"A Place to Stay" was written entirely while listening to metal. In the early days of metal, the band Black Sabbath (then called Earth) noticed people attending horror shows at the cinema across the street. They decided rock music didn't really have any horror elements in it, and ran with the concept. To that end, I thought it might be interesting to experiment with music's effect on writing. I compiled a short list of songs into a playlist and got to work.
By the end of the fourth chapter, I had more or less exhausted my song choices. I was tired of listening to the same few songs over and over again. Periodically, I'd get distracted sifting through more music, hoping to find those few gems that would really kickstart some inspiration. By the end of writing, I was left with a playlist of 50 songs. I won't list them all here. If you like soundtracks to your reading, though, you might consider these for each chapter:
1 Rob Zombie - Dragula
2 Fever Ray - If I had a Heart
3 Black Sabbath - Paranoid
4 Ozzy Osbourne - Diary of a Madman
5 Nine Inch Nails - Only
6 Deftones - Change (in the house of flies)
7 Nine Inch Nails - The Line Begins to Blur
8 Marilyn Manson - Sweet Dreams
9 KoЯn - Coming Undone
10 Rob Zombie - The Girl Who Loved the Monsters
11 Rob Zombie - Death of it All
The process was certainly a lot like sifting, going through lots of grain and dust just to find the tracks that would be experimental gold. Not only did I have to like the song, but I had to be able to write while it played, too.
More about stuff soon.