January 13, 2019 — Admin

10 Songs I LOVE Listening to While I’m Writing !

I’ve recently started creating small playlists on Youtube with a variety of music I happen to enjoy – especially when I’m writing. I’ve even started using them on my TV to free up resources on my computer – plus, the speakers are much louder.

I like to turn it up and rock out while the words hit the page. Check out the songs I LOVE to listen to while I’m writing.

This is part of my Music Review Series.

Slow Dancing in a Burning Room – John Mayer

That’s right, there’s not much better than John Mayer singing and playing the guitar – especially his live shows – while I’m working on the details of a dialogue scene in my upcoming novel, Sacred the Sent, as Xavier meets the consequences of his actions head on. It’s a gripping, heart-wrenching scene between him and his wife, and the perfect song is Slow Dancing in a Burning Room.

Riders on the Storm – the Doors

The next song is, of course, a classic Doors tune. I used to sit in my buddies’ living room in high school and we would blast the Doors until all hours on his dad’s stereo system.

The last time I was listening to this when writing, I was working on Ashen Monk Mountain, when Christopher has a peculiar encounter with a stranger in the upper room of the monastery – a second level that had been abandoned for lack of need. But, Christopher finds it an apt place to pray and consider the inconceivable events that have happened since his arrival to the monastery hidden deep in the Canadian Rockies.

You should really listen to this song, and all the songs by the Doors. They are simply the best.

Here is the entire playlist. Check it out!

Heartbreak Warfare – John Mayer

I will have to warn you now. There will be a lot of John Mayer in these playlists that I write to. I can’t help it. I simply LOVE John Mayer’s music.

Well, most of it.

This song I used to play when I would drive at midnight to the local Walmart to pick up groceries. It was wonderful listening to this song, driving on the freeway in the dark, no one else out on the road, the store empty – bliss.

Last time this played when I was writing? I was working on the last bible study (hasn’t even been released yet), a new blog series I hope will run for a long time – should take me about 5 years to finish (finger’s crossed).

This is the End – The Doors

Yeah, I know. I should have named this the Doors and John Mayer Playlist, but……

I was listening to this while working on the summary for a new novel I’ve just started working on called Writing Kathy & Charlotte. It’s will be the first installment of a paranormal trilogy series called A Jack Shaw Journey.

Jack is a young man who suddenly finds himself in a torrid romance with two women – a thrupple. It’s an unexpected experience Jack never dreamed he would be involved in, not to mention exciting as hell.

But, despite this newfound romantic roller-coaster happening, there is something else going on down in the basement at his work. Is he seeing things? Hearing them, too?

This is the End was the perfect soundtrack while working out the fine points of the plot for what will surely be an incredibly suspenseful and jaw-dropping series.

The Crystal Ship – the Doors

I know, I need to learn how to shuffle a bit better! But this song rolled on right after the End, and it was perfect. I’ve written articles about ghosts, missing people in the woods, and a few book reviews to Jim’s accompaniment. It’s the perfect song.

Wish You Were Here – Pink Floyd

Hands down, probably the best Pink Floyd song I’ve ever heard before. The live version is even better.

I listened to Pink Floyd alot, especially this song, while writing Seeking Light Aurora. It’s the perfect kind of music for reality bending plots that send characters scrambling for their lives, where people all around you are keeping secrets, and at any moment, your life is in jeopardy.

I’m really proud of how the entire Aurora Series turned out. For a limited time, you can get the entire Omnibus series at half price. Just click HERE to get your copy and save!

Give You What You Like – Avril Lavigne

I didn’t know anything about this song or this album until I listened to it for awhile on Youtube. I have to say, this song quickly became one of my favorites.

I listened to Avril often while writing In the Meadow. It’s the perfect song for a gritty, haunted, serial killer story, where ghosts are in control (or out of control) and you’ve got to run as fast and as far as you can, because there is someone behind you in those woods.

And, they want to kill you!

Bring Me to Life – Evanescence

I’ve been an Amy Lee fan for many years, especially her early stuff.

I listened to this song in particular (who’s kidding, I had her entire discography on my playlist) while writing the rough draft for Returning the Meadow, the second installment in the Meadow Series.

In it, you find Dawn having to return to Skagit River years after the aftermath that nearly killed her in In the Meadow.

Now her son is a teenager, and a death has hesitantly brought her back to the woods where she lost nearly everything. Her best friend. The sheriff. Her fairy-tale life.

And now there is a new presence in those same woods. And it wants what little she has left.

Let Me Go – Avril Lavigne

This is another song I fell in love with while working on Sacred the Circle. It’s a great love story song, and fit perfect for the struggles Xavier and Shalina must go through. Likewise, Xavier and his wife. Anton and Emma. The list goes on.

But, this song has that familiar haunting quality of loss and abandon to it that I try to ensure my stories are soaked in.

It is human nature to hurt those closest to us, whether we mean to or not. And it is this fallen nature that those called in Sacred the Circle are trying to help.

Walt Grace’s Submarine Test – John Mayer

For the last song, who else did you think I would choose?

John Mayer.

The first time I heard this song, I was hanging in my hammock at the Eden Property, bundled up, with my laptop on my lap, and started working on Our Daughter right after waking up.

This song is such a fascinating story in and of itself. A guy who has not such a great home life – “wife tells his kids that he’s crazy” -and this guy sets out to the library, reads up, and builds himself a single seater submarine.

By the end of the song, he’s head out into the ocean, learns how to steer the thing once he’s out there, then…..disappears.

He finds peace and tranquility out there in the ocean, a break from his failed old life, and with the hope and dreams and aspirations of a new life out beyond the horizon.

These are many of the same thoughts and emotions going through Katie’s mind in Our Daughter when her old life is ripped from her, and she discovers, through all the tragedy and heartbreak and loss, there is hope.

There can be a future. But, only if you can survive the family of witches that want to wipe you from existence!

Do you like paranormal and supernatural fiction as much as I do? If so, you’re in luck. Check out my trilogy, the Meadow Series. The first two books, In the Meadow, and Returning the Meadow are both available at Amazon, with the final book on the way.

It is a story about a Dawn McKensie, who finds the life of her dreams with a man she absolutely loves, only to be shackled with a great burden – young girls calling out to her from their shallow graves.

Soon Dawn finds herself on the precipice between life and death, love and loss, peace and tragedy.

Will she make it through? Will those she’s trying to help turn on her? Will an unseen, malefic force from the future unravel all the good she’s done?

Find out by getting the first book in the Meadow Series today!