I love music.
I love listening to it.
I pretend that I can make it.
I enjoy singing in the shower and terrifying the neighbors with my failed attempt to hit the high-notes.
Music and books to hand in hand for me. As a kid, I’d sit in far away corners with a pile of books and my discman, hiding away in my own world while my family spent the day competing and coaching at swim meets. The music blocked out the sounds of chaos around me and transported me to the Magic Treehouse, Hogwarts, and Narnia.
Music continues to transport me. But now it’s to my own worlds. I have Spotify playlists for everything, and I want to share them.
Most of the early writing of Tooth and Claw came in snippets of scenes with no real characters or plot. The life and times of Aster Lee Fields were strewn about in my Stories>Paranormal>Urban Fantasy>Werewolves>Shifters folders in my gdrive.
Side note: I might have to do a blog post about the ridiculousness that is my google drive subfolder system.
I had a snippet of a scene of a wolf staring at another wolf before biting its leg off. I had another snippet of an exile, a mating ceremony, and a kidnapping. None of them really came together until Barns Courtney’s Glitter and Gold came over on a different playlist’s radio.
I was obsessed.
I listened to the song three or four times before going to the album and listening to it three or four times. Then I had a meeting, because hello day job. While pretending to be interested in a meeting that could have been an email, the driving bass beat and soulful songs blended in my head, and Tooth and Claw was born.
Rapidly I started a new playlist based on songs that fit the bluesy soulful, driving rhythm beat.
After I published Tooth and Claw in September, I continued to listen to the Kootenai playlist radio at work, because hello, total bangers but the songs were mellow enough I didn’t end up bursting into song (which had been a problem in the past. Sorry again to my former coworkers).
Jennifer’s arc in Ghost Eyes can be 100% linked to the emotional connection I felt listening to Rhonda Vincent’s cover of Jolene by Dolly Parton. It was such a key part to how I viewed Jen’s emotional arc, I even kept in the scene where she listens to the song.
In a previous post I linked the Ghost Eyes Roadtrip playlist, which I listened to when writing most of Jen’s scenes in Ghost Eyes.
Now to the song that inspired me to walk down memory lane of the Kootenai playlist.
Back in October 2019, I was tap tapping away at Ghost Eyes and I needed to actually write Jackson’s mate. I had every intention of making her a side character at best.
Then I heard Brandi Carlile’s Raise Hell. The song starts out fast-paced and (I’ll be honest I didn’t hear the lyrics the first verse the first time I listened to it.) Then the song took a sudden down strum. Better men have hit their knees. A back beat. And bigger men have died.
I started the song over right then. And again, I missed 99% of the first lyrics; I got more this time.
Photo Credit: Aaron Burden @aaronburden
You have a mind to keep me quiet
And although you can try,
Better men have hit their knees
And bigger men have died
Again and again I repeated the song, hearing a little more of the lyrics each time.
My mind pieced together a montage of a fighter in constant battles. Images of her standing in front of a sink looking at herself in the mirror fought with cuts of the battle. Flashes of her staring down her opponent. Bigger, better men, men who want to keep her quiet. Flashes back to the sink, each time there are more scars, but her eyes hold the determination.
I needed to discover this woman. It’s a burst of creative inspiration I’d never had before and haven’t had since. I wrote most of Fallen Lorde while finishing Ghost Eyes. From Raise Hell came my personal favorite book in the Kootenai Pack series so far.
There are so many other songs on the Kootenai playlist that I adore. But the ones mentioned here were the sparks for me. So thank you Barns Courtney, Rhonda Vincent (and Dolly Parton), but a big special thank you to Brandi Carlile. I couldn’t have done it without y’alls kick ass music.
Photo credit Aaron Burden @aaronburden