The first song in every writing playlist is the key to each story. It reminds me of the tone and the feel of everything the story needs to be. The twist with Tattered Heart is that I put the key song last so that I wouldn’t hear it a thousand times and get tired of it.

But then I listened to Opening so many times, and it is elegant and powerful, passionate and a little sad. It became a theme song as well.

Truly, though, My Name is Lincoln is the heart of everything I hope Tattered Heart became. Gentle in the beginning, quietly lovely, elegance that gains in power and strength as it progresses through sadness and triumph and unexpectedly fierce and wonderful at the end. It is one of my favorite songs ever.

You’ll notice the rest of the playlist includes a lot of the Elizabeth: The Golden Age score. It came into my life just as I was beginning to write, to build the playlist that would inspire this story. I intermingled a mix of songs that complimented a fairy tale, keeping it slightly dark in order to remind myself that the story needed conflict; things needed to be hard and to let the characters wade into sadness and anger and fear.

It began at roughly an hour so I could sit and make myself write once through the playlist but it grew as I discovered new songs or added old favorites when I really needed them for a particular moment.

The one song I listened to quite a bit at the end but never put on the playlist is I See Fire by Ed Sheeran. I love it too much and too broadly to let it belong to a single novel.