Matching Music to Mood

The words, they are a flowin'.  I'm making some serious headway on the short story, which took an unexpectedly dark turn but I think we're back on track again.  As long as I can keep my storyteller under a tight leash, I think I've got just one more chapter to write before it is done.  With any luck, the first short story will be finished this weekend and the second story will be loosely outlined as well so I can start writing fresh on Monday.


Now that my new main character Gage and I have been spending so much time together, I thought it was time for us to sit down and make out a playlist.  It's easier to stay in his mindset if I've got his music playing in the background.  For one thing, it keeps me from channeling other characters when things take a dark turn.

So, my friend Gage pulled up a chair and plopped his feet down on the edge of my desk, ready to "help."  Yeah, it turns out that we don't always see eye-to-eye when it comes to music.  There are songs he likes to listen to that I don't like writing to.  It's too much of a distraction.  Oddly, the music that he usually listens to is rather different than what Mira, my nightwalker, enjoyed.  When I was working on the Dark Days series, it was a lot of Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, Korn, Linkin Park, and a selection of movie scores such as Queen of the Damned, Underworld, and Constantine.

Gage will NOT let me listen to movie scores.  I've tried several times and been forced to change music before I could finish a paragraph.  However, we've started to come up with a working list.  Here's a sneak peek at an early version:

Everyday I'm in a good mood music:

Shaman's Harvest
Stone Temple Pilots
Violent Femmes
White Zombie/Rob Zombie
Puddle of Mudd
Cage the Elephant
Buckcherry
Bloodhound Gang*
(*I can't write to this band, but I can revise to it)

I'm drinking alone and I'm in a crappy mood music:
"Freak on a Leash" by Korn
"Bleed It Out" by Linkin Park
"Golgotha Tenement Blues" by Machines of Loving Grace
"Shadow on the Run" by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

This is just the initial list and I'm sure more music will be added to the playlist as we go.  Oddly enough, Blue October didn't make the initial cut.  I wrote most of the first book listening to Blue October and yet it doesn't seem to fit at the moment.  I'm wondering if maybe they proved to be a transition band for me from Mira to Gage.

One last thing before I dart off, I want to pass along a link to an excellent blog entry written by Richard Kadrey on John Scalzi's blog site, Whatever.  The Big Idea: Richard Kadrey is just a great call to writers to stick to their passion, love their art, and realize that it just takes time and persistence.  Check it out!