Opportunity Playlist

Well guys, as of today Opportunity has been available for two weeks, and I gotta say, these have been some of the weirdest, anxiety fueled two weeks of my life! I can only think of maybe 3 or 4 other spans of time that have been more 'white knuckles' than this. 
Releasing a book feels so much more vulnerable than I'd ever imagined. It's sort of like... when it's just a file on my computer or an idea in my head, I can protect the story, the characters... But once it's out there, it has this feeling like I've lost control of it - and ya know what? That's okay. The story is something I love enough to want others to experience it. 
They say that you should write the story you want to read. And Opportunity is definitely a story that I wanted; I wanted the adventure of it, and as I got to know Joshua and Benji during the development phase, I wanted their romance. 
And surely if I wanted it, someone else does too.
All of that is a long and meandering way to talk about the development process. Now that you've got it in your hands; now that you can see the boys and their trials, I thought I'd share a large part of the process for me. 
When I'm writing, the background music is one of the most important parts of the environment that I create. Very early on, I create a playlist for that story, a sort of soundtrack, if you will. I thought it might be interesting to share that playlist with you. So here are the tracks that I listened to during the writing of Opportunity.

From the Apollo 13 Soundtrack
     Main Title/Apollo 12 
     One Small Step
     Launch Control 
     All Systems Go / The Launch 
     House Cleaning / Houston, We Have A Problem
     Master Alarm
     What's Going On?
     Into The LEM
     Out of Time / Shut Her Down
     Dark Side of the Moon
     Failure is Not an Option
     Waiting for Disaster / A Privilege
     Re-Entry / Splashdown
     End Titles / Apollo 13

Space Oddity - David Bowie
Only Us* - Dear Evan Hanson
Waving Through A Window** - Dear Evan Hanson
Rocket Man - Elton John

From the Armageddon Soundtrack
     Armageddon Suite
     Death of MIR
     Long Distance Goodbye / Landing

From the Deep Impact Soundtrack
     Crucial Rendezvous
     The Comet's Sunrise
     The President's Speech
     Goodbye and Godspeed

Starman - David Bowie

From the Interstellar Soundtrack
     Imperfect Lock
     Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
     What Happens Now

Trailblazing - Steve Jablonsky

From the In the Shadow of the Moon Soundtrack
     Opening Titles
     Mare Nectaris
     X15 Jet
     Gemini to Apollo 1
     Elegy
​     Crawler
     The Good Earth
     Vigil - Eve of Launch
     Staging
     Go for TLI
     Mare Serenitas
     The Eagle has Wings
     Lunar Descent
     The Eagle Has Landed
     Loneliest Man
     Down Ladder
     Raising the Flag
     Apollo 13
     Lunar Ascent
     Epiphany
     Re-Entry
     Downlink
     End Titles

From Chris Hadfield SPACE SESSIONS: SONGS FROM A TIN CAN
     Big Smoke
     Beyond the Terra
     Feet Up
     I Wonder If She
     Caroline
     Jewel In the Night
     Daughter of My Sins
     Window of My Mind
     Space Lullaby
     Farm Action
     Ride that Lightning
     Space Oddity (Bonus Track)

I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing) - Chris Hadfield & Barenaked Ladies

NASA Audio of STS-133 Final Launch of Space Shuttle Discovery

So you might have noticed that the two songs from Dear Evan Hanson have a couple asterisks by them. That's because these come from special recordings, not the Broadway Cast Albums.

​*The Only Us version is from a series of videos the production put out and it's amazing. 

** The version of Waving Through a Window that I used was this video done for Broadway.com.