I love a bunch of Dashboard Confessional songs (“Hands Down”, “Ghost of A Good Thing”, “Vindicated”) but the one that ran through my head as I wrote The Summer We Believed was “Carry This Picture”.
The Summer We Believed is the first book first book in the Denim Days series, which tells the story of Melody and Duncan over the course of three summers at their lake houses in the North woods of Minnesota. In the first book, the two main characters have been friends since the womb and the summer before they enter college they feel the tug of stronger feelings.
I really wanted to tell the story of the three summers without all the events that happened in between. Some of the events get included as backstory or even as a part of the main story, but it’s definitely not the traditional structure of one novel, so the series is being released as three shorter books. Eventually, I’ll put out a compiled version, but wanted readers to experience the summers the way Melody and Duncan would have experienced them—with a break in between.
This song feels like it was written from Duncan’s point of view. There’s a key scene in the story when they take a picture together. It’s an important scene in the first book, and in some ways the picture is even more important for the second book in the series. Unfortunately, there’s no official video for this song—I think it would have made a great one!—so, I’ve included a fan video from a concert.
And, if you’re interested in reading about Melody and Duncan’s first summer it’s available as an ebook here.