The moment I walked through the door of Earthquake Ethel’s, I knew I was home. That kick drum and bass kicked my blood pumping into high gear. I’ve written scenes about that time in at least one of my novels, but Raining Men comes to mind.

It was only a matter of time, more rather than less, that I would be drawn to EDM. Actually, I was late to EDM as most people think of it, the EDM of the 90s and 2000s. I only discovered it when I was taking songwriting and music production classes, searching for a genre I was especially interested in or had a knack for. I tried piano-forward genres, guitar-forward genres, but once I realized it was all about the drums for me (my father said “All my kids play the drums” after I met him), I knew EDM was my genre.

But looking back I see that it all started with Earthquake Ethel’s. And as much as I’ve enjoyed writing novels, there was a time and place for that. It was therapy for me back then. Now, my therapy is music. Or maybe writing still is, too, because there are times when I still need to write. But these days I’m writing more with sound than just words.