Somewhere along the way, I decided simply writing about a fictional band wasn’t enough.
I wanted you to hear them.
When I started writing Wish I Didn’t Want You, music was never meant to be background decoration. It is part of who Sunny Chapman is.
Sunny is a singer, guitarist, and songwriter. She’s spent years chasing the dream of making it with her band, Savage Groove, while working, hustling, and trying to hold together a life that doesn’t always leave much room for anything else.
Especially love.
Then Dalton Henry shows up.
What begins as a summer fling becomes something neither of them planned for, and for Sunny, music becomes one of the places where all those complicated feelings eventually have somewhere to go.
That’s how “Wish I Didn’t” began.
A fictional song becomes real
At first, “Wish I Didn’t” existed only inside Sunny and Dalton’s story.
I knew what the song meant to Sunny. I knew the emotion behind it. I knew what I wanted it to feel like.
And eventually I kept coming back to the same thought:
What if readers could actually hear it?
Not a playlist song that reminded me of Sunny.
Not an existing track that captured the mood.
I wanted the song from the book.
So I decided to make it real.
That meant taking something that existed in my imagination and working with real musicians and creatives to give it a sound of its own.
And suddenly Savage Groove wasn’t only a fictional band anymore.
Finding Sunny’s voice
One of the most surreal parts of this entire process was hearing Sunny sing for the first time.
Rachel Maxann brought Sunny’s voice to life on “Wish I Didn’t,” and hearing another person step into a character I had spent so much time with was emotional in a way I wasn’t completely prepared for.
I wanted Sunny to sound soulful and emotionally exposed without losing the strength at the center of who she is. The song needed yearning in it. Frustration. Desire. That awful experience of wishing your feelings would simply cooperate with what your brain knows would be easier.
Rachel gave me that.
For a few minutes, Sunny stopped being someone who existed only in my head and on the page.
I could hear her.
The world of Savage Groove
Savage Groove’s sound lives primarily in R&B and soul, with the kind of live-band energy that makes sense for musicians who have spent years playing small venues, bars, and stages while waiting for their break.
And I wanted “Wish I Didn’t” to feel like a song this particular band could have created.
It shouldn’t sound like promotional music for a romance novel.
It should sound like a Savage Groove record.
That distinction became important to me throughout the process, from the production of the song to the single artwork.
The final cover, created by Doit, captures exactly the feeling I wanted: late at night, alone with your thoughts, trying to write your way through something you probably wish you didn’t feel in the first place.
The song at the heart of Sunny and Dalton’s story
I won’t tell you exactly where “Wish I Didn’t” fits into the story. Part of the experience is discovering that for yourself.
But I will say this:
Sunny is often better at putting the truth into music than she is at saying it directly.
And there are some feelings you can avoid in conversation that become impossible to hide once you start writing a song about them.
That is very much the emotional space where “Wish I Didn’t” lives.
It belongs to Sunny.
But it also belongs to everything that happens between Sunny and Dalton during one unforgettable summer.
You can hear “Wish I Didn’t” now
This entire project started because I wondered how much further I could take the world of a romance novel.
Now there’s a real song.
There’s real sheet music.
There’s an original score built around Sunny, Dalton, and their relationship.
And eventually, there will be even more ways to experience the music behind the story.
For now, you can listen to:
🎧 “Wish I Didn’t” by Savage Groove
And if you want to know the story behind the song:
📖 Wish I Didn’t Want You
Book One of the Wish I Didn’t duet
Available August 25
Sunny and Dalton’s story concludes in Wish I Didn’t Love You, coming November 17.
Maybe you’ll listen to “Wish I Didn’t” before you read the book.
Maybe you’ll wait until after.
But if you listen again once you know everything Sunny is feeling when that song exists?
I have a feeling it may sound a little different. ❤️
Moni