Theme Songs for Characters

Listening to music while I write is so essential that I’ve often thought about asking my accountant if I can put my iTunes purchases on my tax deduction list. Probably not, lol, but I should probably ask just to be sure. Over the years, I’ve developed some standard playlists that help me maintain a certain tone in the book I’m writing.

MiscEmote is an extensive and ever expanding playlist of gritty ballads and soulful tunes that fit with the emotional intensity of my work. Artists on that one would be everything from Nickelback to Melissa Manchester (“Through the Eyes of Love” is a personal fave). I have to wear earphones when I listen to that playlist because most of them make my husband’s ears bleed (according to him!). I have a “Sultry” playlist for the more erotic moments, with tunes like “If You Love Me” by Brownstone, “U Must Be” by Gina Rebe, or “Insatiable” by Darren Hayes. For fight scenes, I often go to movie scores from films like The Matrix, The Postman, Kull the Conqueror or Dances with Wolves.

Some books even have their own playlists, subsets of the playlists above, or with additional songs added. Beloved Vampire was one of those, as was Ice Queen/Mirror of My Soul. Truly Helpless: A Nature of Desire Series Novel, the book I’m writing now, has already attracted two songs to a specific playlist for it. “Sorry” by Buckcherry and “Stay With Me” by Sam Smith. Marius is a very troubled submissive, and the lyrics to both of those songs express his frustration. For instance, this stanza from "Stay With Me" fits him: Deep down I know this never works / but you can lay with me so it doesn’t hurt…

Occasionally a character gets associated with a particular song for me, such that whenever I hear it, my mind goes to him/her and their story. And sometimes that song even becomes part of the book scene. For instance, in Worth the Wait, the Nature of Desire book I wrote last year, there’s a scene where Julie wakes up in the early morning hours, to find Des tying her up in a sensual, dreamy kind of way. While he does it, he’s humming “Oh Girl” by the Chi-Lites…

Des had eventually come to bed, so they could sleep with comfortably tangled limbs, but he was no longer in the bed with her. He wasn’t far away, though. He was bent over her, looping rope around her wrists. Her heart and libido gave a simultaneous leap, making her twitch restlessly. He made a quelling noise, gentle but firm. Then he resumed the humming that had brought her so agreeably back to the surface.

It took a moment to figure out the slow-beat song with his off-tune cadence, but when she did, it gave her heart a little twist. “Oh Girl”, by the Chi-Lites. She didn’t think Des had chosen it lightly. “Oh girl, I’d be in trouble if you left me now… how I depend on you…”

Then there are the songs I never knew about until a reader brought them to my attention with a declaration like, “This is the song I think about when I read about so-n-so.” That happened with Ben O’Callahan of Hostile Takeover and the song "Demons" by Imagine Dragons. Irene of Literary Gossip even did a book trailer to it that I adore and have to share every once in awhile, because I still love it so much. Once I heard the words, I totally agreed the song fit him, because of all the personal demons he had to fight before he and Marcie could grab their Happily Ever After.

Here are a few more characters with their own theme songs:

Marguerite of Ice Queen/Mirror of My Soul – “Only Hope” by Mandy Moore, fit her desolation and loneliness so well, as she reached out to Tyler through darkness with the hope he’d be there to clasp her hand. He was. “Because You Loved Me” by Jo Dee Messina was a close runner up, and was the song she played for him at their wedding.

Marcie of Hostile Takeover – “As Long As You’re There” by Charice fit her resolve to have Ben. She’d loved him since she was 16, and now that she was a woman, she wasn’t going to be deterred. And she, too, had that song played at her wedding.

Lord Mason and Jessica of Beloved Vampire – “Gimme Gimme Gimme” by Abba. This song became their theme song as a couple. Don’t laugh. Give me a man after midnight (a vampire, of course), won’t someone help me chase the shadows away…take me through the darkness to the break of day, there’s not a soul out there to hear my prayer… So much of that fit Jessica’s situation, since she was tortured by a vampire master for years before she fell into Lord Mason’s hands and had to learn to trust him enough to give him her heart. And there are quite a few tense and dangerous moments in the book, so the tempo works great.

Gideon of Vampire Mistress/Vampire Trinity – “Barely Holding On” by Wes Nickson and “Far From Home” by Five Finger Death Punch. Gideon was a dark character, a vampire hunter close to the edge, and brought back from that edge by not one, but two vampires, Daegan and Anwyn. Memories of shadows, ink on the page, and I can’t find my way home… Beautiful writing in that song.

For Night's Templar: A Vampire Queen Novel, a male/male story in my Vampire Queen series, and one that connected through history to quests and the Knights Templar, I needed songs with strong male vocalists whose music and lyrics evoked courage and honor. “Freak the Mighty” by Sting got on the list. “I Will Not Bow” by Breaking Benjamin and “Broken” by Seether were also key, because the first one addressed Uthe’s life as a Templar knight, and the quest he had to pursue for centuries thereafter. “Broken” addressed his struggle with the Ennui, a dementia-type illness that affects vampires.

While I’ve trained myself to connect to the creative juices in a variety of environments, even without the aid of music, there’s no doubt to me that music helps me lock into that groove much faster. If ever you have music that makes you think of my work or stories, please reach out. I love to add to my playlists!

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Would you like to hear me read Chapter One of Truly Helpless, my upcoming release? Click here and you can do just that. It’s my first video production, complete with pretty graphics!