Music Monday – Inspiration for Loving Among the Dead

As most authors do, I have a playlist of songs I work with when I’m writing. It’s the playlist I think embodies the story, the characters and the mood of a certain scene. I have all that set out before me, at my fingertips so I can access it at the press of a button.

However, there are those songs that occurs to you after the story’s done, edited and published. That song which pops up out of almost nowhere and declares itself an official sponsor of your story.

It continues to amaze me how much music can not only soothe the savage beast but also bare one’s soul.

Judith Graham holds her own in her zombie-proofed fortress that was once her childhood home. Through the foresight of her survivalist parents, she’s set for at least a year, but overwhelming loneliness and crushing boredom drives her out into the deserted, yet still dangerous streets of her neighborhood. She crosses paths with another traveler, Sky Beckett, who has decided to take the dangerous journey South to find out if his family is still alive in Tennessee.

A reluctant Jude allows him to stay at her home. Determined to remain a “Lonely Stranger” …..

When I walk, stay behind
Don’t get close to me
‘Cause it’s sure to end in tears
So just let me be
— Eric Clapton

she doesn’t want to get close to anyone because anything could happen, at anytime. Sky takes more of a moderate, if not almost optomistic view of post-apocalyptic life, wherein you keep trying until you can’t try anyone. He struggles to get her to see the facts as they stand and staying in her house is only going to get more dangerous, no matter what fortification she thinks she has.

He also sees that Jude is perhaps not as strong as she thinks she is.