A big topic of conversation among my friends and I is music.  What we’re listening to, what we like, if anything interesting has come along recently.  We’re always on the lookout for new music.  With a collection of 60,000+ songs that grows by leaps and bounds every week, I think it’s pretty safe to say that I like my music.

I am also the type of person who likes my music EXTREMELY organized.  I have song titles, track numbers, disc numbers, album titles, and artists all arranged so that I can find anything I want, right when I want it.

I’m also OCD enough that I have the full albums cataloged in a sortable spreadsheet that will tell me exactly what I have in any category.  Right now, I have 2,650 full albums in digital storage, and that number grows on a weekly basis.

Oh, yeah…and my collection is comprised of pretty much every genre of music you can think of.

In one of her recent posts, Lucy talked about her writing playlists.  Awhile back, Amy posted a Grooveshark playlist, and Puddin’… well, Puddin’ is Puddin’, no matter what way you squish him.  He talked about a local music store selling old-stock CDs for $0.25 each.

So all of that has me thinking about my own playlists, And this is the point when I share my music with the world.  Like Lucy, the music I listen to greatly influences the mood of the story.  If I’m writing a fight, I’m going to have loud, angry music playing.  If it’s a sad scene, there will be a sad song.

The majority of my inspiration comes from music – I will hear a song and think hey…that’s a good plot point.  So I make a note of the idea and stick the song in a playlist.  Many, many times I have built whole stories around a basic song idea.

Marked had a very specific set of songs that went with it.  This story is one of those rare occasions where I don’t have a specific inspiration.  I just started writing, and that was what happened.

While the playlist is too extensive to share the whole thing, the following is a selection (in no particular order, with YouTube links for your listening pleasure) that will give you the overall feel:

Bad Things – Jace Everett  (This sort of became the theme song, even though it’s the most oddball thing on the list)
The Ache – Epsilon Zero
Holy Fool – Love and Rockets
Snakedriver – The Jesus & Mary Chain
Para-Noir – Marilyn Manson
Howl – Florence + The Machine
Amour – Rammstein
Carbon – VNV Nation (the comments on this one are a hoot…techno-junkies complaining about global warming…)
Wreath of Barbs – :Wumpscut:
Meet Your Master – Nine Inch Nails
Adrenaline – Rosetta Stone
Come Undone – Duran Duran
Come in Closer – Blue October
Wild – Poe

For now, I leave you to digest this one.  Maybe one day next week, I’ll provide a new playlist for a different story.