I needed to pick the perfect song. If I was going to write a novel where music was the actual plot device, then I had no choice but to embed a playlist into Playlist of the Ancient Dead. The music had to represent parts of my life and fit into the novel. So each chapter heading became a song title. Each song fit it in its own peculiar way, and one song changed the name of the main character. That song was Caroline by the Espers:
It wasn’t easy picking Caroline. My main character was named Marissa in the early drafts, and I didn’t want to change it. I was going to change Murphy’s name before I changed Marissa’s. But like all prolific writers, I decided to deal with the problem by ignoring it. The first song in the playlist within the Playlist needed to set the tone of the book, and introduce the main character. But there wasn’t a song about a Marissa that fit the description, so I turned to music to mull the problem over. Often when I felt particularly introspective, I’d listen to Caroline and other songs like it on repeat. One such evening, I noticed a comment on youtube about the Espers:
And that’s when it hit me, I had to name my main character Caroline, and no other song could fit better than Caroline as the first song in the playlist within the Playlist. There was something truly ominous hiding within plain sight of Caroline. It was a building she walked by every day, yet failed to understand the significance. Not only did I find the song that fits the tone of the story, but I also found a song that would annoy Caroline’s parents. It also gave me a nice character moment. I could hear her parents now, “why’s it got to sound so depressing!”
Caroline only rebelled against the song of her namesake because of all the embarrassment she suffered at baseball games:
If you are curious to find out the artists of the rest of the playlist within the Playlist, please follow this blog or one of my social media outlets. You may be surprised by some of the artists on the list.
Time Burrito 