Musical Moments: Guest Post: Kiss, Date, Love, Hate Playlist by Luisa Plaja

It is my great honor to welcome Luisa Plaja to Book Angel Booktopia today. Speaking to Luisa via twitter I was aware that she creates play-lists for just about everything lol. I was absolutely over the moon when offered the chance to host the play-list for Luis's new book Love, Date, Kiss, Hate. Over to Luisa......ENJOY.

I often write while playing music, and I have several long play-lists for every book. I add tracks for various reasons. Sometimes the lyrics are perfect for the themes I'm writing about, or they represent a certain character for me. Other times, the music creates the right atmosphere or calls to mind certain locations. I can't explain why other tracks are there, but they somehow feel right.

It was very hard to narrow it down, but here are just a few highlights from the music I played while writing my latest novel, Kiss Date Love Hate.

This is the one I carried over into every new Kiss Date Love Hate playlist I made. A lot of the book's scenes are set in the (relatively tame) wilds of a man-made forest, where tall trees vie with more recent structures built and left by young offenders on an out-of-bounds course. This was the track that inspired some of my thoughts on what it is to look 'wild' on the outside (Drew), or feel 'wild' on the inside (Lex, Jess... George...)

By the way, it was tough to choose just one Flo song and I nearly selected CosmicLove instead, for the sake of Lex's cosmic Geography teacher Ms Cosgrove.

Another scene-setting track, though this one is mostly for Drew.

This one's for Lex's slightly lost friend Jess. Plus it's a brilliant track. Sing it loud!

This is a perfect soundtrack tune. For me it captures that night-time, street-lit atmosphere where anything seems possible. I chose this for the driving scene after the party...

A timeless love song. Hey, it's even *called* Love Song! This one is for all the couples in the book, including the ones that didn't make it to the final cut. I like to think they're out there somewhere!

Just to round things off, for a game-based story, I had to include something about playing (and losing?) a game…

Thank you very much for having me here, Emma!

Thank you Luisa for sharing your awesome music taste.