Music That Inspired Journals of the Undead

Journals of the Undead was written between 2008-2010 so I only remember the artists that I listened to the most.

The Rolling Stones, one of my favourite bands. Wild Horses is one of my all time favourites and one of the songs that’s mentioned in the book. It has a special meaning for me and now it is a special song for one of the characters, too: Lucretia first heard the song when she was about to close one chapter of her life and start another and listened to it a lot.

Sarah Brightman, one of my favourite singers. I saw a recording of her live concert at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna in 2008 and it’s one of the best performances I’ve ever seen. When Brightman sang Fleurs du Mal, it was a magical experience. I love the song so much that I wrote it into one of the stories

Sisters of Mercy. I was trying to come up with a name for the female lead when Lucretia, My Reflection came up on my MP3 player. I liked the way it sounded and, since she was based on me, the reflection thing, too, resonated with me.

Take A Shot by the Finnish band Lovex. There was a time when I would listen to this song non-stop and that included the time when I was working on Tiredness, the first story. The lyrics made me think of Vincent and it sort of became his song. Every time I hear it I think of my story and every time I read Tiredness, I think of the song.

The 69 Eyes aka Helsinki Vampires – an obvious choice but I started to listen to them several years before I wrote the first story. Wasting the Dawn, Brandon Lee and Velvet Touch are still my favourites.

Over the years, I have edited the stories quite a few times and, when I was editing the English version back in 2020, I started listening to classical music a lot, especially Handel’s Water Music and pretty much anything by Mozart. There is a particular classical music for studying playlist on YouTube that I always play in the background when I need to focus. Apart from liking classical music in general, the fact that no-one’s singing means I don’t get distracted by lyrics.