Balloons de Feline | Fiction, Music, Chaos & Catharsis – Page 3 – Fiction for the ones who feel too loud, love too hard, and refuse to apologize. Written from the stage, the road, and the heart.

Between Backline and Crossfade: The Real Story Behind the Fiction

November 7, 2025

When I wrote Backline, I didn’t realize how much of myself I was pouring into every page. At first glance, it’s a story about love, music, and the chaos that comes with life behind the stage. But beneath all the setlists, heartbreaks, and hotel rooms, it was about me—my emotions, my lessons, and my journey through the kind of pain that doesn’t get neatly resolved in three acts.

I didn’t write Backline from a professional distance. I wrote it from the trenches of feeling too much. Every argument, every quiet scene of reflection, every moment of creative fire—it all came from real experiences. Writing it was cathartic, but it also forced me to confront parts of myself that I had been avoiding for years.

That’s the thing about storytelling: it exposes the truths we try to hide, even from ourselves.

As time passed, I realized that Backline wasn’t the end of the story—it was just the opening act. The next part of the journey became Crossfade. If Backline was about breaking down, Crossfade is about rebuilding. It’s about transitions, blurred edges, and the strange in-between moments where you start to become someone new, even if you’re still holding onto pieces of the old you.

In music, a crossfade is when one song fades out as another fades in. That’s what this phase of life feels like for me. One chapter closing softly, another beginning—different tempo, same soul. I wanted the sequel to reflect that. The same heart, the same passion for authenticity, but a little more strength, a little more self-awareness, and a lot more healing.

For those who’ve read Backline and saw pieces of themselves in it, know this: Crossfade is for you too. It’s for everyone who’s ever loved deeply, lost themselves, and slowly started to find their way back.

My hope is that by being honest in my writing—and in posts like this one—I remind others that art doesn’t have to be polished to be powerful. Sometimes the most beautiful stories come from the messiest chapters of our lives.

If you connected with Backline, you’ll love what’s coming next. Stay part of the journey as Crossfade unfolds—exclusive updates, sneak peeks, and behind-the-scenes thoughts straight to your inbox.

Subscribe now and never miss a beat!

https://www.amazon.com/Backline-Balloons-Feline-ebook/dp/B0FQSZN81P

This was me back in my band days 🙂
Behind the Scenes: Writing Backline — Where Fiction Meets the Backstage Life

November 5, 2025

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.
The Quiet Before the Lights Hit

November 4, 2025

There’s a moment right before the world turns gold.

Right before the stage lights warm up and the hum in the air turns into heartbeat. Right before the first chord, the first inhale, the first line of a story that didn’t exist until it came clawing out of your chest.

It’s dark enough that you could disappear —

and bright enough that you know you won’t.

I’ve always loved that moment.

Not the performance.

Not the applause.

Not even the wild rush after when your adrenaline is still chewing through your ribs.

It’s the in-between that gets me.

The quiet backstage corners.

The dusty road miles.

The half-finished coffee and scribbled lyrics on the back of a set list.

The motel mirror at 2am where you look like someone who lived a thousand lifetimes in one night and survived all of them.

That’s where the truth lives.

Not in the center of the spotlight — but in the breath you take right before you step into it.

I think that’s why I write.

To catch the things we don’t say in the moments no one is looking.

The soft violence of vulnerability. The hush right before the roar.

So here’s to the in-betweens. Here’s to the backstage souls. Here’s to the stories that happen before the curtain rises.

And here’s to you — reading this like maybe, just maybe, you’ve lived in those shadows too.

Welcome to the backstage.

We’re just getting started.

https://www.amazon.com/Backline-Balloons-Feline-ebook/dp/B0FQSZN81P