Music is my religion...

Those were my grandmother's words and they've always resonated with me. Music is both an intellectual and emotional experience that I crave it. 

I listen to it constantly. In the car, while working, while exercising—for me, everything in the world ties into music in some manner. It creates a place where I feel safe and comfortable, yet at the same time on the edge of something new: excited, energized and on the brink of some great adventure.  

Indeed, music drives my creativity. Everything I’ve ever written has been born in a moment when some music moved me. The tiny idea I had that led me to my first book, Waking Dreams, came to me while I was listening to a song by Nine Inch Nails. My latest novel, The Scary Girls, was inspired by a song by Veruca Salt. 

The first moment I envisioned in waking dreams was Colin’s dream of a house fire. The following lyrics from Sunspots by NiN started me down the path to that central scene: 

“Peel off our skin we're gonna burn what we were to the ground

[F Bomb] in the fire and we'll spread all the ashes around”

Nothing about that song’s content actually appears in the book, but those words and the sheer driving, yet controlled power of the music raised emotions so strong that my mind began to do its thing. The idea of burning what we were away, creating ourselves anew. That and the visceral feeling of pain as the fire burns away our skin. Those images and feelings led me to that scene.

The Scary Girls came to me in a similar way. I was listening to Seether by Veruca Salt and the combination of the strong female presence and the idea of emotion taking control and becoming an entity in its own right—those ideas led me to the scene where Trick first meets the Scary Girls. While the girls aren’t meant in any way to be representative of the women in Veruca Salt, the strength of those people definitely started me down the path that ended up with the birth of Foxglove, Forsythia, Jessamine and Hazel. I’ve always loved stories with strong female characters.

Both of my books were born in a single song, but a wide range of music elevated me while I worked. Mahler’s first symphony, anything by Queens of the Stone Age, Radiohead are just a few of the sources of energy and emotion that I fed on—that I continue to feed on.  My musical tastes are eclectic and sometimes seem unfocused. I always gravitate toward guitar heavy, powerful music. I love a subtle and almost unexpected minor chord. I love depth of sound and also bareness as well. 

Classical music, old school jazz, older country music, rock, older pop, alternative, electronica, industrial and even some bluegrass. I like it all. It’s not about finding a genre that moves me, it’s about finding music. I’ve got playlists that I use when I go running and it’s not unheard of to find Willy Nelson, Elvis Costello and Tool side by side. I’ve often considered putting together a playlist for each of my books and publishing them on my website. 

But that’s work for another day...