It’s been a while since my first zombie novel, Loving Among the Dead was released through Loose Id. However, no matter how long ago I’ve written a book, the characters stay with me for quite a while. It takes a lot to get into a characters personality- how he or she walks, talks, behaves and reacts in certain situations, and this doesn’t go away very quickly.
With that in mind, I started looking through my Google playlists and found a list of songs I used to evoke moods with my two characters, Jude and Sky.
A little about the book: Jude is my female lead. When the zombie outbreak happened, she endured a scary journey from Philadelphia, where she was going to graduate school, back to Princeton (or thereabouts) where her parents’ lived. She’s a bit spoiled and a lot privileged, however, her parents were survivalists/hoarders, what have you, and they stocked their home with provisions and food, “just in case”. Though her parents are dead when she finally a makes it back home, she stays in her old boarded up home, the only person left alive in her neighborhood. It’s a lonely, scary existence, to be sure.
Then along comes Sky, traveling through solo on his way out of New Jersey to his home state of Tennessee. Before the apocalypse, he’d been a teacher in an urban district, having gone to college on a baseball scholarship.
The two meet in the stock room of a drugstore and Jude ends up allowing him to come stay with her. And as one would imagine, having been starved for human contact for many weeks, they cling together.
That’s the basic premise. The book continues with the push/pull of the relationship, where Sky wants to keep moving South, whereas Jude believes it’s safer to stay in one place.
All that being said, here’s a taste of their soundtrack. Some songs are hers, some are his, and some belong to them both. I’ve included a link to the playlist on YouTube, if you want a listen.
| Jude | Sky | Both |
| Counting Cars – Snow Patrol | Faster – Matt Nathanson | Don’t You Forget about Me – Simple Minds |
| Time after Time – Cyndi Lauper | Don’t Dream It’s Over – Crowded House | Follow you, Follow Me – Genesis |
| Invincible – Pat Benatar | Wild Horses – The Rolling Stones | Perhaps Love – John Denver |
| Like a Prayer – Madonna | Melt with You – Modern English | Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd |
| Nobody Does it Better – Carly Simon | The Flame – Cheap Trick | Never Surrender – Corey Hart |
| Head over Heels – Tears for Fears | Sign Your Name – Terence Trent D’Arby | Born to Run – Bruce Springsteen |
| A Matter of Trust – Billy Joel | Hey, Jude – The Beatles | Anthem for the Already Defeated – Rock Plaza Central |