Every Monday I like to post a piece of music that's either inspired a story, that I could see as part of the soundtrack to one, or what I'm listening to at the time. Today is a little bit different. Tonight I'm off to see Linkin Park live for the first time. Woo hoo! Not only is that something that's been on my wishlist for a while, but on Friday I released a book very much inspired by a Linkin Park album - Living Things - a coincidence I hadn't even tried to engineer. Clearly it must be fate. :P
So today I give you not just one song, but the playlist that acted as inspiration and soundtrack to my superhero romance When Dark Falls. And hopefully I may hear a couple of those tracks live tonight. Enjoy!
And when you've finished that, maybe the music might tempt you to check out the book. I wonder if you'll be able to spot any themes from the songs in the story? :)
Every once in a while I tweet a music track or two that I'm either listening to as I write, and/or that has inspired whatever I'm working on. This week I thought I'd do something a bit different and talk about why and how a particular track sparked ideas. The track is Burn It Down by Linkin Park, from the album Living Things.
Living Things essentially became the unofficial soundtrack for Darkfall, my decopunk superhero romance novella that has just been out to beta readers. Darkfall started off as, of all things, a scene in my head that came across far more as Urban Fantasy than scifi. I haven't read a lot of UF, and the idea of writing one just seemed too far outside my comfort zone. But I stuck with it over CampNaNoWriMo August 2012, until another idea helped me morph it into scifi. Then I started listening to Living Things, and the whole focus shifted. The almost industrial sounds in the music bled into the story. It became dark and gritty, like the UF it started as, but various elements of tech and almost X-Men style superheroes snuck in. Images from Dark City, Sky Captain of Tomorrow, and an element of Underworld coloured it, and especially my fondness for the whole Art Deco period. It might sound an odd mix, but the music gave it that feel. Lastly, Burn it Down and an image of a flaming oil rig gave me a signature piece of tech that helps shape the Art Deco city of Nephopolis I'd created, and gave the story the almost noir feel I wanted. Music, especially that song and that image, transformed Darkfall from a tenuous UF idea into a fully fledged decopunk. Amazing what music and pictures can do.
