Thirteenth Theme Tune

With revisions and edits of my novel Thirteenth underway and the novel due to be released this year (keep an eye out for the ARC announcement!) it’s time to reveal the theme tune by Gemma Cartmell. It’s the same basic tune as The Crows Theme, but it’s been given the dance treatment. I asked for…

cmrosens

January 18, 2021

2–3 minutes

arc, gemma cartmell, goodreads, goodreads group, theme tune, thirteenth, twitter

With revisions and edits of my novel Thirteenth underway and the novel due to be released this year (keep an eye out for the ARC announcement!) it’s time to reveal the theme tune by Gemma Cartmell. It’s the same basic tune as The Crows Theme, but it’s been given the dance treatment.

I asked for something clearly related to The Crows Theme, but reflecting the psychedelic nature of the drug use in the novel by Wes Porter, and the younger protagonist (although it is still Adult, not YA). Fairwood House/The Crows is a main setting, but you see it through the eyes of a jaded 17 year old and her traumatised playboy brother (29). Ricky is also 29 now – he had his birthday in September, and this is set in January, so you missed it. It’s fine, he didn’t want anyone to make a fuss.

It begins with a prologue dated 14 May, before we skip to January. I hope that it’s possible to read Thirteenth as a standalone, or to read it first and then pick up The Crows for a prequel read. Betas seem to think so!

I will be serialising Thirteenth as S2 of the podcast, which will probably begin Autumn 2021.

Cover art by Rebecca F. Kenney

Katy Porter is seventeen, studying for her A Levels, navigating her brutal family of eldritch monstrosities, and trying to cope with turning into one herself. Except Katy is the thirteenth child of a thirteenth child, and that kind of Change comes with a compulsive taste for her own clan’s flesh. Since she doesn’t have much of a stomach for killing, Katy is really not looking forward to that part. In fairness, neither is anyone else.

The unexpected death of the clan’s matriarch (and Katy’s protector) leaves everyone in turmoil, and Katy without her mentor. If she wants to see her next birthday, she needs allies – but the only two she’s got are Wes and Ricky, both of whom have their own opposing agendas, and who can’t stand the sight of each other.

Wes Porter, Katy’s oldest brother, is a polyamorous, drug-addled playboy pushing thirty whose features are instantly forgettable, and trying to remember what he looks and sounds like has driven people – including one of his partners – to madness. When he swears he wants to protect Katy after voting in favour of killing her, what has prompted his change of heart, and can he really be trusted?

Ricky Porter, their soothsayer cousin, is a killer and a car thief who has ascended into an aura-draining, eyeball-eating eldritch god. Or, at least, that’s what he thinks he is. Wes thinks he’s a prick, and Katy remembers him as a violent thug who punched her dad once at her eleventh birthday party. But Ricky has powers they don’t, some dark secrets of his own, and dangerous forces to contend with.

Katy needs to come to terms with her own monstrosity to stay alive, but she’s not the only one who needs to face what they truly are.

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One response to “Thirteenth Theme Tune”

Podcast S01E04 ~ Chapter 4 Up Now! – C. M. Rosens

February 25, 2021 at 12:20 pm

[…] The story of how Nathaniel Montague Porter (Nathan) met and married Deirdre Wend is told in my novella, The Reluctant Husband. You will notice this novella states that the first batch of spawn were actually born in 1939, but this is a truncated family tree. The ones missing off the genealogy above (which just needed to show the quads of 1949 and the triplets of 1952 for the purposes of this branch), run from 1939 (quads), 1943 (quins), and 1946 (triplets). Marrying first cousins is legal in the U.K. and parts of Europe, and is not considered incestuous. Incest here is defined as within the same immediate family group or between uncles/aunts and nieces/nephews, though the latter definition didn’t stop the Habsburgs. So Charlotte and Ian Porter’s marriage is technically legal, although because both sets of parents are siblings, this is also… a bit questionable. George and Letitia’s marriage is obviously not legal, but they have the same surname anyway and Lettie goes by ‘Mrs’ after a formal ceremony at home. Despite the fact that the family almost exclusively marry each other with one or two notable exceptions (Ruby Wend, who married ‘that Youngblood chap’, for example [Ch 2]), the family itself is comprised of five distinct branches. The Wends are the main branch that spawned the Wend-McVeys and the Porters, in-grafting extra genes, while the Shaws and the Foremans do not currently have any branches who have married beyond the family. This is generally because the generations tend to reflect the personalities of each matriarch, descended as they are from one of the three Pendle sisters. The Shaws are peace-keepers or complacent in their situations, the Foreman family think they are the superior line and are therefore the most inbred, while Beverley Wend, still alive and kicking, has a more pragmatic view of the bloodline situation and something of a romantic streak. Just because she never got her HEA, doesn’t mean she actively discourages her spawn from theirs, even if she does complain about them a lot. The Youngbloods (mentioned in Ch 2) are… actually already blood relatives. Beverley’s mother was a Youngblood. Obviously by now this is a distant relative, but it’s not someone entirely unknown to the family. I may explore Ruby and Tom Youngblood in later stories, as Tom Youngblood (based in Lancaster) has a biotech company and partners with Ruby’s cousin, Barry Wend-McVey, who has an underground lab making designer drugs. Both are interested in manufacturing the mutations that the clan members have, only without rituals and shrines and all that palava. There’s a possibility that Tom Youngblood’s company and research is connected to Avery Medical in Chicago, Illinois. If you want to know what that’s about, Avery Medical is the property of Nita Pan, and features in their novella Under Your Knife (forthcoming). You’ll learn a lot more about the family in Thirteenth. […]

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C. M. Rosens