Posts Tagged Desert Island Discs
‘His voice brought me back to where I began’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Joni Rodgers
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on May 13, 2015
My guest this week returns for her third appearance on The Undercover Soundtrack. And it’s for her first novel, which she’s reissuing in a director’s cut, after reclaiming the rights. Plotlines and characters have been reimagined according to her original vision, and music was vital to recreating the book in her mind. Indeed, the story began in music, as she initially didn’t even realise her idea was destined to be a novel. She relates in her post how she’d sit on a gantry with guitar and writing pad, imagining a stage play with songs. But then the back story began to take shape, and the subtext, and before she knew it, a novel was born. She is NYT bestselling author and ghostwriter Joni Rodgers, one of my partners in crime at the Women Writing Women box set, and she’s on the Red Blog with the Undercover Soundtrack for the novel she contributed, Crazy For Trying.
LIMITED OFFER Psst… Outside The Box: Women Writing Women is available only until 24 May. 7 full-length novels for £7.99 or the dollarly equivalent, including My Memories of a Future Life by yours truly. And it vanishes on 24 May.
‘Music is the undertow to what I am writing’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Davina Blake
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on February 4, 2015
My guest this week is one of those many writers who values silence – but is keenly aware that music is influencing what comes out on the page. She describes how music acts as a portal, letting her access moods and mental states in order to recreate them faithfully in her fiction. She describes trying to capture a state of longing and nostalgia, but without sentimentality and the soundtrack she shares here is such a treat: a Gershwin cover by Kate Bush; a Purcell lament sung by Alison Moyet. If you follow my show on Surrey Hills Radio you might hear me finding an excuse to give them airplay sometime soon. Anyway, this imaginative guest is wartime romance author Davina Blake (who also writes historical novels as Deborah Swift), and she’s on the Red Blog with her Undercover Soundtrack.
‘A sequence of notes to transport you to a time and place’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Debbie Bennett
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on January 28, 2015
My guest this week says she was always secretly a rock chick, and has provided pictorial evidence to prove it. When she turned her creative impulses to writing, music helped create the mood and tone. She writes gritty crime with a heavy dose of psychological thriller, and drew on a aural landscape of Alice Cooper, Soul Asylum, Bon Jovi and Skid Row. She is Debbie Bennett and she’s on the Red Blog with her Undercover Soundtrack.
‘A sense of collective trauma across a century’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Suzie Grogan
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on January 21, 2015
My guest this week is a writer of non-fiction. Her book is an exploration of the legacy of the World Wars on mental health – the soldiers who developed shell shock, broke down afterwards or endured their nightmares in silence. And those on the home front too, the families torn apart by grief or traumatised by air raids. Her soundtrack is honest and searching, seeking a way to do justice to a tough subject. There is the gentle despair of Nick Drake, the Question of the Moody Blues, and a reading of Wilfred Owen by Kenneth Branagh. The author is Suzie Grogan and she’s on the Red Blog with her Undercover Soundtrack.
‘Music: a space to make sense of life’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Sarah Yaw
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on January 7, 2015
My first guest this year says that when she was very young, she spent a lot of time in theatres, watching her dad rehearse with bands. She would fall asleep to the sound as he played bass for the likes of Don Cherry, Lou Reed and his own band, The Everyman Band. Later she became consumed by music herself, pouring her soul into the playing of the clarinet. Tendinitis cut her music career short and a teacher suggested she write, encouraging her to write in the voice of one of the authors they’d been reading that term. ‘Voice’ – it was that word that started it. She realised that writing was musical, a sequence of rhythm, tension and release – and so her first novel took shape (and went on to win the 2013 Engine Books Novel Prize). She is Sarah Yaw and she’s on the Red Blog with her Undercover Soundtrack.
‘Harmony from fragments’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Rochelle Jewel Shapiro
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on December 10, 2014
My guest this week had a real struggle to get her novel into shape. She was used to seeking inspiration from music, but found that nothing she listened to was helping. In her head was a jumble of characters and voices, all clamouring but making no sense. Then she happened upon a video of her own daughter-in-law, singing an a capella composition of her own that layered and alternated lines from random blogs. This quirky piece gave her the courage to put her characters together – and see where the harmonies came. She is Rochelle Jewel Shapiro and she’s on the Red Blog with her Undercover Soundtrack.
‘We become readers in our listening’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, EJ Runyon
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on December 3, 2014
My guest this week wrote her book from a soundtrack of nostalgia – she describes it as a mix of Spanish-language songs and an American flavour of yearning. She used music and lyrics as signposts and milestones, to transport her into the mind of a child, to show the passing of time and the key moments of her young life. At one point, the character learns the violin and the author searched the internet until she had tracked down actual lesson books that would have been used by a child of that period. She is writing coach EJ Runyon, and she’s on the Red Blog with her Undercover Soundtrack.
‘Hidden forms that tell a story’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Stephen Weinstock
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on November 19, 2014
You can’t read much about writing advice before you trip over an essay about story structure, and how it works invisible magic on the reader. My guest this week has used sophisticated musical structures as the skeleton of his fantasy series, a series of nested reincarnation tales inspired by The Thousand and One Nights – and his influences range from Alban Berg to Frank Zappa. For him, music does not so much conjure up a scene or a character as an entire shape, of how an idea moves into a story and where it eventually goes. He is uniquely qualified to do so, as he is a composer, pianist and dance accompanist for musical theatre with (though he has not yet said if he is reincarnated). Stephen Weinstock is on the Red Blog with his Undercover Soundtrack.
SHORT BREAK I’ll be taking a short break from blogging but will be back with a post on 30 November.