The Happy Playlist

Back in 2017, I blogged about making a happy music playlist. At the time, I'd barely started it, but I thought it sounded like a good idea. Now, it's more fleshed out and I'm glad I have it. We need happy at the moment, right?

One of the songs that I always find myself singing when things get tough is Lullaby by Shawn Mullins. It's because of the chorus. There's something I find reassuring about hearing it. There have been days I've had this song on repeat indefinitely.

Some of the songs are on the list because of the upbeat tempo. Knock on Wood by Amii Stewart,  Goody Two Shoes by Adam Ant, Run, Run Away by Slade to name some of those.

A few of my more off-beat choices are Sunshine Day by the Brady Bunch kids, Walk the Dinosaur by Was (Not Was), and I Eat Cannibals by Toto Coelo. I love novelty songs.

I also enjoy songs with positive lyrics, like The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades by Timbuk 3. I know they said the song was about nuclear war, but I refuse to accept that. :-) To me, it will always be about an awesome future coming some day. I also include I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing by The New Seekers, Good to be Me by Uncle Kracker (with Kid Rock :-/), Walking on Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves, I'm Good by the Mowgli's, and of course Happy by Pharrell Williams.

Come over to my Facebook and share your happy songs there. The blog posts over there every time it goes up. I'm looking to add more to my playlist. I think we all are.

Music Obsession

When I find a new song I like, I tend to obsess over it and play it on repeat until I get so sick of it, I don't want to listen to it any longer. And let me qualify new song as new to me. One of the podcasts I listen to every week does a yearly broadcast they call Summer Strut and they play clips of music they've discovered. Most of the time, my musical taste doesn't match theirs, but the 2018 Summer Strut did lead me to my current obsessive listen.

I received no compensation from anyone for anything I talk about in this blog post. It's all my own opinion and I bought everything mentioned here myself.

Now that the legalities are out of the way, my current musical obsession is Stela Cole's You FO. The lyrics are clever and even the backup singers add to the overall amazingness of this song. It's such a blend of styles and feels slight discordant in places, but somehow it all works for me.

Although the two songs are really not alike in any substantive way, playing it made me think of Lorde's Glory and Gore. This is one of my previous obsessive songs, but because something about the two works matches (at least in my mind), I have both of them in a playlist on my phone all by themselves. On repeat. Yes, I've been listening to these two songs over and over. :-) What can I say?

I haven't listened to any other music by Stela Cole yet, but at some point I will. Usually, it turns out that I only like the one song and don't buy any others, but who knows? Maybe this time will be the exception.

The Music Gap

A few months ago, I saw a writer asking if she could use song lyrics. (The answer is NO! Use the title only.) Only instead of just asking that question, she posted a snippet from her work with the song lyrics in it. I read it and I thought WTF?

Not because of the writing. There wasn't really enough to judge it, but it seemed fine. No, because the song she picked for her hero AND heroine to sing together was released in 1972.

Maybe her hero and heroine are in the 60s. It's possible. But they didn't read that way. Again, short snippet, so not easy to tell, but I would guess 20-something for their ages. And even though the song did hit number one, it was released in 1972!

I had to look up when the song was released and that it hit number one because I didn't know. I never hear it on the radio (BTW, I'm not going to say what song because I don't want to make this writer feel uncomfortable). I never hear anyone singing it or humming it. I never hear anyone talking about it when the topic of music comes up. In my estimation, this means that while the song was popular at the time, it didn't hold its ground like Beatles music or the Rolling Stones or others.

So the odds of two people in their 20s knowing this song well enough to sing it to each other is slim and none. Hell, I only vaguely remember it. I consider this a pretty big author fail.

Again, possibly the h/h are in their 60s and this would be a perfectly logical song for them to know and sing. But if I'm right about them being in their 20s or even 30s, this is a problem. The only way it works is if the author takes the time to justify why these two people know this song. And putting in that much back story on two separate characters and their tastes in music is not something I'd waste time on. It's just so much easier to give them a song from their own generation or find a completely different way to convey what my point is by this musical interlude.

I can also tell you unequivocally that as a reader I don't want to know that much about the h/h's choice in music unless they're musicians and this is a critical plot point in their story. I didn't get that impression.

Mission: Music

Now that I'm driving myself, the music situation needs to be fixed. Radio in Atlanta is super bad--even those who were born here have said it--and I like to sing when I drive in the afternoon. In the morning, I'm too tired to want noise. I have a USB stick in my car, but the music is limited on there and after weeks of the same songs, I got tired of it. I checked into satellite radio, but the monthly cost was ridiculous. I decided I'd make another USB stick, but add a lot more music.

Theoretically, this shouldn't have been a difficult task. Take some music and drag it over and voila! It wasn't that easy.

First problem was that both iTunes and Amazon music sort everything by artist and then by album name so everything is in a freaking folder. That meant opening hundreds of folders, which was horrible, but then a new problem reared its head. I dragged the song over, but instead of copying, it was moved! That meant copying and pasting songs which added extra time.

I created a folder on my desktop to drag it to, and after two days, I had 600+ songs ready to go to the USB stick.

Second problem was that I couldn't find my bigger USB drives and the ones I had were too small. I ended up having to move everything off one of the larger drives (to my laptop since even those files wouldn't fit on the small drives) and then putting the music on the newly empty stick.

And that's when the third problem occurred to me. My car won't play .m4a files, only .mp3. Now I needed to convert files otherwise about half my music wouldn't play. I did an online search.

There was a free program for Windows in the app store. I downloaded it only to discover it only would convert files one at a time. There was no way I was going to do this for 300-400 songs. I searched again and found out that VLC Media Player will convert. I already have that program, but again, it seemed as if the conversion had to happen one song at a time. Grr.

Then I found out iTunes converted. I followed the instructions and then the fourth problem made itself known. All the files were imported into iTunes and resorted into files again for each artist/each album. ::sobs::

Yes, that's right--after I converted, I had to reopen all those folders. OMG! I'm on day 4 now and I still don't have new music in my car. I wish I could have found an easier way to do this.

Edited to add: The saga continues. About half the music either didn't convert or is hidden deeply inside the file hierarchy. Now I have to figure out which songs are missing and convert them again. What a PITA.

Edited again: After an hour or so of comparing songs to figure out which ones were missing, I gave up. I just copied the .m4a files onto the drive. I guess I'll find out for sure whether or not my car will play those files. I'm hoping it will even though I'm sure I remember that it wouldn't. I guess we'll see.

I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing

I haven't actually watched Mad Men, but there was a mini-series on Smithsonian Channel (I think it was Smithsonian Channel) about advertising that did a lot of cutting between the TV show and real ads from that decade. I believe it was four weeks long and looked at the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. It was long enough ago that I watched it that I can't swear this is correct, but I'm close. :-)

Anyway, they showed how Mad Men concluded--with the Coke commercial from 1971. Even though I hadn't watched any of the series, I knew it was a genius way to conclude it just from everything I'd heard about the show. The ad? I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing.

In May of 2016, the real creator of the ad, passed away and the Washington Post ran a nice article about his creation of the jingle. It seems his plane to London diverted Shannon, Ireland because of fog and he was inspired by what he saw at the airport the following morning. Yes, they were delayed overnight.

The article includes a video of the commercial, a video of last few minutes of Mad Men, and a video of the man who created the ad talking about it.

I am totally an advertising geek. It was my major in college and it continues to fascinate me today.

There's a couple of interesting points. Well, interesting to me anyway. :-) It started out as a radio jingle and people called into radio stations requesting it. With this huge popularity propelling it, the jingle became part of a television commercial. It was supposed to cost $100,000, but because of weather and other issues, came in at $250,000. At the time, it was the most expensive ad ever. The other super interesting thing is that because of the jingle's popularity, it was actually released as a song. When was the last time you heard that happening?

Here's the ad in case you don't want to click over to the article:

Beatlemania

When I was in junior high school, I fell in love with the Beatles music. I have no clue why. They hadn't been a band in about forever by that point and my parents didn't listen to their songs. I don't remember seeing any of their movies, but somehow, somewhere I must have heard them.

I went to a Beatles conference in Minneapolis. I went to see a tribute band with Beatles lookalikes. I bought lots and lots of their albums. Maybe all of them--I can't remember at this point. And I listened to their music endlessly.

And then somewhere along the way, I drifted away from their music. I bought an album or two to stream, but other than that? I hadn't been listening much.

Fast forward to a week or so ago. I've been working to catch up on my podcasts--I got backed up when I was on vacation and still have a backlog--and I noticed an episode in my Slate Plus podcast feed about the band. It was called: Hit Parade: The Fab Four Sweep Edition. I'd listened to an earlier episode of Hit Parade and I'd really enjoyed it, so I queued this one up and loved it!

The episode talks about how the Beatles had the top 5 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 list--a feat that hasn't been repeated since then. How the only reason why it happened was because Capital records refused to distribute the band's music and other, smaller labels were doing it.

It was enough to get me to stream Beatles music again on my phone and I headed over to Audible to buy Dreaming the Beatles by Rob Sheffield. I'm not very far on this yet, but I'm finding this interesting as well. Enough so that I plan to use my next credit to pick up his Duran Duran audio book which has been sitting on my wish list for a while now.

Between the podcast and the audio book, I sort of wish I had been born in time to see the Beatles come to America and be part of the hysteria. On the other hand, I'm very happy to have missed the turbulent stretch of time that came later. And of course, things are always better looking backward than they actually were at the time. That's why nostalgia is such a big thing--we've forgotten all the negatives and only remember the positive. :-)

Happy Music Playlist

At the beginning of December, I blogged about a podcast I listened to that talked about using music to pump up your happiness level quickly. I listed a few of my songs in that post. Afterward, the podcast team posted a Spotify playlist with all the songs people suggested. It's a very long, long playlist. :-)

Here's a link to the podcast website, specifically the episode where they linked to their Spotify playlist. It's a little buried in all the text, but it is there, I promise.

I haven't made it very far on this playlist, but I will say that some of the choices surprised me. I didn't find them uplifting at all. I'd expected to have a little more consistency in what constitutes a song that increases happiness. If I'd made a guess, I would have gone with fast music that makes one want to dance--basically my choices of happy music.

That's not what's on this playlist. At least that's not a lot of what's on this playlist, at least so far. I do have a long way to go yet.

However, one of my choices did tie for first place per the podcast episode. Katrina and the Waves Walking on Sunshine. I know I have very eclectic taste in music, but it's nice to know that at least one of my songs was in the majority.

Merry Christmas!

To those of you who celebrate, Merry Christmas!

Enjoy a little Andy Williams Christmas music.

Old People Radio

When I was in growing up, the only radio station my parents ever listened to was a news/weather/talk show kind of format station. Not political talk. The talk show stuff was cooking or entertaining or household hints kind of things. In fact, I didn't know there was such a thing as FM radio OR music on the radio until (I think) fourth grade when someone in my class asked me what radio station I listened to. I thought there was only one, so I gave them that answer. And got laughed at.

Everyone listens to this top 40 station, I was told. And of course, I immediately found it and started listening to it myself.

When I was a little older, I called my parents' station of choice "old people radio" and didn't understand why they liked to listen to it.

Guess what? I still don't understand why anyone likes the format and it's on steroids in Atlanta. Not only is the station all yakking, it's obnoxiously loud yakking, especially in the morning. I hate talking in the morning. I hate loud in the morning. They do both. And I'm not sure if this is the right term or not, but the station over-modulates their voices making it even worse. There are no words for how much I hate this station. Loathe is too mild a term.

Sadly, because of my van pool, I'm subjected to this hideousness pretty much every weekday morning. I plug a headset into my phone and listen to instrumental music to block it out. Because of how obnoxious it is, I had to go with drumming music which is a little more robust than I'd like at that time of day, but there's nothing milder that will cover up the station from hell.

Even today, I still think of this type of station as being for old people and I'm not quite sure why anyone driving my van pool wants to listen to it. When I drive my car to work (which seldom happens), I don't have the radio on at all in the morning, and when I drive home in the afternoon, I put on music I can sing along with to make the ride shorter. Much, much better than blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

PS: Radio in Atlanta is bad! Even a couple of Atlanta natives who I work with think it's lousy. I didn't believe I'd find worse radio down here than what I had in Minneapolis, but I was wrong. It's at least 100x worse down here. IMO, of course.

Happiness 911

I was listening to a podcast a while back that talked about using music when you need to feel happier. The two hosts went on to talk about several of the songs that perked them up and I thought this was a super cool idea. Their only rule was that Happy by Pharrell could not be one of the songs--I guess because it's too obvious.

This is kind of a cool exercise. I'm very aware that music and mood go together. On a Friday afternoon, when I'm driving home from work, I don't want dark, heavy music because it doesn't fit how I'm feeling. I want light, happy, upbeat songs. In movies, the score is very important to driving tension and mood. Maybe it's just me, but I'm usually not consciously aware of music in movies very often, but when I pick up the soundtracks later (I like instrumental music sometimes when I write), I'll notice how very fitting each song is to the corresponding movie scene.

So my happy songs, the ones I play when I need a pick-me-up:

Walking on Sunshine - Katrina and the Waves
Goody Two Shoes - Adam Ant
Knock on Wood - Amii Stewart
Rebel Yell - Billy Idol

There are more, but they're not coming immediately to mind.

I have a lot of 80s songs on my list and that's because--overall--80s music is happy music IMO. Even the songs that are slower and supposed to be ballads feel happier to me than a lot of the music that came out later. And this is actually one of the reasons why I still listen to so much music from that decade--I want music that makes me happy. The titles listed above are simply the songs that make me happier than my usual mix.

Wandering into New Territory

I've been stagnate for a while with my musical choices, so I decided to shake things up a little bit. I started by using the curated playlists available on Amazon Music. (I received absolutely no compensation for this article. I'm a Prime member had can stream a lot of music for free.) After listening, changing to a different playlist, and skipping a bunch of songs, I tried stations. This is seeded with one artist or theme. I started out with Pitbull. ;-)

The Pitbull station was interesting and I discovered that while I like some of his songs, there are more that I don't like. The station played a lot of other artists and there were some I enjoyed, but when I heard Counting Stars by One Republic, I knew I'd found a new band to listen to.

Radio in Atlanta isn't good. I'm not the only one who thinks this either. A couple of Georgia natives agree with me. Because of this, I mostly listen to my own music. The one radio station I use to wake up to plays oldies. My old wake up radio station was far enough out of range that some mornings all I'd have was static and I can sleep through white noise. That radio station was super cool, though, because it played everything. One morning I'd wake up to the Partridge Family and the next day it would be Lady Gaga. I called it radio roulette because I never knew which decade I'd be hearing.

Too bad the signal wasn't better because I was hearing new music there. It's this station that introduced me to Maroon 5 and some other bands.

It's always easier to listen to what's familiar, but I have an eclectic taste in music and I like adding to my collection. I'm all excited to have a new band to follow.

Edited to add: Two new bands! Between the time I wrote this and now, I discovered Fitz and the Tantrums. I'd actually heard one of their songs before, but didn't know the band. Now I do and I like a lot of their music.

***There was no compensation from anyone for this post. This is my opinion and Amazon Prime allows any member to stream a large selection of music for free. I also have no affiliation or ties to One Republic, Maroon 5 or anyone else for that matter.***

Theme Songs

I used to pick theme songs for my stories. This wasn't something I'd ever planned to do, but one day (as I was driving home from work) Devo's Girl U Want started to play and the lyrics made it perfect for my first book, Ravyn's Flight. The book officially had a theme song.

Nothing popped out at me like that for The Power of Two, but I chose Corey Hart's Never Surrender because that was Cai's attitude.

I never was happy with the theme song for Through a Crimson Veil. The title kind of fit, but the rest of the Travis Tritt song really didn't work for Mika. But Eternal Nights did fit perfectly with INXS's Never Tear Us Apart and every time I hear it, I still think of Kendall and Wyatt.

Because it sometimes helped with the writing, I even tried to choose theme songs for my Works In Progress (WIP), but it's very time consuming to find the right song and as time became harder to come by, I've pretty much given it up. Part of me misses having a song come on the radio and getting all excited because it belonged to one of my books, but on the other hand, a lot of my characters ended up with theme music that I picked just because I was tired of looking for something. Those tunes evoke nothing in me.

I think what I've decided to do is to pick a theme song only if one jumps out as being perfect for the story. That means most of my stories won't have anything, but I think it's better than trying to force something to fit.

Silicone Lost

One of the things that frustrates me endlessly is when the silicone pieces fall off my earbuds. I know, first world problem, right? It's still annoying. And when I lose them in the van pool vehicle, it makes it really hard to locate. Every time one fell off I'd swear I was going to buy some Super Glue and solve the problem for good.

And of course, it happened again. I don't own Super Glue, but I started Googling, thinking that maybe someone else had come up with a solution to keep the silicone ear pieces in place. What solution did I find? Super Glue.

I read the instructions on how to do it and it was exactly what I expected with one warning. Be careful not to let the glue go down the channel. Well, yeah, that makes sense.

So I got the glue, I got the earbuds, and I did it. Later that evening, I did a little check. One stayed on, one came off. I redid the loose one. When I checked the next day, that one, too, was in place. Yea! Now I'm never losing a damn silicone cap again. I found out I had a small problem Monday morning on the van.

I turned on my music, put my earbuds, and frowned. One side had no sound.

I fiddled with the settings, I plugged and unplugged the cord. Nothing. It had been working the last time I used them and the only thing that changed since then was my glue project. I was careful, but maybe some glue went down the channel after all. When I got to work, I dug out a pin and tried to scrape out whatever was there. It's such a small channel, I couldn't see anything. Nothing came out on the pin. I ran the music again.

No change.

Bottom line, my silicone won't come off the earbuds, but I only have sound on one side. I ordered a new set of earbuds and will be extra careful with the glue.

Update: Shortly after I wrote this, I attacked my earbuds again with the pin. This time I was successful and I can hear music on both sides again. Hurrah!

iTunes Radio

This is going to be a very quick post because I'm working on edits for Phoenix Burning and I promised my editor they'd be in her inbox when she arrived at work on Thursday (today).

I finally caved in and downloaded iOS 7. One of the first things I did was try out the new radio station feature. I believe it's free with this latest version of iTunes too.

It's easy to setup. I just went with their pre-existing stations, but I believe you can create your own. I chose four stations.

Overall, I like it. For me, I consider it a plus that there's a buy button on the screen with the price. It's probably going to be bad for my budget, but if I hear a song I like, I don't want to mess around to buy it. Here, I don't have to. One touch shopping.

I like that it is like a radio station and that I didn't have to create a playlist and have it shuffle through it. Sometimes I get tired of some of my playlists and want new music, something I don't already own.

There are two minuses that I've noticed so far. The first, and the biggest one, is that there doesn't seem to be a lot of variety. I've played the same station three days in a row and all three days probably 80% of the songs are ones I' heard yesterday or the day before. That's never happened to me with Pandora.

The other thing I'm not wild about is that there are ads. So far, they've been few and far between, but I don't know if those will increase as Apple moves forward or not. I'd hope they could make enough money on music sales to lose the ads completely. Still, one ad over hours of listening is a satisfactory ratio and I can live with it.

I give it 3.5 stars out of 5. If they get a wider variety of music, I'll bump up my rating.

Influence

I've talked before about how I've acquired words that my characters like to use. It's not that I didn't sometimes use these words myself, but they weren't my first choice. Now they often are. It's still odd at times to realize I say dude because of Cass or crap because of Cai, but I've largely learned to accept this.

Weirder still is that I pick up my characters' tastes in music. At least when they make a preference known to me.

This one I'm not quite used to yet. I only started paying attention recently, so it's possible that this has happened before without my realizing it. There were times I just had to have music playing when I was writing, but I didn't think about what I was listening to or why.

But then the Tchaikovsky day happened and it was a whoa! moment for me.

I own some classical music, but it's not a genre I listen to all that often, and while I can recognize the more famous songs that were used in movies or TV commercials, I'm not all that well versed in it. Then I started writing Blood Feud and Isobel had Tchaikovsky playing in her car.

It was the following weekend while I was working on another story that I felt compelled to listen to Tchaikovsky myself. I checked iTunes, but I didn't own any. I tried other classical music, thinking it was just a yen for that genre, but no. I wanted Tchaikovsky. It had to be Tchaikovsky. Finally, I surrendered and bought three different albums filled with his music.

I played them over and over. On Sunday, I did some more writing on Blood Feud and saw the Tchaikovsky reference. And the light bulb lit up. Isobel. I was listening to this composer because of Isobel.

Months after she left, I tried Tchaikovsky again when the urge to listen to classical re-emerged. And I had no interest. I ended up switching to a different composer instead.

The other character that I'm aware of influencing my music is Kel from In the Darkest Night. He liked Seether. Now I like Seether. I still play Seether. I've had their music stuck in my head the last couple of weeks. Kel's not around anymore, and hasn't been for a while, so I'm thinking this music is going to stick.

And I'm wondering if this is going to happen again with some other character and what music I'll be playing then.

Which Version?

I hate it when a song I want to buy has multiple versions because then I have to figure out which version I want. If it's just a remastered song or one copy is on the Best Of album then it's not a big deal. I know what that is, but a lot of times it's unclear.

Last week I wanted to buy a copy of Good To Be Me. I Googled the lyrics I remembered to get the name of the song and who sings it and then went to buy.

And found three versions. My choices were the regular song, the Deluxe version, and the River Road (River something) rendition. I figured out the Deluxe one had to do with the album and not the song, so I had it narrowed down to two options. I listened to a sample for each of them, but that didn't help me because of the parts of the song in the sample. The lengths were different; one was 4:12 and the other was 4:01.

I decided to Google this and didn't find anything helpful. I did find something interesting, though. The song had received "unsolicited" airplay and this bulletin board had people complaining that this song had gotten the play. There was another, more worthy country singer who hadn't gotten unsolicited airplay like this. I was like, whoa. There are really people discussing things like this? And becoming angry on behalf of another singer? I had no idea that fans kept track of stuff like that.

But I digressed. Sorry. So none of my search results that I checked were helpful. I decided to go to my local radio station's website, hoping they'd list which version of the song they played because that was the one I wanted. I had trouble getting parts of their site to load, including the listing that contained this song. I did find a video for it, played it, but it never said which version it was.

With nothing guiding me the direction I wanted to go, I punted and selected the longer version. I played it when it finished downloading and realized immediately that I'd bought the wrong one. Figures, doesn't it?

I ended up going back and buying the other version. This is the one I wanted. I probably should have figured it out sooner since this mentioned it "featured Kid Rock," but just because the other one didn't say that, didn't necessarily mean he wasn't singing on it. I've run into that before. But in this case, it was accurate.

Mission accomplished, it just took two tries to reach the goal.

Music and Brainstorms

Before I start, I wanted to share that Edge of Dawn is a finalist for Best Paranormal in the Aspen Gold Awards!

Now, on with the topic!

I get all my story information through my characters and they tend to talk to me on an as-needed basis, which means if I'm putting together a proposal for a trilogy, I'll know the first hero and heroine, I'll have some on the second h/h, but that the third set will pretty much be enigmas to me. And since my stories come from characters, any blurb I write about their book is a guess. I tend to keep it kind of vague, just going with the iota of information I have and leave it there.

I also like theme songs for my books. Sometimes I go hunting the songs and sometimes I'll be listening to my iPod or the radio and have something jump out at me. This is what happened to me yesterday. I was shuffling Seether at work and Fake It came on.

At first, I wasn't really paying attention, but then the lyrics started to register and I sat up straighter. It dawned on me that this might be the theme song for h/h number 3. And suddenly the hero about whom I knew next to nothing started giving me information. He went from a cardboard, placeholder character to a man with his own issues and quirks. I played and replayed this song for a lot of the morning.

It's always so awesome when the right song makes itself known because then every time it plays, more of the character comes through to me. That's what's been happening here. I was lucky on this series--not only did all three books pick their own songs, I also have a song for the series as a whole.

I'm still not sure how the pieces I received yesterday about the hero and heroine fit into the story, but by the time I get to there, I'll know. In the meantime, I'll be listening to Seether a lot.

Pop Culture and Fiction

I've been thinking this week about pop culture and how it's used in fiction. I will admit that I absolutely loathe brand name dropping (especially designer name dropping) when I read a book. Every time I see a heroine in Bruno Magli shoes, I cringe a little. There are other shoe brands besides this one.

And here is where I confess that I did, indeed, mention a brand of shoes for a secondary character in one of my books. But she wore Amalfi pumps and the only reason I named a brand at all was because the rhythm of the sentence screamed out for one.

Pop culture references, though, go beyond designer names. Characters don't exist in a vacuum--or at least they shouldn't. If someone is writing a contemporary story, these people need to use computers, cell phones, and watch television and movies. They should text their friends, listen to their iPods, and know about major forces in the society. For example, is there any adult (or kid for that matter) in the United States who hasn't seen at least one episode of The Brady Bunch? Or maybe seen one of the movies?

So when I write I have characters who are Cubs fans, who drive Ford Explorers or Aston Martins, characters who have seen the blockbuster movies, and who own computers, cell phones, and send text messages. Not only does it define the character, but it also makes them more real.

This was something that came up while I was writing In the Midnight Hour. I had references in there to Bewitched because the heroine is a magic-wielding troubleshooter and the hero is a human who's just been introduced to such a person existing in the world. If he didn't know Bewitched, there'd be something wrong with him. But one of my friends called my attention to Charmed and felt that the hero and heroine would be familiar with that show, too. She was right.

Ryne, my heroine, would be interested in the human portrayal of magic users--for a good laugh if for no other reason. It's also fair to assume with the show going into reruns before it went off the air, that Deke, the hero had seen it, too. And that he would base his knowledge of magic on Hollywood representations because he knows nothing else.

IMO, there's always a need to balance the pop culture references. Too many and it's annoying. Too trendy and it dates your book. And this is especially hard with music. Groups come and go so fast now.

When I needed music for In the Darkest Night, I knew Kel wouldn't listen to the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. He was 29, not 59 and he's listening to current music (not that I might not have a hero or heroine in the future who's really into classic rock, but Kel wasn't). I went with Korn because they'd been around for a little while and took a stab that Seether would still be around in five years. I hope I gambled right with those choices. :-)

I still remember picking up an old Silhouette Desire. I remember the story being awesome, although I can't remember the author or the title. But as I was reading, I hit a description of what the heroine was wearing--a velour top and a wrap-around skirt. That jerked me out of the story quickly because it was so dated.

This stuck with me for years and it's part of the reason why I go with very classic styles for my characters. My heroes and heroines generally wear jeans and T-shirts, sweatshirts, polo shirts or I'll just say she was wearing a black skirt. My big foray into more specific clothing was In Twilight's Shadow. I tried to give enough for the reader to picture the dresses Maia wore, but not so specific that it dated the book. I hope I succeeded, but since I'm not a fashion maven, I don't know.

So yeah, balance. It's not always an easy line to walk, but I think it's one authors have to tread or their characters become less real. I'm not going to reference a TV show like My Own Worst Enemy in any of my books (even though it was a totally awesome show that more people should have watched so that it didn't get cancelled), but shows that ran for a while, or that have lived forever on TV Land? Yeah, those get mentioned.

Music Hunt

One really great thing about the internet is the ability to track down information quickly and easily. As a writer, being able to get an answer to a research point for a book almost instantly and being able to get right back to the story is a blessing. It's proven to be handy, though, in other ways.

There has been some really great use of music in television commercials lately. It started with Geico using Let Me Be Myself by 3 Doors Down. Geico nicely put the name of the group and the song title at the bottom of the screen so I was able to jump over to iTunes and buy a copy for myself. Most advertisers haven't been so helpful and this is where the internet comes into play.

There are two other songs I've been grooving on. One of them, Build Me Up Buttercup by the Foundations wasn't too hard to figure out. One Google search gave me the name of the group (I only had the song title from the lyrics of the ad) and it was painless.

The other ad music I've been loving wasn't easy to track down. Oh, I could guess at the song title from the lyrics. That was easy. The hard part was figuring out which version was the right one. I wanted the same one used in the commercial.

What ad was it? The one for the 2010 Major League Baseball All-Star Game. The ad is awesome by itself. A bunch of ballplayers suddenly inundated with sand, another player jumps at the outfield wall to catch a ball and falls through it onto the beach, and a giant sandcastle in the form of Angels Stadium. It's just a fun commercial. The music made it even more fun.

But the song, California Sun was covered by about a million different bands/singers. I looked at the list and was like, wow, which version?

Google didn't exactly help me here, but it led me to YouTube and some kind soul posted the name of the band. Thank you, sir, whoever you are! The version I wanted was by The Dictators. I bought it and have been grooving ever since.

Once, before the internet, getting the name of the band for California Sun would have been a futile effort. Now, it's as easy as heading to YouTube. Awesome!

Watch the fabulous and fun commercial (complete with awesome song) below.

Talking a Little Music

I never really considered myself that into music. Sure, I had a lot of CDs and I'm always buying MP3s, but I can't sing worth a damn and my attempts at playing an instrument went nowhere. Not that I didn't try. I attempted to learn the viola, the guitar, the piano, the drums, and I think there's one more, but I can't remember what it was now. I failed miserably at each. I even know why--I never practiced.

I think this is what separates an interest from a passion--the desire to work at the passion. Writing is my passion. From the age of 14, I wrote and rewrote and revised. If my words didn't live up to my standards, I didn't give up. I went back in and worked on it some more, or I chalked it up as a lesson and went to a new story.

With music and art, I gave up when I wasn't immediately good enough in my own view. Yes, I have an interest in both and I wish I could pick up a pencil and draw. I can't. But then I've never taken the time to try to improve. These are interests for me, not passions.

Oops, digressed. Sorry. Anyway, I never considered myself that into music despite my large collection because I'm a passive consumer and I don't even really listen to music all that much. Then I started thinking about it some more. I listen to music a lot at the Evil Day Job (EDJ). Not every day, but I call my iPod "life support." (At home, the laptop is called "life support." ;-)

I also usually have a song in my head, even if it's just a stanza or something replaying itself. This week it's been the Brady Bunch kids singing It's a Sunshine Day. Why? I have no idea. I haven't watched the Bradys in a long, long time.

My books have theme songs. This started by accident. When I was revising my first published book, Ravyn's Flight, I was listening to Devo's Greatest Hits and when Girl U Want came on, I kept replaying it over and over and over. It finally dawned on me that I was looping the song because it fit my book. Ever since then, I've tried to find a theme song for every story.

Sometimes I just pick one because I can't come up with the perfect choice and I don't have time to waste looking any more. So while I list theme songs for Through a Crimson Veil and my story in Shards of Crimson (among others), they don't really bring the book to mind or the characters.

But when a book has picked it's song, it's a completely different story. I can't hear that Devo song I mentioned without thinking of Ravyn, Damon, Alex, and Stacey. And the music can influence me while I'm writing the book. The theme song for book 2 of the paranormal trilogy my agent is shopping right now brings in information on that hero every single time I play it. I know that when I actually grow close to writing his story, I'll have this song looping to get my head into it.

Another example was when I was writing The Power of Two. Whenever I wasn't sure what to do next (and back then, I wrote a lot more seat of the pants than I do right now), I would listen to Corey Hart's Never Surrender. That was Cai's motto: Never surrender. So the song helped me see what the character would do next.

It's not always theme songs either. When I wrote Blood Feud for The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance 2, Isobel and Seere were listening to Tchaikovsky in her car and I'll be damned if I didn't have to listen to Tchaikovsky, too. The weird thing is that I had to listen to it while I was writing In the Darkest Night, which has no relationship whatsoever with the vampire story. I don't know why, but I bought 3 MP3 albums and shuffled them all weekend while I wrote Kel's book. Kel has zero interest in classical music. He's more Seether and Korn than violins and horns.

And that's the other weird thing--my characters influence me. If they have a word they use all the time, I'll pick it up even if it's one I rarely used until they came in. Same with music. I'd never listened to Seether until Kel, now I have one of their albums and I listened to it just this week. Actually, I'm blaming my heroes for all the hard, edgy music I have now. I have always had an eclectic taste in music, but metal was not something I liked or played. Until I started writing contemporary paranormal and my guys arrived.

It's also interesting that music is more important to my heroes than my heroines. Hmm. I need to think about that. Maybe I have a blog topic for another day.