Confession. I still don’t know what I want my blog to be. If you knew me, you’d know that I’m notorious for being indecisive. The problem is that I have too much passion. Some days I want my blog to be a spot for me to assist fellow indie-authors and help them spread the word about their cover reveals and book releases. Other days I want to write confessional posts like this one.
Or I want to post an awesome song or playlist I’ve discovered or made for my current book. Like today. I’m going to post a playlist and maybe a couple songs from it.
If you stick around a while with me, I can promise you that you’ll get the full effect of my indecision in the form of whimsical posts, news related posts, and cover reveals. Possibly some drawings (literal drawings and giveaways, BOTH . . . why not BOTH?), music reviews, and other fun shiz.
Sometimes I say shiz. Sometimes I say shit. That’s just a function of my indecision (should I be upstanding or real? Should I be classy or fun? Why not both?).
So, regarding music. When I write a novel, I tend to listen to specific music–dream pop, chillwave, aggressive rock, etc–that helps me visualize a scene. Eventually I move past certain songs and can’t listen to them anymore EXCEPT when I’m working on that scene. Other times the song translates to later scenes and works for other places in the book with a similar feel.
Later, during editing, I generally have to find new music because I can no longer listen to those first songs. They’re overdone. And I need to feel something new or different when I’m revising.
This little playlist is a mixture of both:
OFFICIAL PLAYLIST OF ABMOB:
1. “Flickers,” London Grammar (this has been good for editing, and if I was making A Boat Made of Bone into a film, this song would clearly be perfect)
2. “Guilty,” The Bee Gees (inspired the disco skating scene. What? What’s the disco skating scene? Mwah ha ha ha. Read the book!)
3. “The Cold,” ExitMusic (inspired pretty much the whole book. If I was making A Boat Made of Bone into a film, I would personally BEG Aleska Palladino and her man to do the soundtrack. Effing amazing.)
4. “Storms,” ExitMusic (I did a teaser with this song in it. You can listen here)
5. “An Artist’s Song,” Lost in the Trees (inspired a lot of the mythical type scenes in the last half of the book….)
6. “Demons,” The National
7. “I Should Live in Salt,” The National
8. “Tomorrow,” Niki and the Dove
9. “Hysteric” Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs
10. “Wedding Song,” Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs [Holy shiz. This song….kills. IT. AND ME. I love you Karen O.]
11. “Never Again,” Lightning Dust
12. “Atlantis,” Ellie Goulding
13. “Anything Could Happen,” Ellie Goulding
14. “Dream,” The Boxer Rebellion [No, I don’t watch Vampire Diaries. Total accident.]
15. “New York,” The Boxer Rebellion
16. “You Belong to Me,” The Boxer Rebellion
17. “Amsterdam,” Daughter
18. “Human,” Daughter
19. “Post Script,” Typhoon [Beautiful love song.]
20. “Young Fathers,” Typhoon
21. “Prosthetic Love,” Typhoon
22. “Bravado,” Lorde
23. “Heart Beats,” Hey Marseille [Crap video, good song. If you can ignore the guy’s enormous features taking up the entire picture.]
So, as you can see, this playlist would not fit on an 80 minute blank CD. That’s how I used to create playlists and trust me, it was quite a personal achievement today to overcome the habit of cutting off the playlist at 80 minutes. Remember the good old days when you could totally just buy a blank tape that was 120 minutes long? Yeah! The problem was that they wore out faster . . . because of the thinner magnetic tape.
Right? I don’t know. I might have made that up.
You can also see from this playlist that I have a type of music. It’s not death metal. It’s not hard core. And if you can define it accurately, I’ll give you some . . . chocolate. A firecracker chocolate bar from Chuao. Because that is my new favorite. Also, the definition has to be spot on enough that my immediate response is, “Yep. That just about does it.”
Pretty much I consumed Daughter, The Boxer Rebellion, Lost in the Trees, Exitmusic, and Ellie Goulding in large quantities as I wrote A Boat Made of Bone.
I’m posting a couple of my EXTREME favorites below.
“An Artist’s Song,” Lost in the Trees
“Post Script,” Typhoon
“Wedding Song” Yeah Yeah Yeahs [Note, this is not the album cover. I officially loathe the album cover. This is the “Hysteric” cover.]