Our featured writer today is Richard Roberts.
Let’s give him a warm welcome!
If you would like your talent featured in the Artists in Our Midst series or Authors in Our Midst series, send me an email message. Don’t be shy! I have no more Artists posts in the queue, so please get in touch if you would like to be featured.
A Literary Musical Interlude
by Richard Roberts
My latest book is Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m A Giant Monster!
I first had the idea because I thought a friend of mine disabled with chronic pain from severe arthritis might enjoy seeing someone like herself in a book being an action heroine – or villainess – and breaking things. Then I thought there is probably a large demographic of teenage girls who would like to give into their anger just once and break things.
I already had a girl made of glass in my Supervillain books. Mirabelle is sweet and gentle, because she has to be. When offered the power to turn into a monster, will she still be sweet and gentle? Well, yes. But people who aren’t sweet and gentle want that power, and things get complicated, and somehow it becomes a love story but with throwing cars and breathing fire.
Oh, and can we talk about the connection between music and writing novels?
Are there any songs you associate with your favorite fictional characters? The thing is, once you start writing books, pretty much everything loops back and associates with your own books. I have whole playlists of music that I associate with my characters.
And this is fantastic. It’s convenient. Inspiration, folks. Even somebody whose brain churns out weird like mine needs to be put in the mood to put 10,000 words of that on the page in one day. So instead of writing uninspired, I use music to make me feel my characters, what they’re like, and why I want to tell their stories.
I’m not the only person here who does this, right?
Now, for those of you who read my books, have a few examples, and find out how bewilderingly wandering my musical tastes are! Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m A Supervillain was heavily influenced by Thea Gilmore’s ‘Teach Me To Be Bad’. Boy thinks he’s luring girl to misbehavior but it turns out she likes it more than he does? That was a book writing mood. For every Supervillain book ‘One Night In Bangkok’ is the Chinatown sequence inspiration, to give me the feel of decadence laced with smiling danger. And of course, ‘Get The Party Started’ by P!nk is a fine song for any supervillainess.
To go back to my most serious books, lots of Evanescence in Wild Children. ‘Bring Me To Life’ is so much Coo and Jay’s song. Sweet Dreams Are Made Of Teeth was full of Emilie Autumn music, especially with songs like ‘Opheliac’ and ‘Save You’ putting me in the mood for Self-Loathing’s dysfunctional and, yes, self-loathing love for Fang.
Probably my favorite book of mine is You Can Be A Cyborg When You’re Older. The phrase ‘walk the dark side’ comes from the song ‘Darkside’ by Alan Walker. That and ‘Gasoline’ by Halsey painted a picture for me of a teenage girl who was too full of emotion to sit still, who was going out to do something and do it in style, and lived in a broken world world where she felt a little too close to robots. A FNAF fan song, ‘Survive The Night’, inspired the robot asylum.
For my post-Penny supervillain books, the supervillain Cleric was driven by Disturbed’s cover of ‘Sound Of Silence’. Avery’s boyfriend and girlfriend are inspired by ‘You’re So Creepy’ and ‘Truth Or Dare’.
And I’m here today because of the release of my latest book, Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m A Giant Monster! I needed songs about someone dealing with anger issues, and it took songs as strong as ‘Monster’ by Skillet and ‘Control’ by Halsey to imagine any anger in sweet, delicate Mirabelle.
There are more. So many more. And I’m not even going to say how many of those I listen to in Nightcore variants.
So again… what about you folks? Authors, do you use music for inspiration? Non-authors, any songs you associate with your favorite characters?
Also, buy my book, and if you like it, please consider leaving a review!
WaterGirl
Welcome, Richard! Please chime in when you get here.
Frankensteinbeck
Yay! Thank you, WaterGirl! And thank you, Dorothy, because I saw your review. You sure read that book fast, and I thought it was cute that we both had books about glass girls – but using the phrase in the opposite directions.
Alison Rose
Three cheers for Evanescence and Emilie Autumn!
Frankensteinbeck
@Alison Rose:
Sweet Dreams Are Made Of Teeth is a very goth book. It is the most goth book I could make. The original inspiration was “I wrote a book! Can I do it again? What if I pile all the goth stuff I love into one mass, can I stitch it together to look like it’s supposed to be that way, then deliberately write a novel from it? I CAN.” So, lots of Emilie Autumn in there.
O. Felix Culpa
@Frankensteinbeck:
Love the title! Now to read the book. :)
Dorothy A. Winsor
Congrats on the new book! Read it and reviewed it. (Reviews make writers get all warm and fuzzy inside, folks.)
I can’t listen to music while I write because I can’t stop listening to the music. A friend of mine is a musicologist–PhD and everything. And she says there’s a name for that. I’m sorry for it because, as you say, music is really good at evoking emotion and mood.
Kristine
@O. Felix Culpa: That is a great title.
Who am I to disagree?
Alison Rose
@Frankensteinbeck: I don’t look like one anymore but my previous goth self which still lives inside me approves :)
Frankensteinbeck
@Kristine:
The Kirkus review called it ‘Lamentably named’. Mind you, the rest of the review was glowing. I think the final line was ‘A classic coming of age story retold with the sensibilities of a poet.’ Kirkus must like exotic fantasy with pagan gods and nightmares, demons and angry little girls, and the only content in our world a couple of brief peeks through a window.
Frankensteinbeck
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Oh, goodness, I couldn’t listen to music while I write. My ADHD would explode. I take long sessions ahead of time doing something (like the quietest, most chill computer games) that lets me listen to an hour or so of music. That really gets my creative motors fired up.
Kristine
I can write to instrumental music. Can’t deal with lyrics. Years ago I bought a lifetime subscription to brain.fm at one of AppSumo’s sales. Then I forgot about it.
Fast forward to this past year, when I gave it a listen and started using it semi-regularly. I’ve been sticking to the Focus tracks–I like the electronica–but have yet to try the relaxation and sleep tracks. I couple brain.fm with a Pomodoro timer for focused chunks of writing time.
I wonder at times if I have some degree of ADHD because I am so easily distracted and knocked off course. Focus aids help.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Frankensteinbeck: Now that is a good idea.
Kristine
@Frankensteinbeck: Was a time you could count of Kirkus for a so-so review with a side order of snide no matter how much other reviewers loved your work. Over the years, they’ve lightened up–I’ve actually had a good review from them. But folks who’ve been writing for a while still express surprise if Kirkus gives them a good review.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kristine:
This would have been – cripes, 10 years ago, but hoo boy, they loved the book. Dropbox link is the best I can do there.
ALurkSupreme
Have always associated “Sister Ray” with Gravity’s Rainbow. Read the novel 35 years ago, so I can’t remember if there’s any rational basis for that association.
Kristine
@Frankensteinbeck: That is a great review.
I bought it–it has a Gaimanish sense to it that appeals to me. Is it considered YA? I don’t read a lot of it, but I’m hooked on Maureen Johnson’s Truly Devious series. maybe soon to be 65 yo me shouldn’t be identifying with teenagers but oh well.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kristine:
It is intended to be YA. It is very definitely a coming of age story as an adolescent figures out life, love, loss, self-esteem, right and wrong, and whether or not he’s willing to be murdered by a little girl for his art. Just… the adolescent is a nightmare and he lives in the Dark half of the world of dreams.
EDIT – I can’t say I’ve ever looked up to Gaiman as an idol, but he is one of the very few writers who share the genre of my serious books. Probably including A Rag Doll’s Guide To Here And There. Sickly sweet world building And Then The Murders Began sounds about right for Gaiman.
Kristine
@Frankensteinbeck: That does sound like Gaiman.
Are you at all familiar with the Welcome to Night Vale podcast? Small desert community that seems normal everyday at first. Then the weird starts popping up here and there and before you know it you’ve enlisted to fight in the Blood Space War.
I was a regular listener for a few years, then fell away. I’ve been catching up and while it’s definitely not YA it sounds to me like what you write. Plus it touches on politics without coming right out and stating anything. But you know what they’re saying.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kristine:
I know Ursula’s very into Night Vale. Isn’t she a part of it? I’ve never gotten into podcasts. I’ve definitely heard it referred to many, many times, and been compared to it before.
Baud
Congrats on all your success, man. You deserve it.
kalakal
Bought and looking forward to reading it. I enjoyed the others so a welcome addition to my reading list.
Kristine
@Frankensteinbeck:
I checked the cast list over on Wikipedia and didn’t see an Ursula. Be cool if she was.
I’ve never been a podcast person, but some genres appeal. I like Night Vale and a couple of its spin-offs–Within the Wires and the first season of Alice Isn’t Dead. I also listened to Bridgewater, a story that takes place in the Bridgewater Triangle, a Bermuda Triangle-like area of Massachusetts. It was created by Aaron Mahnke, the Lore podcast guy.
piratedan
whenever I’ve attempted to write something for myself or an audience, I try and set the mood with the use of certain bands or genre’s…
humor/lighthearted vibe – Nick Lowe, Southern Culture on the Skids
sense of wonder or displacement – OMD, most of the shoegaze genre
teenage angst – green day, power pop
scientific exposition – synth stuff, Human League, Ultravox, Moody Blues
naturally ymmv
patrick II
Tatiana Mislany, the amazing actress who played multiple cloned sisters on “Orphan Black” would also use different music suitable to each character to get the feel of the character she was playing before each scene. She won an Emmy for the part(s), so it worked very well for her.
Frankensteinbeck
@patrick II:
That is a really cool fact. Using the technique to inspire acting? Fabulous.
WaterGirl
@patrick II:
I cannot imagine how any acting part Tatiana Mislany takes could possibly be as interesting and challenging as playing all those different characters, and playing them so amazingly well.
I have no idea what she’s been up to since, but she is one talent actor.
patrick II
@WaterGirl:
Tatiana is playing She-Hulk on the Disney Channel series. It is a fun show and once again she played different characters — one, the shy retiring lawyer of her normal persona, and the other the bodacious She-Hulk. She had a lot of fun with the part, highlighted by a sleepover with DareDevil.
In Orphan Black I was most impressed when she played one clone who was trying to pass herself off as one of her sister clones. Elements of both personalities are shown through. It was amazing work.
arrieve
@WaterGirl: She was in the first season of Perry Mason–she played Sister Alice.
WaterGirl
@patrick II:
Yes! It truly was.
WaterGirl
@arrieve: I did know that, but had forgotten. Sister Alice was pretty creepy!
SomeRandomGuy
You mentioned songs about anger. One of my favorite songs about anger turned out to be Cop Killer, by Ice-T. I’d heard lots of BS about it, and I knew it was a big, controversial song, but when hearing it, I also knew that it was art, good art, criticizing a horrible situation.
It’s a hard thought to express, but, we don’t live in a free country if people don’t have the right to be that angry, and to speak (well, rap) that angrily. And if there were any good cops that hated that song, I’d hope like hell, they’d stop someone from the extra taser shot or nightstick jab, or the “rough ride” that could break a person’s neck, and say “WTF, dude, you want that *n-word* to be *right*, saying we do shit like that?”
No, I don’t expect *most* people to have that much self control. I know most people will only hear “he’s busting on cops!” That’s why I specified the good ones, the ones who realize that “crowd control” doesn’t mean busting heads, it means directing anger toward safe (even if loud and visible) activities, and separating hotheads from each other, even when it is easy to take it personally.
Frankensteinbeck
By the way, I want to thank everybody who checked out this thread. As a small press author without any kind of PR staff backing, a spot like this on an almost top-10,000 blog is a great chance to get my name out. Thank you all, and thank you again, WaterGirl, for setting it up.
WaterGirl
@Frankensteinbeck: You are most welcome! These are always interesting, plus we like to support our authors!
Be sure to check back later this evening and tomorrow morning – folks often come to these late and still comment if they know the author will see them tomorrow. :-)
Belafon
Very, very late to this party, but you might find “America’s Sweetheart” by Elle King interesting.