While going through some of my mp3s the other day I was thinking about the music that inspired some of the novels I’d written. They weren’t completely inspired by just one song of course, but there was that one track that was pretty much the stepping stone that got the project started in earnest. It got me thinking about some of my other projects and how they got their (musical) start.

The Phoenix Effect / The Bridgetown Trilogy. Poe’s ‘band version’ of her single “Hello” dropped probably a couple of weeks before I started writing The Phoenix Effect in March 1997. I’d had a vague idea of the story I wanted to write for at least a few months, but it was this song that made me realize I was ready to do it. The song itself is very Johnny Mnemonic in its theme — and I had a soft spot for that enjoyable but extremely flawed film — and I realized that movie had a similar mood I was aiming for with this new project. Darker, edgier, angrier. Those weren’t words you’d use to describe my previous writing, to be honest, but I was willing to give it a go. This single got my creative blood pumping enough that it ended up as the first track on the first Songs from the Eden Cycle mixtape.

Two Thousand. This trunked novel was to be my Gen-X ‘becoming an adult without a direction’ story that never quite panned out, based on several related ideas: a close circle of friends regularly meeting up at a bench in Back Bay; a trio of musicians starting a local indie band; the frustrations of following your dreams versus going into the workplace and which obviously paid the rent. The Wolfgang Press’ cover of Three Dog Night’s “Mama Told Me Not to Come” was on their brilliant album Queer, which got played incessantly in The Shoebox apartment while I worked on this. I felt it was the perfect theme song for the project.

Can’t Find My Way Home. I’d come up with the idea for this time travel idea during my time at HMV, when I’d first heard this phenomenal cover of the Blind Faith tune. That gorgeous intro played by Johnny Marr screamed ‘opening theme song’ in my head. It took a few years for me to come up with a story behind it, and it’s gone through various versions and has been trunked multiple times. I’ve recently had a few ideas on a new approach to the story, however, so perhaps this may surface one last time…

Love Like Blood. My trunked vampire novel (it’s there for a good reason in that it’s terrible despite a lot of really good ideas) had been started back in 2004 when I’d been frustrated by my inability to finish The Balance of Light, and I’d been reading a few vampire novels at the time, so I figured, why the hell not? Let’s give it a try, something to focus on so I can at least keep working? This Killing Joke song wasn’t just the opening theme of the novel (the first chapter has a band playing it live at the Paradise in Boston) but it was to set the mood with its ridiculous take on goth tropes. [I haven’t read it in years, so now I’m curious to see how bad it is and if it’s salvageable. I’m in no rush, however.]

Meet the Lidwells! I’ve mentioned before that a lot of MtL borrows from ideas that I’d used in Two Thousand (hey, I wasn’t going to be using them, so…). One of the biggest moments I’d planned in TT was a pivotal ‘make or break’ scene for the lead character and his band, in which they did a blistering cover of this final track off The La’s self-titled album. Years later when I started MtL, I knew that I’d be using that same idea for a pivotal scene, this time pinpointing The Lidwells’ highest career moment they’d ever achieved. It’s the scene near the end of the novel where Thomas Lidwell describes the band performing a live version of their song “Listening” that becomes his all-time favorite moment in the band’s career.

In My Blue World. This one’s a bit obvious, but yes, it was indeed this song that came to mind when I first started writing the novel. At the time I’d just been on an ELO kick and was playing several of their albums when I was planning out the novel itself, but once I started it, I knew this was going to be the opening theme song. For those playing along, in my head there’s a crossfade right at the end of the first scene where Zuze appears for the first time, and the theme song fades in with the movie credits!

Theadia. My space opera was kicked off by this Fuzzbox deep cut off of their second album Big Bang!, one of my favorites despite its 80s pop cheesiness. I just knew that the story was going to revolve around our two nerdy heroes who are trying to save the universe but would really rather be hanging out with close friends and having a good time. I wanted this novel to not be hard sf or steeped in Doctorow levels of tech geekdom. This was the album — and the song — that I put on when I started writing the novel in the last few days of my stay at the former day job at the bank, to remind me that despite how desperate things might become in the story, these two will always find time to be true to themselves. I’m really looking forward to getting this one out as well!

Queen Ophelia’s War. I’d said before that I wrote this novel with the plan of Dialing It Back, just like I had with Diwa & Kaffi. It has its moments of tension and conflict, sure, but I wanted to write something that could also be seen as pastoral as well. And to do that I realized that I also wanted a mixtape that would be similar in feel to what it felt like when I used to listen to Cocteau Twins when I was a teenager. The mood of both the novel and the mixtape then was about the wonders of the unknown and the willingness to get lost in them for a while. Thus putting “Blue Bell Knoll” as the first track on its mixtape!