Addison Brae

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How characters find a place to call home

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Sugar Creek, Missouri

Book heroines often mirror what happens in real life and return to their childhood hometowns. Some have a sense of adventure that takes them across the country or to the other side of the world. Just like us, other main characters fight to escape bad memories by moving as far away as possible.

Gillian, the heroine in Dark Energy, Return to Becker Circle, opted to leave her small-town childhood home of Sugar Creek, Missouri behind. Gillian’s world crashed when her mom lost her battle with cancer. Then she watched her father slip into the bottle. Gillian could mix the best martini of any 12-year-old. Luckily the bar where he was a regular was only a block from their house, so he could stumble home safely. Gillian left her hometown as soon as she could with a scholarship to Harvard.

Becker Circle

After graduation, Gillian headed to Dallas for a fresh start. The weather was warmer than Boston or Sugar Creek. It was a great place to find an accounting job. There were tons of young professionals. And Dallas was far away from her past.

Kross Lounge & Restaurant, Sugar Creek

I researched middle-America towns near metropolitan areas to create Gillian’s roots and found Sugar Creek. Visual mapping and websites helped me locate her schools, part-time job, newspaper where her father was the editor, home, and the bar in the next block.

Visiting Sugar Creek confirmed the town was right for Gillian. Sugar Creek has a Moose Lodge, town gazebo, and shady streets lined with pre-WWII homes. Best of all is the Kross Lounge & Restaurant, exactly the place I picture as the local bar where Gillian’s dad was a regular. It’s a place where everyone knows your name. I ate lunch at the bar and chatted with the bartender who had worked there for 19 years. When I told her why I was visiting, she agreed she would likely be the one who made sure Gillian’s dad made it home.

Blending fiction with real settings and situations helps create relatable characters. Most people who’ve worked hard to start over in a fresh place will understand why Gillian might have selected her new Dallas neighborhood home.

How did you find your place to call home?

Fictional song now real

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Dark Energy .germans mix featuring Brian Miller & Bobby Hoke lyrics by Addison Brae from the Becker Circle novel series

Music has always been a part of my life. All the way through school I played instruments, took part in church choir. My favorite tunes were on while I did homework. The songs that inspired me most calmed my nerves before the most dreaded college finals. My first marketing job was radio and music video promotions for a major record company. But I never had enough talent and drive to be a professional musician.

Music also inspires me. It’s always playing in the background while I write. Dark Energy and Becker Circle take place in the bar scene around live music. Jon, the adorable guy in one of the bands falls for Gillian, the main character, who inspires him to write a song called Dark Energy in the Becker Circle story. As Jon told Gillian, “I wrote it about someone who had a streak of bad luck and how they changed it with good karma.” It hit me while writing Dark Energy: Return to Becker Circle. The song had to be written in reality.

The song symbolizes the dark energy and dark matter theory in the cosmos. Dark matter allows gravity to pull stars, suns, planets, and other matter together the way I see some people draw us together. Dark energy is the vast empty space that opposes dark matter. It slips into the voids of our lives trying to disrupt like it pushes matter apart attempting to destroy our universe.

I never dreamed I would become a songwriter. Thanks to Brian Miller and Bobby Hoke, Dark Energy has music and is recorded and released. Listen for this version toward the end of the book trailer. And now we have Dark Energy .germans mix by Brian Miller and Bobby Hoke, released on March 5.

The chorus below (and all of the lyrics) represents the strength people possess that can help them push past economic, emotional and other hardships that strike even the most careful and good people.

Chorus
Find someone else to conquer.
What does it mean this dark energy?
Dark energy won’t control my fate.
I don’t deserve this dark energy.

Deep thanks to Brian for writing the music and recording both songs, and to Bobby for his vision for the .germans mix and for doing such an amazing job producing. Thank you John Harrell for the beautiful song art and Katlyn Steele for modeling. If you are a Foo Fighters fan, you will like Dark Energy.

You can find Dark Energy by Brian Miller and Dark Energy .germans mix by Brian Miller and Bobby Hoke on your favorite music retail and streaming sites including Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, and Apple Music.

Find your dark matter and enjoy the songs.