Skip to main content

A dragon, a warlock, and a playlist

I’m a huge fan of music. I rarely go a day without listening to it. Growing up, my parents were great listeners too and so I know that’s where I picked it up. When I’m writing, it’s paramount that I have my music on and it helps me focus. In general, silence kind of makes me nuts and I’ve tried having the television on in the background very low, but it tends to annoy me. Music allows my brain to keep rolling or stay in a certain emotion when I’m crafting a tricky scene. When I get stuck, I leave the computer to walk around the house blasting my tunes until I fix whatever issue I'm having in my head.

My characters live in my mind alongside my music so there are songs that get attached to certain couples. It’s funny after I finish a book because when I hear those tunes I always think oh it’s a Dra’Kaedan and Brogan kind of day. For many of these couples, I’ve been crafting their world for over a decade now and that connection hasn’t gone away. I sincerely hope it never does. There are a couple of songs that can make me think of more than one set of lovebirds, but the majority do not. Some of the guys have really long lists while others might only have one or two. I can’t figure out the rhyme or reason to it I just enjoy the end results. As far as genres go, I will listen to just about anything so sometimes there’s a wide range of types of performers.

Since the next book out is Dra’Kaedan’s Coven I thought it would be fun to share with you the songs those two have collected. Some of them evoke a certain mood while others it’s the lyrics that have drawn me towards it. I’ll sprinkle the playlists for the rest of the series in future blogposts.

“Sinner’s Prayer” by Sully Erna (the entire Avalon album feels warlocky to me which is why there are so many on this list)
“7 Years” by Sully Erna
“My Light” by Sully Erna
“The Departed” by Sully Erna
“Broken Road” by Sully Erna
“Avalon” by Sully Erna
“Poor Unfortunate Souls” from The Little Mermaid soundtrack (Don’t ask me why or how this came to be because I have zero clue but somehow, I can see Dra’Kaedan singing this loudly and acting it out like he’s Ursula whenever it comes on)
“Stairway to the Skies” by Within Temptation
“The Last Dance” by Within Temptation
“Here’s to Us” by Halestorm
“Freak Like Me” by Halestorm (this could basically be the theme song of D’Vaire)
“The Moon and the Sky” by Sade
“Heart of Courage” by Two Steps from Hell
“Marry the Night (R3hab Remix)” by Lady Gaga
“Life is Beautiful” by Sixx A.M.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

It's great to be home.

The husband and I flew to Washington, DC for a long weekend and we had a wonderful trip. My niece and her family spent most of that time with us, and we’d gone entirely too long without seeing each other. On Sunday night, we had the awesome opportunity to attend an Iron Maiden concert and one of my favorite bands, Within Temptation, opened for them. While we had a fantastic time on our trip, sleep was not high on our priority list, so it’s going to take me a few days to get caught up. Beauty and Valor was released about twelve hours or so before I boarded my plane, and I really hope everyone enjoyed Preston and Ridgely’s story. Preston is an old character, and many details about where he came from and what race he belonged to changed, but the core of who he was never differed. He went through a few mates before I found the right one, and Ridgely was the perfect fit. Halfway through Gargoyle Birthright , that pair was distracting me, and there was no question that their book was re...

A sentinel and his dagger.

In my last blog, I talked about how D’Vaire was created. The first book was Dra’Kaedan and Brogan and I can’t wait for you to see their tale retold but let’s talk about what happened after the original story was completed. When I started the novel, I didn’t have an outline or anything. I wrote it by the seat of my pants and not even I knew how it would end. D’Vaire was supposed to be designed so that each one was a standalone title but when I was done there were so many things I didn’t have room to include. They would have to wait for the second which turned out to be Sentinel’s Dagger. Gavrael was the beginning of the sentinels. In fact, when I first started crafting his tale there was no Lich Sentinel. It was Gavrael (with Gedeon at his side) who was going to approach the Council to change the way the sentinels functioned within it. But I got sidetracked before his story could be completed by Chander and so things changed. (We’ll get to all that in a future post!) The thing you le...

Schereding in a new warlock book

Scheredin’s story wasn’t one I ever thought would come to fruition. As I created the D’Vaire universe, I put Noirin and Scheredin in there because they’re a vital part of my life and it was fun to add my gaming personas into my fantasy world. However, while Noirin’s path was chartered quickly thanks to Rafe and how his romance with Aleksander worked out, Scheredin didn’t cooperate in the slightest. His personality emerged as I poked and prodded at him, and he was full of surprises. I tried to pair him with multiple partners, and although I was pretty sure about his magic, I wasn’t positive he wanted to be a dark warlock until I wrote The Dragon Masquerade . But from the start I wanted Scheredin’s partner to have something to do with his gaming. For me, that was a neat way to honor the true Scheredin who exists virtually. Thankfully, Scheredin and Kieran liked the idea too, and when they were ready, the details spilled out in a rush. Their book wound up being one of those that was relat...