‘The emptiness of being outside a perfect romantic scene’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Dan Gennoe

Oh my! Do you know what I forgot to do? There hasn’t been an Undercover Soundtrack for a few weeks, and now there is I forgot to publish the teaser post. How easily we forget our own routines. Even more heinous, I’ve been adding the tracks to the soundtrack for my own WIP, greedily enjoying it while forgetting I needed to share it with you. Apologies, apologies.

So: my guest spent 16 years as a rock journalist, interviewing stars and trying to understand what their music was trying to say. When he started to write his first novel, music took on a fresh role – no longer the endpoint, it was now the beginning. The book is the story of a man looking back on an intense love affair, and the music is an aural journey of the character’s obsession, his unstable serenity that could turn dark, his complex sense of comfort in the prison of his memories. Dan Gennoe is on the Red Blog with his Undercover Soundtrack (and has been since Wednesday, mea culpa). Proper writing post to follow later, but for now, sit back with Dan.

‘Very French; and weighed down by heat and melancholy’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Claire King

I’ve now got Eric Satie’s Gnossiennes on repeat in my head – and so will you once you’ve read this week’s Undercover Soundtrack. Satie helped my guest conjure a lulling, heady summer in France; a five-year-old girl running wild while her mother grapples with tragedy, late pregnancy and looming disaster. The novel is The Night Rainbow, the author is Claire King, and she’s on the Red Blog with her Undercover Soundtrack. Even better, you could win a copy for sharing the post and commenting!

‘The Philip Glass concerto wrote the novel for me’ – Linda Gillard, The Undercover Soundtrack

My guest this week says her novel would never have made it to publication if not for a piece of music. She’d been trying for a long time to weave two narratives together and was about to give up when by chance she listened to Philip Glass’s first violin concerto. In that piece she suddenly saw the rhythms of her characters and how they could harmonise. She is Linda Gillard, the novel is Untying The Knot and she’s on the Red Blog talking about its Undercover Soundtrack

‘If I ever lose my character’s voice, Joni Mitchell will guide me back’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Dwight Okita

My guest this week says he needs the noise and bustle of life to help him settle to writing. No silent writer retreats for him. Songs are special talismans for his central characters, providing the innocent wonder of an embryo examining the world before he’ s born, the numbness and gravitas of a girl who has lost all hope. He’s a poet, too, and some of his key pieces have a secret counterpart in the music of Ryuichi Sakamoto. He is Dwight Okita, his novel The Prospect of My Arrival was a finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2008, and he’s on the Red Blog talking about Undercover Soundtracks.

Even better, there’s a GIVEAWAY for the comment that most captures his fancy…

‘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