Ever since my early youth I have loved, followed and respected a certain music genre that some people consider strange, even dangerous: heavy metal. The journey started in Istanbul, at a small, stuffy music store on a side street in Taksim, nestled between an Ottoman mosque and a fish market, where I would buy cassettes of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Led Zeppelin, Megadeth, Twisted Sister, Metallica… and then go home and listen to them endlessly while eating sunflower seeds, because that’s what we Istanbulites do to pass time. Over the years I veered towards less-well-known sub-genres, such as industrial metal, symphonic metal, metalcore, gothic metal, Viking/pagan/Nordic metal; and while the cassettes disappeared, my love for heavy metal remained solid.
Today whenever I go to a literary festival and someone asks me about my writing process, I hesitate for a second, but still tell them the truth. I tell them that I put on my headphones (because otherwise the kids will tell me ‘to turn that bloody thing off!’), choose a particular song by a metal band, new or old, and listen to the same song on a loop as I write my novels.
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