I always create a playlist for whatever book I’m working on, usually during the outlining stage. My theory is that by setting a mood from the outlet, the just-right collection of songs will influence my writing in conscious and subconscious ways.
When I sat down to write “Where the Bones Lie,” in which a disgraced Hollywood fixer helps a young woman uncover a decades-old murder, I had firm ideas for the soundtrack. The book is set in Los Angeles and the rural areas to the north (mostly in the fictional town of San Douglas, based very loosely on Santa Ynez) during a particularly dry season. The landscape is cracked with drought and scorched by wildfire, and the air always stinks of smoke.
This might sound counterintuitive, but given that setting, I wanted a list of songs about California beach, sun, and easy living, to provide an ironic counterpoint with the action on the page. With that in mind, I selected songs like The Rivieras’ “California Sun,” The Marketts’ “Surfer’s Stomp,” and the Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ U.S.A.”
But almost immediately, I sensed that sardonic nostalgia wouldn’t serve the book’s sonic landscape. It was like hitting the same note over and over again—I needed a little bit of nuance, songs that would reflect the narrative’s tension, the characters’ psychological turmoil, the bursts of unhinged energy during the action scenes. In other words, I needed something a little bit more David Lynch.
The resulting playlist does have a burst of old-timey California, as represented by The Kinks’ “Sunny Afternoon,” but it’s a brief flicker of light amidst the weirder songs.
The melancholy “Satan, Luella & I” by HMLTD sounds like a band’s final gig in a Long Beach dive bar. “King Lear (Demo)” by Jerskin Fendrix is like a sonic portrait of a slow-motion breakdown, which mirrors my protagonists’ headspaces at certain moments, especially when it seems like their investigation is grinding to a halt.
Those are balanced out—just a little—by more spiritual pieces such as “Nobody Knows” by Pastor T.L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir.
With that, here’s the full playlist; I’ve included the link to Spotify if you use that service and you would like to listen along:
“Super Breath,” by Karen O, Danger Mouse
“Satan, Luella & I,” by HMLTD
“Estranged,” by The Ting Tings
“Can’t Stop the Noise,” by Millionaire
“Sunny Afternoon,” by The Kinks
“King Lear (Demo),” by Jerskin Fendrix
“Nobody Knows,” by Pastor T.L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir
“Zena,” by Priessnitz
“Radiant Star,” by Sofia Hardig
”Something for the Pain,” by She Drew The Gun
“Just Goes to Show,” by Eliza Shaddad
“Tres Hermanos,” by Hermanos Gutierrez, Dan Auerbach
“Yesterday is Here,” by Tom Waits
I chose “Yesterday is Here” by Tom Waits as the soundtrack’s coda. I’ve loved Waits’ gravelly vocals since I was a little kid, and he’s very much the patron saint of the down and out. He sounds like an exhausted demon singing at the edge of dawn, which I felt was a perfect accompaniment to the end of the book: everyone is tapped out—but maybe some measure of justice is done.
