Guest Post: Jennifer Brown

Today I have the pleasure of having Jennifer Brown, author of the recently released Bitter End, here on the blog. She is here to talk a little about the music behind the book, the music that both inspired her and the music that makes her think of the story and characters she wrote. Here is what she had to say.

I tend to be very inspired by music, so it only makes sense that my writing and music go hand-in-hand. In some ways, my first novel, Hate List, was inspired by the Nickelback song “If Everyone Cared,” and Bitter End is no different, in that there are some songs that really made me think of my novel and vice versa.

Now, this is not to say that these were the songs I was listening to while writing Bitter End. That’s something very different. I’m one of those singalong kind of people, and if a song has words in it that I know, I’m going to spend my brain power singing along. But I can’t write in silence. That’s just too boring. So I end up writing to music that either has no words, or foreign music that I can’t understand. I raid the 99-cent bin at Vintage Stock, looking for African or Chinese or Native American music, or old New Age instrumental music like Ray Lynch, and that’s what I write to every day.

But I do have a playlist that I like to think of as my unofficial Bitter End playlist, which begins with the song that I felt like was my “anchor” song, the song that most defined the story in my mind being the first song, and the others just being songs that reminded me of my characters or the story.

1. “Landslide,” by The Dixie Chicks

2. “Fall for You,” by Secondhand Serenade

3. “Face Down,” by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus

4. “Broken,” by Lifehouse’

5. “Learned My Lesson,” by Daughtry

6. “I Would be Stronger than That,” by Faith Hill

7. “A Broken Wing,” by Martina McBride

8. “Falling Away from Me,” by Korn

9. “Sympathetic Character,” by Alanis Morisette

10. “Island,” by Heather Nova

11. “Overcome,” by Within Temptation

12. “Rain on Me,” by Ashanti

13. “The Silence is Broken,” by Damn Yankees

14. “With a Little Help from My Friends,” by The Beatles

15. “Friends Forever,” by Thunderbugs

    The great thing about playlists and novels, though, is that the songs never stop coming. Very often I will hear a song that will remind me of something I’ve written. I could keep adding to my playlist forever! I don’t mind. Not one bit.