While I don’t listen to music while I write, I definitely find inspiration in certain tunes. Very often I’ll hear a song and think that it fits a certain character’s personality, or that it stands as a good mood setter for the book in general. If a song resonates deeply with me it can even serve as a tool to help fill in backstory for a character.

NOT A DROP TO DRINK has a rather varied playlist. The first example will help illuminate a character that some readers might find hard to connect with. Mother is the only human Lynn has even spoken to, and Mother’s entire life revolves around teaching her daughter to survive – no matter what. She’s a feral mother, a no-holds-barred guardian of her young. The song Rocks & Water by Deb Talan set me back the first time I caught it on Pandora. The refrain particularly applies to Mother:

I will be rocks, I will be water

I will leave this to my daughter:

Lift your head up in the wind

When you feel yourself grow colder

Wrap the night around your shoulders

And I will be with you even then

Even when I cannot see your face anymore.

Another song I want to mention in connection with NOT A DROP TO DRINK is Thistle & Weeds by Mumford & Sons. So much about this song fits my story. The imagery is bleak, there’s a not-so-subtle plea for rain throughout, along with the allusion to bullets falling from the sky- something Lynn herself has been the source of for more than a few thirsty travelers over the years. But hope is also threaded throughout the song, a feeling that redemption might be out of reach right now, but won’t be forever. These lyrics in particular grabbed me the first time I heard it:

Look over your hills and be still

The sky above us shoots to kill

Rain down, rain down on me

But I will hold on, I will hold on…

And lastly I want to mention Waiting For The End by Linkin Park. It has a very defiant feel to it, something that Lynn understands perfectly. She spends everyday assuming that she could die any minute. She controls every element of her life that she can, but her world is a violent one, and no one knows what the next day will bring.

Waiting for the end to come

Wishing I had strength to stand

This is not what I had planned

It’s out of my control.

These three songs together do a great job of painting both the setting for my book and the personalities of two of the main female characters, Lynn & Mother. I hope that hearing them gets you geared up for the release of NOT A DROP TO DRINK on September 24!