I always write with music on in the background. Writers have strong feelings about this. Like plotter-vs-pantster debates, fellow writers either consider music a vital adjunct to the creative process, or a barbaric derailment of inspirational flow. While I’m sure I could write without music I like to have some noise going on in the background (largely, I suspect, because it enables me to talk to myself without it being obvious). A lot of the time I just have the radio on, but every book will attract to itself a tune or tunes that particularly resonate.

For The Last Dreamseer, that tune was Florence and the Machine’s Rabbit Heart (have a listen, courtesy of YouTube):

Because I’m a writer and I adore language and words, it’s always the lyrics of a song that make me fall in love with it, and the words of Rabbit Heart really struck a chord as I was writing The Last Dreamseer. My heroine, Deena, starts the story as a completely “rabbit-hearted girl”, scared of everything (with good reason since she is blessed/cursed with a gift that has had a very high price attached). During the course of the story she learns to take control of her strengths and grows from being the lamb to becoming the knife. You know, this song could have been written for her…