Music To SFR To #amwriting #inspiration

I've always talked a lot about how much music inspires me, and in fact how I couldn't live without it. I miss a day with no music. In the past three years I've been privileged to go to several concerts featuring my two most favourite bands - The Rasmus, who inspired so much of the tone and feel in my Keir series and got me writing again, and Starset who have now become my favourite band to write to, and who I never expected to ever see in concert in the UK. I've now seen them FOUR times, twice as support and twice in their own right on tour. I saw them in February as headline, and each time I think I've already seen them at their best, they just set the bar higher again, with a super appropriate change of image and a set of songs that fit with our current pandemic.

While The Rasmus still take full credit for inspiring Keir, Starset have definitely taken the top spot as my SFR muse. Why? Not just because I love their music and lyrics, but because to me they encapsulate what SFR is, or at least the kind I like to write. Star-crossed lovers, separated by space and time, galaxies colliding, telepathy, enslavement, end of the world stuff. And it's not just music. No, these guys have a novel and a graphic novel out too. They are all about the science, and the fate of humanity, travel to other worlds, and messages from the future. It's not just what they do, it's what they are. Wrap all that up in a song and a video, and I'm a happy space bunny. Just as an example, the video below has always reminded me of The Martian (or rather The Martian reminds me of this, since I saw the music video first).

Or if that doesn't light your fire, you could try Breaking Benjamin's Ashes of Eden (undertones of Passengers), Linkin Park's In The End (for a touch of apocalyptic), or The Rasmus with Justify (a very Keir song, lol).

Writing Update
So, since editing and publishing my Christmas story last year, I've been working on Redemption 2.5, the story my editor felt was missing before book three of the series. I'd always had a vague idea for it in my head, but it wasn't until the release of Starset's Vessels album helped me fix some frankly terrible elements in book three and turn it into something that might actually work that I felt I could do something with it. Despite slowly recovering from burn out and wanting to write again, working full time didn't leave me much...well...time! However, by the start of this year I felt I might be approaching a point with it where I was thinking about booking actual edits for it. Well, more the point of 'omg, this story sucks!!' But as things happen, my beloved editor posted a discount for edits booked and I took it as a sign. Redemption 2.5 was booked for a slot in June. I've now completed the first round, and while I was waiting for those I've finally finished a solstice scifi novella, tidied up an angel short story, and re-opened book 3. Seems I'm an all or nothing kind of person...

Music That Moved My Muse #linkinpark

Well, this wasn't the post I expected to be writing...

2016 was a bad year. So many of us lost icons that had meant so much to us. I still haven't got over some of them. But 2017 isn't shaping up all that well either. On Thursday, just as we began the long school summer holiday, I saw a tweet about Linkin Park, and my heart sank. Then shattered. Chester Bennington had been found dead, probably suicide. He was five years younger than me.

I only became a fan recently, and quite by accident. One of my many internet friends came over to meet me for real and suggested a trip to the cinema. We went to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I'm not a huge fan, but it was action packed and entertaining if not particularly challenging mentally. It had something else though.  A song called New Divide by Linkin Park.

I loved the sound of it and the lyrics, and played it endlessly after downloading it. After watching a few of their videos on Scuzz, most of which had a scifi look and sound to me, I went looking for more of their music and found they'd done a track for The Matrix. They went on to have another song featured in the third Transformer film - Iridescent.

Chester's voice and music inspired and transform two of my books. Thanks to the album Living Things, the chaotic, scattered mess that became When Dark Falls gained an identity and a darkly industrial feel, as well as turning into a superhero romance with a coherent story.

Chester's lesser known band Dead by Sunrise became the sound track to the hardest book I've written so far - my Louisiana zombie story, Restless In Peaceville - along with an LP track called The Little Things Give You Away.

I even had one of their songs picked out to be played at my funeral (morbid, I know, but I'm conscious every day of the fact my mum passed away at 43 and I'm just about to turn 47, so it preys on my mind a bit. Oh, and watch the video. You'll see why I find them so scifi-y).

I haven't loved everything they've done. I'm sorry to say it but I couldn't even sit through the entirety of their two latest singles. They'd gone in a direction I didn't like, but their ever evolving sound and willingness to experiment might well have brought me back to the next album. But that will never happen now. I'm just glad that I found them when I did and at least got to see them play live once. I will treasure that.

RIP Chester Bennington. I hope you've finally found peace.