I was thinking the other day about how music influences my writing. I find it inspirational at all times but crucial at others, for example, when writing Siblings. I could never have written the 3rd book of my series without the songs of Hinder. Their music was the backdrop for that novel and the inspiration for Sebastian and Sykler’s relationship.
I thought there might be someone out there who would be interested to hear the songs that inspired me while writing each book from The Stone Series.

So, here you go…

Sliding: Sliding had a ton of songs from the 80s mentioned in it, each song brought Brook back to a memory from her youth. But when I think of the songs that inspired me, songs that helped me develop Tate, Brook and their relationship in my head I would have to go with the following: The Scientist by Coldplay, Never Say Never by The Fray, and I Won’t Give Up by Jason Mraz.

Stoned: When I first started to look for songs to inspire me for my 2nd novel I entered the word ‘Stoned’ into the iTunes search box and Presto…Magic! Get Stoned by Hinder and Stone by Stereophonics popped up. This discovery of Hinder made my next book start writing itself in my head while I was still working on Stoned. I had heard Hinder’s more popular songs on the radio before and loved them but it wasn’t until this point when I heard a variety of their music that I got hooked. Fix You by Coldplay will always make me think of how Damian feels about Sydney. He would do anything to fix her, to take away her memories of her past. S&M by Rihanna was the inspiration for the scene at Hard as Stone when Damian walked in to find his new dancer “Cinnamon Stick” was actually Sydney.

That leads me to Siblings: At the start of Siblings I provide a partial playlist of the Hinder songs that inspired me while writing Siblings. They were: Heartless, One Night Stand, Loaded and Alone, Anyone But You, Everybody’s Wrong, I Don’t Wanna Believe, Thing For You, and Up All Night. As I listened to each song over and over again in my car on the way to everywhere I went Sebastian and Skyler grew into characters in my mind. Many of the songs created scenes for them to experience. In this book I even wrote song lyrics for Sebastian. I just wish I could snap my fingers and make him appear to perform them for me!

Second Chances: Second Chances was the least musically inspired novel I’ve written. When I Was Your Man by Bruno Mars was popular and on the radio all the time when this story was brewing in my head. Taylor Swift’s song, I Knew You Were Trouble made me think of Raina. She knew from the moment she saw Pete Roman that he would be trouble and boy was she right!

At the moment I’m in the process of re-writing Sliding. A Senior Editor was kind enough to give me a few pointers that will hopefully catch the eye of an agent or a publishing house. Keep your fingers and toes crossed for me. But before I began that process I had started writing the 5th book in the series, Screen Play. You can find a blurb on my website about it if interested. I hope to be able to spend more time on it within the next month or two. It’s too early to determine where it’s ultimately going to go but songs that are calling to me when I think of Phoenix and Bailey are All of Me by John Legend, Beneath Your Beautiful by Labrinth, Human by Christina Perri and Say Something by A Great Big World and Christina Aguilera.

I hope you’ll check out the songs that helped me to create the characters from The Stone Series. Please support the artists through legal means.

Kitty Berry

SlidingStonedSiblingsSecond Chances