Inspiration

Without a doubt, music was my biggest inspiration for the novella, and it continues to stay rooted as I work on expanding it. The story takes place in New Jersey, my home state. I may be biased, but NJ definitely has one of the richest alternative music scenes in the US. Need proof? We created Bruce Springsteen!

I got the idea for the novella while reading an interview with the Bouncing Souls. I can't even put my finger on what exactly triggered the inspiration, but I knew right away that I wanted to write about a punk band from NJ. The band in the story is in no way based upon the Souls, but they set the stage for the scene in which the story takes place. Like the real band, my fictional one came up in the New Brunswick basement scene, which has a distinct DIY quality. Many bands from this scene continue making music for years, and so does the band in the novel.

At the start of each chapter, I included a song lyric from a New Jersey band. Some of my classmates in my creative writing capstone questioned why I would only consider bands from NJ for this, but the reason is simple: most of these bands have, at some point, inspired one another. It was only logical for me to root the action in this. In New Jersey, this scene is almost like a family, and I wanted that feeling to come across in my writing.

I've added a new page that mentions many of the bands that inspired this by name. As an aside, the title of the novella was taken from the Ramones.

There are obviously some aspects of the novel that were not influenced by music. Jarred's prescription drug addiction, for example, actually stemmed from a discussion we had in class after I shared the first chapter of the novella. Originally, I wrote him with a street drug dependency, but my classmates convinced me Oxycotin was more compelling and perhaps even more realistic. As I've mentioned in previous posts, this plot line required a lot of research.

My other influences have all been random things I've read or people I've encountered over the years.