There were quite a few scenes in the story where lyrics and emotions generated by particular songs provided the inspiration for my descriptions, imagery, and character dialogue/emotions. There are also some scenes where I just felt a song “fit” playing over that scene, like a soundtrack. The title of this story even came from one such song which inspired one of the more powerful scenes, and which was the initial seed of this whole idea. The list presented here is in the format of: Artist: “Song Title”- Album. Following that, there is a brief description of the scene(s) that the song is connected to. I feel it is important to make note of these songs because of the impact they had on my writing, and perhaps to inspire readers to take a listen and see if they get the same experience and impressions they gave me. I would highly recommend all of these songs, and I would be interested to read people’s reactions regarding listening to them in relation to the story.

Rush: “Caravan”- Clockwork Angels. This was a new single I first heard perhaps two weeks before I started writing the story. The song title gave me the idea to use a gypsy caravan to introduce Matthias and Anna. It has no other particular significance to the story other than I was listening to it a lot while writing. I would say it does have some connection to the writing process as one of the chorus lyrics, “I can’t stop thinking big,” very accurately described my feelings as I started compiling ideas. I knew this was going to be a large endeavor.

Sylvan: “The Colors Changed”- Posthumous Silence. This is the first of many Sylvan songs which seemed to fit so well into this story. This could be called River’s theme as the mood and tone perfectly described where her character was at emotionally and mentally. The lyrics inspired some of the imagery in the opening scene in the alley of Chapter 1, as well as the concept of the colors changing whenever she became the weapon (though there was also a precedent for that from the movie). It also ins