Music – Chrys Buckley

a silhouette of a person with hair flying like they're head banging, with music symbols in the background, including treble clefs, bass clefs, sharp symbols, flat symbols, and music notes.

If you know (and everyone you know knows) you talk about music too much . . .

If you ever had the urge to cover a driveway or sidewalk with chalk drawings of band logos, song names, and lyrics . . .

If you credit music for getting you through your toughest times and hardest heartbreaks . . .

If you frequently have the urge to blast music while driving (or while riding in a car if you’re like me and can’t drive) and sing along at the top of your lungs . . .

If you remember your life by what albums you were listening to when and understand your life through lyrics . . .

If you were the kind of kid who answered parental questions about how the latest visit to the doctor’s office went with what songs you heard while in the waiting room . . .

If you love the 60 Songs that Explain the ’90s podcast (now 60 Songs that Explain the ’00s) or would listen to a similar podcast for your specific favorite music decade . . .

. . . then my forthcoming debut book, INVISIBLE VIOLETS: A Mixtape in Lyric Essays is a book for you. It’s a memoir in 7 essays with a few different themes running through its tracks (essays).

One of the strongest themes is disability (see this post about the disability aspect of the book), and as I write in Track 3: The Caduceus and the Muse:

Not all my writing, not even all my more personal writing, addressed albinism or disability, but I was constitutionally incapable of not writing about music.”

Music is all over this book. Obnoxiously so, even. Music was such a saving force in my life when I was young, and I hope my book evokes that particular sense of connecting with music as a teenager and how that resonates and evolves long after adolescence. How music can reach you when you’re an isolated and outcast kid in a way nothing else can reach you. How music can buoy you when you’re in your twenties and finding your way in the world. How music will always be with you, through all the ups and downs of adult life, as your tastes expand over time. I hope I’ve done a decent job of capturing something that feels beyond and before words.

Your particular favorite genres might be different from mine, and I hope that what I’ve written, while deeply specific, speaks to feelings that transcend genre. Still, you might be especially drawn to this book if you are or were a fan of ’90s rock, especially any of the many musical projects of Chris Cornell, to whose memory the book is dedicated. Almost every band that was on the Singles soundtrack is in the book. The artists and genres mentioned lean grunge and heavy and rock, and there’s also modern pop, singer-songwriter girlies across the ages, classic rock, and weirdly mentions of two very different artists doing covers of Joni Mitchell songs.

Again, though, my hope is that even when our specific tastes and faves differ, the feeling of the primacy of music that infuses this book will still resonate with you as you read.

I’m working on book playlists based on musical references and allusions in the book. One is a maximalist version that’s over the top, excessive, and 1.3 days long. The other is an abridged version that I’ve so far only been able to whittle down to 100 songs, which seems long for an abridged version but might have to stand as is. I’m also working on a word cloud of all the music in the book. So those will be incoming at some point before my book launch on March 13th!

Music as a theme is over-the-top, excessively prominent in these essays:
Track 3: The Caduceus and the Muse
Track 5: Can’t Change Me: An Unnatural History of My Names
Track 7: Distant Lights
Acknowledgments

Music as a theme is central in these essays:
Track 4: August is a Burnt Burgundy-Violet Haze
Track 6: Reasonable Doubt

Disability is present but more peripheral in these essays:
Track 1: Invisible Violet: On Seeing and Not Seeing
Track 2: Blue Alchemy

Cover image of Invisible Violets: A Mixtape in Lyric Essays by Chrys Buckley. Words are green against a textured background of different shades of purple. Near the top of the cover, there is an author blurb that reads, "A fierce manifesto about claiming your own story. This book will change you and linger long after the final page." This blurb was written by Tarn Wilson, author of In Praise of Inadequate Gifts.

~~~

For all the book details, check out the INVISIBLE VIOLETS page!

This post is part of a series, published the second Tuesday of every month, where I think about who my book is for.

~Chrys

Image Description: a silhouette of a person with hair flying like they’re head banging, with music symbols in the background, including treble clefs, bass clefs, sharp symbols, flat symbols, and music notes.

Blindness and Disability, Music, My Books, Writing

BACK COVER REVEAL!

January 23, 2026January 24, 2026 Chrys Buckley

First there was the COVER REVEAL.

It’s been a minute since then (!) and now it’s time to reveal the back cover of INVISIBLE VIOLETS: A Mixtape in Lyric Essays! You can find book info, including how to pre-order signed and personalized copies here.

With no further ado, here is the back cover:

Back cover of Invisible Violets on a textured purple background

Music, My Books, Writing

How Did It Get So Late?

January 9, 2026January 13, 2026 Chrys Buckley

When I think about INVISIBLE VIOLETS, my book that’s releasing on March 13 (9 weeks from today!), it mostly fills me with joy and pride. I still tear up with feelings of, I can’t believe this is really happening, OMGGGGG!

Mixed in with all that joy and pride and omfg, though, is sorrow. It feels important to talk about that too. Some of the sorrows are too big to go into on here. One of them I may write about eventually but am not ready for yet because it’s something I learned about very recently. For now, I’m going to stick to the survivable sorrows.

Here is one of them: I’m sad in a bone deep way that my first book is coming out so long after Chris Cornell is gone. I’m sad that my book is dedicated to his memory and not to him as a still living person in the world.

Many years ago, I wrote my first full-length memoir manuscript. It’s known around these parts (this site) as Moonchild (named after one of Chris’s songs). I was always going to dedicate to Chris Cornell because it chronicled the year that his first solo album, Euphoria Morning, had a profound impact on my life. I was thinking about that back in maybe 2007, give or take a year or so, when he was alive and well and making music.

I wanted to put it out there, in the world, in concrete words in a book, how much his music had meant to me. I hoped he’d read it someday and feel good that his art had had such a profound impact on someone. Lots of someones.

But then I put writing on the back burner for all sorts of reasons for a really long time, and Chris died in 2017 and now my first book, a different book, is dedicated to his ghost.

On Christmas, I found myself thinking all sorts of sad thoughts about time and regret and how I know it wouldn’t have changed anything if Chris had read a book of mine dedicated to him back in the day but still I wish I’d had a way to convey the magnitude of his art’s impact on me (and on so many other people).

What if I hadn’t put my writing on the back burner for all those years? What if I’d gotten my shit together so much sooner? What if I hadn’t thought there would always be time, always be later, until there wasn’t?

The funny thing is, all the essays in my upcoming collection are from the back burner years. And Moonchild, if I ever do anything with it, will now be dedicated to someone else, someone who was a very important and good friend to me during the year the book focuses on, someone who died in 2023.

Things always change, and mostly I’m at peace with that, but sometimes there are sorrows that need to be spoken. For me, having a book launching soon is bringing up some of those sorrows. I think that’s okay. Grief is weird and nonlinear and yeah, I’ve found myself unspeakably sad lately about a rock star death that happened almost nine years ago.

It doesn’t help with the sadness that I’ve been working on a book playlist and listening to so much Chris Cornell, solo and in all of his bands.

The title of this post comes from the song “Disappearing Act” on Chris’s second solo record, Carry On, and here I give you the music video:

Disappearing Act Video on YouTube

Chrys

Image Description: Picture of Chris Cornell

Blindness and Disability, Music, Pop Culture, Science, TV, Writing

INVISIBLE VIOLETS is Available for Pre-Order!

November 19, 2025January 16, 2026 Chrys Buckley

The title says it all.

This whole thing about a book of mine getting publishing still feels so surreal, and yet here’s one more step in the book publishing process that makes it more concrete. My book is up on all the sites, available for pre-order.

This collection of personal lyric essays took eons to write, and eons to edit. It went through so many iterations, and I plan to talk through and demystify the steps of the process on here in time.

For now, just know that I’m so proud of this book and each essay within. There is darkness in these essay-songs, but writing was always a joy. Even when it made me cry, which was almost always, because I’m a sap like that. I can’t wait for you to read this collection on MARCH 13th, 2026!

I’m also starting an email newsletter that you can sign up for here for all the authorly updates!

Links to pre-order INVISIBLE VIOLETS: A Mixtape in Lyric Essays

Signed and Personalized Books for Anywhere in the US through Annie Bloom’s Books

Full Details About Signed Books Here

pre-order signed and personalized copies of Invisible violets

Portland and Pacific Northwest Independent Bookstores

Pre-Order Invisible Violets from Annie Bloom’s Books

Pre-Order Invisible Violets From Powell’s Books

PRe-Oder Invisible Violets From Darvill’s Bookstore
(Orcas Island)

pre-Order Invisible Violets on bookshop.org

Other Booksellers

Pre-Order Invisible Violets From BOOKS-A-Million

Pre-Order Invisible Violets From Barnes & Noble

pre-Order Invisible Violets From Amazon

Blindness and Disability, Music, Writing

COVER REVEAL!

October 21, 2025 Chrys Buckley

The time is here. After rounds of editing, eproofs, print proofs, and another round of proofs, the book is locked in.

I spent all summer going over my book for what felt like a bajillion times. In fact, if I had to read any of it right now, I’d probably run away screaming because I’m SO SICK OF MY BOOK! Good thing there’s a fair amount of time until launch day (March 13th) so it can feel fresh again by then.

In the meantime, now that it’s all locked in, here is the cover:

It’s a typographic cover rather than an image-based one. One thing I’ve learned through this process and my work at Ooligan Press is that covers often look duller in print, and a lot darker. So stay tuned for future reveals. The back cover will be coming soon, and so will an unboxing video when the author copies arrive!

~Chrys

Blindness and Disability, Music, Pop Culture, Science, Writing

Catching Up with Chrys – a Time-Lapse in Taylor Swift Songs

April 15, 2025April 20, 2025 Chrys Buckley

Before my last spate of posts about my publishing journey (on the submission, the award, and the call), it had been over four years since I updated this site. Last I left off, it was the fall of 2020, and I had decided to leave medical school.

A lot has changed since then, so I thought it was high time to catch you all up, bring some continuity to this site, and fill in the plot holes. Anyone who knows me or has read this site before will be unsurprised I’m doing it through songs.

Here we go.

time lapse still of a road going into hills

Continue reading →

Music, Writing

The Call

April 1, 2025April 6, 2025 Chrys Buckley

In light of the amazing publishing news I posted last month, I want to post about different parts of the process. Mostly, that’ll entail looking back at how I got my manuscript ready for submission, but today I want to talk about the call. It’s important to me to be as transparent as possible, especially for other writers reading this.

I was home sick from work. A bug had been rampaging through my grad program, and it was my turn. So I’d gone to bed early the night before. This was a good thing, because when I woke up, I had an email from Jill McCabe Johnson, the publisher at Wandering Aengus Press, sent the night before, asking if we could find a time for a call so she could ask me something.

After running through about fifty-three thousand possibilities, I settled on suspecting what she wanted to discuss would be something like, “We’d like to publish your book, but…” I couldn’t imagine she wanted to call me just to reject me–I remembered how when I was applying to medical school, a call meant you were getting in, and if they wanted to reject you they’d do it with an email or a notification posted in their online portal–and the need to ask me something wouldn’t likely apply to a straight-up acceptance.

Mostly, I was shocked that they could have an answer for me so quickly. I’d expected to wait until April, at least.

Continue reading →

Blindness and Disability, Music, Pop Culture, Science, Writing

After all the Years that I Stood There on the Sidelines Wishing for Right Now

March 19, 2025November 19, 2025 Chrys Buckley

Sometimes your dreams come true. Your ship finally comes in. You get your turn. This is one of those times for me. I hope this will be the first of many times I get this news. Even if that does come to pass, nothing will ever feel quite like it does right now. I know that, and I’m savoring it, because it still doesn’t feel real.

About a month and a half ago, I did a thing.

Today, I get to tell you that my book manuscript won the Wandering Aengus Press prize for nonfiction, which means MY BOOK IS GETTING PUBLISHED!

We haven’t set an exact release date, but are looking at sometime next spring, perhaps next March.

I’ll have a lot of work to do for my book over the next year. I couldn’t be happier to be working with Wandering Aengus Press and their team. I worked on my manuscript, an essay collection, with their due date in mind and didn’t submit it anywhere else.

The contracts are signed, the process is underway, and most days it still doesn’t feel real. I have waited and worked for this since I was a little girl writing stories in my room.

There’s so much more to say. I plan to post lots about the process as it happens, as well as the process that led to this book and this press. So stay tuned for lots more goodies.

For now, I’m just basking in this once-in-a-lifetime feeling of this writer dreams coming true for the first time.

Chrys

Blindness and Disability, Music, Writing

Yesterday I Did a Thing

January 30, 2025January 30, 2025 Chrys Buckley

Screenshot of Duosuma Submission Manager showing trail to table and Wandering Angus Press Book Awards submission

Yesterday, on the new moon and the lunar new year, I submitted a full-length book manuscript to the Wandering Aengus Press Book Awards.

The manuscript I submitted is a collection of fourteen personal essays. The topics I explore within the pages are pretty reflective of this site in general but with less Breaking Bad. Not none, mind you, but less. There are essays discussing blindness and albinism and disability, essays about medical school, essays featuring the internet of the early 2000s, essays touching on pop culture in so many forms, essays rooted in land and place. Under the surface, they’re all contemplations of choice and time and memory.

They all, and I do mean all, touch on music in some way. In fact, I have a playlist underway and it is both massive and amazing.

My title, at least for now is

INVISIBLE VIOLETS: An Album of Personal Essays.

In some ways, it’s been in the works for over a decade. In other ways, it took shape over the last two or three. In yet another, it came together over the last eight weeks.

I plan on posting more about the process, as it’s been a wild ride I’d love to share.

But for now, for my first post in over four years, I’m just gonna bask in knowing that I did a thing.

Music, Writing

The Artist’s Way Reflections – Week Seven: Recovering a Sense of Connection

October 22, 2020June 24, 2024 Chrys Buckley

Week Seven: Recovering a Sense of Connection

Listening

In this section, I liked the juxtaposition of thinking of creativity as “getting something down,” like transcribing, instead of having to think it up.

For writing, that comes pretty naturally to me. And maybe that’s especially true since I write a lot about real life, explore past experiences, and so forth. When I’m doing other things, especially working out on the elliptical, or listening to music, or walking alone, I often just have words and feelings I want to write down. I pre-write in my head a lot, always have.

Nowadays, I do less of it because there’s just so much other stress and noise, and I drown it out with too much podcast listening and pop culture consumption and social media distraction. But still, this notion of getting something down feels natural to me when it comes to writing.

That said, I don’t think what I’ve written has ever, in all my years, really lived up to what it was in my head. I wonder if that’s true for all writers? It’s something I’ve come to accept: that even though in my head I’m pre-writing in words, when I get to actually putting it in words, it never quite matches or captures what I thought it would.

Continue reading “The Artist’s Way Reflections – Week Seven: Recovering a Sense of Connection” →