Motivated by music

I am inspired by music, are you?
When I want to sit down and get some writing done, music is by far the most motivating factor for me. It can't just be any kind of music, mind you. Ideally, if I'm working on my fantasy Raven series, it needs to be slightly eerie and dark.
As I have such a huge music collection, I have created a playlist on iTunes specifically for when I need to be motivated. My first song of choice is always that fantastic track from the 1980s movie The Lost Boys, called Cry Little Sister by Aiden... that one really gets me going.
Others include some tracks from the Twilight saga, particularly Lykke Li's Possibility. It's absolutely brilliant.
As my first book, Raven, is set in Canada, I also love to listen to native American music such as tracks by Roberto Carlos Nakai... it helps me to really put me in my character's shoes, surrounded by the beauty of North America. It is inspiring in so many ways. I have the same thing with many celtic songs too.
I think it's pretty obvious that I am inspired by the music of the movies. The Lost Boys, Twilight, Hope Floats, Practical Magic, Lord of the Rings, Edward Scissorhands, The Time Machine, Premonition and the Chronicles of Narnia are just a few that I love. There are hundreds of others that I could listen to all day! I am in awe of the people that create such beautiful sounds. Sounds that can literally cause the imagination to go into overdrive just by hearing the first few seconds of a piece of music.
Some other artists and songs that help inspire me in my quest to write include:
Carol Tatum
Impressions of winter
Lisa Gerrard
Vangelis
Enya
Cancao do Mar by Dulce Pontes
Salve me by Libera
Raven by Lisa Marie Presley

Of course I have other tastes in music for when I'm not writing. In fact my tastes vary wildly. Smooth jazz (Stacey Kent, Michael Buble, Ella Fitzgerald, Melody Gardot, for example) is perfect in the warm summer months with a cool glass of white wine on the terrace.
Country music (Lady Antebellum, Martina McBride, Rascal Flatts for example) is great for dinner parties.
While cruising in the car, a good dose of Lady Gaga is just perfect! She certainly plays a bizarre character but having seen her interviewed on Oprah, she appears to be quite a sweet girl. Her music is awesome.
As a young teenager I couldn't get enough of Guns n Roses, Def Leppard, Whitesnake and the like. Now though, I can only listen to their ballads (the rest just seem like noise).
The 90s was an interesting decade for music, one which I recall with fondness, as it was in 1992 that I met and fell in love with my husband. So I have lots of great memories from our early days together! Seal, Lisa Stansfield, Alanis Morisette, Mariah Carey, Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls and Take That were just some of the things we were listening to at the time. I also loved RnB but my husband wasn't so keen. There is one song, though, that we both remember well because it was to that song that I was dancing alone on the dance floor when he first spotted me. It was Fantasy by Black Box. The memory gives me the shivers!
Funnily enough, when we got married in 1998, our entertainer forgot to ask us what song we wanted for our first dance. Imagine our shock (and disappointment) when we were ushered to the dance floor to the sounds of Ave Maria! Now that makes me shiver, but for entirely different reasons. Now though, we have our own song and every time we hear it, we share a sneaky look between us. The song? Take That's Rule the World.
Oh, how music can affect us.