Ryan M. Talbot's Blog

Absent Me Hate to Wake You
Acid Bath When the Kite Sting Pops
Anaal Nathrakh Desideratum
Baroness Purple
Behemoth Entire Catalog
Cicely Goulder Think
Collide These Eyes Before
Combichrist No Redemption
Cradle of Filth Lilith Immaculate
Dark Funeral The Secrets of the Dark Arts
Death The Sound of Perseverance
Deafheaven Entire Catalog
Deathspell Omega Entire Catalog
Devilment The Great and Secret Show
Die Sektor To Be Fed Upon
Down Nola
Drowning Pool Sinner
Emperor Entire Catalog
Fleshgod Apocalypse King
Ghost Entire Catalog
Gojira Entire Catalog
Ihsahn Entire Catalog
Katy Perry Independent Remixes (E.T. & Dark Horse)
Lamb of God VII: Sturm und Drang
Le Castle Vania John Wick Official Sountrack
Marilyn Manson Entire Catalog
Metallica Entire Classic Catalog
Meshuggah Entire Catalog
MDSO Entire Catalog
Misifts Entire Catalog
My Jerusalem A Little Death
Myrkur M
Otep Entire Catalog
Powerman 5000 When Worlds Collide
The Pretty Reckless Going to Hell
Psyclon Nine Entire Catalog
Rob Zombie Well, Everybody’s Fucking in a UFO
Samael Entire Catalog
Satyricon Entire Catalog
Septicflesh Communion
Slayer Entire Catalog
Strappign Young Lad Entire Catalog
Tom Waits Real Gone
Velvet Acid Christ Entire Catalog
Volbeat Entire Catalog
White Zombie Entire Catalog

Generally, the aggrotech and metal tunes were my go to tracks for the majority of writing. Certain scenes required a bit more attention to dialogue, and for those the soundtrack songs were far more effective. Other than that, I'd just bury myself under noise and scotch and write until I had nothing left. The more I learn about how successful writers write, the more I realize how unlikely a fate success truly is. The stories just seem to burn their way out of my brain for good or ill. This one, however, was a labor of love. I hate Rachel nearly as much as Beckett does, and love just the same. This book let me play with some of my favorite characters from upcoming novels, and flesh out characters that I didn't think I'd get to play with again. That said, if you get the chance to listen to some new artists, most of these bands have a presence on social media and youtube. Check them out. And thank you so much for reading. It means the world to me.

I've wanted to write this post for a long time. I've seen several other authors do this and I thought I'd give it a go myself today.

Of course, since I listen to music constantly as I write, this list will be fairly lengthy. For this, I apologize, but I truly believe that the musicians deserve to be recognized for their contributions to my sanity in the face of my work.

The Eye of Eurydice

I wrote EoE over the course of about six months. Two months of that was the actual writing, the rest was my editor beating the shit out of me. There will be two lists for this one, as I originally wrote each half of the book as its own volume.

The Eye of Eurydice
Draconian - Turning Season Within
Behemoth - Satanica, Evangelion
Psyclon Nine - INRI, Crwn thy Frnicatr
Cradle of Filth - Entire Catalog
Slayer- Entire Catalog
Satyricon - Entire Catalog
Enslaved - Entire Catalog (focused on older titles)
Melechesh -Entire Catalog
Absu- BARATHRUM, Tara
Velvet Acid Christ - Calling ov the Dead, Twisted Thought Generator
Dawn of Ashes - Entire Catalog
Dissection - The Somberlain, Storm of the Light's Bane
Agalloch - Entire Catalog
Ancient Wisdom - For Snow Covered The Northland
Bloodbath - Unblesing the Purity
Primordial - To The Nameless Dead, The Gathering Wilderness
Belphegor - Pestapocalypse VI
Dark Funeral - The Secrets of the Black Arts
Dark Tranquility - Skydancer
Emperor -Entire Catalog
Grendel - Harsh Generation
Ihsahn - The Adversary, angL
Lou Reed - "Perfect Day" from Transformer
Meshuggah - ObZen
November's Doom - Into Night's Requiem Eternal
Painbastard - Nyctophobia

In The Shadows Before the Throne
All of the above +
Absent Me - Hate to Wake You
Behemoth - Demonica
Nurzery [Rhymes] - Thorns
Immortal - Entire Catalog
Hypocrisy - Osculum Obscenum, 10 Years of Chaos and Confusion, The Final Chapter
In Flames - Lunar Strain
FGFC820 - Urban Audio Warfare
Emilie Autumn - Liar/Dead is the New Alive, Opheliac
Die Sektor - To Be Fed Upon
Suicide Commando - Implements of Hell
The Haunted -The Haunted Made Me Do It
Peccatum - Entire Catalog
Opeth - Still Life, Watershed
Kataonia - Brave, Murder, Day
Opera IX - The Black Opera

There's probably a handful of artists I'm forgetting. I remember the playlist being over three days long from end to end. I kept it on shuffle and let the music take me where I needed to be. In the end it resulted in some pretty dynamic shifts in the story. After all, it's hard not to kick into high gear when the open strains of "With Strength I Burn" come screaming through your head. I also remember a few key moments where the song so perfectly matched the passage I was writing that it was frightening.

I'd love to revisit this sometime after folks have had a chance to read through the entire story and give some insight to which songs influenced some of the more pivotal moments of the narrative. There were some pretty great coincidences that really made the book for me.

One might notice that these lists are comprised mostly of black/death metal and industrial/aggro-tech. While I listen to more than just these two genres (ok, maybe three or four depending on how anal you want to get about sub-genres and stratification of metal), this book just seemed to call out for this type of aural stimulation. (Say that out loud for me once, would you? There's a nine year-old in my head that's chuckling right now)

Some unpublished portions of this book were written while listening to artists as diverse and far from my comfort zone as Lady Gaga and Pink. For whatever reason, hearing them in my wife's car triggered a response that lent itself directly to the work. While those portions of the book have been excised, they used to exist and thus, credit is due.

The list for To Dance With Dead Gods is both a bit shorter and significantly more slower paced. The tone of that book demanded something a little different, yet still dark and still metal. But that's a list for another day.

G'Night.

Lesson One: Buy a dog.
Lesson Two: Care for said dog.

Please email me with PayPal details so we can arrange payment.

Thanks.

Well, it might not be that simple, but it's damned close. This advice was given to me by a friend when I told him I had an awful protagonist that I needed the reader to like.

"Give him a dog," the man said. "Bad guys don't love their dogs."

He was right.

Strange.

Starting a blog always seems a bit like starting a relationship. It carries with it a taste of autumn, not quite cold, but not uncommonly warm. It makes me want a hot cup of coffee and a comfortable chair.

I recently started re-reading Dracula by Bram Stoker and I found myself again in love with the novel. I was forced to read it in high school and I was too enamored of Frankenstein to give Stoker's work its due. Now a bit older, I find that it has a sort of magic to it that I missed the first time.

Thinking on Stoker's lasting impact on literature in general, not to mention the vampire novel itself, makes me wonder. How much impact can modern authors hope to have in a world of on-demand entertainment and streaming porn?

I look to authors like Joe Hill and Neil Gaiman to give me hope. American Gods is, to my mind, the perfect novel. It mixes literature and lore, the modern and the ancient, the sacred and the profane and pours them over a story that resonates timelessly. It is the definition of what a novel should be in my mind. It removes the reader from the mundane and thrusts him into the realm of impossible with such deft skill that the reader never wishes to leave.

Horns is another such book. It capitalizes on the terrors of reality and sets them seamlessly against the backdrop of mythology. It presents very real, if preternaturally flawed, characters that force the sweetest, most painful sort of empathy from the reader. The scariest parts of the book are entirely grounded in the real world, which is what brings that visceral and terrible dread to the reader as he sits there shaking his head and muttering "No, no, no..."

Where this is leading, if it leads anywhere at all, is to my own work. If reality, and the story of REAL LIFE lend such power, such force to a story, why use metaphysical elements at all? The truth is, when I read a book, I dont want to escape to be little Suzy Dinkins in her happy little tea party world. I don't want to be Jack Smith, angry CIA operative with a heart of gold and terrible, nagging gastro-intestinal distress. No, I want to escape to a world where I can make difference. Not to the starving children of East-West Asscrackistan where for only a dollar a day, I can ensure that this dying child can hear Dr. Suess tales.

Life isn't nice. It really isn't. I've seen places and things that I wish I could unsee. Things that I couldn't change, that no man could repair. Things that the gods were just too damned busy to watch over. That's the real horror to me. Man has no recourse against god. If one believes in predestination, we're all just rats in a maze, biting, roiling and rutting ourselves into oblivion for the amusement of the faceless beings above.

I write to escape all of that. I dance through worlds where man and gods exist side by side, where Death has a face and he may be hated, or even loved. It's a place where words resonate and actions matter. It's a place fraught with dangers to mind, body and soul. Yet in so many ways, it's safer than the world outside my door.

I hope you'll join me, here in this Darkness, and play in the mad realms behind my eyes. I promise, I don't bite. But I might be lying.