If April showers bring May flowers, what happens in June when May continues to be a really wet month? I have no idea but it does make for the perfect weather to stay in and work on writing projects. Lucky I’m a writer.

A lot of authors have playlists of music that motivates, inspires, and helps them work through a story. I’ve never really done that because my taste in music is so varied. I love good old rock and roll, 80’s pop, movie soundtracks, classical, and ballads. Once or twice, a song has stuck with me for a character but it doesn’t happen often. In my Warfield Hotel Series, Justin Warfield’s theme song would have been Whataya Want from Me by Adam Lambert and his lover, Marcus Drummond would have been Stay With Me by Sam Smith. The Pinkerton Man series has a classic John Wayne cowboy background music theme. Some of you are way too young to remember those classics but in the movie Rio Bravo the first 10 minutes of the movie there isn’t one spoken word. Every movement, facial expression, fist thrown was punctuated by the music score. No words were needed. Unfortunately, writers can’t do that in a book. They have to use their words to make you see the scene and music helps them do that.

For me, it was when I found something on Amazon music that really stuck with me. I tend to listen to nature sounds when I write. Yep. A stream rushing over rocks, often helps me find my way through a difficult conversation. A thunderstorm will get my heart pumping and possibly turn into a sexy scene. The birds chirping and the squirrels barking help me find the humor in a situation.

Most of the sounds remind me of being alive and in the moment. It reminds me that’s how I want my characters to be – alive. When I read, which I do a lot of, it’s the characters that are real in the moment with emotions that I can feel, that give me the most satisfaction. As a writer, it’s what I hope to bring to the reader. Real men and women who have feelings and emotions that mirror our own. Of course the majority of us do not face a murder or a mystery on a daily basis, but life itself can through us a curve ball now and then.

So, the next time you open a book, take a close look at those characters. Are they like you? Do they feel? Do they react when they’re happy or pissed off? Do they feel love as deeply as you feel it? Hopefully the author has written them with all those things and more. That’s why we have ‘book boyfriends’.

Happy reading,

C.J. Baty