Friday Fun Videos

While Claire is hard at work on the serial (ack, what will she do, what WILL she do??), I thought I'd put up a bit of entertainment.

I don't usually listen to music while writing. Since I often wrote when my kids were napping, I got into the habit of having total silence. However, I always listen to music in the car, which happens to be the place I tend to plot, dream up new ideas, etc. (driving safety at its finest). Certain songs will always be synonymous with my stories.

When writing The Petal Falls, I listened to Siouxsie and the Banshees a lot. A lot. Lol, I can't tell you how badly I wanted to look like Siouxsie Sioux when I was in high school; she was the epitome of cool in my world. Alas, my blond hair ruined the effect.

Anyhoo... in honor of Petal, here is Siouxsie and the Banshees singing Dear Prudence (with the added bonus of Robert Smith playing guitar, sigh.)

Now, as for West of the Moon, well are a lot of songs I think of in conjunction with Archer and Miri's story, The Cure's A Strange Girl, Coldplay's Twisted Logic, and the current favorite (because I listened to it over and over while editing), Echo and the Bunnymen's Lips Like Sugar. And I shall go on record here in saying that Ian McCulloch has one of the sexiest voices EVER.)

Sigh, I LOVE that song. :)

So, what about all of you? Do you have songs that define your stories? Favorite music that you listen to while writing? Put up a link in the comments section and let us take a listen!

I hope my fellow blog ladies will come by and add their own videos to this post as well (hint, hint, Jen, Rach, Claire *g*)

Happy Friday!

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All right, it's Claire here- still working on that serial installment! But music has an important place in my writing, too- there are just certain songs that have a particular lyric, a strength of feeling... Maybe they're songs I heard at a certain time in the writing process that just made sense to me right there and then, and they stuck with me.

First up- one of my all-time favourite songs EVER- Crowded House, Fall At Your Feet. This song makes me swoon just a little (have I mentioned that I love Neil Finn beyond all reason?). If Bill and Kit were living in this era, I'd call it their song (g). This is a neat acoustic cover version (don't you love YouTube?).



Next, two songs that give me shivers. They're the ones that put me in Bill's mindset after he returns from the devastation of WWI. First, Mad World by Gary Jules. Call me crazy but my favourite version of this one (other than the way it was used in) was the one sung by Adam Lambert in the 2009 American Idol final.



Then the Leonard Cohen classic Hallelujah, sung by Rufus Wainwright (just while we're chucking our hats in the ring for sexiest singing voice out there).



My oddball bit of music for Bill's changing frame of mind is Linkin Park's What I've Done, originally seen in the first Transformers movie. I love the power of the lyrics as they relate to my story- "I've drawn regret from the truth of a thousand lies; let mercy come and wash away what I've done. I'll face myself to cross out what I've become, erase myself and let go of all I've done." And so on- plus I LOVE the video, which shows good and evil throughout humanity and the natural world. Love it.



Then we come to some actual period music- Moonlight Serenade by Glenn Miller is the song Bill and Meredith dance to when they're falling for each other in 1940 London.



Lastly, what I've come to see as Jared's song- partly because the main storm trooper dude about to whup the band in the video bears a little bit of a Jared resemblance (g). This is the Foo Fighters, singing Pretender. Best played at top volume. For whatever reason, embedding is disabled on this video, so you can see it at YouTube here.

Okay, okay- now to get back to writing that next installment!

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And it's Rachel here.

I have a whole batch of songs that I listened to, over and over, when writing Blood of the Heart, and what I listened to in any given writing session would depend on what scenes and characters I was writing.

My villain, Philippe, is a serial-killing psychopath; very clever at keeping a mask of apparent normality over his real nature, but when that mask slips, and he gets out his knife ... well, to write those scenes I just have to have The Prodigy's BREATHE blaring on my Mac. Kinda captures the seething craziness that lies beneath his mask, and the line "Come play my game, I'll test you" sums up his how he thinks of Isabel Knight, my book's heroine.

And when writing Philippe in his less evil moments, Gnarls Barkley's CRAZY does the trick - (for some reason the embedding is disabled, but you can watch it on YouTube here.)

When I write my main character, Dr Isabel Knight, I've gravitated towards U2, particularly A MAN AND A WOMAN (no video, just the music)

and lately, UNDISCLOSED DESIRES by Muse:

Sigh. Love that song.

And, when Isabel and Sebastien Ricard - the man who would be in her life, if she let him - get a little up close and personal, it's back to U2: ELECTRICAL STORM, and THE UNFORGETTABLE FIRE:

Ah, a young Bono. Be still my beating heart!!

And, for a little lightness amongst all this intense music (well, I am writing suspense!) and to get into the vibe of Paris, there's Ben Onono's TATOUAGE BLEU (BLUE TATTOO), sung in French. Enjoy!