‘Each song helped me see the main character a little more clearly’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Melissa Foster

My guest this week has always written in the grip of a wide-ranging playlist, but for one particular novel she found herself listening to three pieces intensively, maybe obsessively. In those songs she found her characters’ strengths and their more playful, softer sides, the great challenges they faced and the reserves they drew on to see them through. She is award-winning bestselling author, indie champion and women’s advocate Melissa Foster – and she’s on the Red Blog talking about Chasing Amanda and its Undercover Soundtrack.

‘Musical taste says so much about someone’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Fanny Blake

My guest this week spends a lot of time discovering her characters through their favourite music. But it’s more than a shorthand for tastes and background; it’s a way to explore the subtle but crucial differences between her main characters’ interior lives. Her own career has spanned almost every aspect of writing – she’s been a publisher, has ghostwritten celebrity autobiographies and is currently the Books Editor of Woman & Home magazine. As well as that she has written two novels - What Women Want and now, Women of a Dangerous Age. She is Fanny Blake and she’s talking about her Undercover Soundtracks today on the red blog