I can’t say a whole lot about the story I just wrote.  I don’t want to spoil a potential commercial novel, but so far, I’ve had two coincidences.  The first was a pair of articles on the same page (p. 22) in Laptop Magazine’s 2011 May issue, just six days after I started a novel about surviving a nuclear war.

Alberta is a teenage girl who appeared in the story as I was writing in the moments before I noticed the Fluor Rope Square ad that I filmed and put on my Youtube channel.  It was for Lights’ (@lightsalot) concert at the Calgary Stampede the following evening, starting exactly thirty-seven hours and fourteen minutes after I filmed the ad (My RYT had only seven views by then, sigh.)  I did not yet know that three of her new 2011 album songs were already on the loose, first performances on 2011 June 18 at the Utopia Festival in Edmonton.  (This was the day before I quit handwriting the new novel because of a spill on my computer’s keyboard.  When I hear the Storyvoice, I write.  Period.  Like Lights herself tweets, “Record’s done, but I’m right back in here [in the studio; http://twitpic.com/5pryfa]. As long as it’s flowing, don’t stop showing! I just made that up.” - 2011 July 13)

On 2011 July 15 (i.e.: yesterday and I’ve already two more chapters), I wrote just how Alberta survives the explosion.  She’s at a fenced pool at a recreation centre, and goes off the diving board.  The bomb goes off six kilometres north of her just as she enters the water.  While under the water, she watches as the shallow end boils in the sun.  Odd, she thinks, the sun is supposed to be that way.  She looks, and sees it just in time for Prandtl–Glauert cloud behind the blast wave blot the sun out.  She emerges from the pool into a new world: the apocalyptic aftermath of a nuclear explosion.  One of the explosion’s effects was blowing away the pool’s privacy fence to the north.  Through it she can see the explosion’s still glowing mushroom cloud.  The story’s ultimate purpose is to show how the impromptu (and very imperfect) community of survivors spring up around the city’s only surviving hospital, and their job is more complicated than mere survival (I’m still figuring all that out.)

The next day, I heard “The Fence Is Low” by Lights for the first time.  That was about an hour ago.  I’m still kinda trying to recover, and I’m running out of time for this post.  I wish my fingers would quit shaking so I could type faster.  My first click was on some amateur Utopia Festival upload I couldn’t make out a word of, but I could feel that there was something special about this song (I call it a “flag”, and so far, only one has been inconclusive out of, I’d guess about fifty, including the moment I first heard Lights’ voice on the radio just over 2996 hours ago.)  Once I could hear the words, this is how it opens.  It took me several listens to realize that the song was indeed, about my character Alberta.  Surprising, since the description is salient on every single line!!

“Where the fence is low,
And the water is rising,
And the fire comes down,
And the dark fills the skies in,
My foot on the ledge,
I’m feeling for safety,
Somewhere between sure,
And I don’t know, maybe.”

It hit me at exactly 10:56, an hour ago, and I’ve been in tears ever since.  The second verse is about part of the story that I can foresee, but haven’t written yet, possibly an epilogue or (God, I hope not!) a second explosion.  This is what Lights thinks of the song, and it speaks towards the common inspiration mechanism I believe is causing all these coincidences (this is the latest of about forty, and the second for this novel, which I started just 34 days ago!)

“This is about (I’ve got a keyboard chart here) I kept having these dream over and over and over again- You ever had those dreams where you’ve go somewhere that you’ve been before?  I’ve totally been here! but it’s in your dream.  So you haven’t technically been there but you have!” Blue Mountain 2011 July 2

“This song’s about this recurring dream that I have all the time and it kinda just wrote itself, because it’s a place you go.  Right, I’m sure you have those places you’ve been in your dreams before, and you’re like Oh I’m here.” (someone screams “At your concert!”) "That’s your dream?  Touche!!“  Utopia 2011 June 18

That’s it for now.