Author Spotlight: Song to the Siren by Barb Lien-Cooper

Is rock star Reed Sinclair haunted, or simply very troubled? Artist Samantha MacNamara loves him either way. Song to the Siren is a “spooky rock-and-roll” series about love, loss, creativity, and the price of fame, written by Barb Lien-Cooper, a founding member of the pioneering comics webzine Sequential Tart and co-creator (with husband Park Cooper) of the Marvel graphic novel Half Dead. It is a slow-burn, ambiguous ghost story for readers tired of cookie-cutter books chasing trends.

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Q&A with Barb Lien-Cooper

Q: Song to the Siren has a wonderfully strange premise. What is it about, and where did it come from?

A: Musician Reed Sinclair is either very mentally troubled, or he sees ghosts, and worse. Artist Samantha MacNamara loves him either way. Song to the Siren is a book series about love, loss, creativity, and the price of fame.

I was suffering from writer’s burnout and the ideas were not coming. It was astoundingly frustrating. One day, to celebrate my husband’s birthday, we went to Pinball Kingdom, a retro arcade with a big red dragon out in front. I have no hand/eye coordination, so I like watching my husband play pinball, as he is really good at it.

As he was playing an Elvis Presley pinball game, I sat there on a stool, drinking a Coke, and suddenly, I had an idea. I thought, “One of my favorite quiet horror stories, ‘The Beckoning Fair One,’ is about a creative man whose work and his desire to work are destroyed either by his own mental problems or by a malevolent entity known as The Beckoning Fair One. So, what if I wrote a modern version of this story, but with a musician instead of a writer?”

While driving home, I saw the first scene in my head: two little boys fighting over a camera, with one little boy dressed as a pirate, and a little tomboy of a girl witnessing the whole thing. That was all I had, really. I thought, “Well, I think it’s compelling, but I know that an agent will think that it’s not crash-boom-bam enough of a start to a book.” But then I thought, “Not all books have to have crash-boom-bam beginnings. Some are slow-burn books.

This book is going to be a slow-burn book. I may not get an agent, but I’ll tell a story that will invite the reader into it instead of demanding their attention. Maybe the hard sell is starting to annoy the readership. Maybe I can do things differently.”

Q: You have a long history in comics and manga. How did that lead to publishing this series?

A: I was always telling myself stories as a kid, making paracosm after paracosm in my head. Later, I became a founding member of Sequential Tart, a pioneering “women in comics” webzine. After that, I wrote a webcomic called “Gun Street Girl” for the pioneering webcomics publisher Modern Tales, and co-wrote a graphic novel with my husband, Park Cooper, called “Half Dead,” published via Marvel Comics.

After my husband and I worked as manga adapters and editors for Viz, Tokyopop, and Del Rey Manga, we started writing novels. What made me choose to publish this book (and my other books) is that a publisher called The Shooting Star Press liked our work. They have published our Song to the Siren trilogy, our The Talking Cure trilogy, and the novel Hungry Ghosts. Then Lucha Comics chose to publish our Hungry Ghosts graphic novel and my Gun Street Girl stories.

Q: Reed Sinclair is a tricky character to pull off. What made him your biggest challenge?

A: Reed Sinclair, the enigmatic rock star who died young, was my biggest challenge, because I did not want him to be just a thinly-veiled version of a cult figure rock star such as Lou Reed or Kurt Cobain. I had to write a character that was charismatic, talented, gifted, and self-destructive, but he could not be someone who was cruel, self-centered, or self-indulgent. He had to be someone who loved his friends and loved and supported his equally-talented girlfriend, Samantha MacNamara.

And I had to write honestly about the child neglect and child abuse he was subjected to, which changed his character and his world view. And, add to that, the Song to the Siren series is not just dark fantasy with an important love story in it. It is also quiet, ambiguous horror where we do not know if the supernatural is real or if a character we have grown to admire is battling mental illness.

Q: Who do you write for, and what do you hope they feel?

A: I write for people who are tired of cookie-cutter books that are chasing trends. I write for people who are looking for something that the mainstream cannot or will not give them. I write for readers who want their minds and hearts to be opened by a work of art. So, I am writing for the outsiders, the survivors, and the people who feel that no one sees them or understands them. So, all of my books have the themes of survival, difficult childhoods, and feeling alienated from a world where most people walk lockstep. My books say, “I see you. I understand. I’ve been there.”

Q: Did real life shape Reed and his world?

A: When I was writing Reed, initially, I had a difficult time getting into his head. So, I remembered something I thought when I was twelve: I had never seen a happy adult. Every adult I knew of took their misery out on their children, then expected their children to follow the same unfulfilling paths as the adults. All the rules the adults have are too inflexible and inconsistently enforced, and adults will cover up for other adults, especially those adults in power, and will believe a fellow adult over their own children.

So, I gave this line of thought to Reed and said, “Okay, kid, what are you going to do with this idea?”

And my character said, “I will fight these adults all the way.”

I thought, “There, I’ve got you. You’re a Peter Pan without a Neverland.”

Q: Is there a question about the series you wish readers would ask?

A: “Will there be any more books in the series?”

Yes, definitely.

Q: Do you have a favorite passage you would like to share?

A: Yes. There is a part where, right before going to a party (that she does not really want to go to), young Samantha is forced by her mother to wear a ridiculous frilly party dress, and Reed laughs, mostly because it is just so absurdly not her. This next passage is where he apologizes for laughing:

“I’m sorry I laughed at your dress, Sam,” Reed said.

“Do I look that stupid in it?”

“No, you look… really pretty. It’s just… it’s not you.”

“So, you’re saying, I’m not meant to be pretty?”

“Nah. What I’m saying is that you’re not meant to be that kind of pretty.”

“What sort of pretty am I supposed to be?”

“Pretty like a lost girl.”

“A lost girl?”

“Yeah. I mean, in Peter Pan, there are the lost boys, so, I imagine, there must be lost girls, too.”

“Oh. Are you a lost boy?”

“I’m Pan himself. I have no parents and no shadow.”

“I’d like to be like that.”

“Well, maybe you are. Let’s check your ears.” “My ears?”

Reed grabbed my head and pretended to examine it. “Oh, yes, you’re a lost fairy child like me. Your ears come to little points and everything.” Reed and I looked at each other. My head was still in his hands. “…Never let them make you into a fairy princess, Sam. Always be my lost girl.”

“I’ll try,” I said. Then Mom yelled for me. “I gotta run,” I said.

“Go take off that dress and get into some real clothes,” Reed said. Then he ruffled my hair and let me go.

Q: What was the biggest challenge in writing or publishing it?

A: When I realized the nature of the supernatural “big bad” of the book (I honestly did not know what the being was at first), I had to sit with the idea for several days, because it was so outrageous that I thought the audience would not believe it. Finally, I said, “Well, that’s where the story is going, nothing I can do about it, let’s roll with it.” After that, I grew fond of the nature of the big bad, as it meant that I could write about Irish mythology.

Q: What is next for you and Park?

A: Right now, we are doing a book launch for the third books in both the Song to the Siren and The Talking Cure series. After that, it is back to the old drawing board. I have an idea for a Song to the Siren book that is a little similar to the old book Titus Alone, but with some Tolkien thrown in there.

Buy the book here: Song to the Siren, Book 1 (Amazon). Find the full series and The Shooting Star Press catalog at sspbooks.com.