Zombie playlist

Because I know you're all dying to know what an author listens to while she writes, right?

It used to be much harder. You had to find just the right album for a given book. I listened to SCHINDLER'S LIST during THE POLARIS PASSAGE. For SANCTUARY it was Josh Groban (shaddup). For NOCTURNAL URGES it was Evanescence. "Bring Me To Life" is, in my head, Samantha's song.

Now, with the marvelousness that is iTunes, I can compile my own playlists. They change over the course of the book, but while I'm writing the zombie novella with the working title THE COLD ONES, here's what I'm listening to:

1. Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 (Allegro: First Movement)
2. Bad Moon Rising (Creedence Clearwater)
3. Everybody Knows (Leonard Cohen)
4. The Downeaster Alexa (Billy Joel)
5. Farewell to Nova Scotia (Three Pints Gone)
6. Red Right Hand (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds)
7. Hurt (Johnny Cash)
8. A Sailor's Prayer (Three Pints Gone)
9. The Town I Loved So Well (The Irish Tenors)
10. Fight the Good Fight (Triumph)
11. Who Wants to Live Forever (Queen)
12. Don't Fear the Reaper (Blue Oyster Cult)
13. We Used to Be Friends (The Dandy Warhols)
14. The Final Trawl (Three Pints Gone)
15. Only Our Rivers Run Free (The Irish Tenors)
16. Soldier's Child (Three Pints Gone)
17. Old Man River (William Warfield)
18. People Are Strange (The Doors)

In other news, many thanks to the good gentleman at my local comic shop. I think I must be the only female customer with a pull list, or he has an exceptional memory. I only come by every month or two, and yet he recognizes me instantly and gets my pull list ready for me.

At any rate, it was a light month, and so I asked him, "If you had to recommend a zombie book..."

"The Walking Dead," he said instantly.

"Wow, that was fast," I replied.

He talked me into it. I picked up the first trade and read it over lunch. And at the end of the lunch I couldn't finish eating, I went back to the comic shop. He asked me if I'd forgotten something. No, I replied. Just needed to pick up volume 2. And if it holds my attention the way volume 1 did, I'll be adding it to my pull list. Excellent work, just the kind of zombie writing I like: zombies without gore, where the characters who survive are the interesting ones. Not scary-gross... scary oh-my-god-what-hell-life-shall-become.

So thanks, Comic Book Guy. You rock in all the good ways. And now I shall be giving you more money. Sigh.