In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Keith Rosson’s Coffin Moon is a dark and savage vampire novel of revenge.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
“Rosson expertly balances action and character development to craft an edge-of-the-seat thrill ride. Readers will be hooked.”
In his own words, here is Keith Rosson’s Book Notes music playlist for his novel Coffin Moon:
Look, Coffin Moon’s a sad one. Sad-ass, mean-ass, bloody vampire book about found family, the indebtedness of love. Of obligation and how weak the notion of revenge can make us. There’s some beautiful music here, but none of it’s celebratory, I don’t think. The songwriters might disagree, who knows. To me, music helps snare and distill a kind of emotional resonance, helps put it on the page sometimes, and this is some of the stuff that I listened throughout the writing (and significant rewrites) of Coffin Moon. Thanks for checking this out.
1) ALAN KORPADY, St. Cecelia, 2018
Apparently this guy’s a retired lawyer? Who now puts out these amazing instrumental guitar albums? Anyway, he did this one with his buddy Patrick Jennings, and it’s a dozen tracks of gorgeous, laid-back guitar stuff. Beautiful and calm and entirely at odds with the brutality of a lot of Coffin Moon, but a record that helped me get centered every time.
2) COUNT OSSIE & THE MYSTIC REVELATION OF RASTAFARI, Tales of Mozambique, 1975
Sometimes I need ferocious hardcore that burns as fast as newspaper, sometimes I need entirely instrumental music to try and skirt past all the hangups of bellowed lyrics or loud guitars. And then there’s that middle ground middle, like this slinky reggae-infused bastard. Just the swagger alone on “Run One Mile,” good lord.
3) HOME FRONT, Games of Power, 2023
Unstoppable, stupidly danceable coldwave punk. Like Blitz and the Psychedelic Furs had a baby. The song “New Face of Death” sounds like the sonic continuation of the Misfits’ “Cough/Cool” and became a focal point for the ferocity of the novel. Probably listened to that song in particular fifty, sixty times throughout the final drafts; I wanted to write a book as readable as that song is catchy, if that makes sense.
4) SLUDGEWORTH, Losers of the Year, 1995
A lot of the book¾set in the ‘70s, a few years before I was born¾is centered on this idea of nostalgia, and man, nothing hits that nostalgia button for me like some ‘90s Lookout-era punk. I was a late-comer to this record, but it proved a foundational piece of music while writing Coffin Moon.
5) JOHNO LEEROY, “Black Boys on Mopeds,” 2023
I tried my best to encapsulate the sorrow and quiet fury in this heartbreaking cover of what might be my favorite Sinead O’Connor song. I still think her original is slightly better, but oh, this guy gets it. If I could write a novel like O’Connor wrote “Black Boys on Mopeds,” I would. I think it’s one of best punk songs we have.
6) PAINT IT BLACK, Famine, 2023
This album, particularly the title track, felt almost baptismal in its fury. This one was helpful during what turned out to be significant rewrites after getting notes from my editor. One of Coffin Moon’s main characters, a disillusioned and damaged Vietnam veteran, spends a fair amount of time questioning his culpability in the war machine, and with lines like, “It’s as American as taking from your neighbor. Pledged to the flag of stolen land, stolen labor,” it’s pretty clear that Famine as a whole proved influential.
7) LUCINDA WILLIAMS, “Ghosts of Highway 20,” 2016
This song, one that artfully and solemnly tackles the death of industry and class divisions and capitalism and so much more, will likely prove to be a foundational song for whatever I write for the rest of my life. It’s just that good. It certainly proved to be for Coffin Moon and its subsequent novel, Crone. Just a haunting five minutes of music that absolutely nails what it’s like to live and die in a small coastal town along Highway 20.
8) HOGAN’S HEROES, Self-Titled, 1990
Another of Coffin Moon’s main characters, Julia, is thirteen years old. Traumatized, withdrawn, angry. I felt myself in a similar position at thirteen, and this album, with its odd amalgam of pre-Epitaph melodic hardcore and stodgy, drawn-out reggae, so embodies that awkward, terrible, earnest time of my life. A record where a bunch of young kids really tried their best, and the results are charming, if not exactly prophetic. Duane and Julia would have hated this album for entirely different reasons.
9) JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE, “Graceland,” 2017
Welp, it appears I have a type. Here’s the second song that’s a contemporary cover of an ‘80s pop song, and my god, the yearning Earle puts in this thing. So often, writing is about the search and documentation of a feeling, a moment, that emotion you might feel between one blink and another, and there are songs that can often help you bridge that gap. That bring you closer to the understanding of that feeling, whatever it might be. And this song is one of them, hell yes.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Keith Rosson’s playlist for his novel The Devil by Name
Keith Rosson’s playlist for his novel Fever House
Keith Rosson’s playlist for his story collection Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons
Keith Rosson’s playlist for his novel Smoke City
Keith Rosson is the author of the novels Fever House, The Devil by Name, Smoke City, Road Seven, and The Mercy of the Tide, as well as the Shirley Jackson Award–winning story collection Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons. He lives in Portland, Oregon.