Archive for category Undercover Soundtrack
‘What is hope and how do we make more of it?’ The Undercover Soundtrack, Dwight Okita
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on January 15, 2018
It’s such a pleasure when an early contributor to this series returns with a new title. Today we’re rewinding to a guest from the first year of The Undercover Soundtrack. Dwight Okita was a finalist in the coveted Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award with The Prospect of My Arrival, a story that flirted with ideas of the supernatural and reincarnation. Now with his second novel, The Hope Store, he’s created a low-key magic realism/science fiction fable that centres around an invention that can bring happiness. Music was important for keeping him on message, and Dwight’s muses included U2 and my own favourite, Kate Bush. Drop by the Red Blog to hear more.
‘Tibetan oms and child prodigies’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Leslie Welch
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Nanowrimo, Undercover Soundtrack on October 29, 2017
My guest this week began her novel as a NaNoWriMo project, appropriately enough for this time of year. But its true seeds were at a gig in the late 1990s where an eight-year-old fiddle player stole the show. Years later, the author sat down to power through a manuscript idea for NaNoWriMo. She used songs of the 90s and early 2000s to take her mind back to the night with the fiddle player, but nothing would make the words flow until an album of Tibetan chants popped up on her music library. She found the zone. She is Leslie Welch and she’s on the Red Blog with her Undercover Soundtrack.
‘The dull rage of Sundays, the relief of good friendships’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Heidi James
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on October 3, 2017
My guest this week says she usually finds music a distraction. She lives with music makers, and finds ‘other people’s sounds’ are too intrusive. But that changed when she started writing a crime novel about a teenage friendship in the 1980s/1990s. Listening to the music of the time helped her re-understand what life was like at that age. Gradually, it helped her tune into the characters and became a place she chose to be rather than an irritant to tune out. From listening to music about her characters she finally discovered, as she puts it, ‘music for me’. She is the award-winning poet, novelist and novella-ist Heidi James and she’s on the Red Blog with her Undercover Soundtrack.
‘Things fall apart … hearts rip open’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Caroline Leavitt
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on August 16, 2017
My guest this week has earned plenty of praise for her first two novels and I’m thrilled to have her here as she launches her third. Her post is a thoughtful, intense journey through the backstage emotions of creating a book. The novel is set in 1969 and 1970, but interestingly she didn’t listen to the hits of the time. Instead she chose tracks that let the characters tell her what experiences they were living – a rich mix of The Smiths, The Beatles, Crowded House and Amy Winehouse. The book’s title – Cruel Beautiful World – dropped out of a lyric one day. She is NYT bestselling author Caroline Leavitt and she’s on the Red Blog with her Undercover Soundtrack.
‘Some of the best lyrical storytelling I’ve ever heard’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Victoria Dougherty
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on June 30, 2017
Pull on your boots. My guest this week had a radical change in music taste when she reached her 30s, and she hopes to convert you too – unless you’re already a fan of country. It started when she moved out of Chicago and found that the sensibilities of country singers were more in tune with her new environment. Not only that, she realised they were wry, witty storytellers, writing about characters complex enough to satisfy any novelist. Soon they were guiding the way her stories developed. So come to the Red Blog and join a twangly, poignant chorus of Dolly Parton, Frankie Laine, Johnny Cash and Garth Brooks, all on the Undercover Soundtrack of Victoria Dougherty.
‘A dead soul, a journalist in a dystopian Scotland, and painful family memories’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Philip Miller
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on May 13, 2017
My guest this week has a novel of three complex threads – as you can probably guess from the above description. He says music was as much a part of the process as his notes, plotting and character building. Indeed, he found his way to a music style he’d never before warmed to – prog rock and, specifically, King Crimson. I’ve seen this before with contributors to the series – experiences and interests that you never took much notice of become suddenly essential. As you work on the book, it works on you. Other musical essentials for this author were Kate Bush, who I could never disapprove of, and he says the novel was so essentially ‘Bush’ that he began the edits by playing Hounds of Love on his iPod. He is Philip Miller and he’s on the Red Blog with his Undercover Soundtrack.
‘Music is both my on and my off switch’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Andrea Darby
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on February 5, 2017
My guest this week is a musician as much as a writer – she teaches piano, and she says that playing is the closest she ever gets to a state of mindfulness. Her debut novel was sparked by the uncanny conjunction of a magazine article and a piece of music. The former was a piece about a couple who had signed up to have their bodies cryonically preserved after their deaths, in the hope that they would be reawakened and reuinited. And the latter? A haunting, icy piece of music by Ennio Morricone that seemed to urge her to write a story about a couple who sign up for preservation, and the tragic situation that ensues. Drop by the Red Blog for the Undercover Soundtrack of Andrea Darby, and her novel The Husband Who Refused To Die.