Balloons de Feline | Fiction, Music, Chaos & Catharsis

There’s a certain magic the public never sees.

They see the lights crash on, the first chord ring out like a prayer, the singer gripping the mic like life depends on it. They don’t see the hands that built it all — calloused, tired, proud. They don’t see the bruises, the duct tape wounds, the panic when the headliner is in staging and a cable suddenly decides to die.

And that is where Backline was born.

Not in a quiet writing nook with soft music and tea (though I respect that life), but in between load-ins and late-night drives. In the adrenaline haze of festival dust, steel truss, road cases, and the hum of generators. In hotel rooms you barely remember. In the stillness after the crowd leaves and the stage stands empty, echoing with what just was.

The Spark

I didn’t want to write a rock-romance fairytale. I wanted to write the truth with fiction’s sharp edges.

To show the grind, the ego, the heartbreak — and the beauty that rises from it all like soundcheck smoke under spotlights. To let a woman take center stage in a world where she’s often seen as the merch girl, the girlfriend, the pretty distraction.

Backline isn’t about being near the music —it’s about building the world the music lives in.

Real Sweat, Real Heart

Writing this book meant pulling from late-night journal entries that smelled like sweat and adrenaline. It meant reliving moments — some I loved, some I had to breathe through — and translating them into scenes where my protagonist refuses to fold when life tries to crush her spine.

It meant asking hard questions:

What does freedom cost? What happens when the lights fade and you’re alone with yourself? Can you build a life around chaos and still find peace? How do you heal while people only see your strength?

The Characters Behind the Curtain

Some of these characters are love letters. Some are warnings. Some are ghosts.

Every stagehand who taught me something with a cigarette half-hanging from their mouth. Every musician who lived harder than their pulse could handle. Every woman who carved space for herself where none was offered. Every person who ever found sanctuary under the scaffolding of a stage.

They’re all in there — in whispers, not replicas. This isn’t autobiography. This is a mirror set on fire.

Why I Had to Write It

Because this world deserves a voice that isn’t sanitized or simplified. Because the people who make the magic deserve to be seen. Because women in the industry deserve stories where they don’t just survive — they rise.

And because for a long time, the road was the only place I felt like myself… until writing became another way to breathe.

Final Bow

Backline is more than a book. It’s a spotlight on the shadows. It’s proof that the loudest lives often have the quietest hearts.

And if you’ve ever stood on an empty stage after load-out, breathing in silence that still hums…you already know why this story had to exist.