About the Book:

Eva is 18 years old and interning at a record label when she discovers 16 year old Alora online. Never before has she heard a voice like Alora’s, and when it’s clear there isn’t anyone at the label interested in hearing this phenomenal talent, Eva takes matters into her own hands and offers to be Alora’s manager without knowing the first thing about artist management or what’s about to happen to both of them.

It turns out Eva’s instincts were right…Alora is catapulted into the spotlight of major superstardom, and as the two young women navigate the whirling vortex of fame – the parties, the paparazzi, the power – they form a close bond, becoming found family to each other. 

But when Alora’s dark and mysterious past begins to infiltrate her present, and Eva’s ambition and success blind her to the obvious signs that her friend is in trouble, their lives unravel with disastrous consequences. 

DARKENING SONG is a fiercely feminist story for fans of DAISY JONES & THE SIX and EUPHORIA. It’s about friendship and betrayal. It’s a love story and a story about trauma. But more than anything, it’s a story about hope and about how dreams can come true in ways we least expect.

It is being adapted for a major TV Series.

Find on Goodreads. Find on Bookshop.org UK (affiliate link).

---

About the Author:

Instagram TikTok

---

Sisterhood in the Boys’ Club

For the past 20 years, I worked in the music business; as a talent lawyer, as Head of Business Affairs at Warner Brothers Records, as an artist manager and most recently, as Chief Operating Officer for Adele’s manager. When I was at Warner Brothers, I became
close friends with two senior lawyer colleagues, both of whom are women. We would often meet in one of our offices to debrief on our days, confiding in each other about someone who’d been difficult or unpleasant in a meeting. Being able to have these honest and open conversations somehow numbed the sting of the experience. It helped me to not interiorise someone else’s behaviour as somehow my fault. And I was loyal to them as they were to me – each time I asked the powers that be for a pay rise, or a change in our job titles to reflect the market, I went into battle on behalf of all three of us. At one particular work event, I
remember we were sitting together laughing so hard my stomach hurt, when a male colleague approached and said to us that we were “cackling like witches.” We owned this comment – our WhatsApp group is to this day named: Witches. I wonder whether in saying this, on some level, that man sensed something of the power of three women united and was wary of it. To me, our relationship felt like sisterhood.

My debut novel, DARKENING SONG (Blue Neon Books/Macmillan), which is described as DAISY JONES & THE SIX meets EUPHORIA, is set in the music business, and explores a partnership between two women – a teenage artist, Alora, and her manager, Eva.
When we first meet Eva she’s very much the underdog, interning at a record label and being bossed around by everyone. She discovers Alora online and when the head of A&R (tasked with signing artists to the label) won’t listen to Eva about Alora’s phenomenal talent, Eva takes matters into her own hands, gets the train up to Manchester where Alora lives with her mum, and convinces Alora that she should let Eva manage her. The girls are very close in age – the book spans a 2 year period at the start of which, Alora is 16 and Eva is 18 – so they’re both young and inexperienced. And when Alora becomes famous practically overnight, the two of them are flung head-first into the pressure cooker of the public eye and the power, money and scrutiny which accompanies their success, and the story follows how that affects both of them individually but also, their relationship.

I would describe the music business in general as a boys’ club, particularly in the upper ranks, and even before I had character names or any real plot for DARKENING SONG, I knew I wanted to drop two girls into that heavily male dominated environment and watch
them navigate it on their own terms, pretty much like I myself had to do when I was a young artist lawyer, just starting out in my early twenties. Because nobody teaches you how to slot yourself into the dynamics of a boardroom full of men and not only secure a seat at the table, but be heard. I had to work it out for myself and over time, rightly or wrongly, I learned to present a much more assertive (forceful) version of myself. There’s a scene in
DARKENING SONG where the MD of the record label is just about to offer Alora a record deal, and he tells her – in front of Eva – that she needs a “premier league manager” and offers to introduce Alora to his mate, Kenny Dodson who he describes as “a fierce
negotiator” with “big balls”. Eva immediately begins to doubt herself, musing that it would probably be better for Alora to be managed by Kenny rather than her. But Alora sticks up for Eva – she tells the MD that her signing the record deal is conditional on Eva remaining her manager. It’s a dramatized scenario, but the situation leans into something I’ve witnessed time and time again in business – women self-limiting. When anyone ever asks me what
advice I’d give to a young person going into the music business today, that’s always what I say – try not to self-limit. It’s easier said than done, and I’m guilty of it myself. But I try to push through my way through it, and having other women around me, encouraging me, like my two colleagues at Warner Brothers, definitely helped.

I’ve also been incredibly lucky to have worked with brilliant and supportive bosses, who made me feel valued and were receptive to hearing about the female experience even though it wasn’t their own experience, and I never held back in telling them about it! When I left Warner Brothers, my boss took me to one side and said that I’d made him a better people manager – that really meant a lot to me. And Adele’s manager was always incredibly encouraging of my writing, I always felt ‘seen’ by him beyond my workplace self, and his company was the only place I’ve ever worked where, with the exception of the business owner himself, the senior management team was comprised entirely of women.

An area of the music business where women are still drastically under-represented is music production – a recent survey reported that less than 6% of music production credits are attributed to women. I can only speculate as to why this is; there might be an element of label A&R (who historically tend to be men) giving work to the same circuit of producers (who historically also tend to be men). A few years ago I helped organise an all-female song writing and production camp for the recording artist, RAYE. We paired up-and-coming female music producers with established female artists and songwriters, and I remember walking between the various studios and being knocked sideways by the creative energy – it was palpable. I always wanted Alora’s song lyrics to tell part of the story in DARKENING SONG and quite early on in the writing process, I decided I wanted them to exist as actual songs. So I wrote an accompanying soundtrack (accessible from the book via a QR code, and woven into the audiobook), which was performed by the independent artist S.Michaud (who also wrote the bonus track at the end) and produced by Ellie Mason, an incredible (female) music producer – it’s unusual for a book to have its own soundtrack and I’m proud of the fact that it was brought to life by an all-female team. There are some amazing, mega-talented female music producers out there, and what I’d really love to see is more female artists of profile insisting on working with them. Because when women support other women, in my personal experience, incredible things can be achieved.

DARKENING SONG is out now in the UK in paperback, EPUB and audiobook via all the usual retailers. If you’d like to read an extract, you can do so via this LINK.

Thank you!

*Affiliate link