It’s weird how music can trigger memories and moods, and how those can in turn trigger the desire to write certain things. I just got to work and caught the tail edge of Natalie Merchant’s “Carnival” on JackFM, which triggered a flood of memories from 1995, when I listened to Tigerlily over and over (this was before MP3s and I still had only so many CDs I could carry). Among them:
- Rereading Jack McKinney’s Robotech books, especially the three Invid Invasion books, and comparing the Robotech mythos to my early and developing Unification Chronicles (this was just before I started work on Between Heaven and Hell)
- Playing a lot of Mechwarrior 2, but more than that listening to the game CD as an audio CD, awesome background music
- Playing Wing Commander 4, The Price of Freedom, and again thinking about my own space opera, my own fighter jocks
I remembered the moment I realized the story worked so much better if the Nemesis were humanoid instead of insectile, the taste of the chili we had almost every day in the POAC café (Pentagon Officer’s Athletic Club) for lunch, waiting in an airport with just those two CDs, Tigerlily and Mechwarrior 2, on my way home to Denver for leave.
All this from maybe 15 seconds of music. A snapshot in the life of a developing writer. Weird.
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