Just to recap, I ran a Twitter contest for the last couple of days. In Love and Capes #12, there's a scene where Abby kisses Mark. When I wrote it, I could hear the soundtrack in my head So I asked people to guess which song that was. That's wildly random, so I gave out a hint a day.
I only got two hints in. The first was that it was a song from 2007. The second was that I referenced another song by this band in my other romantic comedy. That was Long Distance, which referenced Hanging by a Momentby Lifehouse.
I figured that second hint would only work for people who had read that unproduced sitcom script, and I figured there couldn't be that many. Only people who'd followed a bunch of my work would even have a clue that I'd done that project, yet it was all Mizelle needed to figure out that the song was First Time, also by Lifehouse.
I'll use music, frequently, to try to get the right mood for a piece. Here, though, everything just came together.
In #12 (and spoiler warning if you haven't read further) Abby thinks Mark is going to go away forever, and runs up to him in a dramatic moment and delivers, as Some Kind of Wonderfulonce put it, "the kiss that kills." It was a huge moment in the story, and I really needed to nail it. I was worried from all sorts of angles. Drawing two people kissing is always rough, because of how the faces interlock, and trying to make sure both faces can be seen well enough. Plus, it was a big moment and needed to have that feel.
I drew it and thought I did okay. When I colored it and dropped in the background, though, that's when it happened. I could hear First Time and could almost imagine one of those spinning shots as the camera circled around the two lovers. And the lyrics of the song could easily be applied to Abby, with her being scared for Mark and it's definitely a first kiss that isn't a first kiss.
Read the book, you'll get it.
All that was missing was the rain. That probably woud have been too much. Plus it's a hassle to draw.
The contest was fun, though. I'm going to have to do more of them. So keep following me on Twitter for more.