content, it was a nice way to sell books.
Vikings publishing had contacts with a lot of MeTubers that helped them market the book well.
"That's good enough. It seems like we would be able to get a good number of people reading the book on the first day itself. After that, everything is based on how readers liked the book."
Marshall talked with his assistant about the book for a little longer. It was only after half an hour that his assistant left his office and sitting quietly, he again picked up <Behind the scenes> and opened it up before taking a deep breath.
'The smell of paper…'
Thinking that, he started his second reading of a book that had managed to impress him.
***
"Rachel, I got you a great chance!"
As Rachel was sitting in the lounge area in the office of Cyco media, drinking some tea, her manager Linda appeared out of the elevator with an excited expression on her face.
"What chance, Linda? You look pretty happy."
She looked up at Linda who vigorously nodded her head.
"It's a big opportunity. Wait! Let's not talk about it here."
Linda looked around at the other artists and managers in the lounge area and dragged her to an empty meeting room and closed the door. Seeing her like this, Rachel was pretty confused.
Her manager rarely acted like this and she was mostly composed.
"Linda, tell me what chance you got for me? Is the company finally getting me another song?"
Rachel asked, hope reaching her eyes that have mostly looked lost in the past two months.
"Kind of. But it's a bit different."
"Different? How?"
Rachel tilted her head. Shaking her head with a smile, Linda casually took out her phone and headphones from her pocket and passed it to Rachel.
"Play the audio file on it and tell me how you liked it. I will tell you about it after you have listened to it."
She still had reservations and confusion but Rachel still did what Linda said. Putting on the headphones, she played the audio file and the melody that sounded like piano came out.
It flowed smoothly for a while before the tempo increased and it got mixed with the sound of a flute, playing very strongly. It was kind of a grandiose sound that was giving her a feeling of watching a musical on Broadway.
Then, the sound of humming added to the clip, like it was trying to give a balance between the piano and flute.
The audio clip wasn't long and it soon ended.
After it did, Rachel looked at Linda who was smiling.
"How did you like it?"
"It was good. I can't tell much since it's just a guide track but I liked it. Who made it?"
...
