Mood Board for My Debut Novel 'Psalms for the End of the World'

A glimpse at one of the techniques I used to help create my sprawling mosaic narrative

Every project I work on has its own process, its own way of finding its true identity, and I try not to get in its way. When it came to my debut novel PSALMS FOR THE END OF THE WORLD, I used a technique I’d tried with several screenplays over the years. About two months into the writing of its first draft, I began to assemble images on my office wall. It grew into a wild constellation of ideas, tones, and loose story moments. It’s not that I needed help keeping any of the narrative threads straight in my head — PSALMS is a sprawling mosaic novel for those who haven’t read it (which is most of you - for shame!) — but it did allow me to begin to imagine how such disparate storylines could begin to talk to each other. In other words, how they would communicate as a whole with the reader.

I’m not alone in using this technique, commonly referred to as a mood board. But since I’d never seen another artist’s until I was several sales into my screenwriting career, I thought it might help you if I shared the one I just described as a 5AM StoryTalk bonus feature.

In short, presented below are numerous images from cinema, history, science, even my own life that served as inspiration for the book’s tapestry of narratives and puzzle box mystery. No explanation has been provided.

What’s important, I think, is the vibe. What do these images, when juxtaposed with each other, make you feel? What mystery do they conjure in your imagination as they rub shoulders with each other?

If you’ve read PSALMS and care to ask questions based on what you find here — or just want to ask about how I use inspiration boards when I do — I’m happy to try to address them in my own cryptic manner. Can you work out what each of these images are and what role they play in my novel?

Before you dive in, here’s a description of PSALMS FOR THE END OF THE WORLD for a bit of context:

It’s 1962 and physics student Grace Pulansky believes she has met the man of her dreams, Robert Jones, while serving up slices of pecan pie at the local diner. But then the FBI shows up, with their fedoras and off-the-rack business suits, and accuses him of being a bomb-planting mass-murderer.

Finding herself on the run with Jones across America’s Southwest, the discoveries awaiting Gracie will undermine everything she knows about the universe. Her story will reveal how scores of lives — an identity-swapping rock star, a mourning lover in ancient China, Nazi hunters in pursuit of a terrible secret, a crazed artist in pre-revolutionary France, an astronaut struggling with a turbulent interplanetary future, and many more — are interconnected across space and time by love, grief, and quantum entanglement.

Spanning continents, centuries, and dimensions, this exquisitely crafted and madly inventive novel — a triple-disk, concept-album of a book — is a profound yet propulsive enquiry into the nature of reality .

You can read more about it or order it here.

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PSALMS FOR THE END OF THE WORLD is now available. Read more about it, or order here.

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