Home on the Horizon
/“Home on the Horizon” - by Lithia Boson
A Strange Accident
Every once in a while, something happens during the creative process that you simply can’t explain.
Recently, I was experimenting with Suno, an AI music generator that creates original songs from simple text prompts. My goal couldn’t have been more straightforward. I wanted a classic heavy metal track inspired by bands like Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden, and I even disabled the option that generates lyrics.
Instead, Suno did the exact opposite and out came a slow, atmospheric synthwave piece with a soft female voice that wasn’t supposed to exist. The song stretched to nearly nine minutes before becoming repetitive and abruptly stopping, almost as if it had forgotten how to finish.
Then it got even stranger. Normally, Suno saves the prompt that generated the song along with any lyrics it created. This time, both fields were completely blank. There was no prompt. No lyrics. Nothing that explained why this particular song existed.
Image from zdnet.com
I remember thinking it should have been easy to delete it and try again but instead, I kept replaying it. The more I listened, the more convinced I became that there was something special hidden inside what looked like a software glitch.
The song wasn’t just interesting because it sounded different from what I had asked for. It was the vocals that kept pulling me back. They sounded like real words, not random syllables, yet there were no lyrics to read because Suno had never saved them.
My first thought was to upload the song into Otter.ai and let speech recognition figure it out. That lasted about thirty seconds.
Every now and then Otter would stumble onto a phrase that sounded believable before wandering straight back into complete nonsense. I’d think, “That’s got to be it,” only to read the next sentence and realize it clearly wasn’t.
That’s when I asked ChatGPT to help and what followed was probably one of the most unusual creative experiences I’ve had. We listened to the same lines over and over, comparing phonetic sounds and trying to figure out what the vocalist might actually be saying. Sometimes we’d both hear the same thing immediately. Other times we’d spend twenty minutes debating a single word.
One phrase kept resurfacing no matter how many times we listened:
“On the edges of my dreams.”
Whether those were the exact words eventually stopped mattering. They fit the music so naturally that they became the heart of our reconstructed lyrics.
Somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling like we were trying to decode an AI-generated song. It felt more like restoring an old recording whose lyric sheet had somehow been lost.
As much as I had grown attached to the song, there was still one problem I couldn’t ignore. After almost nine minutes, it became repetitive before simply ending. It never felt finished.
Rather than trying to edit it myself, I reached out to professional audio producer Spyros Politis. What impressed me most wasn’t just his technical ability. It was the way he approached the project. He never treated it as “AI music.” He treated it as a piece of music that deserved the same care and attention as anything else.
Spyros produced two different edits and explained why he felt one flowed better than the other. His recommended version shortened the song from nearly nine minutes to just over six, removing the repetitive sections while preserving everything that made the original so compelling. My favorite change was one of the simplest. Instead of fading the music out, he brought part of the opening back at the end, giving the song the kind of conclusion it had always seemed to be searching for.
The mystery surrounding the lyrics caught his attention as well. He and his wife listened to the song independently, each trying to make out what the singer was actually saying. When he shared their notes with me, I couldn’t help smiling. Several of the phrases they heard were remarkably close to the ones ChatGPT and I had already pieced together.
By that point, the project no longer felt like an experiment with AI. It felt like several people had become fascinated by the same mystery, each bringing a different perspective in hopes of solving it.
Once the music felt complete, I realized I didn’t have an image that truly belonged with it.
Over the years, talented artists have helped me develop concept art for The Amaranth Chronicles, and I’ve spent countless hours building my own 3D models and rendered scenes. None of that artwork was created with AI. Those pieces had already established what this universe looked like long before I began experimenting with image generation.
What I didn’t have was this particular moment. I pictured Lithia walking through a field of vividly colored alien grass beneath the light of a setting sun, accompanied by one of the novel’s central characters. I don’t want to reveal who that character is because it gives away too much for anyone who hasn’t read Deviant Rising, but I knew exactly what I wanted the scene to feel like.
After showing ChatGPT my existing concept art along with several of my own 3D renders, I asked if it could create that image and the result genuinely surprised me.
The characters were shown walking away from the viewer toward the horizon. None of my concept art or 3D renders had ever shown either character from behind, yet somehow the image still captured who they were. It felt less like inventing something new and more like discovering a perspective that had been missing all along.
That image eventually became the cover for Home on the Horizon.
▼ Listen to the soundtrack ▼
▲ Listen to the soundtrack ▲
Looking back, the strangest part isn’t that an AI generated a song I never asked it to create.
The strangest part is everything that happened afterward.
A piece of software accidentally created the music. ChatGPT spent hours helping me reconstruct lyrics that had vanished. Spyros Politis transformed an unfinished recording into something that finally felt complete. Then, using years of existing artwork as a foundation, I was able to create a cover image for a scene that had never existed before.
None of that was planned, and I don’t think any of us could have planned it if we’d tried.
That’s probably why I like this song as much as I do. It’s not just another soundtrack piece from The Amaranth Chronicles. Every time I hear it, I remember the strange series of events that somehow brought it into existence.
If you happen to hear lyrics that the rest of us missed, I’d genuinely love to know what you think she’s singing.
Lyrics below:
"The sunrise breathing open air
Life sits somewhere I don’t care
Breathing close beneath the weight
All my fears become my faith
Chasing bright skies above
Dreams and spaces with their love
Nothing broken, just a name
I find my feet in flames
Only echoes on my street
Nothing moves between the trees
Through the clouds upon my soul
This is where I’m meant to be
All the things I can’t define
This broken peace of mind
And the pain begins to sigh
I’ll find my peace in time
Open doors, but please still stay
Like a movie on my page
Every part begins to fade
Just speaks of care that can remain
On the edges of my dreams
Life and sparks that find their dreams
No rush through open maze
As the stars all paint their faith
All the things I can’t define
This broken peace of mind
And the pain begins to sigh
I’ll find my peace sometime"
