Music and sound weave through the Girl Submerged novels, but I don’t listen to music while I write.
I know authors who like to create surrounded by distraction. They sit in the midst of a busy coffeehouse with headphones blaring and pour out the pages. I am not one of them.
I like to write at home. Alone. Silent. Focused.
Sometimes images from Pinterest help me imagine the interior of a home or a street corner I am inventing. Photographs I have taken may trigger my memory for details and textures to bring a moment or location to life. Every so often, I’ll turn on a specific song to awaken a mood. I listen, turn the music off and finish what I started.
The scene following the disastrous dinner party at Cora Lezar’s penthouse required a musical interlude for me. I felt in my belly the bass notes Sirena was listening to, but I needed to hear them with my ears, too. All at once, I knew the right song. For me, it’s Between the Sheets by the Isley Brothers. Every time I hear the opening bars of that piece, the energy of the moment when Sirena turns that night around goes right through me. I didn’t write the name of that song into the book. What works for me may not work for everyone else. But that song specifically helped me tune into the scene that followed.
The playlist I am sharing here are pieces that helped me keep the vibe of Book 2 alive within me. I listened to most of them when I wasn’t writing, but was driving or cooking or relaxing. They participated in molding and shaping the characters. Strung together, they are a soundtrack for this story which insisted on coming through me.