If you read my recent post about how I work, you will already know how important music is to my writing process. Music is where I find the feelings, build the atmosphere and sometimes discover entire scenes before I have written a single word.
Every book normally develops its own playlist while I am writing. Some songs belong to a particular character, some capture a relationship, and others remind me of one specific moment in the plot. A song might represent something happening on the page, something a character cannot say aloud, or simply the emotional vibe I need inside my head while writing that part.
The playlists can become a musical version of the books, so I try to arrange the songs in roughly the same order as the story. If you listen from beginning to end, you should be able to hear Nick and Rachel’s relationship developing through all three books.
I had songs saved in several different places while writing The Carrero Connection, which meant sorting these playlists involved quite a lot of listening, moving songs around and repeatedly asking myself what on earth I had originally added something for. LOL.
Some songs were clearly sitting in the wrong book. Others belonged to scenes so perfectly that I knew immediately where they had to go. A few were moved between playlists several times before everything finally felt right.
Each completed playlist now contains twenty-one songs.
Book 1: The Carrero Connection
Book 1 begins with Rachel before Nick, so the opening songs reflect her independence, her attitude and the way she deals with her father. Then Nick appears, she begins to like him, and everything becomes far more complicated.
The playlist moves through their attraction, the brief affair, Nick’s infuriating push-and-pull behaviour, the separation and everything that leads towards the nightclub scene.
It also includes Best Friends, one of my own original songs written for Rachel and Renee, along with the main theme song for the trilogy.
Listen to The Carrero Connection Book 1 playlist on YouTube
Book 2: The Carrero Connection Continues
Book 2 is war, compromise and two stubborn people slowly learning how to become closer.
Nick and Rachel begin this part hurt, defensive and attempting to navigate co-parenting while pretending their feelings are not still sitting inconveniently between them. Naturally, neither of them makes any of it easy.
This playlist begins with the heartache left behind by Book 1 and moves through anger, mixed signals, emotional battles and reluctant compromise. Gradually, the songs begin to soften as Nick and Rachel stop fighting quite so hard against one another and start finding their way back.
It is probably the most combative playlist of the three, but underneath all that anger is the fact that neither of them has ever really let go.
Listen to The Carrero Connection Book 2 playlist on YouTube
Book 3: The Carrero Connection Forever
Book 3 carries the emotional weight of everything Nick and Rachel have already survived.
This is the playlist of trust, healing, family, commitment and finally finding home. It moves through Rachel learning to believe that Nick will stay, the pain surrounding her relationship with her father, the remaining outside conflicts and the fear attached to building a future when your past has taught you not to trust one.
There are songs about being held, allowing someone to love you, facing old wounds and becoming the family neither of them expected to find.
Piece by Piece is one of my personal favourites and has always hit close to home because it fits the relationship with my own biological father almost perfectly. The song used within the book itself suits Jubilee more closely, but Piece by Piece still carries the exact kind of emotion surrounding fathers, absence and the difference made by someone who chooses to stay.
By the end, the playlist becomes everything Book 3 needed to be: closure, marriage, family, Preston and the home Nick and Rachel finally create together.
Listen to The Carrero Connection Book 3 playlist on YouTube
Twenty-one songs for every part of their story
I wanted all three playlists to feel balanced, so each one now has twenty-one songs. They include some of the music I listened to while writing, songs discovered while sorting the final lists and tracks from two of my favourite bands, ONE OK ROCK and The Rose.
Those bands were playing throughout much of the time I spent inside Nick and Rachel’s world, so the playlists did not feel complete until they were represented properly.
These songs are not simply a collection of music I like. Together, they follow the emotional shape of the trilogy. They carry Rachel’s strength, Nick’s hidden feelings, their attraction, warfare, separation, compromise, healing and eventual forever.
You can listen before reading for a taste of the atmosphere, play them while you read, or return to them afterwards when you are not quite ready to leave Nick and Rachel behind.
Although if you end up emotionally damaged by the end of all sixty-three songs, please remember that I had to live inside them while writing the books.
Sorry, not sorry. 😂
L.T. x
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