Later this week over at Bohemian Zen, you will get your first taste of the Pirates, one of the gangs that inhabit the world created by 3!LL. That taste will come in the form of a work of short fiction penned by little ole me. It will be serialized over a period of weeks, a new installment each week.

One of things we want to do over at Bohemian Zen is give you the occasional look behind the scenes, a chance to see the world being created. This will come in the form of character sketches, panel roughs, script excerpts, etc, but also the writers and 3!LL taking some time to tell you a bit about how we get our creative mojo on and do the things we do.

I have some great behind the scenes stuff planned for the weeks leading up to the first Pirate comic, but that is a ways off so I need something else for the time being. Since my first published work in this epic is the aforementioned short fiction, I thought you might like to know what tunes I listened to while penning the story.

Music doesn’t inspire me to write, but it allows me to focus on the task at hand (I don’t get distracted by lyrics), and the tone, speed and rhythms of the music sets the pace for my writing. When I write with music piped into my ears via iPod ear-buds, I write in a semi-fury, fingers tick-tacking along the keyboard, not stopping to edit until I get a chunk of text onto the page. When it comes to the serious editing, I turn off the music, lean in close to the monitor and take my time.

Here then is the soundtrack that fueled the writing of the upcoming Pirate short fiction:

• Bloc Party’s Intimacy album, especially “Signs”, “Ion Square” and “Flux”
• Faces – Borstal Boys
• Beast’s self-titled debut album
• Be Your Own Pet – Becky
• Throw Me A Statue – Lolita
• Grand Ole Party – Look Out Young Son
• Sons & Daughters – The Nest
• Sons & Daughters – Taste The Last Girl
• Taken By Cars – Uh Oh
• Radiohead – Bangers & Mash
• DJ Champion – No Heaven
• Holy Fuck – Lovely Allen
• Holy Fuck – Casio Bossa Nova
• SM Boot – It Can’t Come Quickly Enough
• The Faint – Worked Up So Sexual
• Underworld – Cowgirl
• Of Montreal’s Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer album, especially “Suffer For Fashion”, “Cato As A Pun” and “The Past Is A Grotesque Animal”
• Sigur Ros’ Agaetis Byrjun album
• T Rex’s Electric Warror album, especially “Mambo Sun” and “Hot Love”

Thanks for reading. Talk to you again soon. I will place an announcement on this blog when the first installment of the Pirate short fiction is published on Bohemian Zen.