How I make an Undercover Soundtrack – post at Writers & Artists

‘The more I wrote, the more my novel seemed to vibrate with meaning and questions. I found these fascinating but they could have drowned the book, whereas most of all I wanted to tell a mysterious story. It was music that kept me straight.’

Today I’m at Writers & Artists, talking about a subject that will be somewhat familiar to regulars here – writing with music. They were fascinated by the concept of Undercover Soundtracks, and asked me to explain to their readers.

So this is a post about how I started using music when I was ghostwriting – and how its influence enlarged drastically when I was working on My Memories of a Future Life. Do come over.

(And would it be gauche of me to do a happy dance because my creative salon is being featured on Bloomsbury’s writing blog… Look where you might end up if you start a series just because you want to. Have a great weekend. x)

‘Writers and songwriters can create memorable shared works’ – The Undercover Soundtrack inside out: SJ Tucker

‘The more writers and songwriters cross-pollinate and cross-promote our work, the more people will find out about us’

This weekend I’m celebrating the anniversary of the launch of My Memories of a Future Life. And since the story explores reincarnation in reverse, I thought I’d turn the Undercover Soundtrack inside out and talk to musicians who have been inspired by novels.

Today I’m hosting SJ Tucker, who has a long-running collaboration with award-winning fantasy novelist Catherynne M Valente. Their partnership goes way beyond a song for a book trailer; Cat writes song hints into her manuscripts for Sooj to find, and they tour together with their very own multimedia song and story circus. Sooj is talking about all that – and how she turns a novel into songs – today on the Red Blog.